Communication, Culture & Critique ISSN 1753-9129

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Knowledge Workers of the World! Unite?

Vincent Mosco
Department of Sociology, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6 Canada

doi:10.1111/j.1753-9137.2007.00011.x

Addressing a blind spot

Research in communication studies has tended to cluster around the exploration of
three interconnected topics: media, messages, and audiences. Those who focus on
media tend to look at power and control, including media ownership and the social,
political, and economic relations that are at play in the construction of messages and
of audiences. Research on messages tends to examine content, ranging from news
to propaganda to advertising, and on the discursive and technological forms these
messages take. Those concentrating on audiences tend to focus on the way individ-
uals or groups receive, make sense of, understand, act on, ignore, or incorporate
messages into daily life. The field has produced rich and varied work, but one aspect
has received little attention: labor. Intellectual and physical labor are required to
produce messages and the technologies used to disseminate them. Receiving and
acting on messages also requires labor. However, communications scholars rarely
address the various forms of laboring. In addition, the organizations that represent
media and information workers, and the presentation of labor in the media, also
receive relatively little attention. It is with this in mind that McKercher and I have
taken on a research project that aims to expand the attention scholars pay to the
laboring of communication and culture. Two recent collections demonstrate that
research is growing in this area (McKercher & Mosco, 2006, 2007b) and this paper
reports on how to build on this work.

Knowledge workers and labor power

Research from a variety of perspectives has demonstrated the importance of infor-
mation and communication labor in the modern economy (Dyer-Witheford, 1999;
Huws, 2003; Terranova, 2004). In an era characterized by declining trade union
penetration, increasing corporate concentration, and the rise of global conglomer-
ates that feed into—and are fed by—the spread of new communication and infor-
mation technology, knowledge workers have begun to explore new ways to increase
labor power. This is especially the case in the communication sector, which provides

Corresponding author: Vincent Mosco; e-mail: moscov@mac.com

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Knowledge Workers of the World V. Mosco

the equipment that makes globalization possible, and the production and distri-
bution of the ideas that are central to its operation. This project examines how
international labor organizations have responded to the pressures of globalization,
technological change, and the shift to an economy increasingly based on information
and communication services. Specifically, it deepens and extends our last research
project, which studied trade union convergence in North America by addressing this
process internationally and through a wider range of labor groups. A set of case
studies considers how different types of worker organizations have responded to
global trends in the converging communication and information sectors. The project
is driven by a significant policy question: Can labor organizations mobilize interna-
tionally to meet the challenges posed by technological change and the shift to what
Castells (2001) has called ‘‘informational capitalism?’’
Most of the literature on knowledge workers has concentrated on how the
technological and institutional forces of postindustrialism structure work and
worker organizations. Valuable as this research has been, it has treated labor as a
largely passive category to be shaped by the dynamics of capitalism and has obscured
just how labor makes itself, at work and in its organizations. This project contributes
to lifting the veil on labor as an active agent, constituting itself, sometimes defen-
sively, sometimes offensively, in the changing international division of labor.

Theoretical grounding
The study draws from several theoretical streams including political economy, which
addresses the power relations that mutually constitute the production, distribution,
and exchange of resources (Mosco, 1996). It also relies on theories of convergence
that explore the processes of integrating technologies through the development of
a common digital language (Longstaff, 2002), integrating institutions, as evidenced
by the growth of corporate concentration (Skinner, Compton, & Gasher, 2006), and
bringing together entire industries, a process which is leading to the creation of
a global electronic services arena (Pavlik, 2003). Finally, the project draws from labor
process theory, which takes up the impact of technological change and corporate
strategy on labor relations at the point of production, particularly by describing the
struggles over deskilling and reskilling that are central to labor in the knowledge
industries (Braverman, 1973; Edwards, 1979; Huws, 2003).
The study of knowledge labor and the information society has raised numerous
important questions for academics and policy makers. Because they have an impor-
tant impact on research and intervention, some of the most fundamental have to do
with how we define and make use of the terms. Because there is extensive debate on
this question, it is more useful to provide a range of definitions for each term rather
than to imagine, and impose, one ostensibly correct meaning. For example, ‘‘knowl-
edge work’’ has been defined in the narrow sense, as involving creative labor. Spe-
cifically, Florida (2002) limits knowledge work to the direct manipulation of symbols
to create an original knowledge product or to add obvious value to an existing one.

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V. Mosco Knowledge Workers of the World

According to this view, knowledge work would cover the labor of people like writers,
artists, web-page designers, and software creators.
A more expansive definition encompasses the occupations of those who handle
and distribute information such as call center workers. The reason for considering
these to be knowledge occupations is that an increasing amount of the work involves
making use of information to efficiently and effectively deliver an information prod-
uct. Indeed, some would add that the management and control of their work would
not be possible without the advanced surveillance technologies brought about by
developments in communication and information technology (Head, 2003).
Clearly, the line between what is and is not creative labor in the knowledge field is
fuzzy, and a good case can be made that workers who appear to be more marginal to
knowledge production nevertheless add value to the information product. There is
also a practical purpose to expanding the definition: the meaning of knowledge labor
is not measured simply by external criteria, but by how it is subjectively experienced
by the workers themselves. Scholars like Florida distinguish creative work from
information handling or distribution because the former is felt to play a different
role in the lives of workers. But that is less the case today. We see evidence of this not
only in the analysis of the range of information age occupations but also in the
growing ‘‘convergence’’ of different kinds of workers under the same union umbrel-
las, such as the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and its Canadian
counterpart, the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers (CEP) union. These
unions have brought together journalists and telephone operators, the people who
write and broadcast news and those who work the cameras and sound boards to
bring it to viewers and listeners. They have also demonstrated the value of conver-
gence in action, by mobilizing their seemingly disparate membership in successful
labor actions (Mosco & McKercher, 2006). However, the mixed pattern of labor
convergence across the communication sector in North America, including the
failure of some creative unions to converge, leaves open the question of how to
bound the term ‘‘knowledge worker’’ (McKercher & Mosco, 2007a).
Finally, the most expansive definition of knowledge work would include all
workers involved in the chain of producing and distributing knowledge products.
This view maintains that workers who assemble computer cables and components,
including low-wage, immigrant women in Silicon Valley and abroad, are knowledge
workers because they are an integral part of the value chain that creates the central
engine of knowledge production, the computer (Smith, Sonnenfeld, & Pellow, 2006).
A similar range of possibilities exists in debates around the meaning of the term
‘‘information society,’’ particularly in its relationship to capitalism. In the narrowest
use of the term, it describes the growth of a particular type of economic activity in
capitalist societies—the simple acknowledgment that the production, distribution,
and exchange of information has come to occupy relatively more economic activity
than either agriculture or manufacturing. The production of exchange value from
use value, and the organization of the economy to maximize surplus value, remains
central to the global political economy—arguably, even more central than ever

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Knowledge Workers of the World V. Mosco

before. Communication and information technology and knowledge labor contrib-

ute to capitalism by expanding the size of the market for products and labor, but do
not call into question the fundamental nature of capitalism. Borrowing a phrase
from Schiller (1999), one might describe the economics of the information society as
‘‘digital capitalism,’’ but it is a capitalist society first and foremost.
Alternatively, one might argue that the terms ‘‘information age’’ or information
society represent a new form of capitalism, simultaneously strengthening some of the
fundamental tendencies of the system by expanding markets while also challenging
them. In this respect, information society is more than just a description of a type of
capitalist society, one with relatively more economic activity bound up with infor-
mation. Rather, it refers to a society whose activity raises significant questions for the
viability of capitalism because it opens new forms of production, both within and
outside the system and its legal structure. Perhaps, the best current example of work
that straddles the fence between a focus on capitalism and on a fundamental break
with capitalism is that of Castells (2001).
The fact that Castells switches back and forth between calling it informational
capitalism and a ‘‘network society’’ reveals a genuine concern that, although elements
of traditional capitalism remain, one needs to be open to the view that we are
experiencing the creation of a fundamentally new type of society. The importance
of making the most profitable use of the means of production, including labor,
continues, and the social relations of production, if increasingly organized around
communication and information, remain distinctly capitalist. However, the enor-
mous and accelerating capacity to create communication and information networks
challenges capitalism’s capacity to manage and contain them. The volume of infor-
mation and communication that falls out of the orbit of value extraction—from the
simple act of downloading material free of charge, to sending a video message to the
world on YouTube, to carrying out criminal activities like money laundering under
the cover of cyberspace—threatens the singular dominance of the capitalist mode of
production. Open source and hacker networks challenge property rights in the digital
world. Criminals and terrorists use digital technology to hide, and thereby expand,
their activities. The network begins to replace the commodity as the central axis of
social development. We live in a changed world, marked by the tension between
information that wants to be free and a capitalism that wants to use it for the singular
purpose of creating surplus value. Castells openly moves between both views, and his
work embodies the tensions in the scholarly community over the significance of an
information society. Others, like Hardt and Negri (2004) and Terranova (2004), take
a more explicit position that the information society—from its networks that blur
the lines between real and virtual, to its labor that blurs the distinction between
material and immaterial—is transforming capitalism into something fundamentally
different. Incapable of containing the process of value creation within the confines of
capitalist processes and institutions, capitalism morphs into an information society
whose rules and relationships are increasingly up for grabs. According to this view,
a society built around information networks erases the once-clear demarcations

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V. Mosco Knowledge Workers of the World

between work and home, labor and leisure, and economic value and social value, and
in so doing, begins to become a new kind of society. Myth-making aside, it is
certainly not a utopian world; the reliance on massive surveillance alone challenges
that claim. But the growth in the multiplicity and intensity of challenges to tradi-
tional capitalism, according to this view, begins to raise fundamental questions that
lead some to find answers in a new type of society, an information society.

Labor convergence in North America

For some time, McKercher and I have studied diverse segments of the Canadian and
U.S. communications industry, including its workers and labor organizations. My
research on labor in the communications industry dates back to a 1983 book that
addressed theories of labor in a postindustrial society, the communication industry
labor process, and media representations of workers. I have also carried out a national
study of Canadian telecommunications workers and provided expert reports on labor
and convergence in telecommunications to assist with three cases before the Canada
Industrial Relations Board.1 McKercher’s research resulted in a book on technological
convergence, the labor process and trade unions in the Canadian and U.S. newspaper
industry (2002). A research project over the period 2004–2007 resulted in several
articles addressing the process of labor convergence in unions and worker associations
in the Canadian and U.S. communications industry in general and through case
studies covering the range of converging communications and information sectors.2
In addition, we have coedited a special double issue of the Canadian Journal of
Communication on The Laboring of Communication (McKercher & Mosco, 2006)
and have an edited book (McKercher & Mosco, 2007b).
Our 2004–2007 project demonstrated the importance of labor convergence or
the integration of labor unions and worker associations across the converging com-
munication industries of Canada and the United States, bringing together, for exam-
ple, journalists, broadcast workers, telecommunications and information specialists,
and other knowledge workers in one large organization. This research comple-
mented the already extensive body of work on technological and industry conver-
gence, which focuses on their impact on media content, typically concluding that
these forms of convergence limit content diversity and access to media (Kunz, 2006;
Skinner et al., 2006). This focus is justifiable but it left gaps in understanding how
convergence changes the nature of work and challenges trade unions. Research is
only now beginning to document the impact of media convergence on employment
in the industry (DiCola, 2006; Yoo & Mody, 2000).
Our research has helped to fill some of these gaps. The preliminary results of our
2004–2007 project documented the relative success of labor convergence as our
major North American models have expanded their success in collective bargaining,
in mobilizing membership, and in political activity. Unions such as the CWA and
worker associations such as the Washington Alliance of Technical Workers (Wash-
Tech) demonstrated their success in labor actions at the Canadian Broadcasting

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Knowledge Workers of the World V. Mosco

Corporation (CBC), in organizing workers in the wireless sector, and in winning

a court contest against Microsoft. In contrast, those unions that have not been able to
bring about the same level of labor convergence, for example, the Screen Actors
Guild, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and the Telecom-
munications Workers Union of Canada, have met with less success, partly because
they have chosen to remain focused on one particular sector of an increasingly
converged industry dominated by companies that span the industry.

The changing international division of labor

However, even those labor organizations that successfully achieved a measure of
national or even, as in the case of the CWA, binational convergence, are limited in
what they can accomplish because they lack a strong international scope. For exam-
ple, when the worker association WashTech, which has received strong CWA sup-
port, successfully defended information technology workers, Microsoft fought back
by outsourcing the work to India and elsewhere (Brophy, 2006). Examples like this
make it imperative to broaden the study of labor convergence to include the inter-
national arena. In doing so, it responds to calls in the scholarly literature to rethink
international labor federations in light of a changing global political economy
(Jakobsen, 2001). But it is important to do so with research that is grounded in
the complexities of a changing international division of labor that is not easily
reducible to simple conclusions. Consider the issue of outsourcing labor. Trade
union organizations invariably consider it negatively, although most businesses con-
clude that it is an unalloyed gain for economic growth. Basing policy, including the
strategies of international labor organizations, on these simple responses is danger-
ous because, as our earlier research has shown, outsourcing is not without its anti-
monies. A large share of outsourcing in the knowledge and communication sectors is
contained within the developed world where, for example, Canada has become
Hollywood North and Ireland continues to benefit from its skilled workforce and
wage premium. Moreover, although India is a major source of low-wage knowledge
labor, its major companies such as ICICI, Tata, Infosys, and Wipro are taking
a leading role in the outsourcing industry. Their activities in North America suggest
that place still matters and that culture continues to count. Finally, resistance is
growing from labor organizations and that is one reason why the expansion of
convergent unions and worker associations in the knowledge and communication
sectors is particularly important. (Mosco, 2006b; see also Elmer & Gasher, 2005).
Research that assesses the strategies and prospects of international labor organiza-
tions needs to be grounded in recognition that the dynamics of the international
division of labor, particularly in the knowledge and communication sectors, is com-
plex and not easily reduced to singularities, however attractive as political slogans or
mythic symbols (Mosco, 2004).
Specifically, sensitive to these complexities, this project is examining the state of
international labor organizations in the communication and information sectors, the

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V. Mosco Knowledge Workers of the World

relationships among them, and assesses the extent to which they enable workers to
meet the challenges of informational capitalism. The research is situated in a political
economy perspective, which concentrates on power relationships at the institutional
level and at the point of production, and addresses the extent and effectiveness of
labor convergence at the international level (McKercher, 2002; Mosco, 1996; Suss-
man & Lent, 1998). There is an extensive body of literature on convergence in the
communication and information arena that examines how technologies, companies,
and entire markets are coming together through the process of digitization, which
creates new and enhanced opportunities to make communication content and the
audiences for it valuable market commodities. Our research has extended this liter-
ature by examining how convergence is increasing opportunities to expand the
commodity form in the labor of communication and information workers and to
provide these workers with opportunities to mobilize effectively to challenge the
standard forms of convergence. To cite one example, in 2005, management at the
CBC argued that the pressures of technological and industry convergence made it
essential for the corporation to combine jobs across its media streams and to
contract out more of its work. Workers at the national broadcaster were somewhat
successful in the ensuing lockout because they were represented by a converged
union, the CWA that brought together technical workers and journalists, and
supported them with a large strike fund that has grown as the CWA has expanded
its membership across the converging communication field (Mosco & McKercher,
2006). But effective mobilization like this increasingly requires international con-
vergence. Although research has documented the process of global convergence in
technology, firms, and markets, we know very little about the international dynam-
ics of labor convergence.

Global labor convergence

Specifically, we are in the process of producing a global map of labor convergence by
describing four primary types of international labor organization. These include
international federations that remain rooted in one of the major forms of commu-
nication and information, global federations of unions that span the communication
and information industries, government or public federations that represent the
interests of workers, and worker associations that may be rooted in one nation
but which are testing new forms of organizing and partnering with unions and
federations outside the nation. We are interested in identifying the major organiza-
tions in each category, describing their successes and failures, and the relationships
among them. In essence, it is intended to produce an assessment of the state of global
labor convergence and the prospects for building international solidarity among
workers and their organizations. This provides the groundwork for detailed case
studies that examine organizations facing a range of convergence-related challenges,
including the challenge of making use of converging technologies to meet the needs
of workers and their labor organizations.

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Knowledge Workers of the World V. Mosco

Case 1 deals with the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), an example of

convergence that continues to focus on one sector of the media industry. The IFJ is
the world’s largest journalism organization, representing 500,000 journalism profes-
sionals who comprise its 161 member unions from 117 countries. One of the
arguments made in defense of union convergence is the ability to take on broad
policy issues that smaller unions cannot afford to address. We are investigating the
extent to which the IFJ succeeds on four of the issues to which it gives prominence:
media concentration, women’s rights in the media, authors’ rights to control their
work, and institutional attacks on press freedom. The IFJ also claims to bring
together journalists from both rich and poor nations. This practice is particularly
important because companies like Reuters have begun to outsource journalism work
from wealthy nations like the U.K. to low-wage nations like India. Has convergence
enabled the IFJ to address this practice? Finally, as technological and corporate
convergence challenges traditional definitions of journalism and as some of its
member unions, like the CEP in Canada, enlist workers across both the content
and the technical segments of the knowledge industries, can the IFJ continue to
succeed by focusing on one media sector?
Case 2 examines the Union Network International (UNI), a global federation
that spans all sectors of the converging electronic services arena. Unlike the IFJ, UNI
fully embraces convergence. Calling itself ‘‘a new international for a new millen-
nium,’’ it was founded in 2000 and today brings together 15.5 million workers from
900 unions in 140 countries. It primarily spans the newly converged electronic
information and communication sectors including workers in the postal, media,
entertainment, telecommunications, and culture sectors. A driving force behind its
creation was the growth of companies that span these sectors by taking advantage of
converging electronic technologies. Although it is new, UNI has been in the forefront
of global labor issues like outsourcing and prominent in applying pressure to global
companies and international organizations like the World Trade Organization. How
effective is the strategy of creating a labor network of networks that is not confined to
one sector? How successful has it been in bridging major divides in the knowledge
sector, such as those separating technical from content producers, and news workers
from entertainment and other cultural workers? Finally, we are examining how UNI
has fared in one of its major goals, building connections between first- and third-
world workers on the vital issue of outsourcing knowledge work.
Case 3 addresses the International Labor Organization (ILO) to consider how
labor convergence works in a United Nations agency. The ILO differs from both the
IFJ and UNI in that it is an arm of the United Nations and was chartered in 1919 to
promote justice and human rights for workers. Formally, it produces conventions
and recommendations that establish minimum standards for labor rights including
freedom of association, the right to organize, collective bargaining, abolition of
forced labor, and equality of opportunity and treatment. It also provides technical
assistance to workers and labor organizations. This case enables us to examine the
state of an international public institution charged with protecting workers and their

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V. Mosco Knowledge Workers of the World

unions. How does convergence affect the ILO’s operation? Specifically, how has it
dealt with the shift from industrial work, the main form of labor throughout most of
its history, to the increasingly important category of knowledge work, as well as with
the differing regional balances of those two forms of labor? We are also assessing the
extent to which the ILO has or has not been a force in building networks between
first- and third-world information workers, between those occupying different posi-
tions on outsourcing and the changing international division of knowledge work.
Case 4 takes up two labor federations in India, the New Trade Union Initiative,
which brings together 300 trade unions representing more than 500,000 Indian
workers and the Union for IT Enabled Services (UNITES), which organizes workers
across the information and communication technology sectors including completing
successful contract drives with a major outsourcing firm as well as an international
call center located in Hyderabad. We are focusing on these organizations because
they represent new efforts to transcend traditional political party-oriented trade
unionism in India, because they each respond in different ways to convergence in
the knowledge sector (NTUI is broad based, whereas UNITES focuses on informa-
tion technology), and because each has relationships with the organizations in the
first three case studies, particularly in attempts to build global labor networks to meet
the challenge of outsourced communication and knowledge labor. Our project is
examining this new burst of trade union activity in India and is assessing how it is
facing the challenges of convergence. Specifically, how effectively are these new
organizations mobilizing knowledge workers in India and how successful are they
in building ties to labor federations based in the developed world?
In sum, these case studies suggest that rather than simply asking of informational
capitalism, what will be the next new thing?, our attention should turn to an arguably
more significant one, will knowledge workers of the world unite?

Acknowledgment
This paper was produced with the assistance of a grant from the Canadian Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Notes
1 Mosco and Wasko (1983); Mosco, Zureik, and Lochhead (1989); Mosco (2002).
2 Mosco, McKercher, and Stevens (2007); McKercher and Mosco (2007a); Mosco (2005);
Mosco (2006a, 2006b, 2006c); Kiss and Mosco (2005).

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