 Information Technology, Labor Process and Labor  Movement
- An Attempt for a Political Economy of Beepers -

Kang, Su-Dol*

1. Basic Views to informatization

It is usually said that 21C would be 'the age of globalization and information'.(1)  Many future-study scholars are declaring that 'informatization society' is the only fundamental condition for "labour liberation" and "humanization of work". However, this definition contains massive political meaning in the sense of making the working people be indifferent to the real politics. Regarding to 'information society' which has developed to a considerable extent, the opposite opinion is coming out to the public as well. For instance, the analysis such as "electronic panopticon"(Foucault), "the society of 20:80"(Martin & Schumann 1996) has changed the image of fantasy from 'information society' into the image of nightmare. Therefore, the discourse of globalization and informatization is, from my viewpoint, not a certain thing which has dropped from sky as a categorical proposition or natural born, but has got strong strategic meaning for global capital's accumulation and ruling.
Especially, the process of informatization in the world capitalism doesn't point only to the information technology. It should also be analysed in a wider context of neo-liberalistic ideological propaganda such as unlimited competition on the world market. So it should be understood as a specific form of capitalist offensive against the working class in the name of worldwide competition. It is not an accident that the informatization attack is accompanied by the neo-liberalistic and neo-conservative actions of capital such as privatization, deregulation and rationalization.
In this context, this essay is going to focus, by and large, on two issues; one is to analyse the effect of these informatization which affects labor market, labor process and usual life. Of course even in this case, a variable named informatization is not an independent variable or a constant, but is recognized as a mediate variable through which the capital changes labor's life and power, as well as a dependent variable which reflects power relationship between capital and labor. The reason is that the process of informatization is usually going in a special period and situation in which the capital finds itself endangered in further accumulation. For instance, after the general strike in summer 1987 in Korea, the wave of full automatization and informatization has been strongly going on. In my view, the question, "why do informatization is strongly processed in a specific period?", is here of great importance.
The other focus in this paper is regarding the alternative way of seeing and utilizing information technology for the labor movement. In the history, the information technology has never had neutral value or non-political character. So changing only its user could mean nothing for our society. For just like this reason, the second point needs to have more and deeper discussion.


2. The influences of informatization process on the workers' life

There are millions of individual capitals which try to satisfy their want of continuous accumulation throughout 24 hours all over the world. The fundamental problem of these capitals is that they should fight against other individual capitals in order to accumulate more and more. Meanwhile, they should get rid of the pressure of this competition as light as possible. Therefore, individual capitals started to deploy two kinds of strategy at the same time. 
One of the capital strategy is to monopolize market, technology and banking. For the individual capitalists, to take over a market by means of technological monopoly based on monopoly capital would be the ideal type. Throughout these tendency, information-communication industry has been developed in intentional and systemic way in order to overcome the accumulation crisis on world market. Especially the monopoly capital in USA has found a good breakthrough in this information and communication industry. It is also true of other multi-national capitals in the world. So, all around the world, the communication, electronic and computer industry is  expanding at full speed. Until 1993, a new market of which size is at large 194 billion dollars in USA, 163 billion dollars in Asia, 140 billion dollars in Europe, and over 500 billion dollars in sum, had been created. By 2000, if various kinds of hardwares, softwares, accessories will be added to this market, the new communication market will become a gigantic one of which size will be 5 thousand billion dollars or 7 billion dollars.(2) Korean Industrial Bank also expects that by 2001, the total size of Korean industry of information and technology will have been expanded to 15.2 billion won(nearly 18 billion dollars), which will be 20% of GDP in Korea(Chu, 1997)(3). However, all over the world, the multi-national monopolies get patent and intellectual property rights for their exclusive interests in the profits from the technologies of information and communication(Uruguay Round).(4) But, at the same time, they maintain explicitly 'free-market-doctrine' on the other side. Symbolically the WTO system has already started in 1995. In consideration of these situations, we can confirm that the 'Information Society' never comes accidently and naturally.
And the other capital strategy is reinforcement of control over labor. No matter what strong power of capital, exclusive technologies and high market share they hold, if one individual capital cannot hold sufficient power over human labor forces, the accumulation movement of capital would be far from satisfactory. So, individual capital makes use of labor forces as much as possible, which are so called 'human resources' purchased as a form of commodity, by every means of qualification and motivation of laborers' ability. Therefore, the capital has developed various ways of qualifying and motivating of the workers. Management theories have well contributed to this effort initiated by the capital. By this way, human labor force alive is effectively changed into variable capital. Qualification and motivation could be the only way to transform the human living labor force into (variable) capital successfully. If we take this kind of view, the competition 'individual capital A vs. individual capital B' can be formulated into 'individual capital a)/individual labor a) vs. individual capital b)/individual labor b). And this can also be reformulated into 'industrial relations A vs. industrial relations B'. In other words, the competition among individual capitals depends decisively on their ability to dominate and rule their own workforce effectively, for example through creation of cooperative and participative circumstances at the workplace. In this case, capital A pointed to a company. To broaden our imagination, it could be a certain nation or state. This is a good way to explain why almost every country has tried to keep industrial peace and cooperation between capital and labor, especially in the wave of globalization in the 1990s.
Between these two strategies this essay is focused on the second one. To strengthen control over labor is not concentrated only on the direct labor process, but throughout the whole social processes including labor market and daily life of the working people. Therefore, the following essay is going to analyse how the informatization influences on labor's life including labor market, labor process, and everyday life.

2.1 Changes on the Labor Market - employment relations and pay system

It is "the society of 20:80"(Martin & Schumann, 1996) that implicitly represents the negative result of automatization and imformatization initiated by capital and for capital. Of course the industrial restructuring and business rationalization based on information and communication technology affect labor market significantly. In a word, only 1/5 of the world working people could enjoy safe employment, high pay and good life. But the others 4/5 would become unemployed or suffer precarious employment, low pay and bad life. Because it is that automatization and informatization(through mechanical operation excluding personal variances, digitalized memory of information, and increase of possibility to compare, judge, predict and control through classified data) replace not only physical labor but mental work. Accordingly, capital could systematically remove many "obstacles" of the valorization process effectively by means of informatization(standardization, unification, objectification). These "obstacles" originate from subjective sides of workers or their collective actions. Consequently, long-term and structural unemployment and unstable labor markets are intentionally created by the capital. "The crisis of labor society" in the capitalistic world has already been our reality.
According to the data of Korean government's bureau for statistics, the number of temporary employees who have got contract less than one year is more than 6 million in June 1997 for the first time in history. This number represents more than 45% of total 13 million laborers in South Korea. It is also difficult to say that the full employed workers' condition would be stable. According to the official statement of department of labor(in May 1997), there have been 63,000 fired people by lay-off during the period from 1990 to 1996. More than 10,000 people are fired on average every year. Moreover, young people between the ages of 20 and 24 can rarely catch a chance to get a job because of the narrow labor market. Every year, hundreds thousands of graduated young people seek for their job, but the number of secure job is more and more becoming reduced. For example, there will be 320,000 student who graduate from their university or college. The size of new jobs can only prepared for 80,000 candidates. In other words, merely 20% of graduated young people can get secure job leaving behind 80% of unemployed or temporarily employed friends.

   <Table 1> Change of the internal composition of workers in Korea
                                               (in thousands, %)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                  1990     1991    1992    1993   1994    1995     1996     96.2/4    97. 2/4    
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
wage labor        10,950   11,349  11,568  11,757  12,297   12,736   13,043    13,063    13,320

full-time labor      5,939    6,256    6,607   6,900   7,110    7,389    7,378     7,409     7,262
                  (54.2)    (55.1)    (57.1)   (58.7)   (57.8)   (58.0)    (56.6)     (56.7)     (54.5)   
casual labor        3,171    3,263    3,189   3,133   3,420   3,546    3,868     3,853     4,135
                  (29.0)    (28.8)   (27.6)    (26.7)   (26.3)   (27.8)    (29.7)     (29.5)     (31.0)
day labor          1,840    1,830    1,772    1,718   1,767    1,801   1,797    1,801     1,923
                   (16.8)   (16.0)    (15.3)    (14.6)   (15.9)   (14.2)   (13.7)     (13.8)     (14.5)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  note) full-time labor : workers with contracts effective for one year and more
       casual labor : workers with contracts effective between one month and one year
       day labor : workers with contracts effective for below one month
  source: Korea Statistics Bureau(1997).

With regard to the change of the labor market, one of the interesting phenomena is that the dawn labor market which have been seen in Namdemun or Chunggyechun market are disappearing according to the vast spread of the beepers and the handphones.(5) In the past, there were many people living from hand to mouth who wanted to get job. But now they watch television in their room simply waiting for a call, and if someone pages to them, they run to the workplace immediately. These "just-in-time workers" are easily to meet in Yongsan electronic commercial center or in Chunggyechun market in Seoul, Kukje market in Pusan and at the restaurants, in the entertainment businesses and construction branches. These businesses need to arrange the number of the workers contingently and immediately to carry out the service according to customers. The informal survey in 1996 in Korea showed that the number of these workers had reached to 200,000, but an official at the ministry of labor said that it is practically about 600,000. Futhermore, many firms which organize these just-in-time workers have been established very rapidly. These firms input names, personality characters, and phone or pager numbers of the potential workers into computer, and then dispatch appropriate people according to the demand of other companies searching for workforce. The number of these man-power broker firms has already reached 4,000 in 1996. Compared with the number in 1986, their number has increased three times already in 1991. This is true of the number of the workers being dispatched and managed via pagers. These firms don't need to equip anything except for pagers and handphones. The so-called "walking office" come to be reality. In some cases someone can manage manpower business at home only with phone, fax and computer network. Thus the possibility of the virtual firm, virtual organization come to increase vastly. Considering this situation from the workers' standpoint, they can't see the counterpart to whom they can express their dissatisfaction with working conditions, and also can't organize themselves to struggle for improvement of working life.(6) In short, as the 'collective subjects' on the labor market are dismantled, the 'invisible fist(power)' of capital can be strengthened considerably.(7)

          <Table 2> Increasing trend of wireless telephones in the world    
                                                               (in millions)
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                1996      1997    1998    1999    2000   2001
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
number of the users              136      205     317      491    761    1,179
new applicant for use              50      72      112      174     270    418   
number of sold portable            65      94      146      226     315    543
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 source: Financial Times(August, 13. 1997)


On the other hand, the capital is changing the wage system which had been till now decided by collective bargaining with trade unions in every company. It has the intention to depoliticize the mechanism of wage negotiation by strengthening the management's personnel assesment system. The "informatization revolution" enabled this change to be realized for the capital. For example, Samsung Data System Co. introduced in 1995 the annual salary system that decide wage level of each worker according to their individual ability and performance. This new wage system has the assumption that only 5% of the workers can contribute to company's profit increase, whereas the other 95% are merely parasites. Therefore it meant on rigid assesment, the minority 5% must be treated generously and with great care, but others must not. In other words, under quickly changing conditions of the information and communication technology, the length of workers' service in the company or their age is no longer important, but instead, only their ability and the performance, in order to adjust fast and flexibly to new conditions. Especially the establishment of comprehensive personnel information system in each company or 'manpower bank' in each city can enable the capital to grasp promptly and compare personal character, performance, attitude to supervisor, colleague relations and even organizational activities in such as labor union. It means that capital's controlling power has been considerably improved through information technology. The new 'just-in-time workers', because they get salary per hour or per their work performance, can't even dream the traditional collective bargaining. What does it say? It is capital's attempt to make industrial reserve force available at any time, to a massive extent, to confront the accumulation crisis by the democratic labor movement. 


2.2 Change of the labor process - character of work and forms of labor control 

 First of all, the informatization changes character of the work. At the same time it makes labor process more flexible and abstract. The abstract character of labor is one of the results from those changes. The labor process that still had been dependent on the human labor's sensitivity and skill, its discretion and estimation competence changes into a new system based on computer, robot, and sensor with automation and informatization. Here the possibility of remembrance, calculation, control and repetition through digital technology is of great importance. For instance, Korea Telekom substituted thousands of telephone operators with the establishment of the computerized voice recognizing system just like at AT&T in USA. As the informatization process proceeds, everything related to business process is coded, quantified(digitalized), and so, better compared and assessed. And this process tends to become a prompt and exact control mechanism. Workers under new conditions only program(8) or push the button according to manuals provided by management or engineers. The work at informatization age may seem as what has liberated human being from dirty, difficult and dangerous work in glimpse. But this has, in reality, made workers be dismantled more than before, and so they cannot understand the whole production process, especially, what and how is produced concretely. Already the labor process had been cut to pieces and disordered. As a result, the working people have lost the substantial control power over their own labor process. And the concrete human's figure dealing with iron, timber directly, writing customer's names, composing the reports, and feeling, talking and reacting through all these processes is disappearing. Instead, all are now reduced to the relation between computer and their operator.(9) Every pore is removed through this process and capital's productivity increases. Furthermore, this "neutralizing" process has led workers to an occupational disease such as job stress or VDT syndrome through strengthened labor intensity. From my viewpoint, this "neutralizing" of labor process through technological innovation is not irrelevant to the widespread workaholism in our society. Just like most addicts the addictive workers are often out of touch with their feelings, intuition, and other similar sources of information(cf. Schaef & Fassel 1988), because their labor process has been neutralized and abstracted to a considerable extent, losing the insight and critical competence what and how should be produced. 
The flexibilization of labor, on the other side, means that much work is no longer carried out in the long-term, but moves very frequently with informatization (transcendence of time, space and border). Thanks to the information network the capital can easily compare the performances of each factory. So continuous comparison and control of various operating processes are conducted because they want to continue their business on more advantageous basis. The capital now moves its headquarters freely worldwide, moves some part of manufacturing process abroad, or take global-sourcing after close of the company. And the capital continually elevates the rate of machinery-operation in order to withdraw its investment cost in a short term and accelerate capital movement. In that process, there would be installed a variety of shift system for 24 hour-operation of machinery, extension of absolute working time, or introduction of flexible working time. The new labor law in Korea, which was revised in March 1997 after two months' general strike, legislates the flexible use of labor(legally reasonable dismissal system, flexible working time system, substitution of strike workers through strikebreakers from the same factory) in this context. And on the other hand, information society enlarges the possibility of telework. For example, teleworkers in America increased from 23 millions in 1989 to about 39 millions in 1994, and there are about 10 millions of teleworkers in Europe(Cho, 1997:70). The extended capacity of capital to flexibilize labor means considerable increase of capital's control over labor. So workers who can't move less freely across any border than capital cannot but being subordinate to the domination of capital. Information network moving at a hyperspeed can make it possible to control labor through any national or local data, so capital can achieve both hyper-localization and hyper-centralization simultaneously. Indeed, though the capital empowers lots of branches all over the world to manage by themselves to some extent and stimulate them to compete desperately among them, capital can, at the same time, acquire centralized control beyond the time and space efficiently thanks to the global information network. For example, the capital of Daewoo Motors can stay only in the headqurter in Incheon(near of Seoul) and can collect data on productivity, quality, and situation of strikes from the second factory of Koonsan(about 3 hours far from Incheon) and other 10 factories such as joint investment in Poland and Rumania and Indonesia. So it is possible to move factories to another location or regulate production at a certain location at any time, if the expected performance is not achieved. In September 1997, Korea Telecom Freetel, Hansol PCS, and LG Telecom, in addition to the existing cellular phone companies like SK Telecom and Shinsegi Telecom, have come to compete each other, the former companies have about 600 unmanned satellite bases respectively all over the country and SK Telecom has 2,500 unmanned bases. Their service workers, who move continually with cellular phone on one hand and steering wheel of Korando(Jeepers) on the other hand, so as to repair and manage these unmanned bases. For example, there are now about 6,000 workers in SK Telecom and 2,500 'running' workers, that is more than 40% of total workers, supervise these unmanned bases. They have no more regular work places or working desks like the traditional clericals or engineers. As shown in this case, the informatization raises not only the possibility of substitution of labor but also that of labor process itself. 
The informatization process also gives the capital new possibility in the form of labor control in the direct labor process. Indeed, internal control, which is represented as a institutionalized and communicative form, is favored and made possible at the informatization age more than external control such as an old authoritarian and mechanical form(cf. Kang 1995). The institutionalized form of control aims at strengthening the domination of capital through management participation system or welfare system at the company or social level, and communicative form aims at labor control through "internalization" of the capital's logic by workers, which happens when the capital allows workers somewhat autonomous space and opportunity of bilateral communication to some extent. For example, some companies allow workers to express any kind of discontent, to make any proposals, or suggest ideas through company-wide computer network, and these opinions are, of course, technically, delivered to the CEOs without any interruption. In many cases, these opinions can be chosen and given even prize, and the dissatisfactory things would be sometimes reformed. This process helps the workers "identify" themselves more than before with "their" companies, and workers even have the illusion of 'electric democracy'. But at the same time, new instruments such as electric censor machine, beeper, cellular phone, or personal record system which police and company share make it possible for the capital to supervise and control intensively and rapidly all the people or organizations that obstruct its capitalistic activities.
Another important aspect in relation to the form of labor control is, regardless of blue collar, white collar, or executives, also to be referred to : team work. In case that work is implemented collectively in the shopfloor or office, the team work is being diffused. Originally requested by the European unions in terms of expansion of workers' autonomy in the labor process, improvement of worker capacity, humanization of labor in 1970's, in the wave of informatization(refinement of Taylor-style time-motion study via video cameras and computers, visualization of operating processes via electric sign boards etc.), however, the team work is attempted in terms of employment reduction, pore-reduction of working time, intensification of labor, internalization of external control, diminishing of management cost(reduction of hierarchical rigidity and middle management class), and full-using of workers' experiences and creativity. In particular, information technology is very sensitive, while very systematic for the linkage of network. So a damage out of a very small trouble can paralyze or disturb almost the whole system. So, for capital, the more is developed the informatization of labor process, the more is it required to make workers participate active in protecting against these dangers positively and voluntarily. Workers' subjective voluntarism, stronger identification with each company, and fluent communication in business organization come to front for the capital. In this context, team works are being developed and installed very steadily. In short, team work with the base of informatization enables team members to control themselves effectively and provide the capital with the possibility of solving such problems as productivity, quality, working attitude, and the problem of independent union movement at once.
Finally, it must be added that inducement of information technology contributes to the process of polarization of workers: minority male workforce becoming core layer and majority female and other low skilled workforce becoming marginal layer(unskilled assembly job, simple office job, temporary job). In other words, "the gender-discrimination in organizations is intensified in the process of the inducement of high-tech"(Savage 1992, Cho 1997). The labor control through such discrimination and competition resulting in a strict, but rarely visible social hierarchy help the capital, in the long run, to reinforce the domination over labor on the whole.


2.3. Daily life - speed feeling, hastiness, information-addiction, and poverty in wealth

Because the development of capital-driven info-communication technology makes the capital in turn move in no delay, even worker's daily life and daily consciousness are compelled to adapt to it silently. For instance, in 1996, in just only USA, the investment fund of about 6 thousand billion dollars is running all over the world tens of times a day through computerized financial network. Sometimes lucky speculator earn 10 million dollars only in one minute. To the contrary, there appear numberless failed investors in very short time. Owing to the informatization of financial market(unlimited mobility of financial capital separated from with real material production), cunning speculator can do 'profit hunting' of billions of dollars in the brink of eyes. And the enormous power of financial capital enforce often the labor-excluding rationalization of global management compelling to secure profit rate over 10% to investment enterprises. And in this course, in the age of uncertainty, new business emerges, that is derivatives transaction. This contract is assumed at 12 thousand billion dollars in 1994, and expected to grow to 18 thousand billion dollars. Recently, Korea saw an interesting happening, too. In October 1997, when the advance sale of the airline ticket for Chu-seok holidays in one year(October 1998) started, all of the main line tickets(about two hundred thousand seats) are sold out only within 10 minutes via PC-communication network and on-line service of tour agencies etc. It is about to 6 thousand million won, and for the full one year left until the real boarding at the airport, airline companies can get 6 hundred million won freely just by interest.
This very rapid movement of capital help reinforce the general daily consciousness, "time is money", to all social members as well as workers. To the surprise, people can acquire actual information more chiefly and more quickly through the expansion of network(so-called, the reduction of 'transaction cost'). But no other than such convenience makes us afraid of wasting one minute or even one second. In fact, the hastiness of the people did something in the case of airline ticket reservation. The daily consciousness of this type leads one to lose room for consideration and may change even one's personal character. In some cases, such a development of information technology may make relationship of family, friends, and fellowship estranged rather than intimate with each other. For example, when someone ask his girl friend via radio pager(beeper) or hand-phone to call back immediately but the woman put off her pager at that time, then he may misunderstand or can be greatly afraid of eventual accidents with her after half an hour. Furthermore, such a speed-feeling of capital movement is presented in universalization of advertisement and fashion. Using info-technology, commercial advertisements standardize and depoliticize our needs structure, while vogue and fashion reduce the life-cycle of such products and 'institutionalize' them(cf. Kang, N.H. 1997). One of the tools that make people more sensitive to these vogue and fashion is teleshopping, or cybershopping. It is regarded that TV, phone, internet removes physical, psychological distance between consumers and sellers, so in the case that these tools are provided, people will fall into the consuming life more easily, and in the long run becoming addictive. There are already three cyber-shopping malls in Korea(i.e., Lotte department store, Interpark of DACOM, and Chongno bookstore), and some big businesses, department stores, and large bookstores are preparing them, too. Therefore, it is not accidental tendency to use instant(one-time) goods and always new and new products in an addictive way, instead of making full use of necessary goods for our subsistence. In addition, if this tendency is progressively growing in our minds, our life-world will be more money-dependent and so finally, capital-dependent. Then, more members of the family will have to go to labor markets and more time has to be devoted faithfully to work under the command of capital.
In this context we can discuss further about the important aspect of informatization(transcendency of time and space), as already implicated: informational addiction. We live in the flood of information and, in particular, the publicization of internet is premise of unlimited information desire and also its mid-consequence. But information such as pornography is diffused more extensively and quickly than informaton to find wisdom and to help understand the real world correctly. Furthermore, this informatization wave makes various traditional consciousness, specific life styles, and unique mode of cultures overall in the world change into uniformed, standardized, and simple one on a global scale. This global standardization process is, in fact, intersected with self-valorization desire of the capital. When we feel thirsty in midsummer, for an instance, traditionally people in Korea drank well-water, grain drink, or cucumber soup, but today we have a great craving for beer or Coke almost automatically. And we navigate the sea of internet to find necessary information with the standardized manual. In this process people tend to miss their mark for the desire to go around. Anyway, once he got the information wanted he would go the same navigation willingly at the next time. This is the case for not only information search but also communication technology like pagers and handphones. In other words, the merit of informatization(convenience and utility) reinforces our belief in unlimited progress of productivity and give us even the illusion of 'techno-utopia'. Potentially this sea of informatization seems boundless and has no border, at a glance, so it is believed to bring almost 'all' the people to the sense of free-navigating. But exactly through this belief many people are brought to the world of info-addiction gradually. Therefore, without seeing into daily news and information board in the computer network, one becomes easily unstable out of the sense of being 'out-of-date'. In this context it is not unnecessary warning that such technology as pager, handphone, electronic news and internet can be modernized slave chains.
Besides, the information as such emerges and functions as power. Particularly, as national information agency(KCIA) wants to have all the information and control all the people including workers on the base of such monopoly position, there may be 'information despotism' in spite of the expectation and illusion of 'information democracy'. This is also true of in business world. Company organizations can know all our personal items by personnel information system, while we have much difficulty in getting access to the information about company or boss, for instance such information: how much one enterprise destroys the tropical forests in a company abroad, how much it destroys traditional local communities, how they control labor and what is their profit, secret-fund, lobby fund and so forth. Of course this reflects the unbalance of power relations and power structures which have already been established before the informatization age, but the informatization(saving so much information in very small chips, possibility of centralization etc.) reinforce this tendency stronger than before with no doubt. The attempt to induce 'electronic citizenship-card' after 1998 in Korea is a good example. Electronic card is designed to include not only personal information(such items as in the traditional ID-card) but also educational level, registered family relations and members, insurance relations, pension records and employment relations etc. So, if it is implemented, our daily lives will be subjected to information society more completely and so, the unbalance of power relation will be more intensified. Webster & Robin noted that modern info-technology deposit all trajectory and all the records under their watching eyes and expand Taylorism from the workplace to all the social areas, so named it 'social Taylorism'(cf. Chu 1997). In addition, as described in former part, when '20:80 society' comes and only selected 20% must feed 80%(who are in unemployment or unstable employment), social conflict will rise and so, the ruling class will eventually resort to the high level technology of watching and control(Heide 1997). In this case, information technology will become intensively substantial source of power, and finally, the power itself. Then in a sense, such things as electronic citizenship card, police identifying on-line system, arbitrary information revelation and commercialization of personal information are realistic examples of 'social-Taylorism'. If it were realized, then we might  live with the sense that "invisible someone always watches over me"(Foucault).


3. Informatization and Labor Movement

The problem of the development of scientific technology or automation or informatization is incessantly being discussed, but it has never been solved clearly in the process of practical movement. As mentioned, the process of informatization is something that the monopoly capital pursues, in the extremely systematic unequal power relations, to overcome the accumulation crisis, and eventually it helps consolidate capital's dominance over labor in general. Especially, with the creation of global world market, everyone is forced to adapt oneself to the given conditions of the globalization and informatization, in which she/he also is required to "internalize" the illusion of the 'information society' and the myth of 'boundless social progress'. And in proportion as the utility(convenience, rapidity and precision etc.) brought by the technology of information and communication is even greater, people are becoming more and more involved in the process of internalization of such illusions and myth, even though they are afraid of the eventual side effect. But generally, they don't recognize correctly what kind of influence the informatization will impose upon the social relations as a whole, and how it will bring about the change.
If we summarize our views in this way, what could be the basic attitude toward the informatization problem on the part of the labor movement? As is clear enough, we don't think we should go back to the "Luddite Movement" in the early 1800's in the sphere of information, too. Nor should we go back to the primitive society. The crucial point is the social context or the social relations in which the information technology is designed, developed, applied and disseminated. Therefore, such process that is designed and developed exclusively by the capital and is applied and disseminated for the stronger domination of it and increase of the profit should be changed fundamentally. The working people, as subjects of their own lives, should above all consider, whether and how they design and develop the technology of information and communication, in order to improve the quality of life on the whole. Furthermore, they should make a careful appraisal of it before and after application. In a word, the important point is to revolutionize the basic idea about the information and technology innovation itself. So we should ask of ourselves: what is technology(10) and why and how the innovation? 
And the second point is that we should make a clear recognition over concrete contradictions arising on the labor market, labor process and living process at large and make an active intervention to eliminate them. The 'space of informatization' itself can be already called a 'contested terrain' which is flooded by the wave of neo-liberalism. Moreover, from the 'realistic' viewpoint, we should at least remove the segmentation and competition on the labor market and reduce the social working hours in the labor process, which is although not the ultimate alternative. In this context, we should regain the room for leisure in everyday life, regain lost time and space, restore or reconstitute lost or distorted social relationships. In the long run, we should pursue an alternative way of life which is not dependent, not discriminative, and not destructive(cf. Kang S.D. 1997).
The third point to be emphasized is that, by making active use of the global network of information and technology, we should shape the new frame of solidarity beyond all the narrow border lines on the occupational, industrial, national and international, and finally, global dimension. Of course, it requires of us an open and democratic exchange of ideas and experiences, from the level of simple exchange of information to that of strategical standpoint about concrete issues of workers' life. This kind of effort may meet lots of blockade, such as intervention of state apparatus or communication censorship, which must be eliminated by our own strong resistance. But what is more dreadful is 'self-censorship' of labor movement which does not open itself and make internal control over itself. If we overcome this kind of self-censorship, communication space will become "the new space of freedom". For instance, in early 1993, a political organization in USA, Lead ... Or Leave, succeeded in winning strong political influence by using communication network, and the LaborNet maintains organic links among more than 250 union federations, national or international, and other international organizations. In Great Britain, the LabourNet shows wonderful example of international solidarity by disseminating news about main struggles of workers in the world, and the Canadian Public Employees Union, by setting up SoliNet, is linking four million members in 2,200 regions. And the Zapatista peasant army in Mexico, facing the threat brought by NAFTA since 1994, published their arguments and views about the economy and social life through the Internet of an American university, and drew the attentions and solidarity from global communities. And Pepsi Cola workers in Guatemala publicized their struggle through Internet and made a great success in organizing global solidarity. Also, in Korea during the General Strike of 1996/7, the Task Group for General Strike has organized active solidarity with various labor and political organizations of more than 30 countries. And the 'Quick Report' of the group made a great contribution in organizing the national and international resistance against the snatched evil labor laws by transmitting lively visual images, not typed text. Especially, the 'Quick Report of General Strike' was presented in the '1997 Berlin Film Festival' and drew much interest and favorable responses from German labor activists and other participants. 
But the labor movement should, beyond the resistance movement against capital, build a new alternative society of autonomous and responsible communities based on the spirit of worldwide solidarity and self-help. Our alternative picture for the future, form the standpoint of the labor movement, could be called "global-networked autonomous communities".
If the global activities for solidarity succeed in extinguishing the fierce competion among workers surrounding the world market, the new social relations toward solidarity and cooperation will be settled in place of those of control and exploitation. And if workers as subjects come to initiate deliberately by itself the revolution of informational technology, we can make alternative communities where we make autonomous and responsible decisions on what to produce, how much to produce and how to produce, distribute and consume, in order to satisfy our social needs. 
Finally, by overcoming the fetishism which is inherent in the informational technology itself, we have to recover our spirituality(cf. Heide 1997).  By virtue of the flourish of enlightenment, scientism, and capitalism, we human beings have been free from the external control of the God and from the subordination to the nature. In the very process, however, we threw away the spirituality, that is, the idea that mankind is merely small part of the nature, too. As a result of this despiritualization(cf. "Entspiritualisierung" in Heide 1997), the processes of controlling people by people and controlling the nature by mankind came to be justified through scientism and technology. And exactly in those processes the human being has been separated from its own internal world, internal nature. 
So, by restoring our internal self-nature we have to reorganize the relationship of man to man, between man and nature into those of solidarity, cooperation, coordination and co-existence, no more those of domination, exploitation, development and abuse. Only then we can be free from the illusionary paradigm that 'man can make a boundless progress of human society through the revolution of information and communication technology. The liberation from the very illusionary paradigm could be the real starting point towards our own alternative future.

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(*) Assistant Professor at Korea University in Industrial Relations, Vice-President at the 'Management & Labor Union Research Institute'(Nokiyun). For the good comments much thank to all the participants in the Seoul LaborMedia 1997 at the Yonsei University. And for the translation and correction of this paper I owe great thanks to the volunteers of the conference. I also would like to express many thanks to my friend Prof. Heide at the University of Bremen who has considerably influenced on the basic idea of this paper.

(1) The meaning of 'information age' here includes wide range of aspects; on the one side flexible production technologies such as automatization, industrial robots, artificial-intel, modem and PC communication network and internet, and on the other hand information-based living culture such as TV, telephone, fax, video, digital camera, multi-media, information high-way, card pager, mobile phone, PCS(Personal Communication System) etc. Moreover, this concept "information" includes all the econo-technological processes of development, application and diffusion of information technology. More important is the fact that it includes also socio-psychological process which means "internalization" of the possibility of these information technologies in our own mind.

(2) Recently, in USA, the gigantic monopoly capitals like dinosaurs are in competition for their market share in mass communication area. The MCI, the 2nd of U.S. long-distance call companies, was decided to be taken over by British Telecom, but at the last stage the undertaking failed in its price negotiation. After this negotiation failure, Worldcom, the 4th great U.S. long-distance call company, proposed to take over the MCI, and the GTE, the 3rd great long-distance call company also joined in the undertaking at the same time. Finally, the AT&T, the 1st U.S. long-distance call company, joined in undertaking, too, and took over the MCI. (Hankyore News, Oct. 17. 1997)

(3) In the morning, 23rd, Oct, 1997, a meeting for "the informatization policy" announcements of  presidential candidates(broadcasted lively on TV) held at Lotte Hotel in Seoul. At this meeting, 5 presidential candidates(except Young-Gil Kwon who is president of new democratic labor union KCTU) all agreed that 'a progress of industry of information and communication can break through the Korean socio-economic crisis (of capital accumulation)'. At this point, we can see that the economic and political leaders in Korea just like those in other countries have already blindly "internalized" the informatization policy which is promoted by the mainly American multi-national monopols as a new break-through out of crisis. They all made every effort to insist that amendment of educational system, establishment of administrative support system, and construction of infra-structure be urgent. However, this opinion has no 'alternative' perspective, because they have never considered fundamentally 'the paradigm of economic growth' up to the present. And they are only interested in exploring new break-through for promotion of national competition on the world market.

(4) For example, the Korean portable (hand)phone companies have paid till now about over 160 billion dollars as loyalty to Qualcom, the U.S. monopoly. The parts and components for cellular phones and PCS are produced 30% in Korea, and 70% of them are depend on import.

(5) In beepers, the number of the users has increased in South Korea from 2,650,000 in the late 1993 to 12,000,000 in the late 1996, in september 1997 this number became over 14,000,000. One out of three people has the beeper. The spreading speed is the first in the world. And the number of those using handphone, cityphone and PCS and so on(mobile communication) has already gone over 5,000,000. This indicates a double increase of users since 1990. Futhermore, many people expect that in future, besides PCS, the spread of the new electronic communication apparatus including CT2, TRS, IMT-2000 and so on will enable the users of the mobile communication to be more than the users of the traditional wire phone.     

(6) Of course, the appearance of an association of like-minded persons, for example 'PC Hitel association of liked-minded persons' and  sports association such as 'red devil'(foot ball lovers' society) is the example of the falsification. Especially the 'red devil' is changed into powerful movement, and evaluated as a new possibility of organizing through pc-network. But the 'red devil' has the fundamental limit that although it is very political from nationalistic viewpoint, it has no political influence in capital-labor relation. Besides there are many associations of like-minded persons, except for a few people who try to deal with capital-labor relations as antagonism, the most only seek to make good terms between members (of course it is important in itself), don't make efforts to organize any political movement.

(7) A worker in a computer business sent by manpower firm said: "First I didn't know what they do, but I know now. It is the firm which deals with manpower. There is no contract on working conditions in this firm. I was just sent by it to a work in 00 insurance company and get the salary unilaterally given by the manpower firm, not from the insurance company where I work. At first it was only 230,000 Won(about 230 US dollar). I fell here frustrated, because I am not a regular member of this company but only a contingent subcontracted worker. If there were another job, I want to go out immediately. But I've no opportunity, so I work unavoidably here ... .  I was very embarrassed when my acquaintances asked which company I work for. My family and close friends know that I am employed regularly by the 00 insurance company. When someone who doesn't know me well ask for which company I work, I just answer that I work in 00 insurance company." 

(8) In fact, those who carry out intellectual work such as design, modelling and programming are a few male workers. In the future even this work will be carried out by the so-called 'creatively working' robots. 

(9) Although cybernetics is developed and computerized life can be born, it is questionable whether cyber apparatus having human's emotional world, passion and aspiration can be created.

(10) As implicated in the former parts, technology is an objectified result of the splitting process of all the originally wholistic human knowledge, skill, experience, insight, discretion and wisdom from human being itself that had been accumulated in the concrete living process and bounded mankind and nature as well as mankind and mankind in a unit. So the technology could be easily transformed into powerful 'weapons' in the antagonistic struggle in the capitalistic society.


