 1991-2091 Into the Next Century
Next month’s official celebration of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Worker’s centennial year is more than just an opportunity to look back over the last century of the union’s accomplishments and struggles; it’s an opportunity to look ahead. Because looking at history doesn’t just tell us about where we’ve been, it helps us understand where we are, and it prepares us for where we’re going.
The world of the IBEW’s second century promises to bring many new challenges and changes. Technology is on the verge of a digital revolution, the nature of work in each IBEW’s branches is clearly moving in new directions, the makeup of the work force continues to change, and the very status of organized labor will be different in the next century.
Technological Revolution
The most dramatic changes to take place in the next century are likely to be in technological breakthroughs. Homes, workplaces, transportation, broadcasting and communication systems, even supermarkets, stand on the verge of truly revolutionary change. Much of this change centers on the technology of digital information processing.
Processing information digitally is not new. Since the 1940s machines have been built to translate information to numerical codes, move it through various circuits and translate it back. In time, a simple system called binary was developed, whereby all information (most often math equations) was translated into a long series of “zeros” and “ones.” These early computers handled vastly complex math problems in relatively short periods of time.
Over the following years systems-software and hardware- were developed to handle words as well as math digitally. And today, computers have the ability to translate words, images, numbers, even sounds, into binary codes and store them, call them up and change them around.
Digital technology is now being used in many more things than what we think of as computers in the traditional sense. Telephones now possess the ability to translate sounds into binary code and send it in digital pulses of light along hair-thin cables. Computer-like features, such as voice mail and Caller ID, are becoming commonplace in today’s phone systems. Compact-Disk technology also uses digital information storage. Laser light is used to decipher digitally coded information on the CD-whether it’s music or computer software-and pass it digitally to the CD player in a stereo system or to a computer terminal. The information is transmitted with virtually no loss of quality or the distortion inherent in the old analog 33-1/3 LPs and analog magnetic tapes.
It is really only a matter of time before our homes are transformed by this digital technology-where all electrical equipment will be wired together into one “smart” system. A phone call to your house from you (using a special code on a digital phone) could start the oven, the dishwasher and the washing machine. Sensors around the house could turn lights on and off as needed, and keep a close watch on heating and cooling throughout the house. And interactive television could allow an almost unlimited choice of viewing and business-related options. Digital television would also likely have the ability to store, replay and rearrange images displayed on its screen, opening up even more possibilities.
Offices and workplaces stand to change just as dramatically with the spread of digital technology. Today’s instantaneous transfer of information enables offices to spread out—really spread out. For example, a document on the computer screen in a firm’s Washington, D.C., office can now be called up almost instantly in the firm’s San Francisco office. A writer in Bangor, Maine, can have his latest work reviewed in New York and returned to him via computer hookup—with corrections—later that afternoon. Fax machines send hard copies of documents in an instant. And video conferencing now makes it possible to hold a meeting in four countries without anyone ever going out the door.
Industrial work is changing as well. Robotics and automation are now the norm in large-scale manufacturing. And it takes a far more skilled worker to run and maintain those industrial machines than was required 20 years ago.
IBEW, Branching Out
Work for each branch of the IBEW has been changing rapidly and is set to make some giant leaps in the near future. Utility Branch members have increases in job complexity to look forward to. At last year’s IBEW Utility Conference, Utility Department Director Robert Macdonald said,
“Utility workers, no matter what classification they are in today—and even more so in the future—will be required to make more independent decisions, to read more technical data.” Alternative energy-generation systems, long supported by the Brotherhood, will no doubt come into their own in the next century. Safe nuclear power-generated electricity produced by clean fusion reactors will be a reality. So too will cost-effect solar-, wind-, hydro- geothermal-generated power be producing high percentages of North America’s electricity.
Telecommunications Branch members were shaken up in 1982 when AT&T was forced by the U.S. government to give up control of its regional telephone carriers known as the “Baby Bells.” U.S. District Judge Harold Greene presided over a consent decree which stopped AT&T from competing in the local and regional phone market, but allowed them to design and manufacture telecommunications and computer equipment. In addition, the decree stopped the Baby Bells from designing and manufacturing equipment, but gave them the exclusive rights to provide local phone service. It now looks like that arrangement may change, and with it will change the nature of equipment manufacturing, and installation work.
But regardless who provides which services to the public, the digital evolution is poised to drastically change all aspects of telecommunication. Automation will continue to take its toll on the work force. Smaller, more portable telephones will likely be in people’s pockets, carried with the casualness with which we wear a watch today. With improved switching technology, each person could le assigned one phone number, at which he or she could be reached no matter which phone happens to be nearby. And clearly telephone-computer compatibility will improve to the point where picking Up a telephone will give you close to the full power of a personal computer.
The introduction of high technology into the factory has already changed the face of Manufacturing Branch work. Robotics, computer- regulated equipment and automation will continue to redefine the way Americans and Canadians manufacture goods. Additionally, an increase in the number of mergers and acquisitions of manufacturing companies has changes manufacturing –and such change is likely to continue.
Of particular concern to Manufacturing Branch members will be the increased pace of what big business likes to call “globalization,” or the shifting of assets around the globe. International competition has hit union-North-American-made products hard. More and more companies have responded by moving manufacturing facilities overseas, throwing Americans out of work.
Rising imports, fights to improve international competitiveness, and American job losses have prompted many to refer to North America’s manufacturing and trade predicament as a crisis. In his so-named book, American Trade Crisis (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1988), former U.S. Representative Don Bonker (D-Wash.) writes, “ America’s trade crisis is really a world trade crisis. How the United States confronts its own trade and deficit problems and its unique leadership role in the Western world, could well determine the economic fate of all nations well into the 21 st century.”
Those IBEW members in the Railroad Branch are sure to see remarkable change in the next century as well. Fast-Train technology, long a reality in Europe and Japan, is on its way to North American shores. Using a variety of means—magnetic levitation, electromagnetic systems, carbody tilting—high-speed rail systems are on the drawing boards in the United States and Canada.
The new trains will change all aspects of the railroad industry, from manufacturing and maintaining the equipment, to controlling the trains, to how the new kinds of track are laid. All of these changes will profoundly affect IBEW members as well as the general public.
The Broadcasting and Recording Branch industries have also been changing rapidly and are set to change even more in the future. Because broadcasting and recording are so closely tied to the consumer-electronics market, the recent leaps in digital technology have moved both the television and the recording industries to new levels.
According to IBEW Broadcasting and Recording Department Director Reggie Gilliam, “The year 2000 will see direct-to-home broadcasting, fiber optic cable service and free, over-the-airways TV. Digital TVs and VCRs will provide the viewer with improved, quality products. High-definition television will be in the home, either by direct cable, direct broadcast, free TV, in-home VCR, video disc, or by all of the above.”
And finally, Construction and Maintenance Branch members will face considerable change in the future as well. New high-strength building materials, and complex electrical systems needed for renovation and construction, will change the way construction and maintenance electricians perform their jobs.
Construction and Maintenance Department Director Charles “Bud” Fisher stresses the construction industry’s dependence on work in all other branches. He points to a recent Congressional
Office of Technology Assessment study which linked the loss of 125,000 construction jobs to foreign manufactured imports in 1984 alone. his assessment for the future, however, remains positive.
The AFL-CIO, among others, predicts a need for approximately 650,000 additional construction workers by the year 2000, he said. Of those new workers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 215,000 will be electricians.
Work Force 2000
The makeup and character of the American work force is sure to be dramatically different in the next century. According to the Hudson Institute’s 1987 report, Workforce 2000, Work and Workers for the 21st Century, in 1985 fully half of all American workers were native-born, white males. They project that number to drop to 15 percent by the year 2000. The institute projects women, minorities, and immigrants will make up the vast majority of the American work force. They also see the average age of American workers increasing.
Not surprisingly the Hudson Institute study predicts higher educational and skill requirements for more and more jobs. They write, “Among the fastest-growing jobs, the trend toward higher educational requirements is striking. Of all the new jobs that will be created over the 1984-2000 period, more than half will require some education beyond high school, and almost a third will be filled by college graduates. Today only 22 percent of all occupations require a college degree.”
Labor Day 2091
All of the changes in the homes, lives, and workplaces of North American working people will have an important impact on the direction and character of the labor movement. Greater cooperation between labor and management is likely as global competition in every industry forces managers to work with their employees to fashion strategies for the future.
The educational and skills-training programs that unions, such as the IBEW, offer will likely attract an increasing number of young men and women, leading to a gain in union membership. To achieve substantial gains in union membership as a percentage of the overall work force, service-sector unions will need to aggressively expand to take advantage of the increasing numbers of service jobs in the United States and Canada. An increased overall union presence in the next century is surely an attainable goal.
But through the changes in organization, structure, and membership ratios, the purpose of organized labor will remain the same. Unionism and brotherhood are ideas as old as work itself. Formally and informally, legally and illegally, working-men and -women have joined together for strength and support for centuries. One hundred years from now, when IBEW members look back on 200 years of the union’s history, they will see progress. They will see the dream of 10 men who met in St. Louis to bring workers together unfold into a powerful movement. They will see the movement gather strength as it has fought for justice, freedom and opportunity. And they will see the dream still very much alive and ready to enrich their future.
|
