Washington, D.C.
The development of the "information superhighway" -- a web of communications networks, computers, databases and consumer electronics -- is changing the way Americans live, work, learn and interact with others. This ongoing revolution in communications technology will profoundly affect working Americans, their unions, their communities and society as a whole -- for better or for worse.
Because the lion's share of the new information infrastructure is being developed by the private sector, its potential for good is threatened by enterprises whose aim is to control the system in order to maximize profits. For this reason, government action must ensure that it is the public interest and not these private interests that prevails.
There are already disparities in access to information and technology. Some private elementary schools require students to own laptop computers, while public schools in poor neighborhoods can't even afford to keep their libraries open. Converging communications industries are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in creating and providing information for those who have ready cash to pay for them. But there are no clear federal policies aimed at ensuring universal and affordable access to these increasingly vital services. Without such policies, the information superhighway will certainly exacerbate the gap between rich and poor by dividing the country into "information haves" and "information have-nots."
Over the past 14 years, the revolution in the telecommunications industry has produced the loss of a quarter-million high-wage, high-tech jobs. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the number of jobs for computer and peripheral equipment operators, as well as the number of typists, word processors, data entry keyers and bank tellers, will decline by another 122,000 over the next decade. While information processing jobs were once thought to be immune to the pressures of international trade, the information superhighway's expansion is not and will not be detoured by national borders. Its growth has already facilitated the export of U.S. jobs to low-wage countries.
Advances in communications technology have also taken a toll on the individuals responsible for the content that travels on the information superhighway. The new technologies have increased the unauthorized, uncompensated use of information, at home and abroad, at the expense of the people who create and own it.
Clearly, government policy for the information superhighway should be directed at assuring that the workers who produce, disseminate and deliver information do so under good wages, standards and working conditions. Federal law should guarantee that they have a genuine voice on the job through independent trade unions and adequate protection of their privacy rights. Our copyright laws should be vigorously enforced to protect against inappropriate use of U.S.-produced information in both domestic and overseas markets.
The AFL-CIO calls on the Clinton Administration and Congress to take the actions necessary to assure that all Americans have affordable access to a national information infrastructure -- in their homes, at school, in the libraries or through community centers -- that reserves adequate space for the use of public, non-commercial interests in order to ensure diverse programming, open networks and quality information services. And government at all levels should strive to increase public access to its documents and services through new communications technologies.
The AFL-CIO encourages all affiliates, state federations and local central bodies to explore ways that the labor movement can use the new communications technologies to promote labor's historic vision of a greater voice for working people on the job and in their communities.