BECTU preliminary response to Council of Europe Cultural Committee's draft recommendation on cultural work within the information society

16 November 1998

1. The Cultural Committee's Draft Recommendation on this issue covers a wide area and touches on a number of more complicated debates. BECTU's views, as set out here, are very much a preliminary response, with no attempt to engage at this stage in a more detailed debate.
2. Our initial views, as set out below, broadly follow the headings set out in the document itself. General Recommendations
3. The paper draws attention to the 'fundamental structural changes' in the cultural industries originated by the new 'information and communication technologies' (ICT). In particular, the cultural industries should take account of globalisation of their market and should adapt to the gradual convergence within the sector.
4. We can acknowledge the trend towards globalisation, in the sense of an increasing international rather than national market for cultural and information products. In our own sphere of interest, some areas have always been strongly oriented to the international market (eg the film industry – certainly for the larger budget, theatrical productions). Other areas have become subject to globalisation much more recently eg the development of pan-national satellite television (while many terrestrial broadcasters remain strongly rooted in their national markets).
5. Globalisation is not, however, invariably benign, nor is it a trend that is beyond modification or resistance in some contexts. Cultural industries involve, by definition, criteria other than the purely economic. In the audiovisual sector, there has been increasing concern about the structural dominance of the US in the world market and its potential ability to swamp the European programme market with programme stocks that appear relatively cheap, having already covered their costs in their vast domestic market. For both cultural and economic reasons, the enormous and growing audiovisual trade deficit between Europe and the US has been a trend which BECTU along with many other organisations have sought to resist.
6. We therefore believe that globalisation should not be noted uncritically. The current debate on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) and the previous debate on the European broadcast programming quota are both examples of campaigns essentially seeking to modify the impact of an increasingly globalised market in our sector. We remain convinced that a critical view of globalisation is justified and indeed necessary, and would like to see this reflected in the Council of Europe's document. This does not mean that we advocate reversion to a narrow and futile nationalism, merely that the imperatives of the global market can and should be channelled, modified and resisted when necessary.
7. The Paper recommends that the cultural industries should 'adapt their policies' to the gradual convergence of their spheres of activities. Again, we can acknowledge the undeniable impetus to convergence between the audiovisual, telecommunications and IT sectors through the application of digital technology. At the same time, we do not accept that 'adapting our policies' should entail uncritically facilitating this process. Technical convergence need not invariably lead to convergence in content or services, nor to the development of common regulatory structures governing these.
8. As with globalisation, we would emphasise that non-economic and non-technological criteria have and should continue to play a key role in policy development within the cultural industries. Adapting to convergence does not and need not entail abandoning other considerations – such as those embodied in the EU Amsterdam Protocol on public service broadcasting, which referred to 'the democratic, social and cultural needs of each society and to the need to preserve media pluralism.'
9. These democratic, social and cultural criteria should remain as central policy considerations within the new digitally convergent era. More specifically, the regulatory structures which seek to retain these concerns in the face of economic and technological developments which might otherwise sweep them aside (in public service broadcasting in particular) should be preserved, strengthened and given a continuing role. Many of the products of the cultural industries are 'merit goods' which a free market would not naturally provide. A single converged marketplace could therefore destroy as much as it would create. Strong regulation continues to be necessary.
10. Are these concerns academic? We think not. The management consultants KPMG have advised Commissioner Bangemann, in the context of 'telecommunications and audiovisual convergence', of the need to 'support market-led developments' and to develop a strategy 'based primarily on competition law' which should 'minimise regulatory intervention'. We strongly disagree and would hope the Council of Europe would take account of the divergence of opinion on this issue.
11. The Paper advises the cultural industries to 'adapt their policies to new organisational patterns required by ICT' – meaning a more decentralised, flexible and interdisciplinary approach to the organisation of work.
12. We can support much of this, including the need to move away from centralised, hierarchical management towards a decentralised and less bureaucratic approach. We would see this as in tune with much of the current thinking on developing industrial democracy and on the establishment of work councils and other forms for workforce contribution to decision-making and access to information (with a strong view, of course, that independent trade unions are the most appropriate vehicle for participation in such developments).
13. As a trade union in the cultural industries we are, of course, already very familiar with other aspects of 'flexibility' at work. We have lived very closely with the problems and issues arising from, in some sectors, an overwhelmingly freelance workforce, and in other sectors a shrinking core of permanent staff surrounded by increasing numbers of fixed-term contract and freelance workers, with the growth of, for example, annualised hours and salary banding.
14. To some extent, the workforce we represent is already among the most flexible. The point we would emphasise is that such flexibility should be matched by appropriate rewards and protections for the individuals involved. At most, unfettered flexibility can entail long hours, the buying out of all conditions and the waiving of all rights. The consequences – in terms of living standards and health and safety (up to and including fatalities owing to stress and fatigue) – are unacceptable.
15. We would therefore argue strongly that new and more flexible work patterns should be based on a minimum 'quality threshold' of accepted, industry-standard terms, conditions and procedures to be developed through benchmark collective agreements. Flexibility through consensus rather than exploitation is a more secure basis for a successful industrial strategy in the long run. A short-term, opportunist approach to flexibility at work – with the benefits accruing to management and the costs to the workers involved – will not provide any feasible basis for the successful cultural industries of the future. We would therefore wish to see an acknowledgement, in the Paper, of the need for this form of consensual approach to the development of new organisational patterns of work.
16. We fully support the Paper's emphasis on qualifications and training in the area of ICT. As a union we are closely involved in promoting, advocating and supporting high quality training programmes throughout our sector – including new entrant training, the development of benchmark vocational qualifications, and retraining which assists workers to come to terms with the new technologies.
17. One point we would emphasise, however, is that quality training is a necessary but often expensive investment in the industry's 'human capital'. Adequate funding is essential and the industry itself, rather than purely external public funding sources, should be prepared to make an adequate contribution. Well-funded industry training is, in the long run, an extremely productive investment.
18. We should particularly seek to ensure that well funded training is available to workers operating in freelance labour markets, where individual employers may not be willing or able to provide adequate in-house training. In this context, sector-wide schemes with pooled funding can provide opportunities which a narrow, individual-company approach would not deliver. Professional Profiles and Key Tasks and Competencies
19. We acknowledge the relevance of the illustrative examples of new professional profiles in the ICT sector. Many such individual profiles are familiar – either actually or potentially –from within our own membership eg multimedia designers, computer animation designers, film and video editors, multimedia project managers/producers, multimedia authors/developers/co-ordinators, editors for off-line and on-line products, multimedia librarians/archivists.
20. It is undoubtedly true that as the labour market continues to develop in this sector, the need for new or more highly developed competencies will emerge in some or all of the areas outlined, such as managerial, organisational, creative, informatics and communications skills.
21. Our concern – we do not see this as necessarily at variance with the thrust of the Paper – is that ICT workers be given adequate opportunity to train and develop these new skills; that existing workers be given proper access to retraining; and that skill development should reflect a strong input from the actual practitioners rather than a 'top-down' list of priorities of requirements from management.
22. It should also be understood, of course, that the new and emerging key competencies should also apply to and be required of managerial occupations in our sector. For all the focus on the need for the ICT workforce to adapt and develop, it should not be forgotten that management skills in our sector are often unevenly developed in an adhoc way, and are sometimes plainly inadequate. Public Powers
23. We fully support the proposal for public powers to show a strong commitment to respecting 'cultural pluralism and diversity'. This need for pluralism is one of the key non-economic criteria in the cultural sector – especially in the context, for example, of the fact that for most people the broadcast media are their main sources of information and comment on news and current affairs.
24. The growth of powerful media corporations in Europe - such as News International, Bertelsmann and CLT – continues to give cause for concern in this respect. Their potential stranglehold on all key stages of production and distribution (including conditional access 'gatekeeper' technology) is clearly to be monitored and resisted. We continue to await the long delayed initiative from the European Commission on media pluralism and concentration.
25. We also support the proposal for an active public policy creating favourable conditions for the 'European content industry'. We believe that such a policy has to include appropriate measures to channel or limit the affects of globalisation. In particular, as already outlined above, measures to limit the impact of the structural dominance of the US in the audiovisual industry (and some neighbouring sectors) are necessary and justified. We hope that the Council of Europe can therefore recognise that limits on ICT market forces will have to be applied where appropriate (eg the current debate on the MAI).
26. We note the single passing reference in this section to intellectual property rights. It is not entirely clear what the call for 'more legal security in the field of ICT regarding questions concerning intellectual property' actually entails. Our own concern is to protect the interests of authors and creators in the new digital area, as opposed to the economically much more powerful corporate purchasers and holders of copyright.
27. These issues are currently under debate in the context of the draft directive on copyright in the information society. The Paper's passing reference to IP seems to beg many of the questions thrown up in this debate and further clarity – hopefully with due emphasis on creators' rights – would be helpful.
28. We support in principle the call for public policy promoting improved forms of qualification and training. Support for ICT training throughout the educational system should not, however, be uncritical. We face a situation in the UK of an oversupply of 'media studies' graduates flooding a labour market for which many are ill qualified in any practical sense, and for many of whom there is no serious prospect of a job or a career. The closer integration of training and education policy with accurate labour market information and planning would obviously be beneficial.
29. Finally, we note the call in 5.4.2 for a 'reorganising of the legislative framework of the labour market in a way to allow for more flexible salary structures and terms of employment' and refer back to the points made in paragraphs 11-15 above. We cannot accept that the development of a more flexible labour market should be at the expense of the living standards and the health of the workers involved. A concensual approach to this, with flexibility only on the basis of adequate guarantees covering pay, hours and other key aspects is, in the long run, the only secure basis for building the successful cultural industries of the future.