THE ORGANIZATIONS OF IMMATERIAL LABOUR:
KNOWLEDGE WORKER RESISTANCE IN POST-FORDISM
by
Enda Brophy
A thesis submitted to the Department of Sociology
In conformity with the requirements for
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Queen’s University
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
June 2008
Copyright ©Enda Brophy, 2008

https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/bitstream/handle/1974/1236/Brophy_Enda_O_2008:05_PhD.pdf?sequence=2

Abstract
Liberal-democratic theories of knowledge work suggest that labour and capital are no longer at odds in the information society. This dissertation critiques such a position, proposing that
knowledge worker professions, or ones it describes as involving forms of immaterial labour, are subject to new regimes of exploitation and emergent modes of resistance within post-Fordism.
The study begins by surveying competing theoretical perspectives on knowledge work, and
moves on to consider the ethical questions, epistemological foundations, and methodological choices involved in carrying out engaged inquiries into collective organization by immaterial labourers. The dissertation’s empirical contribution is comprised of three case studies of labour organization by knowledge workers. The first is the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, an “open-source” union formed in 1998 by contract workers at Microsoft. The second is the Aliant clerical/call-centre workers in Moncton, New Brunswick, who certified a bargaining unit through the Communication, Energy and Paperworkers Union in 2001. The third is theCollettivo PrecariAtesia, a self-organized group of Roman workers formed at Atesia, Europe’s largest call centre, in 2004. Drawing on these and other contemporary examples, the dissertation suggests that, in its most promising articulations, the organization of immaterial labour is occurring at the intersection of spontaneous struggles by workers and a process of union renewal underway within certain sectors of the established labour movement. These cases also point to
the potential of collective organizing occurring around precarity, or the increasing financial and existential insecurity arising from the flexibilization of labour. Both of these processes, the dissertation concludes, involve a process of adaptation to post-Fordism, in which new forms of organization, new subjectivities, and new social demands are being produced.

Table of Contents

Abstract ..................................................................................................................................................ii
Acknowledgements ..............................................................................................................................iii
Statement of Originality.......................................................................................................................iv
Table of Contents...................................................................................................................................v
Chapter 1 The Subterranean Stream.....................................................................................................1
Chapter 2 From the Knowledge Worker to Immaterial Labour .......................................................18
2.1 Liberal-Democratic Theories of the Knowledge Worker.......................................................21
2.1.1 Information and Markets...................................................................................................24
2.1.2 The End of Hierarchy ........................................................................................................30
2.1.3 The Self-Organization of Knowledge Work ....................................................................32
2.1.4 Collective Organization and the Knowledge Worker......................................................37
2.2 Critical Responses to the Knowledge Worker Thesis.............................................................41
2.2.1 The Material Economy ......................................................................................................43
2.2.2 The Degradation of Knowledge Work .............................................................................46
2.2.3 Differences Within Knowledge Work..............................................................................49
2.2.4 The Cybertariat ..................................................................................................................53
2.3 Autonomist Theories of Immaterial Labour............................................................................57
2.3.1 Language and Labour ........................................................................................................61
2.3.2 Immaterial and Free Labour..............................................................................................68
2.3.3 The Self-Organization of Immaterial Labour ..................................................................70
2.4 Choosing a Perspective for Inquiry..........................................................................................73
Chapter 3 Epistemology and Method in a Worker Inquiry...............................................................80
3.1 Immanent Ontology ..................................................................................................................83
3.2 Immanent Epistemology: Subjugated Knowledges and Feminist Standpoints.....................90
3.3 Immanent Method: From the Down and Outers to the Worker Inquiry..............................104
3.3.1 The Down and Outers and Labour Process Ethnography .............................................105
3.3.2 The Worker Inquiry and Conricerca...............................................................................112
3.4 The Risky Business of Immanent Approaches......................................................................122
3.5 Setting the Scene for an Inquiry Into Immaterial Labour.....................................................126
Chapter 4 Revolt of the Microserfs: The Formation of WashTech................................................134
4.1 Political-Economic Restructuring and High-Tech Labour in the United States.................136
vi
4.2 Revolt of the Microserfs.........................................................................................................139
4.3 WashTech’s Structure .............................................................................................................144
4.4 Experiences of Labour, Experiences of Precarity .................................................................149
4.5 Organizing Immaterial Labour in the Thick of Precarity .....................................................155
4.5.1 Worker Subjectivity.........................................................................................................155
4.5.2 From Local to Global Precarity: The Offshoring of Immaterial Labour .....................159
4.6 WashTech: Preliminary Notes................................................................................................162
Chapter 5 Labour and Convergence Inside the Aliant Laboratory.................................................167
5.1 Moncton: We’re OK ...............................................................................................................171
5.2 The Composition of Call Centre Work in New Brunswick..................................................176
5.3 Convergence at Aliant and the CEP.......................................................................................178
5.4 Unionization and the Labour Process....................................................................................180
5.5 Inside the Aliant Laboratory: Convergence, Language, and the Labour Process...............185
5.6 The Aliant Strike and Union Convergence............................................................................190
5.7 Post-Strike Restructuring: Outsourcing of Call Centre Jobs................................................197
5.8 Convergence and Memory of Struggle in the Aliant Laboratory.........................................199
Chapter 6 The Struggles at Atesia ....................................................................................................208
6.1 Italian Labour Law, Trade Unions, and Labour Precarity....................................................209
6.2 Atesia and the Composition of Italian Call Centre Labour ..................................................217
6.3 Atesia: Factory of Precarity....................................................................................................221
6.4 The Collettivo PrecariAtesia ..................................................................................................227
6.5 Composition, Organization, and Memory in the Precarity Factory.....................................243
Chapter 7 Subsumption, Immaterial Labour, and Collective Organization...................................249
7.1 The Subsumption of Immaterial Labour................................................................................252
7.2 Immaterial Labour and Memory of Struggle.........................................................................260
7.3 The Organizations of Immaterial Labour ..............................................................................269
Appendix A : List of Interviews.......................................................................................................314