Recoding Power

Tactics for Mobilizing Tech Workers

Inbunden, Engelska, 2023

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Does digital transformation make worker power impossible? Many seem to think so, especially those who see the Silicon Valley model as the best chance for economic growth in the twenty-first century. If economic growth requires deregulating markets for labor and finance capital, then labor's traditional power resources - especially institutions for social protection and the unions that support and enforce them - need to be dismantled. Rising inequality and spreading precarity are therefore inevitable and unavoidable in a world where workers cannot defend against employer discretion. In Recoding Power, Rothstein argues that worker power is possible in digital transformation, and outlines three tactics that workers can use in order to defend against precarity. Tracing how workers respond to mass layoffs at four tech firms in the United States and Germany, Rothstein shows that workers can build power in twenty-first century capitalism when they put workplace discourse at the center of their tactics for collective action. Close analysis of struggles in the workplace uncovers the creative tactics workers can develop to "recode" management's discourse in order to recognize the possibility of power and mobilize to transform that possibility into reality. By centering workers' lived experiences in the workplace, Recoding Power develops an account of actually existing digital transformation, illustrating how the path of capitalist development is shaped not by economic necessity, but by political creativity.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2023-06-20
Mått237 x 163 x 24 mm
Vikt540 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor288
FörlagOUP USA
ISBN9780197612873
UtmärkelserHonorable mention, 2023 SASE Alice Amsden Best Book Award

Tillhör följande kategorier

Statsvetenskap och politisk teori inom Samhälle och politik

Sidney A. Rothstein is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Williams College. He has published in the British Journal of Industrial Relations, German Politics, Perspectives on Politics, Review of International Political Economy, Socio-Economic Review, and Studies in American Political Development, and co-edited (with Tobias Schulze-Cleven) Imbalance: Germany's Political Economy After the Social Democratic Century (Routledge, 2021).

Acknowledgements List of Figures List of Tables List of Abbreviations Chapter 1. Actually Existing Digital Transformation Chapter 2. Worker Power in Twenty-First-Century Capitalism PART I. MASS LAYOFFS IN THE UNITED STATES Worker Power and the Discourse of Market Fundamentalism Chapter 3. Economic Transition in the Workplace: Resistance at IBM Burlington Chapter 4. Market Power is not Enough: Acquiescence at IBM San Jose PART II. MASS LAYOFFS IN GERMANY Digital Transformation in a Robust Institutional Environment Chapter 5. Institutions by the Wayside: Acquiescence at Infineon Chapter 6. Counterhegemonic Tactics: Resistance at Siemens Chapter 7. The Power of Recoding Appendix I. List of Interviews Appendix II. A Note on Methods: Workplace Discourse References Index