Abstract
This chapter explores the challenges for workers and unions to organize as capital uses network connectivity to restructure commodity chains and labor processes. Specifically, the chapter examines work and organizing in the media industry and the impact of shifts from job-based employment to freelance, and the attendant pressure on workers to identify and act as entrepreneurs and self-marketers. Finally, the chapter describes some recent union organizing efforts in Canada that attempt to rise to the challenges posed by the decomposition and recomposition of labor in early twenty-first-century media.
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Wirsig, K., Compton, J. (2017). Workers, Contradictions and Digital Commodity Chains: Organizing with Content Creators in Canada. In: Meil, P., Kirov, V. (eds) Policy Implications of Virtual Work. Dynamics of Virtual Work. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52057-5_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52057-5_9
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