European Telework Week: 4-11 November 1996
Country Report - Austria, Vienna
Event
Reporter: Horace Mitchell, ETD Programme Director.
Georg Kapsch, head of one of Austria's largest private sector telecommunications
company's took a pragmatic approach in his contribution to the event, commenting:
"I don't want to pay for their (teleworkers) home costs - I have a
fear that we start by paying for the chair and end up paying for the repairs
to the roof!".
Mr Kapsch said he anticipated a significant change in how work and jobs
are understood in society, emphasising "the need to act, rather than
look for a job where someone else tells you how to act. If we liberalise
telecoms and liberalise work, while having adequate protection of basic
needs, then young entrepreneurs will be able to flourish and to build virtual
companies, virtual schools, virtual communities of interest and virtual
communities of relationships".
Andrew Bibby, a UK writer and journalist, who recent completed a book of
teleworking case studies, reported on sweeping employment changes in retail
banking, already apparent in several European countries, and that in these
changes telework as home-based work is an irrelevant side-issue.
Mr Bibby asserted that "existing jobs are disappearing from the High
Street" and new jobs are being created in "office factories"
called Call Centres. (Already, in the UK, there are estimates that 1 in
100 workers will be based in call centres by the year 2000). From the outside
these might be thought to be "conventional employment" but inside
they are quite different: - systems driven; the systems determine who answers
which telephone call and largely determine what happens in the call. Staff
at call centres tend to be paid a flat rate, regardless of their shift times
and patterns and many of the workers are employed on a part-time basis.
He estimates there were 6000 such centres in Europe by 1995 and said (without
contradiction from Union leaders present) that the Unions appeared not to
be noticing.
Jens Kittelsen (CEC DGV) was among the Commission officials who took part
in some of the public debates.
There was a successful video-link to San Francisco during the event.
Wouter Van Dieren of the Institute for Environment and Systems Analysis
commented, perhaps rather tongue-in-cheek, that he had read and believed
a book with the premise that technology is the problem not the solution
- and perhaps it was technology which had caused the two great world wars.
Robert Verrue, from the European Commission's DGXIII, answered questions
and took part in a debate, which focussed on the topic of where new jobs
would come from in the future. The worrying trend of generally rising European
costs (compared to other trading areas) is one which concerns politicians
and employers right across Europe. The urgent need to embrace new methods
of working, which include teleworking, and the expected cost savings was
debated at some length.
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