Challenges of computerization: the example of the printing unions

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Karsten Uhl
• Subject Area: History of Science
• Term: from 2016 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 290706649

This project deals with technological, social, and cultural transformations in the printing industry during the 1970s and 1980s. It is crucial to focus on this context for investigating the trade union crisis of this period. The printing union gives a good example, because of its strong position rested on a strong force of qualified workers. The project will investigate the period from the 1950s to the 1980s, starting in a decade in which artisan printing developed into industrial printing. The main focus will be on the invention of computer technology during the 1970s and 1980s; the establishment of Desktop Publishing since 1985 then marks the preliminary completion of computerization in printing industry. The project hence examines the role technological change played for the trade union crisis. Automation - in printing industry foremost in the special form of computerization - challenged the unions in three ways: Firstly, on the discursive level, labour's traditional believe in technological progress in general became fragile. Union members discussed if automation's social impacts could still be shaped by union power. Secondly, on the level of political action, strikes being the unions' most important power resource became vulnerable: computerization enabled production outside of the factory and even without skilled workers. Thirdly, on the level of workers' self-perception, the image of printers belonging to an aristocracy of labour became obsolete in context of computerization. The formerly distinct self-perception of skilled workers, being of utmost importance for union stability, split into a multitude of qualification profiles and self-perceptions. This project will show in which respect the three levels were interconnected, i.e. it will show whether changes on one level affected the other levels. The project examines historical actors on three dimensions: local, national, and international. On the local level, the printing union's local associations and work councils will be investigated. On the national level the German printing union and the German Trade Union Federation will be analysed, and on the international level, the International Graphical Federation and the European Trade Union Congress will be investigated. Further, it is of utmost importance to examine to which extent the union crisis was first caused by technological change and then pushed the trade union movement's Europeanization.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants