Wireless Telegraphy Act (UK), 1904
Media companies expand in reach but also
seek to economize on labour. In-house work, if
its costs threaten profi t-growth, is replaced by
outsourcing (to low-wage economies),whether
or not that harms effi ciency or standards or puts
people out of work.
Worker rights and protection that may have
been established within nation states risk
being ignored or actively resisted by employers
working across international boundaries. The
hazards are numerous: workers fi nd themselves
at the mercy of ‘take it or leave it’ new contracts
demanding more for less, impacting on job
security in contexts where traditional union
protection can no longer be guaranteed.
As never before the dynamics of information
capitalism shape labour globally, undermining
worker power and control. In response, orga-
nizations representing the interests of commu-
nication and media workers are reconstituting
themselves as global operators by converging in
alliance with like-minded institutions – the aim,
worker protection and worker mobilization.
For example, the International Federation of
Journalists (IFJ) represents over half a million
journalists worldwide and comprises more than
160 member unions in over a hundred coun-
tries. Th e recently established Union Network
International (UNI) serves workers in electronic
communication and has proved itself eff ective in
pressurizing global companies on its members’
behalf.
Such alliances work for the maintenance and
extension of worker rights. Th ese prominently
include defence of women workers, who are
particularly vulnerable in harsh global climates.
A product of the global activity of labour orga-
nizations is the Global Framework Agreement
(GLA), still in its infancy, where a communica-
tions company operating worldwide agrees stan-
dards of employment that apply to all workers in
its employ, ensuring minimum labour standards,
health and safety and training opportunities.
Vincent Mosco and David O. Lavin conclude
their chapter, ‘The labouring of international
communication’ in Internationalizing Media
Studies (Routledge, 2009), edited by Daya
Kishan Thussu, ‘rather than asking again and
again “what will be the next new thing?” it may
be time to ask a more important question: will
communication workers of the world unite?’.
World Trade Organization (WTO) Telecom-
munications Agreement, 1997 Signed by
sixty-eight countries, this agreement to abolish
national and regional barriers to free trade in
telecommunication services was, as the WTOaccepted that radio equipment was essential
on board all ships. Th e British Admiralty paid
Marconi 20,000 a year for the use of his system
in the Royal Navy.
By 1901, wireless messages were being trans-
mitted from Cornwall to Newfoundland, tapped
out in Morse. A year later R.A. Fissenden of the
University of Pittsburg transmitted the sound of
a human voice over a distance of a mile. Further
progress was made possible by the invention of
the thermionic valve or electron tube, by English
electrical engineer John Ambrose Fleming
(1904). Th is device served to change the minute
alternating current of a radio signal into a direct
current, capable of actuating a telephone
receiver or the needle of a meter. American
physicist Lee De Forest improved the valve by
making amplifi cation possible. In 1910 De Forest
fi tted what he named a ‘radio-phone’ on the roof
of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York,
enabling listeners to hear the voices of the sing-
ers 100 miles away.
The First World War (1914–18) accelerated
developments in radio, where it received
baptism as a weapon of propaganda, by the
Germans. The future possibilities for radio
were encapsulated by American engineer David
Sarnoff when in 1916, he declared, ‘I have in
mind a plan of development which would make
a radio a “household utility” like the piano or
electricity. Th e idea is to bring music into the
house by wireless.’ See radio broadcasting.
See also topic guides under broadcasting;
media history; media: technologies.
Wireless Telegraphy Act (UK), 1904 Th e result
of a meeting of the major international powers
held in Berlin in 1903 to prepare an international
plan for the regulation of wireless telegraphy at
sea. The UK government required legislation
in order to sign the ensuing agreements that
enforced uniform rules of working. The Act
established universal wireless licensing in Brit-
ain, shore and sea, granted by the Postmaster-
General with the consent of the Admiralty and
Army Council and the Board of Trade.
Workers in communications and media So
diverse is the labour market for the communi-
cations industry that the vast aggregate size of
labour in communications worldwide is often
overlooked in study and research. Yet whether
it is journalists, broadcasters, telecommunica-
tion engineers, operatives in the knowledge and
publishing industries or workers in New Media
that are being focused on, similar pressures and
challenges are being encountered in the age of
globalization. A key trend is convergence.