"The responses revealed that in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and France there were on average three employees, that is journalists, in each on-line service. These were newly employed people who had not originally come from more conventional newspaper activities. In Germany, an average of six permanent jobs are created per on-line service and roughly five freelance positions as well. There were no jobs lost in publishing houses as a result of the new activities of newspapers in on-line services. These figures, while not totally representative or complete, do indicate a general trend, which is that when newspapers add on-line services to their activities, jobs are created."
However it is difficult to admit that the information society would generate jobs, and it is already stated worldwide that multimedia convergence leads to massive loss of jobs. In the same Symposium, Michel Muller, Secretary-General of the French Federation of Book, Paper and Communication Industry (Fédération des industries du livre, du papier et de la communication), stated that, in France, the graphics industry had lost 20,000 jobs - falling from 110,000 to 90,000 - within the last decade, and that very expensive social plans had been necessary to re-employ those people. He explained:
"If the technological developments really created new jobs, as had been suggested, then it might have been better to invest the money in reliable studies about what jobs were being created and which ones were being lost, rather than in social plans which often created artificial jobs. These studies should highlight the new skills and qualifications in demand as the technological convergence process broke down the barriers between the printing industry, journalism and other vehicles of information. Another problem caused by convergence was the trend towards ownership concentration. A few big groups controlled not only the bulk of the print media, but a wide range of other media, and thus posed a threat to pluralism in expression. Various tax advantages enjoyed by the press today should be re-examined and adapted to the new realities facing the press and multimedia enterprises. Managing all the social and societal issues raised by new technologies required widespread agreement and consensus. Collective agreements were vital, since neither individual negotiations nor the market alone could sufficiently settle these matters."
Quite theoretical compared to the unionists' interventions, the answer of Walter Durling, Director of AT&T Global Information Solutions, was that humanity must not fear technology:
"Technology would not change the core of human relations. More sophisticated means of communicating, new mechanisms for negotiating, and new types of conflicts would all arise, but the relationships between workers and employers themselves would continue to be the same. When film was invented, people had been afraid that it could bring theatre to an end. That has not happened. When television was developed, people had feared that it would do away cinemas, but it had not. One should not be afraid of the future. Fear of the future should not lead us to stifle creativity with regulations. Creativity was needed to generate new employment. The spirit of enterprise had to be reinforced with the new technology in order to create jobs for those who had been displaced. Problems should not be anticipated, but tackled when they arose."
Is it true? People are not so much afraid of the future as they are afraid of losing their jobs. The problem is more the context of a society with a high rate of unemployment, which was not the case when film was invented and television developed. In the information society, what is, and what will be, the percentage of job creations compared to dismissals?
Unions fight worldwide for job creations through investment and innovation, vocational training in the use of new technologies, retraining of workers whose jobs are abolished, fair conditions for the setting-up of contracts and collective conventions, the defense of copyright, a better protection of workers in the artistic field, and the defense of teleworkers as full workers. According to the estimates of the European Commission, there should be 10 million European teleworkers in the year 2000, which would represent 20% of the number of teleworkers worldwide.
Despite all the unions' efforts, will the situation become as tragic as the one described in a report of the International Labour Organization (ILO) suggesting that "in the information age individuals will be 'forced to struggle for survival in an electronic jungle' with 'survival mechanisms' which have been developed over previous decades 's orely tested by change'…"?
In Cyberplanète: notre vie en temps virtuel (Cyberplanet: our life in virtual time) (Paris, Editions Autrement, 1998), Philip Wade et Didier Falkand stated that the United States, Canada and Japan, which are the countries investing the most in new technologies, are also the ones that create the most jobs. A study carried out in February 1997 by Booz.Allen & Hamilton for European Ministers of Industry showed that the European delay has cost one million jobs in 1995 and 1996, because of a technological growth of 2.4% (compared to 9.3% in the United States). According to another study made in January 1997 for the European Commission, 1.3 million jobs could be maintained or created by the European Union between 1997 and 2005. The 300,000 jobs lost in traditional companies would be compensated by 93,000 jobs created by their competitors and 1.2 million jobs created in the sectors of telecommunications, electric and electronic construction, equipment, and distribution of communication products.
Will the traditional distinction between library, publishing house, press publisher or bookstore still exist in a few years? Any writer can create a website, and any website can already create a digital library. More and more libraries, bookstores and publishing houses have no walls, no windows and no shelves. Their premises are their websites, and all the transactions are made on the Web. As for distribution, it is still possible to buy newspapers and magazines at the newsstand or to receive them in the letterbox, but more and more people read them on the Web, and more and more periodicals are "only" electronic.