Worker responses to technological change in the Canadian public sector: issues of learning and labour process

Abstract

This article reports selected findings from a study on the changing nature of work, learning and technology in the Canadian public sector (Ontario). Vis‐à‐vis the involvement of a major management consultant firm, these findings mirror the experiences at the nexus of policy, labour process and technology, seen in several other western countries. The authors examined workers’ learning responses to management‐led introduction of a leading edge, Web‐based social service delivery system. The paper shows how neo‐Taylorist principles have shaped work design, and argues that the result has been a high‐tech form of “de‐skilling” (Braverman) in which semi‐professionalized case management workers’ skill/knowledge sets have been systematically broken down. The process has been contested however. Workers have sought to learn and re‐skill, generating not only specific computer‐based skills (or “work‐arounds”) but more general, collective cultures of learning within the everyday life of work. This learning is sometimes in keeping with managerial interests, and sometimes not.

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