ing 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