During the ILO Symposium on Multimedia Convergence held in January 1997, Peter Leisink, Associate Professor of Labour Studies at the Utrecht University, Netherlands, explained: "A survey of the United Kingdom book publishing industry showed that proofreaders and editors have been externalized and now work as home-based teleworkers.

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. 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.

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.