Thursday, February 18, 1999
UNIONISM
Workers Online
A union movement struggling with issues of recruitment and relevance is
seeking salvation in cyberspace. HELEN TRINCA reports.
KARL Marx would be pleased. He liked the idea that new means of
communication would unite the workers. Although he never expected his dream
of a workers' International would be played out in cyberspace.
But Marx doubtless would have approved of the way global labour is stalking
global capital through the Internet at the end of the 20th century, on
union Web sites dedicated to Rio Tinto, for example. Or the way American
unions have lately taken to publishing photos of "scabs" on their Web
sites. Even perhaps of a new venture to be launched by Premier Bob Carr in
Sydney tonight - Workers Online, a weekly Net newspaper from the Labor
Council of NSW.
Workers Online has an old-fashioned masthead that comes from an era when
union newspapers were a powerful counter among their own constituencies to
the press barons. But there is nothing old-fashioned about its delivery.
The Labor Council, like individual unions, has caught the latest millennium
bug strutting its stuff on the Net.
It's a long way from flogging the workers' paper outside factories or on
street corners. Workers Online will be read around the world, potentially
by a new audience which couldn't even hum the International.
The Net may not be a panacea for a union movement struggling with issues of
recruitment and relevance, but a new generation of computer-savvy union
officials is recognising its potential for propaganda, information and as a
tool for industrial work.
Last year, for example, when information technology workers who feed data
to banks and the stock exchange were in dispute with their boss, the
multinational Bridge group, the Australian Services Union (ASU) ran a
vigorous campaign in cyberspace. For weeks, the union's Web site and e-mail
buzzed with details about the dispute and the company's plans not just
here, but overseas. A very long virtual meeting of the rank and file.
Organiser Sally McManus says: "We won the dispute because of the pressure
we were able to exert internationally. It led to the Bridge head office [in
the US] being pressured. Their competitors and their clients could see what
was happening on the Web site."
McManus is 27 and part of the new breed embracing the Net for recruitment,
organising and networking. She is responsible for workers at call centres
and information banks - the new assembly lines of the workplace - and her
members are naturals for meeting on the Net, invariably having access to
it. Young computer technicians known as "techies", who man the phones at
call centres to service internet users across Australian and the region,
are so familiar with cyberspace they often set up their own "hidden" union
sites at work to swap information. The bosses need never know about the
solidarity lurking below the surface.
McManus now does 90 per cent of her work on the Net and by e-mail. "I have
a great relationship with people that I have never met face to face."
The Net is also a godsend to unions trying to recruit in non-traditional
workplaces. Says McManus: "It's very hard to get entry to some of the call
centres. But it's not so hard to stand outside and tell people to look at
the Web site."
This new generation is also excited about the Net's global reach and many
are disciples of Eric Lee, a British-based writer and union worker, whose
1997 book on the subject, The labour movement and the internet: the new
internationalism (Pluto Press), has become a handbook. In an e-mail
interview with the Herald, Lee says that the Net allows the "creation of
true communications networks linking millions of trade unionists ... I
don't think that e-mail replaces telephones, snailmail, faxes, but it
supplements them and enlarges the possibilities for trade union action."
The Net brings more democracy to unions: "Obviously there are many other
factors that contribute to a union's being democratic (a concerned and
informed membership, for example) but once an idea gets loose on the Net,
it cannot be stopped."
And it is good for taking on officials, too. One British union has set up
online discussion forums for members to contribute. Members have open
slather to criticise their leaders - something harder to do at mass
meetings. And the Net is terrific for gathering information. Lee's site,
LabourStart, trawls the Web daily to drag in news stories on union issues.
For many, like Lee, last year's maritime dispute in Australia was a turning
point for the Net, with Web sites raising worldwide awareness. The Net
played a part, too, in alerting offshore supporters to boycotts. Locally,
the dispute generated a lot of interest on the Net - through the MUA's
page, which carried extensive information. And the ACTU's docks dispute
page posted court decisions, advised of picket lines and protests, and
operated as a forum for information about how to get involved, including
e-mailing the principals in the dispute such as Patrick boss Chris Corrigan.
The Net is popular as a protest tool. Sites in the United States offer
formatted systems for sending protest e-mails to senators and congressmen.
Other sites are like community notice boards: the British-based LabourNet
links people to international sites, but also advises about the latest
protest against privatisation of the Tube and the fate of General Pinochet.
In Australia, the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union continues
to run an extensive campaign against Rio Tinto as part of a global push.
Other unions use the Net to distribute leaflets and flyers: just download
the material and away you go into your local campaign.
But for many unions the Net's uses are more directly industrial. The
Community and Public Sector Union carries extensive information for
delegates on how to do their job and others, such as the Fire Brigades
Employees Union, tell members everything from information on awards to
rostering.
Access is a key issue. Some workplaces are a lifetime away from being
connected to the Net, although there are surprises. Firemen, for example,
have good access, while some media organisations, which are naturals for
e-mail, have been slow to provide desktop access to staff.
Noel Hester helped set up many union sites at Social Change Online. He says
unions should be arguing for access as part of their enterprise agreements.
Hester, a media officer at the ASU, says unions are very well placed to use
the Net because they have what the Net needs: good content in the form of
information about law, workplaces, and social and political issues.
The need to get more content on to the Labor Council's site is what drove
Peter Lewis, editor at Workers Online. "A site can look good, but it's like
a poster in the traffic," says Lewis, a former newspaper journalist and
press secretary to the NSW Industrial Relations Minister, Jeff Shaw. "You
need to get the content up."
His ambition is to develop Workers Online as a alternative forum for work,
economic and social issues which he argues sometimes slip through the
mainstream media. It will also carry a media watch column in the form of a
PiersWatch column dedicated to the Daily Telegraph columnist Piers Akerman
whose strong opinions on unions have perturbed Lewis and his colleagues.
Lewis wants a "tabloid, in-your-face" style in his site and will run a
regular column on sport, along with interactive interviews with key public
figures. The interview will be posted for one week and readers invited to
mail questions, to be answered the following week. More ambitiously, when
the site is upgraded, he wants interactive interviews with questions
e-mailed at a specified time for immediate answers.
The paper will be updated every Friday and will be e-mailed directly to
those on a free subscribers' list, as well as being available on the Net.
"Our goal is to get a subscription list which will allow us to sell
advertising and be self-sufficient," Lewis says.
Getting the content up on the Net is one thing. Getting through to the
proletariat may be quite another. Some workplaces now monitor employees
browsing of the Net and the use of e-mail, and warn workers that they risk
the sack if they abuse the system for personal pleasure. Are unions sites
personal or professional?
Garry Brack, chief executive of the Employers Federation of NSW, says that
broadly speaking, reading a union's newsletter on the Web at work is like
reading your golf club's newsletter during working hours. An employer
doesn't have to hack it.
There may be times when accessing union assistance through the Net or
e-mail is appropriate, for example, if there is an obvious illegality or
dangerous practice at work and the employee needed help.
The federation is getting increasing numbers of calls from employers about
whether they have the right to restrict workers' access to the Net for
personal pursuits. Brack's answer is yes - just as employers can limit use
of the telephone or fax machine. He says the range of responses from
employers is varied and both workers and bosses are getting used to the
novelty of cyberspace.
So maybe Marx's vision of one world of workers united by emerging methods
of communication is still some time off.
--
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