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. -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink