Labor Goes Online to Organize, Communicate,
and Strike. Workers On The Net, Unite! (page
2 of 2)
By Montieth M. Illingworth
Information Week
LaborNet also has
current and archived labor news from around the world and full
Internet access, which includes a link-up with SoliNet. Users
pay $15 to sign up, a $10 monthly fee (it includes an hour of
online time), and up to $7 for each additional hour of online
connection.
The Colorado Cougar,
based in Thornton, Colo., is a network of labor-oriented computer
bulletin boards geared for rank-and-file workers. Like the IGC's
LaborNet, it is part of the Internet and has ties with similar
networks that are cropping up around the world. These include
Glasnet in Russia, WorkNet in South Africa, Geonet in Germany,
and Poptel in the United Kingdom.
Some U.S. labor organizers
believe computer conferencing networks may help rejuvenate their
cause. The unions have been losing members steadily since 1970,
when membership peaked at more than 19 million people, or more
than a quarter of the work force, according to the Bureau of
Labor Statistics.
Today, union members
account for less than 16% of the work force (though membership
in Canada is close to 40%). "Uniting has never been more
feasible or more necessary," says organizer Wilson.
Wilson got his first
taste of the power of networking during the CWA's 1989 strike
against Nynex Corp. He helped the union organize the strike
and to use AT&T's EasyLink electronic-mail system to distribute
strike news and negotiation updates to 60,000 members in 30
locals in New York and New England.
"Information
is everything during a strike," says Wilson. "The
greatest value of E-mail was damage control. Rumors about the
negotiations could be laid to rest almost instantly." The
strike ended with the CWA victorious in most of its demands.
Since then, Wilson
has become director of Massachusetts Jobs With Justice, a community/labor
coalition for workers' rights. Soon after he found out about
the IGC's LaborNet, he joined.
Democratic
Medium
Just as E-mail networks
have enabled workers in the private sector to communicate more
freely, so have these services enhanced communications among
union members.
"It's an inherently
democratic medium," says Michael Stein, a LaborNet coordinator.
"We want union leadership to join, but we also encourage
workers to sign up individually and exchange ideas with other
workers in different industries. That kind of cross-sector link
isn't supported by union leadership." Adds Wilson: "I
can see the networks eliminating a lot of middle-layer functions
among the union bosses, and that must be freaking them out."
The AFL-CIO, for
one, has decided not to let technology get too far ahead of
leadership. In 1992, it established LaborNet on CompuServe Information
Services. Today, users pay CompuServe's $8.95 monthly fee plus
an extra $5 per month for unlimited access to LaborNet. While
the AFL-CIO is a federation of 86 national unions representing
autoworkers, actors, miners, truckers, steelworkers, communications
employees, and others, only a handful of those unions have signed
on.
More significantly,
the AFL-CIO service is targeted at stewards and above from the
600 city central and 51 state labor federations, says Blair
Calton, LaborNet's coordinator. It's primarily a means for union
bosses to talk to other bosses.
That has limited
LaborNet's value to the rank and file, argues SoliNet's Belanger,
who has written to AFL-CIO leaders to encourage them to develop
the network further-- and to do it independently. "There
is power in knowing how the networks work," he says. Organizer
Wilson agrees, but says he knows why the AFL-CIO took its approach.
"They want to control the information just like everybody
else," he says.
Online services are
encouraging some white-collar workers to organize, too. After
Digital announced in July that it would eliminate 20,000 jobs
worldwide, company employees in the U.S. and Germany contacted
organizer Wilson via IGC's LaborNet. They sought his advice
on how they could get together to discuss their options. As
a result, a Digital workers' meeting is being planned.
White-collared IBMers
may be joining them. Big Blue plans to lay off more than 70,000
employees this year, and Lee Conrad, head of IBM Workers United,
an employee association, is also experiencing the "solidarity
effect" of the labor networks.
Conrad, an assembler/tester
in IBM's Endicott, N.Y., plant, started the group in the mid-1970s.
Though all he has to show for his efforts today is a 150-subscriber
newsletter called The Resistor, both the reach of that newsletter
and the power of his group are poised to expand.
Conrad says many
IBM employees are already commiserating on Prodigy, an online
service jointly run by Sears, Roebuck & Co. and--ironically--IBM.
Conrad is also on the Delphi commercial online service. From
there he exchanges E-mail with a handful of IBM managers around
the U.S., plus labor activists on IGC's LaborNet (including
some Europe-based Digital workers). Conrad intends to join LaborNet,
and he hopes to put The Resistor online as an electronic magazine.
"A year ago, IBM management would announce plant closings
and layoffs nationally. They stopped doing that. Now we don't
find out about it until it's too late," Conrad says. "Online,
we can get that information ourselves directly from the people
affected."
But will
white-collar workers actually want to organize around specific
issues with their blue-collar brethren? Online chat and story
swapping is one thing, but taking action is quite another. All
that can be measured now is a temperament. There are signs that
a growing number of people--both blue- and white- collar--are
open to the possibility of joint action. "What's needed
are pioneer efforts by volunteers," says one Digital worker
in an E-mail posting on the LaborNet. "I'd be proud to
work with them."