Free Guide to Social Media for Unions

Alex White is an Australian trade unionist and webhead who publishes his thoughts on unions and the internet online. Now he has made available a quick guide for unions in their use of social media.

More sophisticated communicators won’t find much new here, but for the rest of us this will be an invaluable intro to integrated online communications. I'd especially recommend it to local union folks looking to build a more effective online presence and organizing capacity. If nothing else it can act as a kind of detailed checklist for new folks or activists and unions moving online.

Free to download HERE.

Online Workers of the Future Unite!

Corey Doctorow is a well-known speculative fiction writer who is also something of an online activist and a new media critic (see his work re. Creative Commons licensing and his time at the New Frontiers Foundation.

Corey's latest book is about the struggle of young online workers to organize. If that doesn’t grab you the title will: For the Win: Organize to Survive. It's tagged with 'young adult fiction' but I had a fine time with it (OK, that might say more about me than about the book) and it's getting great reviews.

Download it for free at Corey’s own website HERE.

Twitter Ups and Downs

Our Times column, vol. 29-4.

Sometimes we need to hear about organizing tactics hurting employers – enough for them to spend money countering them – before we take the tactics seriously. That’s why I’m giving SMS (texting) even more space here in my WebWork column.

Text messaging to organize flash mobs in support of strikes or to otherwise put sudden, organized and unexpected pressure on an employer is becoming a common tactic in Europe,particularly in the retail sector. Last Christmas, the Association of German Retailers filed a complaint with the nation’s highest court in an attempt to ban the use of flash mob tactics by thepublic sector workers’ union, Verdi, in labour disputes. Using SMS, strikers and supporters could converge on a single store on short notice. Large numbers of people lined up at cashiers’ stations to buy a single item. Others filled carts with food, and then abandoned them for managers to re-shelve.

These are effective tactics – a surprise to the company. No one aside from a small committee knows where or when the action will happen. Volunteers provide a mobile phone number and get less than an hour’s notice of the action. No posters, no newsletters, no overnight lags while a phone tree operates that an employer can use to prepare. A flying squad on steroids. Fast, flexible, nimble.

As I write this, a second wave of strikes is hitting Chinese auto parts plants. Seen the photos the Globe and the Guardian have been carrying? Those workers are staring at their phones not because they have nothing else to do. They’re getting directions and updates from the strike committee.

Both text messaging and micro-blogging (using the Twitter site) from a mobile phone are also becoming useful (or possibly not, we’ll see) tools in internal local union organizing. Recently I’ve started to see members at meetings tweeting and texting summaries of discussions at membership meetings to co-workers who couldn’t or wouldn’t come to a meeting. Unions need to give some thought to the implications of this increasingly popular practice.

A while back I mentioned Twitter and the tweeting that went on during last fall’s CUPE national convention. I’ve since compared notes with a few members and staff. We’re pretty sure that, on several important resolutions, there were more people in the hall tweeting their thoughts on the resolution being debated than there were delegates at the mics. And that’s just the tweets using the “official” hash tag (tweets organized around a topic) for the convention. Opining online is faster than waiting to get to a mic; it doesn’t induce stage fright; and it allows for a back-and-forth debate that the rules of order don’t and can’t allow for. It also, and this deserves some thought, allows for members at a meeting, conference or convention to have input from members who aren’t in the room before they cast a ballot. My reflexive reaction to this is to think: “Wow! Representative democracy gets a boost!” Delegates will no longer just be elected and then sent off to do whatever and then report back; members can now provide them with feedback and direction in real time.

But there are down sides too, and they’re worth considering. (Or am I just past it?) For sure there is the question of whether we’re creating two classes of members: one that is techsavvy and gets more input into the union’s direction, and one that isn’t and so loses out as we have fewer face-to-face meetings and more interaction online. Are we at the point where we can say that those who don’t tweet are those who don’t want to rather than those who can’t?

The recent LabourStart 2010 conference in Hamilton, Ontario, saw some less serious use of Twitter. The hash tag (a text string starting with the “#” sign that you can use to find tweets on the same topic) “#LSCONF2010” was created and advertised to the 200 participants. We suggested it be used by people looking for rides to and from Pearson Airport and such mundane things. Instead, we were treated to realtime reviews of workshops, speakers and even the quality of the lunches.

Judy Rebick, our keynote speaker, may have been responsible. In her opening address to the conference she made a point of looking at the screen over her head on which the conference logo appeared. She explained that she had recently attended an event where Twitter postings on speakers were projected over their heads where they couldn’t see them, but where everyone else in the room could. Sounded a hoot and worth setting up. Unless, of course, you’re the speaker.

SITES TO CHECK OUT

The AFL-CIO has created a nice one-stop-shopping site for unemployed workers (union and not) at www.unemploymentlifeline.com. A nice bridge to workers often lost to their unions or never a member. The Association for Progressive Communications advocates for an accessible and open Internet available globally for use in creating a more just world: www.apc.org. New (at least to me) is the online journal Global Labour at http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/globallabour/.

The always interesting Cyberunions (http://cyberunions.org) has posted the results of their survey of unions online. Aside from the health and safety content, http://www.workscape.ca/ is worth looking over if you’re thinking about setting up a members-only discussion forum. My favourite model airplane and travel forums use the same software.

Alexei Sayle on Union Conventions

From Stalin Ate My Homework:

“To be at the congress of a large trade union in the 1960s was a little like attending a rock festival where the stars up on the stage were balding alcoholics in ill-fitting suits talking gibberish.”

No comment. :-)

For more on Alexei, my favourite Marxist stand-up comedian, see HERE.

2010 Global Labour Photo Contest Up and Running

The latest LabourStart Labour Photo of the Year contest is up and running.

The panel of three distinguished labour photogs has selected five finalists. You can view all five and vote for your favourite HERE.

At midnight GMT on 31 December voting will close and the finalist with the most votes will be declared the winner.

Some great images here, be sure and visit and vote soon.

Podcasts and Tweet-ins

Webwork column in April-May 2010 Our Times.

According to an Ipso survey, Canadians now spend more time online than watching TV. Does your union’s communications strategy reflect that? We have far more access to the web in getting out our message than we ever had to TV, including through podcasting. So, let’s get to it.

Wayne McPhail’s session on podcasting at this year’s LabourTech conference in Windsor, Ontario, got rave reviews from participants and generated a lot of talk over coffee and dinner about the technology, and about ideas for content. RadioLabour 5 is past the talk stage and available now. (See www.radiolabour.net.) It’s the summary version of the 30-minute RadioLabour weekly global news pod. RadioLabour, itself, is becoming well-established, with 30,000 weekly listeners. Yep, you read that right: 30,000. RadioLabour is also carried on 140 radio stations in the U.S. via a partnership with the Workers Independent News Services (visit www.laborradio.org).

RadioLabour isn’t the only labour podcast around that focuses on international issues. The venerable and well respected China Labour Bulletin has its own audio pod. It does mini-documentaries, interviews, and reports on changes within China’s trade unions, and on worker protests. If you think that China’s union scene is monolithic and static, that’s proof you’ve not been listening.

Visit www.china-labour.org.hk.

Union pods are slowly growing in number and sophistication. Chances are that pods, at least for special events, will soon be as de rigeur as websites — and as expected of unions by the members. Union Hour is a UK podcast also available on CD. Listen in to a sample of a regional union news and national issues pod at http://tinyurl.com/2cy49vd.

FACEBOOK GROUPS

I’m just not certain what the lesson here is yet but. . . . Paul F. Tompkins is a comedian who committed to a Toronto gig — not through an agent, but through a Facebook group. He set a lower limit of 300 fans for the group and when it got there he rented a venue and appeared. He pretty much guaranteed himself a few bucks and a full house instead of risking an empty house and the bill for the room.

Have you spent months, or even years, collecting friends on Facebook only to find yourself daunted by the prospect of inviting them all, one by one, to join the new campaign group you’ve created? One Man’s Blog (subtitled “Specialization is for Insects”) has a solution for you: simply follow the instructions at http://tinyurl.com/l4eq64.

TWEET-INS

I remain personally unimpressed with Twitter, but I think I’m gradually being proved wrong. In May, the Council of Canadians organized a “tweet-in” in opposition to the free trade agreement with Colombia. Twenty-five thousand tweeters participated, virtually, in the Commons Trade Committee’s debate on the proposed agreement. To see how a “tweet-in” works visit the Canadian Union of Public Employees’ global justice committee’s tweet-in campaign against free trade with Colombia:
http://tinyurl.com/29e6ols.

More tweeting followed a LabourStart campaign in support of workers in a Taiwan electronics factory. As the workers make touch-screens for some of the most popular smartphones around, using the Twitter fan groups for those phones (phones have fan clubs?) to get the word out was a pretty effective strategy. It helped put pressure on the companies whose names are on the phones to squeeze the manufacturer.

On a less savoury note, Twitter and other social networking sites are becoming a labour relations battleground. Andy Hanson of the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (ETFO) wrote in to report that at least one Ontario school board has retained a security company to search such sites for comments by employees. Hanson has had to represent his first member disciplined for tweeting. And workers at the
Ville de Québec are going to court to challenge a $90,000 contract to monitor employees’ use of sites like Facebook.

In the good old days, you could stand in line at the grocery store and complain about your supervisor and not have to worry as long as a manager wasn’t in the line next to you. Say the same thing with the same intent on Facebook or Twitter and you might get toasted. It’s as if employers were hiring security guards to follow workers outside of work time. The 21st century version of that grocery check-out line has Big Brother waiting at the cash.

BIG UNION BROTHER

“Big Brother is watching” can take on another, perhaps less ominous, meaning though. Local 615 of the Service Employees International Union at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has proposed that the bargaining table have webcams installed so that negotiations can be webcast for members.

I could, and might yet, spend a whole column listing the pros and cons of something like this. But, for the moment, I’ll restrain myself and simply say that it, and things like it, are things we should be thinking about now, not later.

And while you’re trying to come up with a policy on webbed bargaining, you might as well think about one regarding tweeting from the bargaining or grievance table or strike vote meeting, and what to do when a member walks into a meeting with a Thumbtack mic stuck into an iPod. Is this stuff good? Bad?

Or just another way people will do what they’ve always been doing?

William Gibson Meets Ginger Goodwin

Published somewhere in 2007.

I ran across a story on LabourStart.org the other day that made me think some one had taken the brains of two Canadians, one well-known and read and alive, and the other not-so alive, but just as deserving and had thrown them both into a bender.

William Gibson the speculative fiction writer and inventor of cyberspace, and Ginger Goodwin, mine union organizer, shot in the back while viciously attacking the police.

************************************************

I am getting old. I can tell: mostly because I keep finding more opportunities in life to say ‘I am getting old’. The biggest and best of those was when a granddaughter picked me up at the airport and drove me home.

The latest came when I stumbled across a story about 9000 Italian IBM workers, members of the RSU, taking job action against their employer – virtually.

As in online. Not real. Using little cartoon-like characters to represent real workers. This just a few years after I wrote an article saying such things would never happen, that organizing workers requires face-to-face contact.

Turns out that may be true of me my generation, but what’s coming up behind may have a different take on things. Note I resisted the temptation to make reference to ‘whippersnappers’.

There will be picket lines (though mebbe no oil drum heaters), leaflets for shoppers and other workers - everything you’d expect in a strike. Just no people. But lots and lots of avatars, because this is happening (if it can be said to be happening at all), in Second Life.

Second Life, for those of you who don’t know, is a virtual world in which 9 million users adopt facsimiles of themselves called avatars. Avatars then live out their lives at the direction of the users, interacting in most if not all the same ways their users do (so far as I know actual reproduction isn’t possible). But anonymously.

To the point where you can now buy real estate on Second Life, undertake all kinds of financial transactions find romance and figure out if you really could have made it as a painter.

You can also, now get this, visit a real embassy. Several in fact, with more coming. Get a visa, plan a vacation. Or take a university course.

While technically a computer game, Second Life resembles the Pong of my day the way I resemble whatever it was that first climbed out of the primal ooze.

Except mebbe a bit around the eyes…

Second Life has become so popular that a wide spectrum of corporations have established themselves there, the better to advertise themselves and their cutting-edginess, and to sell stuff to the online-addicted.

IBM is one. A big one. It has reportedly been spending big time on the establishment of a variety of online presences. On Second Life IBM has it’s own virtual island.

Corporations on Second Life actually use the environment for what they consider to be meetings that are more productive than conference calls or video conferencing. They sell stuff. They test stuff (especially graphic-intensive applications). And they advertise stuff. Oh boy, do they advertise stuff.

So what is this? The shape of strikes to come? A publicity stunt? Just a way of avoiding taking real action? Or just one more reminder from the Universe that I am getting old?

It’s perhaps all those things, but mostly it’s a case of whiplash for IBM. If transnational corporations like IBM have invested heavily in a presence on Second Life, then the workers would be stupid to ignore the possibilities for getting their employer’s attention it presents.

IBM can run, but it can’t hide.

Transnational virtual corps spawn transnational virtual unions. IBM doesn’t play nice with its workers; their union organizes something embarrassing on Second Life. And for some corporations it may actually be possible to have an economic impact on their business. If they are well established on Second Life (or any other social networking site), dependent on it for a significant chunk of sales or advertising or meeting time, then a virtual strike like this could have an impact back here in the real world of profits and share prices.

A virtual job action also the potential to make building support for unions, especially unions representing professional workers, workers with a long tradition of workplace conflict.

Better yet, potential for organizing high-tech home workers and telecommuters. These are workers that unions have traditionally had a hard time reaching and organizing. It’s hard to convince workers like these that what they are doing by organizing and mobilizing is real when you have nothing real for them to do. As unreal as second Life is, the action the RSU members are taking against IBM is very real. Not concrete mebbe, but real.


For workers in a sector not traditionally union, the RSU is organizing a kind of job action that allows workers (if they work at it just a bit) to stay anonymous. They don’t, unless they want to, have to make it easy to identify who is behind their avatar. As a way to build confidence amongst workers who need and want to take that first action against an unfair employer this may have some advantages. Start out slow and work your way to more direct actions.

In and of itself it’s unlikely a virtual job action will bring IBM to its knees. Ten years from now I’ll be even older, both granddaughters will have driver’s licences, and perhaps the odds will have shifted, but not yet.

But the confidence in themselves, their co-workers and their union, that an action like this could create might just make possible and successful more, dare I say it, traditional, forms of job action.

Workers are not stupid. They may be in the position of having to react to their employers’ actions, but when you react you go looking for new weak points. IBM’s Second Life image may be that point. We’ll see. But if it isn’t, who cares? The workers may be, as a result, just a little more ready to move on to actions out here in meatspace.

Look at their press releases and statements: nothing new in their goals, incremental pressure on IBM to meet some well-defined and limited goals. With the exception of the details of the action that’s planned, there’s nothing exceptional in what the workers want (respect), or in how IBM has behaved (badly). Just in how the union is reacting.

Like the Borg, unions are adapting.

Ginger Goodwin might not approve (though William Gibson sure would), if he understood, but if you work for a tech company that does business in non-places like Second Life, you gotta fight them on their ground.

Even if that ground doesn’t really exist.

But the really nice thing about a virtual strike is that even if a car on a picket line hits your avatar, even if the riot squad shows up, you don’t wake up in hospital or spend an evening trying to get the stinging to stop.

Stay tuned. We’re going to see more of this.