Unions and Technology
by Guest Blogger, 2/16/2002
Unions and the Digital Divide
Unions and technology have had a good amount of attention lately.
You have probably heard the news that the Ford Motor Company,
through PeoplePC is offering their 350,000 employees computers with
Internet access for US$5 a month, including shipping.
This arrangement came about when Ford and the United Auto
Workers (UAW)- which represents 100,000 Ford workers
in America- negotiated a four-year contract last fall. The
UAW suggested the idea for computer access for workers
during the negotiations.
Program participants will get a basic Hewlett-Packard computer
consisting of a 500 mHz processor, 64 MB RAM, 4.3 GB
hard drive, 15 inch monitor, CD-ROM, and modem, and 24-hour
tech support. The Internet service (included in the $5 monthly fee)
is provided by UUNET (owned by MCI WorldCom).
Workers can upgrade to a more powerful
Machine at their own expense, provided they honor a
three-year contract with PeoplePC. When workers access the
Internet, they will go through a portal customized to their
geographic region and linked to Ford services. The program
will start in April in the US, and be available to both union and
non-union Ford workers globally over the course of the year.
Normally, PeoplePC charges $24.95 a month for three years
or $789 as a one-time fee for a similar base machine and
unlimited Internet access. Ford is covering the cost difference
for each worker who enrolls in the program.
Unlike other free PC services, members in this online collective
purchasing club do not have to put up with persistent banner
ads when they use their machines or access the Web. Special offers,
however, will be distributed to users on a regular basis from over
70 retail partners (including the Gap and Amazon.com), based
on their preferences.
How do they make their money? The monthly fee is really a
payment of a loan at a fixed interest rate of 11 percent over 36
months. There is normally a $48 shipping fee and an optional
$99 charge to have someone set up your computer for you.
At the end of three years, you'll have a chance to renew or end
your PeoplePC membership. If you renew, you get a new
computer system at that time, and your old machine gets
donated to charity. If you cancel at that point, the
machine is yours. In addition, PeoplePC receives a small
percentage of each online transaction you make from their
affiliate partners.
This news comes on the heels of the AFL-CIO's
announcement last year that it would offer low-cost
Internet access to current and retired union members.
The service, expected to cost between $8 to $15 a month
will launch towards the end of March.
This in part was a reaction to last year's Department
of Commerce report on the digital divide, which
found, that households at the lowest annual income
levels were at least 20 times less likely to have
access to a computer than households with incomes of $75,000.
Technology in the Union Interest
Sam McManis, in a piece for the San Francisco Chronicle
last year, reported on the Working Families portal, which officially
launched in early December 1999. This is a portal developed in
partnership between the 68 affiliated unions of the AFL-CIO
and commercial portal developer iBelong.
The portal seeks to give the union workers an opportunity
to use the Internet to address basic family needs and
professional concerns. All of this is designed not only
to close the gap between union members and workers in
high technology fields. It is also designed to provide
a recruitment and retention vehicle to leverage the union's
resources in the policy arena.
The portal, Internet access, and online resources, once
fully operational, will also serve as a potential way to
recruit new members from immigrants, minority and youth
populations hooked by technology access. It might also
serve as a way to broker coalition activity and to
bridge traditional outreach and coordination efforts
distanced by geography and perceived lack of mutual
interests. There will also be interactive discussion
areas, online surveys, and policy related content.
Similarly, the Communications Workers of America (CWA),
according to MaManis, identified a way to utilize technology
and partnerships with business to potentially attract a larger member base.
Through a program that emphasizes technology training
piloted in the Washington, DC area, CWA and Cisco Systems
are training 175 military veterans and union members for high-tech
jobs. CWA's rationale is that the trained workers placed in high-tech
jobs might in turn seek union membership and representation. CWA,
additionally, would then be viewed as a training and
development organization, a professional association and
network, and a trade union because the will associate
their training with the CWA facility, bridging the gap
between trade union and professional development.
The union-business partnerships announced recently will
also serve to build the technology capacity of workers to
directly engage in public policy activities more quickly,
more efficiently, and to leverage their efforts on a
potentially larger scale than previously imagined.
Technology and Union Activity
The recent news about Ford, however, should not eclipse
a number of existing technology resources and examples
associated with unions.
You might recall our earlier discussion around last
Augusts New York Times article by Noam Cohen, which
discussed how some labor unions have successfully used
websites and e-mail for organizing activities. Julia Flynn
covered similar territory for the Wall Street Journal last October,
reporting on how the International Federation of Chemical, Energy,
Mine and General Workers Unions (ICEM) uses an online approach
to union action.
ICEM, located in Brussels, Belgium, is a four-year old
industry-based federation of 400 trade unions representing
20 million workers in 115 countries. ICEM has used the Internet
to coordinate online strikes, protests, and pickets in order to draw
international attention and solidarity around local conflicts between workers
and multinational corporations. The method is not only to
direct worker activity towards a corporation, but using the
Internet to also provide their point of view to a company's
consumers as well.
Flynn describes, for example, how ICEM raised the profile of
a local strike against a tire plant in North Carolina into
an international activity against the plant's parent company
based in Germany. After eight months of traditional activity
(picket lines and distribution of printed materials), ICEM
developed a website to compliment the local effort. The site
not only highlighted the local issue, but also presented the
issue with respect to the federation's concerns. It then
provided e-mail links to the parent company's management and
government officials in the United States and Germany, and
encouraged union supporters to make their concerns heard.
The more noticeable impact, though, was ICEM's ability to
encourage solidarity strikes across and within the tire
industry. Flynn notes, for example, that a couple of weeks
after the website was launched, 800 tire factory workers
in South Africa held a two-hour sympathy strike, followed
the next day by a group of Australian union picketers
demonstrating outside the German consulate in Sydney.
An added benefit is that previously unheard unions
gained visibility as they demonstrated support of workers
located no small geographic distance removed from their own
scope of normal activity. The result: the nearly 1,500
North Carolina workers got a wage increase, their first in
10 years, though the company says the "cyberpicketing" did
not make any difference.
Interestingly, it is that last comment that, while an
attempt to minimize the possible influence of online
organizing and mobilizing, does raise an interesting argument:
By elevating local concerns into global issues, it makes
worker criticisms too general to be taken as true for other
parts of the world. From an organizers' perspective, that's
precisely the reason to utilize "cyberpicketing": in order
to highlight local issues such that they have global
resonance, and will encourage people to act locally on
issues that affect them by showing the linkages among
multinational players.
An interesting resource mentioned in Flynn's piece called
the Cyber Picket-Line. This is an international directory of
trade unions and trade union resources (including links to
union news, conferences, research centers, information sources,
"how-to" organize, and union networks) from around the
world.
In addition, LaborNet is an online
communications network for the international labor movement.
One major area of activity is centered on maintaining open,
uncensored, and non-privatized channels of online communication,
as well as use of technology for skills and capacity building
in developing labor solidarity. It also features links to
existing campaigns. Right now, the network's LaborTech
resource seeks examples of how labor unions use the Internet.
What good is a protest, however, if no one shows up? One
example of an online union effort that not only helped turnout, but also
helped prepare participants was the AFL-CIO World Trade
Organization Mobilization Page. This was one of numerous online
resources used to prepare organizers for the WTO protest meeting.
Its features include an online
petition, flyers that could be downloaded, and logistical
information for WTO protests.
But what if you want a better idea of different union
related events going on locally or in other parts of the
world? An online resource of note for union and community
organizers in this area is The Great Speckled Bird (or
"The Bird"), an "underground" liberal newspaper. It features
a frequently updated international listing of upcoming and
ongoing boycotts; petitions, demonstrations, and strikes, the latter
co-sponsored by LaborNet. Links to campaign targets and their
offenses, organizers, and deadlines are provided on each of the
listings, as well as tips for developing protest activities.
The Bird's editors encourage submissions.
Another resource of note is Protest.Net,
a public record of community activist political activity in
communities around the world, which has operated since summer of
1998. Evan Henshaw-Plath, who was 21 when he created the site,
used an online calendar program he created in college as the engine
behind the site. Last year, there were some 5,000 events listed.
The concept behind Protest.Net was that the Web was contributing to
the further dispersion of progressive activity. Easy to locate URLs
were being registered before groups that could benefit from
their association could register them. Moreover, there was no
definitive source for activists to locate information on what was
going on that was timely, up to date, and that could link to
similar activities and groups in other countries. Protest.Net will
accept notice on almost any activity, as long as it is regarded
as progressive, and is not offensive to its user community.
There is, however, continued debate about whether Protest.Net
is good vehicle for progressive political activity. A 1998
New York Times article by Bob Tedeschi quoted some skeptics who suggested that:
- such a vehicle might create an environment where different forms of protest have to compete with one another for the attention of potential supporters, thereby slowing actual activity while people try to wade through all of the options available
- the audience that would use the service might be those interested only in committing to short-term events, rather than long-term sustained political activity over a long-
