ELECTRONIC ORGANIZING

February, 2003

Computers don’t organize workers--workers organize workers!

This statement reflects the expansion of workplace technology as a many-headed monster which provides both problems and opportunities. Shrewd stewards should overcome their concerns about new technology and tame the monster to build their unions.

In the first place, the computerization of the world, and of our workplaces, is a reality that just won’t quit. The sheer volume of computer use has increased at a breathtaking speed: as of September, 2001, according to a report by the U.S Department of Commerce, “174 million people—66 per cent of the U.S. population—were using computers in their homes, schools, libraries and work. In the workplace, 65 million of the 115 million employed adults age 25 and over, almost 57 per cent, used a computer at work,” and almost 42 per cent “were using the Internet and/or e-mail at work.”

In a simple anecdotal way, I have found in the past several years an enormous increase of workers who have become computer literate, either on their own or through their children. There are now virtually whole classes of traditional manufacturing workers, with little “formal” education, who have come on-line, joining the service workers whose computer literacy has been forced by employer demands. For example, it’s possible now to establish e-mail distribution lists and catch almost every student, passing out information, pasting in newspaper articles, and getting group discussions going.

If you watch people flipping burgers, even they now take instructions from a computer screen.

So our bosses have provided a wonderful communications medium for us—we just have to use it effectively.

On one hand, of course, stewards must deal with computers as they deal with the introduction of any new machinery: as a change in working conditions and as a threat to the workers represented by the union. The changes are virtually without limits, as are the headaches for stewards.

The increased use of computers at work has dramatically changed job descriptions, creating huge opportunities for electronic monitoring and snooping on workers. Every keystroke you take, every e-mail message you send or receive, can be recorded and, as the phrase goes, may be used against you in a court of law. It is now estimated that 30 per cent of private employers monitor their workers electronic communications, a figure expected to soar to 80 per cent within a few years, according to management lawyer Peter D. Guattery, writing in The Maryland Bar Journal. (May/June, 2000). More grievance problems have arisen over telecommuting, showing that the traditional workplace has virtually—pun intended—disappeared.

Bitter struggles in contract negotiations have emerged in traditional work areas like the West Coast longshore, over control and jurisdiction of work, which is now done electronically.

Our bosses have provided a wonderful communications medium for us—we just have to use it effectively to build our unions. Using e-mail and web sites for communicating with members and organizing targets has tremendous potential: it’s fast, cheap, colorful and easy. So let’s see how we can build the union electronically.

  • Steward’s bulletins? No problem—a steward can create an electronic leaflet, assemble an electronic distribution list and—zap, powie—the stewards have the information. Another keystroke and every member on-line has the same information, with no limit to the numbers of workers who can be added at no additional cost. The Washington DC Central Labor Council has created a weekly Union Cities distribution list with thousands of workers on the other end.
  • Remember standing at a shop gate in the rain, trying to pass out leaflets to workers during an organizing campaign? Pretty tough but electronic distribution of these leaflets can help out your campaign. Get a e-mail directory so your organizing message can pop up the first thing in the morning.
  • Need to distribute information for a membership meeting? Have trouble even getting a quorum at the membership meetings? Send out the information electronically. In a time of crisis, when events are moving fast, a web site can be updated instantly, giving your union officers a huge advantage over a slower moving boss in the battle for the hearts and minds of the membership. Several years ago, during the strike against Boeing, the Engineer’s Union provided a model for electronic communication, with a fast and effective electronic posting of every move in negotiations, allowing all of the members—as well as the world at large--an up close and personal look at every move the massive manufacturer made.
  • If your membership is declining, and you are having difficulties—both financially and in terms of support—with your cherished local union newsletter, why not look at creating a web site, which can contain all of the information in the newsletter, with links to other union related sources? One of the most underrated responsibilities for stewards is to bring into the workplace news and opinion from outside their own workplace; links to other web sites can provide this information.
  • Want feedback from your members, who are so pressed for time that they can’t even attend brief shop meetings? Put up a union bulletin board, so members can post questions and opinions.
  • Remember all of the trouble you had in negotiations with a simple clause like “the union bulletin board” at work? Issues like who can post notices, what these notices can say, even who can have keys if the board is covered? These issues vanish when you can electronically post notices.

So what’s the problem? As we said at the beginning, computers don’t organize workers—workers organize other workers by personal contact. The simple distribution of information does not, in itself, make your union stronger. In fact, there are some union activists who basically hide behind their computers, rather than using the computer as a vehicle to move their membership forward. Providing information is no substitute for a membership meeting—unions are a collective organization, not a collection of individuals peering at computer screens. Workers need to come together and your members should not regard electronic communications as an easy way out. Building your union requires a commitment of time and effort, and computers can supplement—but never replace—this effort.

Here’s another issue: for better or worse, electronic communications are impossible to control, like the genie that has been let out of the bottle. If you are a supporter of The Servicing Model of Unionism, the dramatic expansion of computer-based communication is a water filled with sharks—members with opinions who can now quickly and cheaply circulate their opinions, outside of “official” channels. The free-wheeling debates that the internet allows will quickly come to your local, whether you like it or not.

Some members take basic computer training and hoist their own web sites, often in cooperation with the elected union officers. In this area, a third-shift steward at the Post Office created a slick site, ( to provide information about his APWU local and its activities. Nothing particularly subversive.

At the same time, a UAW member’s e-mail handle is disgruntedmember, hardly subtle hint about the direction of his communications, which are distributed to a voluntary list, both in the local and across a nationwide network.

There is another essential issue: if your members—or organizing targets—regularly use computers at work, can you send messages directly to them, to be read on work time and using company equipment? Stay tuned for this answer in our next installment.

By Bill Barry

Director of Labor Studies

Community College of BaltimoreCounty