From Luddism 2.0 to Cyberunions

It’s time for unions to embrace the information age and develop an online, global, networked social movement unionism.

Rational Luddism

The default trade union position on new technology is Luddism 2.0. Anecdotes abound of a Life on Mars world where trade union officials get their secretaries to print out their emails, or use their computer screens for post-it notes. This luddism is not entirely irrational: technology has a long history of putting people out of work, as well as monitoring and controlling them. Some trade unionists seem determined to avoid entering the 21^st century at all costs.

However, the success of new technology in Obama’s election campaign, and more recently in organising student protests and the wave of democracy that has swept across the Middle East during the Arab Spring, has lead many unionists to realise that “every tool is a weapon if you hold it right”, as Ani DiFranco puts it.

ICT as tools

Unions are keen to grasp the communications potential of new technology and use it to turn around decades of decline. They have added new technologies to their toolbox, and many are experimenting with innovative campaigning websites. Unite and the RCN, among others, have hired Blue State Digital, the company that developed Obama’s online campaign. Unions are using text messaging and phone banks to speak directly to their members and to canvass their opinions.

However, unions have largely failed to understand that cyberspace is a space, where people work, organise politically, are entertained and educated, and engage in many fields of human endeavour. For the most part, unions see technology as a communications tool, for broadcasting union messages to members and the wider public. They haven’t fully grasped the cultural implications of new technology: that the internet encourages iconoclasm, and new technology favours horizontal rather than hierarchical organising. The Creative Commons movement, Open Source software, the growth of online peer production and decentralised political movements mean that the world is changing fast, and that arguably a new mode of production is being born in cyberspace.

New Organisational forms

A new organisational form is developing – in the worlds of work as well as activism – that is decentralised, networked and transparent. It’s an organisational form that is challenging, and overcoming, rigid, hierarchical structures everywhere. This poses a challenged for unions, which are often centralised, hierarchical organisations, sometimes with a paranoia about relinquishing control. The iconoclasm of online culture is at odds with the centralised control of trade union structures.

The problem trade unions face is that their organisational form is out of date. Unions formed in the late 19^th and early 20^th century as a response to the industrial revolution and the Fordist manufacturing model – industrial armies of workers organised in great factories.  They reached their peak power in the late 1960s. In the great war between capital and labour, capital responded to union strength by increasingly casualising the workforce.

Unions have struggled to adapt to this change, and to a workforce that is increasingly casualised, young, female and migrant. Agency work, temporary contracts and the ephemeral nature of the work makes them extremely hard to organise. A more fluid organisational form, facilitated by technology, could make all the difference.

There is a need for structure in trade unions, because they are representative organisations – fluidity would make collective bargaining difficult, and restrictive labour laws mean tight organisation is essential for conducting binding ballots. The challenge to unions is to embrace openness without losing structure.

An Open Source labour movement

There has been a shift towards pluralism in a number of trade unions, and a realisation of the need to build coalitions to resist the cuts. Partly this is a result of leadership changes and responses to crisis – the left wing Len McCluskey winning the Unite leadership election has changed things in that organisation, for instance. A networked, global, social movement unionism would prove a powerful adversary to multinational companies. LabourStart has run international campaigns for years, but the movement still has some distance to travel.

It is also important for unions to engage with social movements fighting to keep information technology in the public sphere – the global commons. Unions have largely failed to understand where the class line runs through the information wars, and net neutrality should be an important trade union issue. This includes using Creative Commons to share good practice, and supporting Open Source software projects: I am only aware of one union federation that uses Open Source – the CGT in Spain runs Debian. The rest seem satisfied with putting money in Bill Gate’s pocket.

What does the information age mean for union organisers?

There has been a failure of imagination on the part of unions, and the best exploration of trade union organising in the information age comes from the world of science fiction: Cory Doctorow’s For the Win outlines a campaign by the Industrial Workers of the World Wide Web – the Webblies – to organise cyberspace.

The challenge for trade union leaders is to realise that the battles we face require decentralised organisation, and to let power pass gracefully from their hands to their activists. Activists should be provided with tools and training, be encouraged to experiment with technology, and to build horizontal networks. By managing the shift to more open and decentralised organising structures, the new breed of trade union organisers will be radical facilitators, rather than tub-thumping militants.

The age of mobilising industrial armies is passing. The information age needs a networked trade unionism that builds a swarm of activism around workplace rights and popular campaigns, and acts as the industrial muscle in a world wide struggle for social justice.