Opening Labor's Minds to Internet Communication

What is it that causes some people to accept new inventions quickly and others never? In his book, The Evolution of Useful Things, Henry Petroski says: “The very fact that we are so adaptable to our artifactual and technological environment is often what makes us resistant to changes in it, especially as we grow older and accumulate our own familiar things and ways with them.”

Whatever the reason, there are always people and organizations that resist change in any form. Traditional Labor seems to have endless excuses to mistrust technology. One of the flash points is this idea that a face-to-face meeting is the “one and only” effective way to organize, now and forever more, Amen. Ever since Howard Dean’s campaign “lost” you can hear the collective sigh of relief that the techno path to organizing has been discredited. Somehow I must’ve missed the incredible string of victories Labor has racked up using the organizing playbook from the 1930’s.

Since I’ve grown up in a pre-virtual world (other than TV) I can certainly sympathize with the old ways. I am a creature of routine, I don’t play video games, I struggle with fast cutting in films and I still like my friends to be up front and personal - three dimensions rather than two. I take the time to hand write notes and send them snail mail. However, it doesn’t mean the newer, virtual ways are bad, that pre-computer values are better, or that the life was more meaningful before. It’s just different.

Virtual interactions are filling a void created by an increasingly complex world. Events are speeding up and every day the world is more interconnected. People are juggling more relationships and the value of virtual interactions keeps growing as computer and network technology becomes more pervasive. So, it’s time to get with the program. Swim with the fish rather than sleep with them.

Here are a few objections to using technology in organizing (there are more) that I’ve heard from an assorted group of organizing directors, elected leaders and labor activists.

Virtual Isn’t Real and so It has No Impact

Well, as David Weinberger points out in his book Small Pieces Loosely Joined: “…words aren’t real, values aren’t real, even emotions aren’t real because they don’t exist independently of their being felt.” So, lots of things that aren’t “real” have very real effects on people’s behavior and that includes political behavior.

In fact, a preference for face-to-face interaction over other types of interaction is no more than a value judgment and values are historical constructions that change over time. Privacy, for example, isn’t some ahistorical, eternal value. It’s a product of the rise of the middle class and abundance. If you look closely enough, you can see privacy is already fading as an important concept in our connected world. It’s morphing into the value of transparency.

Workers will never Trust someone unless they meet Face-to-Face

That’s what reputation systems are for. People give their hard earned money to complete strangers on the web through eBay and take all sorts of risks on-line based on evaluations from other buyers and sellers. Why not a reputation system for organizers? If someone is being vouched for by workers who have had a successful interaction with them why not rate them? Conversely, if someone had a bad interaction with an organizer then people should know that too. Let’s face it, certain unions will tell all sorts of lies to get people into the fold and then fail to deliver. Reputation systems would probably help us organize more by rewarding the principled unions. Anyway, there aren’t enough physical bodies to do the in-person organizing at the pace we need to gain the upper hand. Let’s think out-of-the-box rather than nailing down the lid.

Most Workers aren’t even Connected

There are two answers to this objection. First, it’s true that quite a few workers are not connected – yet. However, if you look at the rate of adoption, it’s hard to ignore the gathering storm of technological momentum. Do labor folks really think there will be a choice between being virtual or not virtual in the future? It will be like having the choice between using, or not using, electricity or refrigeration, which means no choice at all. Labor has to stop being negative about technological change so we can capture some benefit from it rather than being left with the scraps.

For example, today I made the foolish attempt to talk with a “real” airline reservation specialist to book a flight. First, you wade through a phone tree with 10 choices on each branch, fend off attempts to send you to the web or pay a $10.00 surcharge, leap over very good voice recognition software and, if you're not disconnected, your reward is to speak with someone with a pulse from India reading off a script. Believe me, when it comes to virtual, we will learn to love the bomb.

Second, it depends on what technology you’re talking about. A lot of workers may not have PC’s or even if they have them, don’t use them much or very well. What they do have are cell phones. Developing outreach through cell phones and smart phones is a frontier that labor hasn’t even crossed yet. All workers have communication technologies now. They just might not be the ones that labor unions are backing. Every survey of worker attitudes that I’ve seen mentions training in technology. They know something we don’t.

Technology doesn’t Work Consistently

Well, yes and no. It works well enough if you have money to spend on it or are willing to put in the hours to learn about it. Technology is like a new language, when you need it, you learn it. Maybe you’ll never be fluent but you’ll have enough words to get by. Many workers use increasingly sophisticated gadgets because they find them useful or need them to socialize. It’s time to stop half-stepping our way into the future. Labor should focus on the opportunities and not just the problems with technology.

I think the real issue with many of these objections is that Labor institutions are afraid of losing control. The emerging open-source organization isn’t something that can be controlled. You just point it and get the hell out-of-the way. It isn’t workers who fear new technology but the organizational structures of labor. We have met the enemy and it is us.