Follow the leaders

My point in the last post was that what is internal and what is external has changed: so-called internal union affairs are now largely external and forums and media outside the union are increasingly part of the union's internal culture and politics.

If that's true, it poses a problem for official union websites. If you run a website that assumes the old framework -- no talking about union affairs in public, no public display of dissent, we have to show a united face to the public and keep the debates behind closed doors in our meetings -- then you are choosing to be less relevant.

We have all gotten that type of magazine from our unions: mine comes from the UAW and shows workers organizing and winning with pictures of hard working union leaders and fired-up rank-and-filers. I'm glad to see pictures of people winning, but how seriously can we take a magazine that says nothing about the 1,000 pound gorilla in the room -- the massive cutbacks and concessions that are undoing the work of generations of autoworkers?

The actual debate in the union is already public and likely to show up first in what I call the rank-and-file web, they are still leading the way, I think.

So, to take Steve's first point:

1) Screen comments. As much as I love free-for-all, spirited debate, there are times for having it and times for not having it. A public union website is not the forum for that. Do it behind closed doors.

Screening comments is perfectly reasonable. The problem is screen them for what? If you screen out free-for-all spirited ,debate, what's left?

What does it mean to say that a union website is not the forum for such discussion? If the website is chiefly for PR purposes, this may be accurate, but is that what we want our union websites to be?

Having a closed, members-only forum for discussion is an option. Nothing stops a union from hosting such a discussion (of course, that's different from the approach the IUOE is taking which would try to force all online discussion of IUOE elections to be conducted behind such closed doors).

Will people choose the union's official members-only forum if there are others available that are open and pubic? Maybe. But I think the likelihood that critical comments will be screened combined with the fear members may have of posting on a site where their identity will be known to the union's officers and staff, and the easy access to public sites that allow free speech and anonymity lean against it.

What are the alternatives?

Run an official union website with an open forum, screening only for spam, porn, etc. Encourage participants to take responsibility for policing the site and encouraging people to be constructive.

Run an official site that has no forum of its own, but provides links (and takes feeds) from independent websites representing various points of view. Why shouldn't the IBT link to TDU, Teamsternet, and the host of independent IBT sites? Under the government monitorship, the IBT was required to provide election materials from all slates and candidates in the IBT election, what's wrong with that? Shouldn't that be common practice?

Run an unofficial site with an open forum, screening only for spam, porn, etc.

Run an online community, which includes official union content (election reports, financial statements, etc.) and unofficial member created content -- member blogs, forums etc.

There are complicated questions, for sure: what if members in one workplace hold a wildcat action, using the union forum to organize it? What about using the forum to call for bringing in another union?