Eric Lee

In May 2006 LabourStart asked its readers to participate in what was probably the first-ever global survey of trade unionists on the subject of online campaigning.

The survey was not in any sense of the word scientific. It was conducted only in English. To know about it, you had to be on LabourStart's mailing list. You would almost certainly have been someone who participated in online campaigns. It was hardly a representative group of trade unionists.

Nevertheless, there were some interesting -- and mostly encouraging -- results.

Campaign fatigue

First of all, we were concerned about "campaign fatigue". With a dozen active campaigns running simultaneously, and barely a week going by without a global online campaign being launched, we were sure that people would tell us to be more selective. But fewer than 20% of the 1,441 participants in the survey said that such campaigns were taking place "too frequently". The vast majority were happy with the number of campaigns being waged. And even one in six said we weren't running enough campaigns!

Within days of our announcing this, LabourStart launched several campaigns on the same day (at the request of a global union federation) and despite the survey results, there were some signs of "campaign fatigue" with fewer responses than expected. The nature of the campaigns themselves may have explained this -- these were not necessarily the most exciting campaigns we'd ever launched. But the evidence is that while activists like to say they're ready to do more, people do reach a natural limit, do grow tired, and we need to take this into account when planning a campaigning strategy.

Internationalism

We asked people if they'd be more likely to respond to a campaign if it focuses on workers in their own country. To my surprise, more than 80% said no -- in other words, they demonstrated a profoundly internationalist spirit. It seems like many people in our movement are now ready to embrace the old idea that "workers have no country" -- or perhaps the new idea that in an increasingly globalized world, borders are becoming irrelevant.

I'm convinced that those surveyed are telling the truth, but they are probably the hard-core of people that respond almost always to our appeals to participate in online campaigns. I'm also convinced that they are unrepresentative of the trade union movement as a whole, which remains trapped in 20th century thinking about nation-states and national borders.

Our experience with online campaigning shows that two kinds of campaigns do really well: campaigns which are highly dramatic, with a real sense of urgency (such as union leaders being jailed or killed), or campaigns that take place in English-speaking countries. In other words, while there is core group of genuinely internationalist participants in campaigns, they are a minority. Most people continue to react more strongly to campaigns that are closer to home.

Victories

One of the things that we always thought worked well needed confirmation and got it when we asked about reporting on victories. Over 91% of those responding indicated that they felt encouraged to take part in more campaigns when we reported on successes. This seems obvious to experienced campaigners, and yet it is not always the case. Many campaigning organizations, and not only unions, seem to constantly harp on the themes of suffering, defeat and weakness, and ignore the victories, even the small ones, which mean so much.

It goes without saying that the victories we report on must be real ones. We should be able to point to real-world changes that have improved the lives of working people and in doing so, encourage more and more people to participate in our campaigns. This week, for example, we were able to announce that a giant transnational corporation had dropped its lawsuit against union activists in Thailand following a brief global online campaign. You read a story like that and it's got to whet your appetite to do more.

Union campaigns

While the survey results seem to show a fairly large group of activists ready to do more, inspired by stories of victories, we also learned something extraordinary about the trade union movement. We asked people if their own unions campaigned online. Remember that this is a group of people who are union members, computer-literate, connected to the net, participants themselves in LabourStart's online campaigns.

And to our amazement, no fewer than 27% replied that they did not know if their unions campaigned online. We can only interpret that to mean that they think it's possible that their own union does campaign online, but they wouldn't necessarily know about it. To me, this is a huge vote of no-confidence in the way at least some unions campaign and use the net.

If a union is doing its job, its members -- and especially those like the ones filling in LabourStart's online survey -- will certainly know if it campaigns online.

A glance at the websites of many unions will show the reason for the problem: to many of them, campaigns consist of little more than the publication online of documents. In some cases, unions do campaign using their website -- but only using their website. And so few union members visit the website, and rarely return for a second visit, that one wouldn't know if a new campaign were launched. Most unions do not collect and use email addresses to effectively and regularly reach all their members -- and we have learned that this is the only way to properly campaign online.

Improvements

Most of the participants in the survey -- 761 of them, in fact -- made suggestions about how LabourStart could improve its own campaigning capacity. We're still reading through these, but one message came through loud and clear: campaigns are more effective if they are done in more than one language. Within days of getting that message, we launched LabourStart's first campaign (in support of Indonesian security guards who were occupying corporate headquarters) simultaneously in six languages -- English, French, Spanish, Norwegian, German and Indonesian. Other improvements will follow.

I think every union and campaigning organization can learn something from this. And because we want everyone in our movement to know the results of the survey, we've made it available online, here.

Posted by Eric Lee at 09:12 AM | Permalink

The death of Iraqi Al-Qaeda boss Abu Musab al-Zarqawi led the BBC website to solicit comments from readers. And invited readers to vote on their favourite comments.

Normally, you'd expect something along the lines of the Bush and Blair bashing that usually occurs when something (anything) happens in the war on terror -- the charges that Bush and Blair are the world's greatest terrorists, etc., etc. There were comments posted along this line, such as:

Ok he was a thorn in the side of Iraq, but the real problem is Bush and Blair.

And:

I believe that this operation to kill the above was entirely illegal.

And:

So a minor player in the disaster that is Iraq bites the dust. Big deal! Not until the real monsters, Bush and Blair are brought to book will there be any justice to the long-suffering people of Iraq.

But something strange is happening today. Of the 729 comments currently posted on the site, the top 9 are all positive. The largest number of votes went to a Londoner who wrote, "In memory of Ken Bigley: JUSTICE has been served."

My own 3-word long comment made it to 6th place out of the 729. What did I have to say about the killing of Zarqawi? Here's my message in full:

Good aim, guys.

Posted by Eric Lee at 01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The decisions by major unions in the UK and Canada yesterday to promote peace in the Middle East by encouraging boycotts have come in for a lot of criticism. But I want to understand the reasons behind the decisions by the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) and the Ontario section of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) to boycott Palestinian products and academics.

The Canadian union's Ontario branch called for a policy of boycotts, divestment and sanctions against the Palestinian Authority until it recognises the Jewish people's "right to self-determination".

The election victory for Hamas, which rejects the Oslo accords, the road map, the 1947 UN partition plan and basically every other suggestion of ways in which Israelis and Arabs can live together side by side is a worthy target for the Canadian unionists.

And they've really hit the nail on the head by singling out this issue of recognising the other side's rights. Israel under Ben Gurion accepted the UN partition plan back in 1947 and most Israeli governments right up to the present day have agreed to one form of compromise or another -- most recently the complete withdrawal of all settlers and soldiers from Gaza. In the face of one side's refusal to recognize the other's right to exist, I can see where those Canadian unionists were coming from.

The election victory of Hamas, with its steadfast refusal to recognise Israel, is central to understanding what has happened.

In case anyone missed this point, NATFHE resolved as follows: "Conference notes the victory of HAMAS in the free, democratic and non-violent elections for the Palestinian Authority." So it's pretty clear that the call for a boycott is in direct response to the Palestinian decision to turn away from the peace process, such as it was.

After all, we wouldn't call for a boycott of a country which had just elected a government committed to ending the conflict, territorial compromise, and so on. Boycotts are a weapon of last resort and we use them only against regimes like Hamas -- or South Africa under apartheid.

Both the Canadian and British unions alike compared Palestine to South Africa, which has triggered some criticism. Obviously, the comparison will not be exact, but I can see where they are coming from.

After all, the central belief of the white racists in South Africa was that the races must live apart, and that one had greater rights than the other. This does describe Hamas' view of things fairly accurately. In societies where Islamic fundamentalist parties -- the sister movements to Hamas -- have come to power, they have imposed racist laws and suppressed ethnic and religious minorities. Imagining a Hamas military victory over Israel, I can see where one would expect the rise of a Palestinian-dominated apartheid state.

Of course it is equally likely that a Hamas military victory would result in a simple genocide directed against the Jews, in which case accusing Hamas of proposing apartheid is actually being generous.

One campaigning group in the UK hailed the union for standing up to "the campaign of intimidation and bullying waged against proponents of the NATFHE academic boycott initiative." I think it is important to point out the courage shown by both unions in taking on powerful Arab and Islamic lobbies, both inside their countries and globally. Clearly these campaigners had the recent world-wide outcry over the Danish cartoons in mind.

Timing is everything. And the timing of the union boycott resolutions in the wake of the Hamas election victory -- as highlighted in the NATFHE statements -- confirms this.

Unions have a long and proud tradition of supporting the rights of peoples to self determination and opposing violence, which naturally makes them hostile towards Hamas. Throw in Hamas' medieval world-view, its rejection of women's rights and gay rights, and the racism at the core of its hatred of Jews and Israel, and you can see why unions have chosen the boycott route.

But I have to say that I don't agree with them. I think the best way to deal with the Palestinians is not by boycott, but by dialogue and engagement.

Targetting Palestinian academics is particularly stupid, as quite a few of them were involved in the original Oslo peace process. Boycotting the Palestinians will be counter-productive, causing them to react defensively, rallying around the Hamas government. And it is a form of collective punishment, blaming Palestinian innocents for decisions taken by some of their leaders.

Finally, the decision by NATFHE and CUPE is a bad one because it could be turned around and used by supporters of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

I know it sounds unlikely, but this could some day lead to unions calling for boycotts of Israeli academics and Israeli products. Yes, I know this seems highly unlikely, following the recent Israeli elections where the centre-left triumphed and the far right was routed. Israel's new defense minister is one of the founders of the "Peace Now" movement. Its government is committed to further large scale withdrawals from Palestinian territories.

It sounds crazy, I know, but next thing you know, unions might even call for boycotts against Israel too.

Posted by Eric Lee at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

If one thing has become clear in trade union use of the Internet over the last decade, it is this: without a list of your members' and supporters' email addresses, there is almost no point in having a website.

But how do you set up a mailing list? There are basically two approaches: host one yourself, or pay someone to host a mailing list for you.

Large unions will already have membership databases that should include email addresses of members. In those cases, there will usually be a way for those systems to allow mass emailings. At a minimum, those membership databases generally allow the export of emails addresses to a separate file, which can then be used by any one of a number of mailing list programs. One of the least expensive and best of these is Group Mail, produced by an Irish company called Infacta. There are even free mailing list programs which you can set up on your web server, if you have the skills. Subscribe Me Lite is one example.

Programs like Group Mail and Subscribe Me Lite not only give your union the facility to send out bulk emailings, but also include subscribe and unsubscribe capabilities.

But my own experience with both of these has been mixed. Group Mail works best if your internet service provider allows you to use its outgoing mail server, which is not always the case. And Subscribe Me Lite is best suited to small lists. If your union has several thousand addresses, you'll need a more robust solution.

This is where an externally hosted mailing list is a good idea, and here we are spoilt for choice. The good old days of free mailing lists (Listbot, later purchased by Microsoft, was a good example) are long gone. Today we pay for such services. For LabourStart's mailing list of nearly 40,000, we heard prices ranging from £100 to £10,000 per year -- for the same service. Shopping around is, therefore, a very good idea.

British unions have increasingly been using unionlists.org.uk to host their mailing lists. Unionlists is a very low cost, powerful solution, and is based upon the well-known Sympa mailing list software.

For more information, visit http://www.unionlists.org.uk/lists/.

Email nick@thewebtailor.co.uk for pricing and to get your union's mailing list up and running.

Posted by Eric Lee at 01:15 PM | Permalink