The blog of Eric Lee - web design and internet consulting for the trade union movement.

The new web and the unions

There's been a lot of talk lately about something called “Web 2.0”. The term is pure buzz; the web is the same web it has always been. But certain features of the web, some of them available from the beginning, are becoming more pronounced. And some of this is relevant to the work of trade unions.

Though no one has come up with a precise definition of what “Web 2.0” means, one feature that nearly everyone agrees on is that the new web is largely driven by the readers. Readers of websites are creating the content on those sites. The line that separated producers of content from consumers is evaporating.

Some of the best known and most successful of the new sites are examples of this.

Take YouTube, the video sharing site recently purchased by Google for 1.6 billion dollars. The site defines itself as being “a place for people to engage in new ways with video by sharing, commenting on, and viewing videos” and notes that YouTube “started as a personal video sharing service, and has grown into an entertainment destination with people watching more than 70 million videos on the site daily.”

YouTube is not producing the videos. It's simply created a space on the web where people can share their videos. And it's a runaway success story.

MySpace is another huge commercial success. It defines itself as “an online community that lets you meet your friends' friends” and invites people to “create a private community on MySpace and you can share photos, journals and interests” with those friends.

Like YouTube, MySpace shares an aversion to blank spaces between words, and has also been snapped up by a mega-corporation – in this case, ultra-reactionary Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which snapped up MySpace in 2005 for a mere $580 million.

What MySpace and YouTube have in common is that they are enormously popular venues particularly for young people – who not only consume the content there (watch the videos, read the journals) but produce it as well.

Flickr, now owned by Yahoo, has done the same thing with people's digital photos. Digg is providing a way for people to indicate their interest in articles they read online (a kind of popularity contest). The awkwardly-named Deli.cio.us is a “social bookmarking” site, allowing people to share their favorites and bookmarks with the world. (It was purchased last year by Yahoo.)

All of these have been touted as examples of hugely successful websites that actually start as a kind of blank page. The content for all of them is being produced not by professional journalists but by ordinary people.

And none of these ideas are entirely new.

A decade ago, one of the most popular sites was Geocities, (now owned by Yahoo). It was just a collection of people's personal home pages. Bookmark sharing and photo sharing have also been around since the web was young. And many of the most popular websites from the era of “Web 1.0” such as Amazon, eBay, the Internet Movie Database, Craig's List and Slashdot, became as popular as they did in part because much of their content was user-generated, including book and movie reviews, items for sale, and comments on news stories.

Part of the success of the whole phenomenon of blogging is surely due not only to the ease of creation of blogs, but also the fact that you can comment, and read other people's comments.

In other words, people seem to love websites that allow ordinary people to express themselves – to write what they think, to show off their ideas with words, pictures, movies and sound.

While most electronic media (think radio and television) are a form of one-to-many communication, where you tune in to listen or watch, the web is increasingly a form of many-to-many communication.

You'd think that the trade union movement would be falling over itself with enthusiasm over this possibility. After all, unions are not only organizations of vast numbers of people, but are mostly committed to democracy. Union websites should be leading the way with reader-generated content.

In a sense, the trade union movement as it emerged in the last 150 years has been an outstanding example of a mass conversation in which millions of ordinary people have been engaged. The great militant social unions – including the IWW – all arose out of the kinds of discussions and sharing of views that are now common on the web.

But unions are not rushing forward to create websites that are full of content produced by their own members. The vast majority of union websites are traditional, one-to-many forms of broadcasting just like television and radio.

There are some notable exceptions. In Britain, the Trades Union Congress launched a website some time ago called UnionReps.org.uk. At its core, the site is a giant discussion forum in which union reps (shop stewards) get to talk about whatever matters to them. It has been a phenomenal success story, studied by academics and the subject of a lot of attention. But it has not been emulated.

The typical union website – even in unions which ordinarily would see themselves as encouraging member participation – is written by officials, designed to be read by members. There is very little that members can do on these sites other than read what their leaders have to say.

It is quite ironic that websites owned by the likes of Murdoch are wide open, examples of free-ranging discussion and debate, while the websites of the trade union movement are closed, tightly regulated, censored and controlled.

There are lots of ways we can fix this. Some examples of ways to involve members more would include:

* Allow members to decide which news articles are most important (Digg shows ways to do this); show lists of the most popular items on the site.

* Give members the chance to comment on items posted to the website (as most blogs do).

* The old fashioned discussion forum is still a powerful tool, as UnionReps.org.uk demonstrates and should be widely used.

* Let members vote on things – the popularity of LabourStart's labour website of the year competition shows us every year how much people want to have a say

* Conduct opinion polls online – again, LabourStart's recent experience is that if you ask trade unionists the right questions you will get thousands of very interesting answers

We don't need buzzwords like “Web 2.0” because we know as trade unionists that the strength of our movement lies in the collective intelligence and experience of our members.

And yet we create websites in which a handful of staffers or elected officials write texts which members can read. We are simply reproducing the old broadcasting model of one-to-many communication. We are not taking advantage of the tools we have at our disposal – nor are we taking advantage of what our members know and think.

We in the trade union movement should be at least as open and democratic as the websites now being bought up by the transnational corporations. If the likes of the billionaire owners of News Corporation, Google and Yahoo are not afraid of websites created by ordinary people, what are we in the trade union movement waiting for?

Comments

Like this article very much Eric and I just hope that some of our union leaders read and digest it.
I was personally involved with the unofficial campaigning site during the Fire Dispute.
Set up relatively cheaply, it grew to be a huge pot of information and support.
The site continues to grow and is still the firefighters first port of call when anything kicks off.
The employers and the government also stick there noses in and that must be remembered. During the dispute the site was mentioned in the Houses of Parliament.
The internet isn’t used to its full potential yet and I can only hope that the movement will embrace it more fully they will gain so much out of it.
Cheap and very effective.

I couldn't agree more Eric. Perhaps its the demography of the Union movement that gets in the way of adopting these newer ways of doing things? Perhaps if the movement did adopt these new style of websites more widely it would appeal to the younger generation?

We had a meeting of Amicus reps in Fujitsu today, and thought about the ideas in the article. Most of them are great. But two comments struck me.

One is that unions aren't debating societies; the discussion is great, but it needs to lead to action to advance the interests of our members. Yes, we should be open to new ideas on how to do that, and share our experiences and ideas - but at some stage a decision has to be reached.

That brings us to the second point. You suggest "letting members vote on things" and "holding opinion polls". We must never let web debate become a substitute for existing democratic processes, unless it is clearly established that it actually does give equal access to every member and works better in enabling every member to participate fully in decisions. We're a long way off that.

Finally, although I fully support the ability of grass-roots members to debate with leaders, we still do need leaders so that clear choices can be formulated and presented to members for decision, and so that effective action can be planned to carry out decisions. When a decision has been made (by the most democratic process feasible in the circumstances) then it is the tradition of unions that all members accept and work with it. United we stand, divided we fall!

I think you've been reading Douglas Adams. Good for you. We have to become dissatisfied with topdown approaches and piecemeal cyberactivism in order to abandon it and start many-to-many communication and reap any benefits.

Well said Eric.
Napo has a very lively discussion forum open to all -members and non members - alike. As General Secretary I keep a regular eye on it but resist getting involved in the conversations, much as I'm often tempted!

As often before your point is well-taken. Slowly, and unevenly, more and more unionists are hearing your Message - and by 2010 or even a bit before we should have come a long way toward the NEW Labor Movement we so urgently need. Keep the Faith!