Last month, I attended the founding convention in St. Louis of the Change to Win federation — the alliance of unions which have broken away from the AFL-CIO. I wrote at length about the convention for a number of union papers, and also covered it live by blogging from the convention floor. (My blog is still accessible at http://www.ericlee.me.uk .)

I thought it was pretty amazing to be able to write about such an important development as it was happening, and to get instant feedback from readers. (One old friend in Seattle emailed me, having read something I posted, to ask who of our friends I could see in the hall — and I could tell her that Frank was by my side and Harold sitting behind me.) I had readers emailing me or posting comments directly to the blog offering a critical view of what was happening in St. Louis. Some readers answered these comments on their own.
Behind me sat Jonathan Tasini, whose daily coverage of news from the AFL-CIO and the new coalition has turned his blog into a “must-read” for many union officials. (His blog is at http://workinglife.org/ .)
And that was it. From what I could tell, out of the 1,000 or so people in the hall, we were the only two taking advantage of the new technologies to provide live coverage of the event.
The technical requirements for doing live blogging from an event like this one are pretty simple and clear. You need access to the net, ideally wireless, high-speed access. The Change to Win convention organizers were providing this free of charge.
You need a place to put your content on the web, and there are plenty of completely free places to do so. Blogger.com is a good place to get a free blog and there are many others.
And finally, you need an input device to allow you to write your content — Jonathan and I were both using laptop computers, but one could just as easily have used much smaller devices, such as Blackberries, personal digital assistants (PDAs) or even mobile phones.
With laptop computer prices in the USA having fallen to below $500, wireless access now available in many hotels, coffee shops, airports, and so on, and blogging being essentially free, I now wonder why there were only two of us doing this.
It is true that many of the people in the hall were rank and file trade union members, people who have very low paying jobs. For these people, even a $500 laptop is prohibitively expensive.
But many — probably most — were union officials, often with quite decent salaries, and many of them probably even own computers. Maybe some had their laptops with them, in carrying cases under their seats, or safely stowed away in their hotel rooms.
I don’t think the problem is a lack of equipment or money. I think the problem is cultural.
To me, the idea of elected officials reporting back to those who elected them, engaging their constituents in discussion, is the ABCs of democracy. Union officials are no different from any other elected officials — they too should be communicating regularly with those who they represent. These days, much of that communication will be taking place online.
In St. Louis last month, trade unions were making history. A new federation was being born. Delegates came from all over the country and could have been providing their members — and indeed, the wider public — with impressions of what was going on, and what it all means.
But that didn’t happen. Instead, those who were interested in learning what happened relied on largely non-union sources of information. And even those were barely there. Though the convention was front page news in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The New York Times put its coverage of the federation launch on page 16. You had to be looking for it to find it. Most papers and TV and radio stations had little or no coverage.
Another golden opportunity missed as trade unionists once again fail to grasp that the new technologies make a new kind of trade union movement possible. A movement where rank and file members can communicate with their elected delegates and officials in real time. Where you don’t have to travel halfway across the country to follow an event in real time, to ask questions and to make comments. Where alternatives exist to hostile or non-existent mass media coverage of labor news.
Eventually, wi-fi blogging using portable devices at union events will be common. Delegates from far-flung parts of the country will type in their impressions of what’s going on (or record them as audio files) and their colleagues back home will read and comment on these in real time. Many more people will be involved in discussion and debate — and maybe the labor movement will come alive again.
But not yet. Not in 2005, not in St. Louis. For the moment, it’s just Jonathan and me.