Unions are rarely, if ever, on the bleeding edge of technology. If you’re ever nostalgic to see what computers looked like several years ago, just wander into a trade union office. For many reasons (and not only budget) unions have been reluctant to invest in information technology on the same scale as corporations do.
A couple of years ago, a trade union official allowed me to use her PC to do a bit of work on the web and after a short while, I realized that I was using a very old version of Microsoft Internet Explorer. Just out of curiosity, I thought I’d check out the union’s own website. Because of the browser I was using, I couldn’t actually see the union’s site — nor could the person whose desk I was using.
A few weeks ago, I visited a trade union branch office in a large insurance company. There were computers everywhere, mobile phones, all the latest gadgets. But the union’s own connection to the Internet was through a modem that belonged in a museum, not an office. Connection speeds were so slow that we were unable to download the software we needed to continue our work. Eventually, a couple of us went outside to find a magazine store, and picked up a computer magazine with a CD on it, taking the software we needed from that.
Trade unionists often drag around the heaviest laptops you’ve ever seen, or work at desks with the smallest and lowest-resolution screens you’ll ever find in an office. Union staffers usually have to accept that IT is considered a luxury and that buying the latest gadgets is a waste of members’ money.
Which is often true. I’ve heard of union officers demanding to be given the latest palm-top computers, only to discover that they actually had no use for them. Of course unions should be extremely careful with how they spend their limited resources. Buying “toys for boys” should not top any union’s priority list.
But — sometimes a technology comes along that fits the needs of the trade union movement like a glove. I think that the wireless Internet experienced through hand-held computers is just such a technology.

An ideal tool for trade unionists, and for organizers in particular, would be light and mobile, with an extremely fast connection to the Internet. It would give organizers access to their email and to the web. Indeed, it could do much more than that, including play MP3 files or give them access to Internet radio stations, or have a built in digital camera, but let’s get down to the essentials. Imagine a device that did all the necessary things — word processing, spreadsheets, a calendar, a to-do list, a database of contact details. All hooked up at extremely high speed to the net.
Such a device would probably be used in addition to, and not as a replacement for, a desktop PC.
Wouldn’t such a device make our lives as organizers and campaigners easier? It would — but with a couple of caveats.
First of all, to use such a device, the Internet would have to be “in the air” — that is to say, widely accessible through wireless networks. This is rapidly becoming the case. There are many thousands of wireless “hotspots” around the world, some of which you have to pay to use, many of which are free of charge.
And second, such a device would have to cost less — substantially less — than the clunky laptops and aging desktop PCs so many of us use.
The fact is that such devices have begun to come onto the market — and their prices are rapidly falling. The first Palm device to include built-in high-speed wireless access to the Internet now sells in the US for less than $460. There are alternative devices, using Microsoft’s Pocket PC operating system, Linux, or even the RIM Blackberry, but these all do basically the same thing. They make Internet-assisted mobile organizing and campaigning possible.
Activists armed with such devices — and with a knowledge of how to find the “hotspots” where they can get high-speed Internet access — will have in their pockets a tool of unimaginable power. The latest inexpensive palm-tops have more computing power and more memory than desktops did five years ago.
And because they are light and boot up instantly, one tends to use them more — and to use them everywhere.
Activists, unhooked from their desktops and telephone lines, will be able to work as never before. We have already seen examples of this in the way SMS (short text messages) have been used by campaigners before and during demonstrations. Wireless palmtops will offer far more capabilities than this.
With the available of these new, inexpensive gadgets, and the rapid spread of wireless hotspots, we are entering a new era in labour’s use of the Internet.