I returned a few weeks ago from a month-long journey to Australia and New Zealand, countries in which the trade union movement has taken some huge steps forward in its use of the new communications technology. I’d like to share six of the things that I saw — examples of trade unions using the net effectively.

1. There are unions in Australia which recruit members online. By that I don’t mean that they allow potential members to print out a PDF file of the membership application form which they can then fill in by pen and mail in. (Though there are unions which consider that a kind of “online recruitment”.) Nor do I mean that a potential member fills in an online form and then gets sent something in the post which they have to fill in again in order to join. I’m talking about real online recruitment, where joining a union is as easy as shopping at Amazon.com. A pioneer in this field is the New South Wales Teachers Federation (NSWTF) whose website is located at http://www.nswtf.org.au/ The NSWTF website allows teachers to join their union paying with a credit card — in spite of a rather complex payment structure. If they can do this, why can’t workers join any union, anywhere, the same way?
2. Unions in Australia have begun to make use of a campaigning model pioneered by LabourStart, using keyword-based advertising on Google. One of the first to do so is the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union (LHMU). In early May, childcare workers and their supporters from all across Australia took part in an email campaign based at the LHMU’s website ( http://www.lhmu.org.au ). At one point, a thousand email messages a day were pouring into the inbox of the country’s Treasurer, Peter Costello. Google’s keyword-based advertising is now playing an increasing role in the union’s online campaigns.
3. In several of the events I participated in, I spoke about how someday we will all be using handheld, wireless devices to access the Internet. For at least one Australian union, that “someday” is now. The flight attendants (members of the Flight Attendants Association of Australia – http://www.faaa.net/ ) were quick to inform me that use of wireless devices to access the net was common in their union. That shouldn’t be surprising; flight attendants spend a great deal of their time in airports and hotels, two of the places where wireless internet access is most likely to be available. The FAAA is one of the unions making the most of tools like email, as it is the only way to reach most of the members.
4. One of the big issues facing the trade union movement in the advanced industrial countries at least is going to be ensuring that members and potential members have access to our websites and email from their workplaces. Employers are going to have to be compelled, either by collective bargaining or by law, to a give unions electronic access to their members. In most countries, this is at best an aspiration, but in New South Wales, the trade union movement has managed — after a five year struggle — to get the government to propose powerful new legislation to ensure just such access. (For full details, go here: http://workers.labor.net.au/215/news3_legal.html )
5. That last link would have taken you to what is perhaps the crowning achievement of the Australian labour movement online: the weekly online newsletter Workers Online. Launched more than five years ago, Workers Online has already published some 225 issues, all of which are still viewable on the net. Edited by a half-time journalist staffer, it has become essential reading every Friday not only for trade union activists, but for journalists, politicians and others. To see what an online trade union newspaper would look like, check out http://workers.labor.net.au/latest
6. And finally, there’s news syndication. Many Australian websites share their news content through something called LaborNet ( http://www.labor.net.au/ ). If I visit the website of, say, the New South Wales Teachers, I can read the latest news coming from the nurses union. It may not seem like much, but at least here in Britain, the idea that unions will run links to other unions’ news stories is Utopian. Globally, LabourStart has managed to do something like this, but Australia offers perhaps the only example of a national labour news syndication service online.
None of this should be taken to mean that unions in Australia have done a perfect job. I also saw examples of unions with poor websites, or unions that were doing nothing to collect the email addresses of their members, or who were doing an utterly inadequate job of campaigning online. Just like unions in most countries.
But I also saw some examples, six of which I mentioned above, of truly impressive work being done down under. I have seen the future of how trade unions everywhere will use the net, and like Australia itself, it’s bright and sunny.
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