Francisco Cendejas's blog

MyDD ran two articles about the labor movements' split on net neutrality, one on the CWA's mistaken stance and a guest post by Andy Stern, president of SEIU.
Seems that CWA has sided with the telecom industry's interests in coming out against net neutrality, while Stern cites blogging as an example of the democratizing effect on media that a neutral web creates.
This split is troublesome, as CWA pushes labor-friendly Democrats to back the telecoms' profits instead of equal access to the web. This is not unlike the conflict in the 1980s between construction unions and environmentalists - an unfortunate error that we're only now forgetting.
Stern's stance shouldn't come as a surprise; he's the most prominent labor leader to embrace blogging, and SEIU has encouraged members and campaigners to write their own blogs through Purple Ocean, their online community affiliate.

On Friday, CNN Money reported on an Indian IT company, HCL Technologies which practices some rather progressive managerial policies. Check this: workers can publicly rate and provide critiques of their management, and submit grievances on anything from benefits to office furniture, and managers are judged by how much workers are giving - the more the better. Sounds pretty good, right? The trouble is, I kept waiting to see which Indian union had the foresight to bargain for these contract clauses... but there wasn't one.

And there was no mention in the article about that other primary concern of working people... pay. Where was the company's stance on benefits and salary scales? Here we get the interesting caveat of "worker-friendly policies" in the globalized IT sector - white-collar and other professional workers typically don't see a need for a union, thinking themselves different from unionized industries. Oddly, this kind of unorthodox management style reinforces that idea, suggesting that worker input is valuable in company operations, but individually, and not with regards to compensation.

Interesting note -After a little bit of research, I saw that HCL has actually "outsourced" some of its operation to Ireland, going in the opposite direction of most sourcing trends. Unlike their Indian counterparts, these Irish workers benefit from a union contract with Connect, a UK-based communications workers' union.

Any thoughts?

tags:labor union labor union india india labortech hcl technologies outsourcing

Somone once mentioned a Communicate or Die Convention; I recommend this year's LaborTech Conference as an appropriate venue to strategize on how to employ IT towards advancing workers' rights.
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LaborTech Conference 2006:
The Digital Revolution and a Labor Media Strategy
November 17, 18 & 19th, 2006
University Of San Francisco
San Francisco, California
www.labortech.net

Join trade unionists, educators and workers from the US and around the world as they debate, discuss and learn about new communication technology and the development of a labor media movement.
LaborTech.net, which has had conferences since 1990, brings together labor video, computer, labor media activists and labor educators to advance knowledge and use of the the internet and multi-media by working people.

Originally at Labor Educator is a short blurb on Finnish unions conducting internal elections through the Internet.

Last Saturday the SEIU California State Council webcast a Governor's Town Hall where the two hopefuls for the Democratic bid, Phil Angelides and Steve Westly, answered questions from members watching the live videocast from at least 10 different cities. The townhall was also streamed live online. Questions were taken in English and Spanish with translation. At the end, members at the different sites and watching at home cast votes to endorse one of the candidates, the results of which were read on the webcast.

David Weinberger, one of the author's of the Cluetrain Manifesto, has noted two articles discussing the recent frustration over the top down selection at Since Sliced Bread. One by Zephyr Teachout, former Director of Internet Organizing for Howard Dean's campaign, speaks well about what kinds of changes the project could have implemented to sustain a truly grassroots policy interest.

Here's where I think del.icio.us gets really good. About a year ago, some folks in the non-profit world had the idea of tagging everything pertinent to non-profit technology efforts with the specifically created "nptech" tag (for the Web2.0 buzzword fans, that's the folksonomy being developed). I liked this idea - it gives folks within the "nptech" community a really quick way to identify eachother and worthwhile content, paving the way for future community-members to access material easily. (original thread & about it.)
Soooo… proposal: let the del.icio.us users amongst us start using the "labortech" tag. Like "nptech", we can use it whenever we spot something relevant to the implementation of IT by labor unions. I started today.
http://del.icio.us/fcendejas/labortech & http://del.icio.us/tag/labortech
By the way - you know how big changes have been made by seemingly inconsequential buzzwords? Maybe we can start making our own.

REDIRECTED TO --- http://www.communicateordie.com/node/232

Does anyone else read the writings, academic and otherwise, on organized labor & information technology? I volunteer to start a running annotated bibliography of union/information technology papers and essays (below). A wiki would be the best format for this, but anyone that can contribute to this, please do.

Moderator: maybe this could become a top-level book?

Something I've noticed about most of the discussion that occurs regarding IT & unions is that the internet is often regarded as a communications medium or a publishing platform. And it is, of course. We all wish that unions would make smarter use of the communications innovations that have grown out of the internet.
But what about web-based open-source software to promote better internal organizing, though? Instead of seeing the web as a series of external communications innovations (blogs, participatory debate, etc) how can labor use it as an application platform for improved membership management and research?