"Unite To Win" shutters blog
Ya gotta wonder eh? With all the hoopla regarding the AFL-CIO convention and the emergence of the change to win gang, it looked like we were on the verge of leaders becoming more open and willing to listen.
The unitetowin blog was saluted for it's interactive communication (limited as it was). They allowed virtually anything to be said. Some would argue it was too loose, but it was light years away from most other union sites.
When the CTW website was launched, the first thing noted was it was your standard run of the mill crap. A bunch of old white guys telling us what they thought we wanted to hear. Boring is the kindest word i can think of.
Now we read on unitetowin they will no longer accept comments, their work is done. Can it be they have decided the "cost" of open commentary is too risky? Are we at the point where they no longer need or care about what the "little people" think or have to say? Was it fine to try and influence people before the split, but now they need to "control" their message?
It would be too funny if they abandon the idea that interactive, open discussion is too risky. Besides, it would support what i have been telling Steve from the beginning, it's all about control and has nothing to do with the fact they just need to be educated about the net.
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Very interesting development
Yesterday, I went to visit the site and it was totally off line. Perhaps they decided that was too abrupt of a closing and decided to put up this last note from Stern.
Anyway, I had suspected they might close it down. As I pointed out last week, the way the blog was structured made it seem more like a public relations move than a place for genuine dialogue to occur. Now that it served its purpose, Stern decided to retire it. I don't think the way he just ended it without giving a reason for not opening another one is a very wise PR move, however. It's going to leave a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. Like you, they are going to wonder if this guy was for real.
I have hopes that Stern will continue the experiment using a better format on another site. Perhaps that's wishful thinking because he probably would have already done that. We'll have to wait and see. But even if he didn't open up another blog, I'm not ready to concede victory as far as our friendley debate goes. One man cannot define a movement. :)
Why don't we let Stern know we're disappointed?
I was thinking, this would be a good time to organize our little community here and agree to send Stern a little note saying we're disappointed and would like to see him open up a new blog.
Spoke with someone at SEIU
I spoke to someone who wouldn't go on the record but they said they "don't know" if they will be opening up another blog. I take that to mean "no."
Not Surprised
I am not a bit surprised. Our Union is still run by the folks in D.C. The last thing want to hear is criticism of their failures and choices.
Not Surprised
I am not a bit surprised. Our Union is still run by the folks in D.C. The last thing want to hear is criticism of their failures and choices.
Recent conversation
I just atteneded the WikiSym2005 conference and it was co-conferenced with a much larger computer programming conference. One night a couple of guys, from a bank, came over to see what us wiki people were doing, as we were clearly different from the majority of the conference.
I explained wiki, weblogs, delicious, flickr - bascially social software to them. There were pretty excited. One guy wanted to talk to me about starting a wiki for the computer department. His friend said, you can never have a wiki in this corporation, any corporation. He was pretty enthusiastic about it. I wanted to engage him, but I also wanted to brainstorm some ways that it might work in his department. The other guy kept talking about the messed up culture within corporations... finally I finished brainstorming about the wiki in his office and, with glazed eyes from his outspoken friend, he left.
Then I engaged the corporate critic insider about why a wiki wouldn't work. He explained that a wiki allowed for their to be questions asked that no one wanted to answer. So it would go unanswered, then it was highly possible that someone would be blamed for not answering the question, and it would be used against you. Basically the corporation is built on tearing people down, you start here, but you do anything wrong or we take away or penalize you.
One of the struggles unions have, is to work in the opposite way. Work to understand, at all levels, what are the dynamics of power that are in effect. A union that keeps a high priority of empowering new persons active in the union is a good example of that struggle.
Social software, the idea begining far longer than email 34 years ago, of letting people communicate with whoever they want however they want and in what manner they want is a fantastic tool for empowering new people getting involved in the labor movement. Self organizing the labor movement at a finer detail than has been possible before.
Not just Unite to Win...
"Change to Win's website has no blog and offers no space for commentary or discussion nor are there counter proposals or links to dissenting views, as there were on Unite to Win. From the classically-titled proposal "Restoring the American Dream," to the self-congratulatory press releases, Change to Win is very much in the tradition of the old-style official union website: top-down, one-way, promotional material.
"SEIU’s retreat from the brave new world of online discussion may go even further. Andy Stern’s “Blog for the Future” - which preceded Unite to Win - has also disappeared from the SEIU website...
"The AFL-CIO website still hosts "Strengthening Our Union Movement for the Future" a cumbersome arrangement of proposals and documents that includes comments from unionists, but it is buried in the site. A look at the (undated) posts from union members suggests that the "Voices from our Movement" have been silent since before the AFL-CIO convention. The "AFL-CIO 2005 Convention" page makes no mention of the comments page and mirrors Change to Win's seamless self-promotion."
Excerpted from "SEIU Pulls Plug on Future of Labor Discussion"