Follow the leaders
|
My point in the last post was that what is internal and what is external has changed: so-called internal union affairs are now largely external and forums and media outside the union are increasingly part of the union's internal culture and politics.
If that's true, it poses a problem for official union websites. If you run a website that assumes the old framework -- no talking about union affairs in public, no public display of dissent, we have to show a united face to the public and keep the debates behind closed doors in our meetings -- then you are choosing to be less relevant.
We have all gotten that type of magazine from our unions: mine comes from the UAW and shows workers organizing and winning with pictures of hard working union leaders and fired-up rank-and-filers. I'm glad to see pictures of people winning, but how seriously can we take a magazine that says nothing about the 1,000 pound gorilla in the room -- the massive cutbacks and concessions that are undoing the work of generations of autoworkers?
The actual debate in the union is already public and likely to show up first in what I call the rank-and-file web, they are still leading the way, I think.
So, to take Steve's first point:
1) Screen comments. As much as I love free-for-all, spirited debate, there are times for having it and times for not having it. A public union website is not the forum for that. Do it behind closed doors.
Screening comments is perfectly reasonable. The problem is screen them for what? If you screen out free-for-all spirited ,debate, what's left?
What does it mean to say that a union website is not the forum for such discussion? If the website is chiefly for PR purposes, this may be accurate, but is that what we want our union websites to be?
Having a closed, members-only forum for discussion is an option. Nothing stops a union from hosting such a discussion (of course, that's different from the approach the IUOE is taking which would try to force all online discussion of IUOE elections to be conducted behind such closed doors).
Will people choose the union's official members-only forum if there are others available that are open and pubic? Maybe. But I think the likelihood that critical comments will be screened combined with the fear members may have of posting on a site where their identity will be known to the union's officers and staff, and the easy access to public sites that allow free speech and anonymity lean against it.
What are the alternatives?
Run an official union website with an open forum, screening only for spam, porn, etc. Encourage participants to take responsibility for policing the site and encouraging people to be constructive.
Run an official site that has no forum of its own, but provides links (and takes feeds) from independent websites representing various points of view. Why shouldn't the IBT link to TDU, Teamsternet, and the host of independent IBT sites? Under the government monitorship, the IBT was required to provide election materials from all slates and candidates in the IBT election, what's wrong with that? Shouldn't that be common practice?
Run an unofficial site with an open forum, screening only for spam, porn, etc.
Run an online community, which includes official union content (election reports, financial statements, etc.) and unofficial member created content -- member blogs, forums etc.
There are complicated questions, for sure: what if members in one workplace hold a wildcat action, using the union forum to organize it? What about using the forum to call for bringing in another union?
- Matt Noyes's blog
- Login or register to post comments
- 1145 reads
Would UAW link to Soldiers of Solidarity?
I am doubtful I will ever see that day -- and would be concerned if I did. The Soldiers of Solidarity are not who the members pay dues to.
While SEIU Local 503 workers band together to get their president Overtime Joe ousted, would the Local run a link to the member-driven site? Would SEIU/National?
You wrote: Run an official union website with an open forum, screening only for spam, porn, etc. Encourage participants to take responsibility for policing the site and encouraging people to be constructive.
I find it difficult for some members even to open email or do much of anything online after work. Encourage them to be responsible for "policing" the site and encourage them to be "constructive" confused me ... what is constructive to the TDU might not be constructive to the IBT (take a look at what happened with Waste Management in California for a clear example).
What is constructive for Soldiers of Solidarity screaming at the top of their bold-point voice that Vebas are wrong, bad, harmful, etc ... will, unfortunately, not be constructive for the UAW. Then comes the question of where is either the union or the Soldiers or anyone else on the blood bath our union's leadership experienced at the beginning of the year? Why is THAT getting swept under the carpet all around? I think as bad as a VEBA might be is as bad as pushing out some of the best union leadership I knew. (I am speaking of Local 1981)but no one is talking about that -- is that constructive? Are we all guilty? Am I already way off point :) ??? Sorry, man.
Think of the person that brought to your attention that TeamsterPower.com launched. Here is a guy who spends more time finding wrong than finding right ... is that constructive? I guess it is for him ... but that's not my idea of creating solidarity, unity or democracy either. I guess, in the end, the point is that "constructive" has many definitions depending on where you are on any one particular issue.
Sometimes a worker might want to post something to a site that is known to be sponsored from his or her union. The comments from the worker could very well be considered constructive -- but it pushes back the organizing strategies taking place behind the scenes. Is that good in your opinion? I think many local and international unions might be concerned that too many voices being heard can be counter-productive to an overall move by the union. I am not saying I agree or disagree, I am saying it might be the case. If that worker was censored for this reason, he'd have one of two reactions: pissed that he was censored, glad that was censored for the better of the bargaining unit.
Who has the time or the resources to monitor the free-for-all? We have to remember that while we are online almost all day, there are a lot more of us who are dealing with each other in person in the field and are not attached to their computers 12 hours a day.
So, what is the solution? I think a site needs to set up very specific guidelines and then follow through with the established rules.
Sorry for the long babble ... but this stuff is fun to think about, I suppose.
Should they?
If the goal is to encourage members to think for themselves, why not post links to sites run by those who think differently?
Few unions are ready to take this step, but I think that's a sign of their resistance to the new culture of unionism that the internet brings.
Union officers seem to imagine that they can continue to keep internal matters behind closed doors. But while the doors may be closed, the windows are open (sorry for the bad pun).
Internal affairs are already external, there's no going back, and that's good for unionism, I believe. Unions can create PR type websites, but if that is all they do, and if they do it as a substitute for open and democratic communications, then they miss out on what the internet has to offer.
You write, "What is constructive for Soldiers of Solidarity screaming at the top of their bold-point voice that Vebas are wrong, bad, harmful, etc ... will, unfortunately, not be constructive for the UAW." When you say UAW, you mean, I think, the UAW officials who control the International (not people like Bill Parker in Detroit, nor even the Soldiers of Solidarity themselves. All of those people are part of the larger political process that is unionism, right?
I don't expect the UAW or SEIU or most any other union I can think of to link to Soldiers of Solidarity or any other independent member website. Should they? Sure.
The URL to the website run
The URL to the website run to oust "Overtime Joe" was and continues to be very available. There are a lot of legal reasons why it can not be posted to any of the sites. Just as an update, Joe did lose his lawsuit. The members are still working to get him out of office as far as I know.
SEIU 503 has several open mailing lists run from GNU Mailman. There was a lot of screaming and fighting on many of them between Joe's supporters and those fighting against Joe over things entirely unrelated to Joe himself. A group was attacking one member because of the number of things he was posting to the list. This member is a retired IT person from one of the universities, 503 represents mostly state workers, unusual for most SEIU locals, and spends a lot of time posting both to the "Overtime Joe" site and to all of 503s mailing lists. He is also often sending suggestions and comments to the IT department.
This person also sent out to every list he is a member of the link to that website. There are no legal restrictions on that. Members are allowed to send. I believe the link was posted to portions of the website where the members control the content. Some of the sub-locals have their own homepages that are under the seiu503.org domain.
It isn't that SEIU staff did not want to post links to it. I don't know of anyone, including the executive director, that didn't whole-heartedly support the recall. There are legal and ethic reasons though for staff not to influence member elections. This is the way it should be, as unfortunate as that may seem in this case!
Those are just some quick remarks/comments on the SEIU 503. I can answer more if anyone has any.
Staff strategy: get out of the way
Interesting comment -- I think people are right to be concerned about the role played by union staff (especially since unions like SEIU have spent the past few years "staffing up").
Perhaps the best way to staffers to be helpful to union democracy is to get out of the way of members' discussion and debate. If you can't post a link yourself, you set it up so there is a place where members can post links.
link building is important
link building is important for any website and letting everyone post links is important to their site and right to share information.
IWW email list
The Wobblies have an private email discussion list that's open to all members in good standing. There are a few hundred subscribers to the list - not a majority of the members but probably most of the active ones.
It's unmoderated, and things do get wild and wooley from time to time, but for the most part it's a useful tool.
There are also both public and private forums set up on the iww.org web site, but they don't see very much use.
We also have an email list for our local branch, with about 50 members, and well as an "announcement" list for lapsed members and supporters. The local list has a much higher participation rate than the national one, because we automatically add new members to the list.
I like to think of the IWW email list as a benefit of membership. And while you have to put up with a few crazies from time to time, at least you know they're dues-paying crazies. Anonymity is preserved (if desired) by posting messages under "screen names".
I do wonder how well this "model" would work for unions with tens of thousands of members. As more and more members participate, do the shouting matches grow exponentially?
Can you imagine
1.4 million members who like to shout when they can?
It does boggle the imagination, doesn't it?
Though in theory, I guess you could have millions of people contributing comments to the AFL-CIO or CtW blogs!
As more and more union members start to feel comfortable talking online, the volume of postings is going to start becoming a bigger issue for sites that encourage this communication, whether they're offical or "rank and file".
Even with our relatively small membership, the traffic on the IWW email list is heavy enough that a lot of members choose not to subscribe. I think there's more online discussion going on at the local branch level, where you're looking at groups of around 20-25 members. So perhaps some of these tools are better used on a local-by-local basis rather than for huge national discussions.
Seems to me that labor councils and similar bodies could also play an important role in hosting discussions of local labor issues. Hopefully we'll start to see that happen more as leadership and (where it exists) staff become more comfortable with the tools.