Interview with Bill Pearson: Labor's Internet Pioneer

Bill Pearson is the former President of UFCW Local 789, a union that boldly pioneered use of the Internet under his leadership. What follows is an interview with Bill which took place via e-mail. Bill is currently retired and living in Arizona.

When did if first occur to you that the Internet was a tool the labor movement should seize and capitalize upon?

We were fortunate in the Twin Cities; the Labor Education Services (LES) at the University of Minnesota was one of the more aggressive and technically advanced labor schools in the country. By the mid 90’s they were working with a non-profit cable network that was offering group discounts on Internet access. The New River project was a fascinating concept that allowed us to sell to our members an ISP that cost a fraction of the price if members had bought it on the open market. To kick off our own UFCW 789 web site and the marketing of the ISP, we held a cyber surfing USA party complete with tie-died t-shirts and web sites projected on the walls. The year was 1995, and we brought in just under a hundred members and friends.

As President of UFCW Local 789 in St. Paul, you launched several web sites, some which went on to be quite successful. What were those sites? What are some of the important principles you learned from these projects with regard to the Internet and its effectiveness for communicating with workers and members?

Our first was the 789 site: http://www.ufcw789.org/ It was your stock boring static site but we thought we were well ahead of the curve. The handful of unions that were using the net was two or three times our size (7500 members). The best result from this venture was we came to understand the net could give members instant access to information. By 1998 we had developed a far more aggressive stance on how to use our web site. In our major grocery store negotiations we built a page that allowed members to track talks on a meeting-to-meeting basis. We used a link at the top of the site that led directly to reports members could print out (the bad news was we made a commitment to post a full report immediately after every session; which we accomplished, though it made for horrendously long days). We had compiled a 500-member communications committee that would print out our reports and put them in every break room the morning after negotiations. Employers were blow away by that much candor and such an open style of communication. After one particularly bad session we posted a picture of the Titanic and when members clicked on it they read an ugly story of employer rejections to the unions proposals. We linked a song (with Janis Joplin singing Oh Lord Won’t You buy Me A Mercedes Benz), and we tried to have fun with it. The counter was off the charts and the employers often commented on how disconcerting it was to face this instant messaging affect. I’ll talk about the other sites we developed, in that they were a story unto themselves.

How closely did you oversee and manage the day-to-day operations of the web sites? How much liberty did you give the technical experts who oversaw the site to make decisions? Did you get involved in any technical aspects of running the site?

We had two technical folks assisting us. One was John See (see http://www.workdayminnesota.org/about.php) from the LES staff and the other was a contract employee from the New River project who has since left the business. Thankfully both of the guys worked reasonably cheap, and were pretty knowledgeable. Back then everything was still being written in code and without them we were screwed. My problem was (and still is), I am too demanding. No matter what we did, it was never good enough. They would do something and I would tell them I wanted more. I know it was a challenge for them.

One of your more successful sites, www.YouAreWorthMore.org, featured a forum geared to workers in the retail industry that enjoyed a lot of activity. There are many forums out there but few enjoy much popularity. Do you know how workers found out about the site? What's your theory on what kept them around?

The YAWM site is a great story (though it wasn’t called YouAreWorthMore when it was first launched in 2001). We were going to the bargaining table in the winter of 2002. The growth of non-union retailers was staring us in the face and employers were chomping at the bit to reduce costs. The UFCW International had no strategy to stop them, so we developed our own. We created a web site that would be devoted to non-union retail workers and used coincidentally by our members to follow the negotiations. We literally kicked it off 6 months before talks started and tied it into a heavy radio promotion for the web site. We did some really far out ads that were talking to workers; issues regarding their hours of work, health care and crappy pay rates. We simulated the talk show format in some cases and in others just went crazy with in your face stuff. Members and non-union workers loved it. By the time we got to the bargaining table in 02 we had over a thousand members signed up for the communication committee (every store, every department, every shift). Beyond that, we felt by exposing non-union workers to how our negotiations went we could prove to them they could have a voice in what happened in their workplace. We knew we were taking a big risk (9/11 had occurred and the economy was softening), but we were confident our worker/member empowerment strategy would overcome it. We were right. The negotiations were contentious, but we had conditioned members to put more money in the lower rates and focused on using benefit improvements to satisfy the longer service folks. The outcome speaks for itself, talks were concluded with a very good settlement and we also came to see we could expand the YAWM site and let it become a permanent fixture in talking with members and non-union alike. The site become very popular for it’s honesty and blunt approach to addressing the problems workers were facing; both union and non-union.

How did you handle posts by rabidly anti-union users trolling for controversy on your message boards?

This is one of the challenges of interactive sites. We never used censorship, but we were very aggressive in our responses. Topics were allowed at posters discretion and occasionally some ugly stuff showed up. We dealt with it straight up. The fact that all of our salaries and the way we ran the local were very “reasonable” allowed us the luxury to answer queries and accusations with simple answers of what we were doing was the way it should be. The problem for many locals and internationals is they have issues they would rather not address. It’s a killer and it is one of the reasons many unions won’t go interactive.

YouAreWorthMore.org makes little mention of the fact that UFCW Local 789 built and sponsored the site. What was the reasoning behind that decision?

Again, a great story to the evolution of our YAWM site: Following the successful negotiations of 02 we knew we had a winner with our site, but something was missing. I had been following the original RetailWorker web site and a handful of other interactive forums that were drawing large crowds of workers. Rogers and Freeman's piece on Open Source Unionism had come out as well as Shostak’s book CyberUnion; both were getting lots of play. In the spring of '02 we invited a collection of 25 activists to participate in a think tank type gathering where we would brainstorm an expanded version of YAWM. It was an eye opening experience. We had people from several walks of life and there was no question we were on the right path. The challenge was there was no clear concise plan of action. Following the get together, we decided rather than a collective action by many, we would undertake the effort ourselves. We brought in the web creator and owner of Retail Worker and BordersUnion and he worked tirelessly to build a fully interactive site; including the innovative Ask The Rep feature. After much tweaking, we had developed a first of its kind, direct access online union hall. It was unveiled in July of 2002 and received immediate attention. This article on Workday Minnesota and a great piece in the Nation by John Dicker were just a couple of the most prominent. There were countless stories of how we were attempting to go in areas other unions dare not enter.

How did the YouAreWorthMore.org site benefit Local 789?

I intentionally ignored most of the similar question above so I could tie this together. In 1995 I ran against the seated president. Without regard to why, I promised members it would not be more of the same tired old unionism. We said we would come out swinging and getting the members involved. We immediately started the process by adopting the slogan, “Membership Is About Ownership.” As much as I would tell you, members were becoming more active, it never reached the critical masse we needed. The Youareworthmore site forced us to turn to the members and ask for a 25% increase in dues. We used the forum section to debate the increase and let members vent. We posted questions and answers, we never told them they had to pass it, we were clear it was their decision to make. Once it passed, we kicked it all up a notch. We were getting national recognition; our members were joining us in non-union store blitzes. It was awesome; in the beginning we passed out over 100,000 business cards with the Youareworthmore web site printed on it. Wal-Mart, K-Mart and Target all began to panic when we hit them and would attempt to throw us out when soliciting. We stopped passing out business cards and started wearing t-shirts imprinted with the web site and messages to workers. It was all about empowerment…worker empowerment.

The YouAreWorthMore.org site moved to the Drupal platform recently. Were you involved in that decision? If so, what attracted you to Drupal?

No, sorry, I know the site was changed, and sadly it had a negative impact. I think it is less labor intensive, but it also becomes less personal to the "members."

The YouAreWorthMore.org web site hasn't seen many new posts lately. Do you know why that is?

A couple of reasons: The site was my passion. I can tell you while I was still working I would answer questions at almost all hours of the day and night. It became a labor of love, and I nurtured it to a point of absurdity. I would spend countless hours trying to build an online community that saw the labor movement for what it could be. The beauty was it had little to do with money; it was just about workers. Frankly, I expected the site to go down within six months of my retirement. The local 789 staff didn’t replace me, and were working one person short. It was/is to their credit they did as good a job as they did. We have always been a strong servicing local and we were also aggressively trying to organize and build community ties. When you try and do it all, something has to give.

What Internet technologies have you run across lately that you think hold a lot of promise for labor unions?

The blogging is interesting, but some of the formats really suck. The challenge is there are too many sites and no real connectivity to tie them all together. Having gone to the World Futurist Society meetings the past two years, there was no question we were on the right path, it’s just the journey is taking us in too many different directions.

Did Local 789 ever have a forum specifically for its members? If so, how successful was it and what problems did you encounter?

No, and we didn’t see a need. If you read any of the early posts you will find some of the best discussions were those where our members spoke their minds and questioned our goals. I always felt workers needed to see that and by having a member only section it became exclusionary; and our intent was always to make non-union workers feel welcome.

You have mentioned before that the Internet will hasten the demise of "business unionism." Can you briefly explain what you mean how you think that will happen?

I don’t know if I have ever done anything briefly, but I’ll try. You used the term transparency, and it will be biz unionist’s downfall. The Internet gives every person with a keyboard equal access and instant credibility. It is the great equalizer. Power and control has always been contained at the top, today, it exists only in the biz union guys mind. They can ignore and pretend the net doesn’t exist, but that only makes them even more helplessly and hopelessly out of touch.

Most labor union sites are one way vehicles for the leadership's message. What would you tell a union leader to convince them to embrace a more interactive approach to their web site? How would you allay concerns they have about the risks of publishing the thoughts and ideas of others on their sites?

Hell Steve if I knew that answer, I’d write a book and become a millionaire. Just kidding. There is no easy sell. The fact is most unions exist in a purely reactionary mode. Long-term goals are non-existent and any efforts to strategize have been long since abandoned. The reality is nothing changes overnight, especially bureaucracies. If there is any hope for labor to embrace today’s (and more importantly tomorrow's) technologies they need look at the future. Virtually everyone coming out of grade school, high school and college are computer literate. They are tomorrow’s workforce, and they will be blogging, surfing and text messaging en masse. Labor has failed to reach out and inspire workers, and in large part because they have refused to change; to adapt to the differences that exist in how and where we work; how we communicate; how we relate. These aren’t throwaway trite answers; the labor movement has lived in a vacuum expecting everyone else to conform to their tired old methods, boring agenda and empty rhetoric.

If they cling to that, we are dead. At the last presentation I did before the World Futurist Society, I forecast labor’s demise by 2012 if Bush lost and much sooner if he won. The scary thing is, many institutions can remain an empty shell for years before someone comes along and mercifully kicks it over. The tragedy of ignoring the Internet and the latest technologies will be felt more by the workers and members than by the leadership. For what it is worth, at the same presentation for the WFS, I also predicted a rebirth for the labor movement…and at the heart of it will be workers rallying/gathering around computer monitors as they make their long climb back to a place where social and economic justice are at its core.