At the CBI's Annual Dinner in May, Sir Clive Thompson, Chief Executive of Rentokil-Initial said: "a third party that comes between employer and employee can only interfere... and harm our drive for quality". On
15 June, FIET, the international union federation, launched an internet-based campaign against Rentokil-Initial, demanding it allow it's British employees representation on the company European Works Council. Two days later, the company contacted FIET to arrange talks which began on 1 July.
If this sequence of events is a coincidence, then it is one of a growing number of such coincidences. What is indisputable is that, in recent years, there has been a marked growth in internet use by the world's trade unions.
From Seoul to Sao Paulo, Manchester to Manila and Capetown to Quebec, unions are increasingly using the world wide web in an imaginative and innovative way. Despite the problems of internet access that exist,
union internet activity is neither confined to labour in the more advanced OECD economies nor to the technically based unions within those countries.
There are over 1,700 union websites world-wide, with more coming on-line daily. Development began slowly. At first, many unions set up websites without seeming to have any clear idea as to their purpose -
very similar to the response of many businesses to the new technology. These were "vanity sites" with a picture of the general secretary, the union's logo, virtually no information and little if any interactive element.
Today the best union sites are completely different. Offering instantaneous communications with large numbers of members, they open up information previously only accessible to those working at the
union headquarters. They often feature a discussion forum, and are also increasingly seen as a weapon in industrial campaigns.
It is in the pursuit of industrial disputes that unions have made the most spectacular impact on the internet. Three recent examples stand out: the Liverpool dockers' dispute, the Bridgestone/Firestone dispute and last year's US Teamsters' strike at United Parcel Services.
The Liverpool dockers' dispute was one of the defining moments in awakening union activists to the possibilities of the internet. An international campaign was constructed on a shoestring, supported by
unpaid labour movement internet enthusiasts. Conducted largely independently of the dockers' own union headquarters (TGWU), remarkable things were achieved. Two international Days of Action were co-ordinated, conferences held, funds raised and news circulated around the world. So successful was the information campaign that senior managers of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board (MDHB) complained that Liverpool's international image was that of a strike-bound port. For the Liverpool dockers, the most important payoff was when ships that docked at MDHB ports found themselves pariahs, unable to enter American ports. US longshoremen, in contact with the dockers via their website, refused to cross picket lines set up by local community activists.
These international links survived the defeat of the Liverpool dockers and were quickly reactivated when, earlier this year, Australian dockers found themselves embroiled in that country's bitterest industrial dispute since the war. The Maritime Union of Australia and the International Transport Workers Federation used the internet to build world wide support. Again, US longshoremen refused to cross community picket lines.
Chris Bailey, of LabourNet and co-ordinator of the Liverpool dockers' website, argues that this coming together of the worlds of computers and the docks is not surprising: "The use of computer technology by
employers has been central to the international rationalisation of ports and shipping. Without it the new international structures of transport and distribution they are creating would be inconceivable." Bailey argues that, like the union response to 19th century free trade, the response of unions to today's globalisation "must be international solidarity. But it too must be with computer communication".
The 20 million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mining and General Workers Unions (ICEM) is one of the trailblazers. ICEM was the first to launch a "cyber picket" of a multinational company - tyre giant Bridgestone/Firestone. ICEM acted in support of its American affiliate in a dispute which saw the sacking of hundreds of members. The campaign symbol adopted was the black flag, which in motor racing means immediate disqualification for serious rules violations.
ICEM identified the email addresses of top company executives world-wide and published links to them on its website, urging affiliates and sympathisers to send email messages supporting the workers with a copy of the black flag computer graphic downloaded from the ICEM site. Responding to the "black flagging" or cyberpicketing", the company confessed to the French daily, Le Monde that it constructed a parallel email structure to ensure its system did not collapse under the weight of pro-union messages.
The unions believe that the cyber campaign played an important part in their success in this dispute. One of the aims was to generate unfavourable media coverage for the company, and they point to the campaign launch day in July 1996, when the story made the FT European edition's front page. The company responded with a massive advertising campaign in the US regional press, wherever there was a tyre plant, at a cost estimated by the union of $5 million.
ICEM official, Jim Catterson said: "The Bridgestone/Firestone campaign was the first time that unions used a company's own web presence against them." The ICEM site alerted affiliates and sympathisers to the email addresses of the company in every country, its subsidiaries, its retail outlets and its suppliers. The unions' site also listed large shareholders in Bridgestone by name (such as banks and others with major holdings) providing links to these investors' own web networks.
Catterson emphasises that "virtually all of this information came from the company's own website. Often all we did was publish a link to their own on-line contact lists". Catterson argues "rather than it being some form of "cyber-terrorism", I see its real benefit as raising awareness about a dispute and spreading information as well as allowing an individual to actually do something in support easily and cheaply."
Possibly the first national industrial dispute in which a union used the internet as a matter of course was last year's US Teamsters strike in United Parcel Services.
The Teamsters used a combination of traditional and high tech methods to communicate with members and to pursue the dispute. Their website carried daily (sometimes twice daily) print-ready copies of the Teamster UPS Update in desk top published quality which could be downloaded by the union locals, then photocopied and distributed to members. The site posted press releases, copies of flyers, analyses of the company's offers, reports of activity around the country and news of support from other unions. The union used the site to call for volunteers to assist in the regions.
The Teamsters also organised the world's largest telephone conference call, with President Ron Carey hooked up to every Teamsters hall in the country to report the latest position in negotiations.
They have built on this experience. Andy Banks, Campaigns Officer explains: "At the ITF World Council of UPS Unions we developed plans for national Internet Stewards. One UPS "Internet Steward" would be identified in each country that could read and write in English. Each steward would draft and email a monthly country report of no more that one page to the other Internet Stewards and provide their national
unions with a copy of what is received each month from the other countries for distribution. In this fashion the translation of the various monthly reports would be done from English into the native tongues quickly. Both the national union hierarchies and the UPS shop stewards would know in good detail and in rapid time, the news of events around the world. And, of course, this same structure could be used in the future as a mobilization structure for worldwide actions".
More widely, a loose international coalition now exists, drawing together individual labour internet activists, local branches, national unions, international federations and various union support organisations. This network is based on new, open, horizontal channels of communication. Old hierarchical, official, vertical lines of communication are challenged by the fact that any union activist with a computer and a modem can discuss strategy and tactics with colleagues in five continents virtually instantaneously and access sources of information that would be the envy of most national union research departments only five or ten years ago.
This upsurge in international contacts and activity has not been lost on some employers. US lawyer Paul Heylman last year warned an international shipping employers' conference that they should regularly check union websites for news on strike targets as "it seems highly likely that labour's battles with management will be increasingly transnational".
Jim Catterson of ICEM says that use of the internet will have far-reaching implications for unions: "I seriously think that it's going to change how organisations are structured". He expects union demands for access to employers' internet communications systems to become a normal part of the bargaining process - especially for those companies covered by European Works Councils.
Best practice on everything from web design to tactics in disputes can be shared very quickly and consequently the quality and effectiveness of union websites can improve spectacularly fast at little cost.
Therefore we can expect to see international lessons in the use of the web as a campaign tool absorbed by UK unions too. US and Canadian unions use sophisticated 'Buy Union' advice pages with lists of union-organised companies broken down by product and geographical region. They also publicise 'Boycott Lists' of companies in dispute with unions.
In Sweden and Finland, the union centres use access to their membership base to negotiate bulk buying of computer hardware to help boost the numbers of unionists on-line. They then sell kit to members at up to 30% off retail cost. Julie Scott of Britain's TUC says that it has concentrated on affiliates rather than individual members, offering free needs-assessment, a consultancy service and discounted website software.
Donald MacDonald, President of the British Communications Workers is upbeat: "Unions have to develop the technology and use it as an organiser and a weapon which can be directed against bad employers. The technology can empower and enrich the experience of trade union activists - above all we should embrace it as an extension of democracy."
MacDonald views union internet activity as essential rather than an optional extra, and warns that "the internet has the power to switch transmission facilities, control production lines, determine new products, and even further distort the imbalances in the world economy. It is a very political tool and we need to keep up to speed in order to understand and, where possible, correct the negative features through mass electronic activism".
Flying pickets may have disappeared but it looks as though cyberpickets are here to stay. Ask Rentokil-Initial.
(article by Steve Davies in People Management, September 1998)
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