Response to Eric Lee: How the Internet Makes Organising Harder

All round web guy for the trade union movement, Eric Lee (www.labourstart.org) has written a blog piece about some of the drawbacks of the internet for organising. You can read the piece here at his blog.

I really respect Eric Lee and like the work he is doing, however, I would like to make the point that while the internet is tactically mixed for the union movement, strategically it is a gain.

Eric Lee rightfully points out that the “old strategy of blacklisting…has now become infinitely more effective thanks to the net.” In a sense unionbusters can use the internet as a more effective tool for something which happened prior to the invention and widespread use of the net, gaining information about unions, union activists and potential organising campaigns. The union movement must be extremely careful to protect sensitive information. However, all that has changed is that the internet can now be used to do the same thing in a more efficient manner. It is also possible that the relative ease of gaining information off the net may overtime blunt the other investigative tools that union busters used to use. This point though is pure speculation.

For the union movement though, not only is the internet a useful communication tool which presents tactical advantages in used in the right circumstances, it is transformative. The internet has the power to bring together a truely global labour movement, a movement which is being born through the crisis and struggle of existing national and regional labour movements. Every day I log onto LabourStart and I am immediately connected to the various struggles and campaigns of the movement in various locations around the world.

The other aspect of the internet is that it can serve as a relatively low-cost way for an ongoing dialogue about unionism and the public life in general. It has the capacity to bring together a community of minds who can debate, argue and come to agreed positions in way that the earlier mediums could not. Books, newspapers and televisions are one way mediums where there is a producer and a receiver who takes in the information being presented (with television being perhaps the most passive of the three). The internet, however, can bring together people to participate in a two-way constructive dialogue. This does not mean that we should be uncritical of the exisitng status quo of the internet. Commercial interests abound as the recent case of union organiser, Derek Blackadder, being temporarily banned from Facebook highlights. It is now more than ever though easier to create our own space. The internet, when combined with real world activism, has the potential to draw the union movement into a cyclical process of questioning and acting, with each component enriching the other. It also draws us back to our core value of solidarity (touch one, touch all), through the net we connect.

So is this just a load of bull$%^? Is the internet simply another site of corporate control or a necessary condition for a truely global labour movement?