
Issue No 3		05 March 1999

Guest Report

Thinking Virtually with Eric Lee

Eric Lee is a leading advocate for on-line trade unionism and the co-ordinator of Labourstart, a daily web-based industrial news service. This is an extract from a speech he delivered to the 1998 Labour Online conference.

We must be absolutely realistic about how effective the net has been so far.

We must be wildly "unrealistic" -- that is to say, visionary -- about what we will be able to do.

Let's look at some recent struggles.

Despite wonderful work done on the web by Chris Bailey and Labournet on behalf of the Liverpool dockers, they eventually lost their struggle. And following their defeat, they pointed to the lack of support as the reason why they gave up. (And building such support was the one thing the web was supposed to be good for.)

In the US, the UPS strikers won a great victory, but even though they used the web and email, absolutely no one attributes that victory to the new communications technology.

The Detroit newspaper strikers produced an excellent online newspaper, but it too did not seem to make the difference.

Despite the very high level of use of the net by Korean trade unionists and their supporters, the intensification of repression of trade unionists in that country under Kim Dae Jung has not been answered by any pressure being brought to bear through the net. No online campaign has been mounted, for example, to free imprisoned Korean labour leaders.

Despite years of effort, there has been no noticeable democratization as a result of greatly expanded use of the net.

The net has not made union affairs open and transparent to members. (I need only mention the example of scandal-ridden District Council 37 of AFSCME in New York City.)

The Internet has not empowered the new, reforming, democratic wing of the trade unions, levelling the playing field between reformers and the Old Guard. (See, for example, the election of James Hoffa Jr. in the Teamsters.)

Above all, increased use of the net has not made a noticeable contribution to the much-needed globalization of the unions. (For example, no one mounted any significant online protest at the arrest, trial and sentencing of Zhang Shuangang, an independent Chinese labour activist.)

The utopian idea that all websites are created equal, that every netizen can individually challenge corporate power, has been refuted by the reality of a commercialized, corporate-dominated web.

Our unions' members come online by their millions, but they do not do so to visit our sites.

If we go back and read, for example, Howard Rheingold's The Virtual Community, or the papers presented in 1992 and 1993 at the Manchester conferences on labour telematics, or even my own book, written in 1995, and

if we are completely honest with ourselves -- we must admit that what we had hoped would happen (the emergence of a much more powerful, robust, militant, democratic, internationalist labour movement) has not happened.

One hundred and fifty million people are now online (87 million of them in the US and Canada), there are more than 1,500 labour websites, hundreds of mailing lists, chat rooms, web forums -- and the labour movement still largely looks like and acts the same as it always did.

And yet -- everything we wrote and said from the first conferences at the beginning of this decade until today is true and valid.

The new technology is empowering.

- It does level the playing field between unions and corporations.

- It does allow the creation of new, alternative international media.

- In the end, the vision of a new International will emerge.

So what is holding things up?

In my view, consciousness lags behind reality.

In our own heads, we have not caught up with the reality of a globalized, digitized capitalism. (But the corporations have.)

Peter Waterman writes of the need for a "global solidarity culture".

I have written about the birth of a new International.

I believe that we are both talking about the same thing.

We cannot think in the old ways anymore. And the new thinking must reflect the new reality of a global capitalism that knows no borders. (We can now correct Marx and point out that the capitalists are the ones who have no country.)

Because I am convinced that consciousness ultimately follows reality, and because I see the first buds of spring in the work being done by the people at this conference, I believe that we are on the brink of a great transformation of the labour movement.

The new labour movement will be global, democratic, militant -- and it will be wired.

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  Issue 3 contents

Interview: How Organising Works
The ACTU�s Sarah Kaine is part of a new breed of union organiser who help workers stand up for themselves.

Unions: Big Boys Bank on Mergers
Mergers of the big banks are back on the agenda, and the Finance Sector Union is leading the community campaign against them.

History: Commemorating Our Dear Departed Equal Pay Activists
Two women who deserve special recognition and commemoration as part of our Women's Day celebrations are Eileen Powell and Edna Ryan, both of who played a crucial role in the struggle for equal pay.

Legal: New Judge Announces Zero Tolerance Of Pay Inequity In NSW
The NSW Industrial Relations Commission is training its sights on industrial raw-deals for women, and targeting the traditional under-valuation of women's work.

Review: Keep the Australia in Australian Television.
Local content quotas for Australian television are under threat from our Kiwi cousins.

Campaign Diary: Radical Conservatives Raise Their Own Bar
This Monday writs are issued for the state election, The phoney campaign ends and the real one begins; and the issue of stability, the need for it and the lack of it, is set to dominate the next four weeks.

» Unions Win Virtual Access To The Workplace

» Shaw To Snip At Gender Pay Gaps

» Living Wage - Round One To Unions

» Workers Fight Hotel Chain's Contracts Push

» No Picnic, No Pay

» The Modern Day Tales Of Robin Hood

» Nothing Casual About Woolies Drivers

» Unionists Flex Muscles for a Gay Time