E-collectivism: Emergent Opportunities for Renewal

 

Anne-marie GREENE1, John HOGAN2 and Margaret GRIECO3

1Organisation Studies Group, Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, B4 7ET, Tel: 0121 359 3611 ext. 5044; Fax 0121 359 2919 Email: a.greene@aston.ac.uk

2The Management School, Royal Holloway College, University of London, Egham, Surrey, TW20 0EX, Tel: 01784 434455, Email: john_hogan@talk21.com

3Professor of Transport & Society, Napier University, Redwood Campus, Edinburgh, EH10 5BR, Tel: 0131 455 5165, Email: m.grieco@napier.ac.uk

 

 

Abstract

Problems of recruitment and retention of members have been the primary concern for the British trade union movement in the new millennium. However, trade unions in Britain have been slow to respond to the opportunities that new information and communication technologies (ICTs) afford for organisation and mobilisation both with and beyond sectors and workplaces. This paper explores the current usage of new technology forms and highlights how recruitment and retention characteristics are altered and rEformed by their use.

 

1.      Problems of recruitment and retention in the British Trade Union Movement

There can be no doubt that unions have become less powerful and less demonstrably effective both in the workplace and at national level in Britain since the late 1970s. Perhaps the most explicit demonstration of this has been the dramatic decline in British union membership since 1979 of nearly 32% while national survey evidence [1] charts a significant trend towards union derecognition, with the proportion of workplaces in Britain with no union members at all, increasing from 27% in 1984 to 47% in 1998. Thus there is a need for renewal of union membership in existing areas [2] and for recruitment in traditionally non-unionised sectors or in growth areas of the economy, most notably in the service sectors and amongst those working ‘non-standard’ hours. Women and young workers are a particularly important target group because of their increased share of these employment growth areas [3].

 

Typical trade union strategies to halt the decline

 

Strategies for recruitment have typically focused around partnership with employers, making the union more attractive to individual members and through increasing strength through union merger [4]. However, these strategies of the 1980s and early 1990s appear to have been singularly unsuccessful; demonstrated most clearly by the continued downward spiral of membership. Trade unions in Britain continue to be criticised for being largely reactive, rather than proactive, in their recruitment strategies and therefore, have been over-preoccupied with maintaining levels of membership where unions already have recognition [5]. This has led to fears that the union movement will be confined to a selection of mature and declining industries [6]. In particular, trade unions have continued to find difficulty in organising growth areas of the labour market, especially amongst women and non-standard employees. Such deficiencies in union recruitment have significant consequences for membership retention and participation, and the reform of union bargaining agendas. That trade union decision-making structures are unrepresentative of membership diversity is widely recognised [7], and Cockburn [8] coins the term ‘democracy deficit’ to describe the present situation within most British unions. This is significant because there has been shown to exist, a connection between this democracy deficit and unions’ historical lack of success in organising these segments of the workforce [9].

The most recent strategies for renewal have focused around the need to develop an ‘organising’ culture within the trade union movement, drawing on similar trends within the trade union movements in the USA and Australia. Such a strategy has been actively promoted by the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) with its Organising Academy, opened in 1998, which was established to produce a cadre of ‘lead organisers’ who can plan and manage organising campaigns and promote the cause of organising across the British trade union movement [10]. Initial analysis [11] indicates movements to set up specialist organising teams within many unions and the widespread use of at least the rhetoric of an ‘organising culture’, which has coincided with a small but notable increase in the overall numbers of trade union members nationally. However this analysis also indicates the way in which most unions have not been prepared to break with existing recruitment practice and if prepared, have found difficulty in resourcing the expense of an organising culture along the lines encouraged by the TUC. In other words, for a variety of reasons, the new rhetoric is generally more diffused than the new practices.

More importantly, our contention is that the union movement could be making use of much more innovative and potentially effective forms of organising; most notably, through the use of ICTs. This primarily involves use of the Internet, including such features as e-mail, web sites, chat rooms, bulletin boards, and on-line application and voting mechanisms. We describe such features, as E-forms of trade union recruiting, organising, mobilising, and campaigning. While the TUC Organising Academy prides itself on encouraging innovative recruitment and organisation techniques, the lack of any mention of the specific use of new technology as a campaign tool is significant. Techniques continue to be based around more traditional forms, such as face-to face recruitment, leafleting and newsletters. In comparison, ICTs have become widely used in other sectors of the economy [12]. However trade unions have been slower to respond to the opportunities that ICTs provide for global solidarity and local and national organisation.

Similarly, the academic industrial relations literature has been slow to reflect or deliberate upon the organising opportunities that global electronic adjacency offers the trade union movement, with some notable exceptions [13]. The potential opportunities of E-forms for trade union organising are offered in this paper. Such reflections draw on exploratory research within the trade union movement, primarily conducted upon the internet. This has also involved email exchange with a leading trade unionist, field visits to a major ‘unions on line’ conference in London, a web search of major union sites, plus preliminary interviews at a large international human rights campaigning organisation to provide a wider context of collective activities.

 

 

2. E-form and rEform: The potentiality of electronic adjacency

 

2.1 Space, Time and Distance

One of the ways in which traditional methods are rEformed by the use of ICTs involves issues of time and distance. Agencies and agents who were traditionally separated from collective organisation and solidarity by the physical barriers of distance are now highly proximate electronically- they are in daily reach and range of one another with important consequences for mobilisation and enhanced solidarity. Little attention as yet, appears to have been given to using the Internet as a way of mass recruiting new union members. This is extremely important, when it is considered that women and non-standard workers are viewed as a crucial recruitment target for unions. Traditional union structures have not provided those who do not meet the full time, male stereotype of the worker, with many opportunities for unionisation, largely because of the ‘democracy deficit’ identified above.

Notably women and non-standard employees suffer from timing problems. Family responsibilities are key here and studies indicate that women who do participate tend to be ‘atypical’, meaning predominantly single and childless women, who are most able to give the necessary time, effort and commitment [14]. Traditional union activities such as meetings, continue to be held at times and in locations, which make it extremely difficult for women or those working non-standard hours to attend, and continue to reinforce a traditional stereotype of the union activist and of bargaining agendas. E-forms could better enable increased participation and activism among women and non-standard employees.

Additionally, workplaces where union density is high have often been characterised by discrete organisations, largely in the manufacturing and public sectors. Here, legacies of trade union organisation tend to be well-established and relations between unions and members have been built up over a long period of time around close physical proximity. The dispersed and flexible work patterns of much of the service sector and modern manufacturing areas do not match these characteristics. E-forms can provide features of close-knit community relationships over a much more dispersed organisational base. Additionally, there are resource issues to consider; achieving close physical proximity of union representatives to members is very expensive. E-forms change recruitment frontiers because they enable organisation on the basis of informal resources, which is less expensive to organise.

 

2.2. Transparency

One of the established pre-requisites of the union renewal thesis [15] involves the need for union structures and leadership to be more accountable and more representative. This is in order to avoid accommodation with management, separation from members, routinisation of methods and conservatism of aims [16]. This is also significant in retention terms, in making union agendas more representative of membership demands, particularly for those segments particularly under-represented. ICTs clearly have the potential to refashion union democracy, reducing the distance between bureaucracy and rank and file that is so harshly criticised [17]. The proximity of union members to local, regional, national and international on-line trade union resources, through ICTs, increases the transparency of the behaviour of union officials to the union membership and enables an independent assessment of performance of officials, in a manner that was never previously possible. Cyber-unionism thus has the potential to alter the bargaining positions of ordinary union members in respect of union leadership. Current research looking at trade union education [18] indicates the importance of gaining knowledge and information in order to more effectively bargain in the workplace. However, analysis also indicates that resource and communication constraints mean that only a limited number of union members and activists attend courses (particularly low amongst women). E-forms could thus provide a vital alternative source in a trade union context, as they have in arenas of civic participation, political activism and transport policy-making [19].

E-forms also offer a level of transparency through the use of intelligent auditing and search functions. Such technology is already used by the US electorate and pressure groups in the monitoring of voting records and could be used by individual union members or groups of members to muster and manage the performance profiles of key organisational actors and activities, well beyond the traditional surveillance capacity and skills of union membership. E-forms could essentially challenge Michels’ [20] iron law of oligarchy.

     The importance of archiving ability provided by the new information technologies is also highlighted. Within the new E-forms, there are some important tools for maintaining continuities and ensuring that histories do not get lost or go missing. Through a well constructed archive, rank and file members can trace and track through the unfolding of events; assessing the activities of the leadership over time, and preventing external agencies from breaking their history by disrupting the social relationships which constitute union solidarity. It is as repositories of collective memory that unions can give shape to conceptions of the past, present and future and in doing so construct sustainable worker identity. This has clear links to issues of solidarity and activism discussed below.

 

2.3 Solidarity and Activism

It should be recognised that unions do not just represent workers as atomised individuals but that they also have a key role in forming collective identity. The key to constructing and maintaining collectivism involves the ability to generate a consciousness of distinctive worker interests and a sense of alternatives. E-forms provide opportunities for enhanced forms of solidarity and communication [21] at every level from the local to the global. Electronic proximity enables the ready connection of those with similar interests or aims at minimal effort, and with highly distributed costs so that no one agency or agent is bearing the total cost of communication. Reviewing the Internet experience of ordinary union members in the USA, Shostak [22] indicates the importance of the new proximity of rank and file members to official union resources offered by E-forms. The old understanding of physical proximity as a primary pre-condition for solidarity [23] is clearly under challenge; virtual organisation is a new and important key in the process of synchronisation of political and industrial movements [24].

E-forms also make it less important to work on a permanent membership basis for many levels of solidarity actions – ties can be restored at any point through listings and social networks. The recent anti-World Bank activities have used affinity structures, meaning that groups who have internal links can provide support for one another or are able to link into hub activities through the net and on-site welcome facilities. This appears to fit with a more realistic notion of collectivism and solidarity within trade unions; which identities the existence of surges and troughs of membership participation and solidarity which can be mobilised over specific issues, rather than a feeling of solidarity or group ethos existing all the time [25]. E-forms are appropriate tools to use in order to mobilise this issue-based solidarity.

     Currently, conventional analysis has highlighted the importance of close physical proximity in mobilising support and encouraging campaign participation [26]. However, there has been little academic or practitioner debate about whether and/or how electronic participation is qualitatively different. Preliminary interviews at a large human rights campaigning organisation have suggested that officials are concerned that collective solidarity will be lost as people rely on individual electronic activism rather than face-to face discussion within  physical group settings: the development of an ‘individualistic collectivism’. However, our contention is that in contrast, E-forms provide the potential for extending solidarity across local, national and global arenas. We contend that without awareness of the plight of another, the localisation of consciousness can never breach its spatial domain. In essence, just because, information is received and conveyed by ‘isolated’ individuals within E-forms, there is no logical reason to suppose that such interaction will necessarily preclude the elaboration of solidarity and collective action. A study by Pliskin et al [27] suggests that the Internet can enhance membership loyalty to collective action by providing for more rapid and frequent communication between leaders and those they lead. E-forms thus provide the means by which those in dispute can interact with each other to maintain solidarity, and a mechanism by which members can assert greater ownership over the cause of the dispute by allowing an open exchange of views. E-forms thus help to strengthen solidarity by attenuating the effects of spatial isolation.

Hogan and Grieco [28] indicate the global links which can be made, pointing to the web site of the GMPU where an explicit intention is to provide a view of different modes of organising across the world and make international links between activists. Use of the Internet allows unions to highlight organisations, which support their causes and interests and vice versa through explicit links. Global visibility gave impetus to the campaign of the Liverpool Dockers, while the development of web sites such as the Cyber Picket Line [29] provides a clear indication of the benefits that the web can bestow on groups with less resources than the big unions.

At the level of the workplace, one also needs to consider the implications of the technology for generating new forms of surveillance and control, along with the possibilities for novel forms of resistance. There are opportunities for ICTs to be utilised as new instruments of struggle. For instance, E-mail communication can have a key role in the construction of workplace narratives about what constitutes organisational reality [30]. This could have important consequences for the development of interest definition, grievance formulation and the establishment of oppositional movements.

However, while it is clear that Internet use could further the cause of participation, there is a danger that a decentralised communication forum could easily become the setting for incoherence. Collective discipline needs to be enforced and there need to be customised mechanisms developed which ensure some kind of responsibility within the collective. Unions on-line may, for example, have to be far more explicit about what is meant by solidarity and collective worker action.

 

 

3. Current Use and Miss-Use of the Eform

There are clear signs of the take up (albeit limited) of E-forms within the British trade union sector. The main TUC site for example [31] is well organised and provides ready access to a wealth of current and archived industrial relations materials that can be marshalled at the touch of a button by the individual union member. The most recent estimates indicate that there are also over 1700 union web sites worldwide [32]. However these vary widely in their quality of use, which has consequences for how the potentialities of E-forms are more or less exploited by trade unions.

Hogan and Grieco [33] provide a useful comparative study in this regard. They indicate that the extent to which increased transparency of union structures and activities, and mobilisation of resources, (which are potentially offered by E-forms), are utilised, depends very much on the openness of web sites. Some sites encourage the extensive use of resources; however others reinforce existing physical barriers to information and exclusivity of action to official channels through strict copyright restrictions and therefore do not really capitalise on the potential for rEforming that is offered. Web sites to date have also been largely technology-led; in other words, sites have been developed simply because the technology is there, rather than using the sites in a strategic way. Labourstart [34] have described the object of the first round of trade union sites as simply to have a presence on the web. This is significant, as the full potential of E-forms is not utilised if their use is not strategised. For instance, little attention seems to have been given yet, to using the net as a way of mass recruiting new members. In particular, full electronic application facilities would support such a process of expanded recruitment with on-line credit card payment in the same way that goods are processed in E-commerce, allowing recruitment with the greatest speed, the least bureaucracy and least need for close physical proximity. However, while many unions have on-line application procedures, these are not fully electronic.

     In practice, the use of new technology in any extended way has been limited to those unions organising in sectors that are computer literate and which are predominantly white collar. Effective utilisation of E-forms requires unions to consider the wider context of their membership and how ICT use can be encouraged in the lower-paid sectors of the economy. In particular, Unison is exceptional in actively encouraging its membership to participate in web activity by offering free Internet services. Given the diversity of access to ICTs across the world and within national contexts, this is an initiative which clearly has the potential to make E-forms more socially inclusive, but which has not been taken up by many other unions, particularly those with predominantly blue collar membership, where perhaps the need is most acute. The International Teledemocracy Centre at Napier University [35] is committed to enabling the civic participation of socially excluded communities and individuals through ICTs, who are not able to participate fully, through lack of means, to access, understand and interpret information. Explicit links between such organisations and trade unions would be of great benefit in this endeavour.

 

 

4. The Future-Focus: Recommendations and Suggestions

We have established that British trade unions today face particular membership recruitment, retention, and participation challenges. It is important to recognise that we are not suggesting that unions should eschew traditional forms of organising, however, E-forms should not be ignored, as they offer such potential benefits. In particular, we have discussed benefits in terms of: decreasing the need for close physical proximity, and thus encouraging increased participation of under-represented groups; increasing the transparency and accountability of union officials; encouraging activism and extending solidarity across global arenas. While some use has been made of E-forms by British trade unions, we contend that this is currently limited and variable and that many unions are 'missing' the positive potential that ICTs offer. Such debates are obviously in their infancy and require considerable further research, however we offer the following, as possible suggestions for trade unions and researchers.

There are important considerations to be borne in mind in respect of customising the technology for union use rather than using existing forms in a rather ad hoc way. Unions have to make explicit use of the qualitatively different ways of organising, mobilising and bargaining which are provided by E-forms and not simply use the technology because it is ‘there’. Electronic balloting and auditing capabilities and using E-forms for mass recruiting through fully electronic application forms are areas of possible discussion [36]. We have also discussed the need for unions to actively campaign for extending the use of ICTs to lower paid sectors of their membership, through links with wider community and governmental campaigns. It is also obvious at the moment that not all unions are embracing the inherent openness of E-forms and more strategic use may decrease the variability of this use by different unions.

However, there are concerns about how the use of ICTs fits into current debates about trade union renewal strategies. There seems to be very strong evidence that in the UK, E-forms are currently being harnessed to a servicing conception of trade unionism, linked to more conventional renewal strategies. At the Union Futures 2000 conference in October 1999, tensions surfaced between some of the participants and the platform on this very issue. Here, the servicing model comes up against its apparent opposite, the organising model, as promoted by the British TUC. It is worth noting that the US trade union federation; AFL-CIO, which is in many ways far more advanced than the TUC in promoting ICTs, harnesses ICTs to an explicitly campaigning model of union purpose. Such a campaigning purpose would more effectively exploit the potentialities of the E-forms. There is a clear need for further research, in particular on how unions articulate their underlying conceptions of objectives when promoting and developing the use of E-forms.

 

 

References

[1] Cully, M., O'Reilly, A., Millward, N., Forth, J., Woodland, S., Dix, G., and Bryson, A, (1999) Britain at work as depicted by the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey, ISBN 0415206375, Routledge.

[2] Fairbrother, P.  (1989), "Work place trade unionism in the 1980's: A process of renewal",  Studies for trade unionists London: Workers Educational Association, Vol 15, 57,

[3] Labour Research (1996) ‘Recruitment - Stopping the Rot’: 11-13, September, London: Labour Research Department.

[4] Blyton, P and Turnbull, P  (1998), The Dynamics of Employee Relations, ISBN 0333679857, Macmillan.

[5] Snape, E. (1994), ‘Union organising in Britain: the virus of local full-time officials’, Employee Relations, 16, 48-62.

[6]Heery, E, Simms, M., Delbridge, R, Salmon, J., Simpson, D. (2000), ‘The Organising Academy: An assessment’, Paper presented to the 18th Annual International Labour Process Conference, April, Glasgow.

[7] Labour Research (1998) Hard work ahead for unions, Labour Research Department.

[8] Cockburn, C (1995) ‘Strategies for Gender Democracy’, Brussels: European Commission.

[9] Cunnison, S & J.Stageman (1995) ‘Feminising the Unions’, ISBN 1859721001, Avebury.

[10] Heery et al, op. cit.

[11] Heery et al, op. cit.

[12] http://www.unl.ac.uk/relational/papers/malaysia.htm

[13] Castells, M. (1991), The information city: information technology, economic restructuring and the urban-regional process, ISBN 0631179372, Blackwell; Lee, E. (1997), The Labour movement and the Internet: the new internationalism, ISBN 0745311199, Pluto Press; Pliskin N., Romm, C. T., and Markey, R. (1997), ‘E-mail as a weapon in an industrial dispute’, New technology, Work and Employment, 12: 1, 3-12; Shostak, A. B. (1999), Cyberunion: empowering labor through computer technology, ISBN 0765604620, M.E. Sharpe.

[14] Kirton, G & G.Healy (1999) ‘Transforming Union Women - the Role of Women Trade Union Officials in Union Renewal’, Industrial Relations Journal, Vol 30:1

[15] Fairbrother, P op cit.

[16] Gall, G. (1999), ‘The prospects for workplace trade unionism: evaluating Fairbrother’s union renewal thesis’, Capital and Class, 66, 149-157.

[17] Michels, R. (1951) Political parties: A sociological study of oligarchical tendencies in modern democracy’, ISBN 760526s, New York: Dover; Lane, T. and Roberts, K. (1971), Strike at Pilkingtons, ISBN 0006326536, William Fontana,

[19] For a variety of e-activist materials in existing use in a number of non-trade union settings, see http://www.geocities.com/transport_and_society/telegovernance

[18] Greene A. M. and Kirton, G. (2000), ‘From Equality to diversity: The case of women only trade union education’, Paper presented to the 18th Annual International Labour Process Conference, April, Glasgow.

[20] Michels, R. op cit.

[21] Trench, B. and O’Donnell, S. (1997), ‘The Internet and democratic participation: Uses of ICTs by voluntary and community organisations in Ireland’, Economic and Social Review, 28: 3, 213-234.

[22] Shostak op cit.

[23] Greene, AM, Black, J. and Ackers, P. (2000), ‘The union makes us strong? A study of the dynamics of workplace union leadership at two manufacturing plants’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 38: 1, 75-95

[24] Pliskin et al, op cit.

[25] Fosh, P.  (1993), ‘Membership Participation and Work Place Trade Unionism: The Possibility of Renewal’,  British Journal of Industrial Relations, Dec., 577-92,

[26] Greene et al, op cit.

[27] Pliskin et al, op cit.

[28] Hogan, J. and Grieco, M. (1999) ‘Trade unions on line: technology, transparency and bargaining power’, Paper presented at a Workshop on Cyber Ontology at the University of North London, October 1999. www.oocities.org/unionsonline

[29] http://www.cf.ac.uk/ccin/union/cyberpicketline

[30] Brigham, M. and Corbett, JM (1997) ‘Email, power and the constitution of organisational reality’ New Technology, Work and Employment, 12: 1, 25-35.

[31] http://www.tuc.org.uk

[32] Labourstart at http://www.labourstart.org

[33] Hogan and Grieco op cit.

[34] Labourstart op cit.

[35] http://www.teledemocracy.org/

[36] See Hogan and Grieco, 1999 op cit.

 

 

 

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