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Look For The Union Web Site Label
By L.M. Sixel, Inter@ctive Week
Marcus Courtney is a typical union organizer taking an uncommon
path to organizing labor. During the past year, he has gone to bat
on behalf of more than 6,000 contract employees, winning benefits
for them such as guaranteed time off for vacation, minimum
health- care coverage and an annual $500 training benefit.
Not bad, considering that Courtney is helping to break new ground
for labor groups that are finding ways to transform the Internet
into the world's largest union hall. Providing both a resource for
collecting information and a forum for swapping worker stories,
unions are going online in a way that is beginning to
revolutionize the way labor groups organize themselves and wield
their powers.
As co-founder and organizer of the Washington Alliance of
Technology Workers (www.washtech.org),
Courtney is using the
Internet against even Microsoft, organizing workers who were faced
with losing overtime pay. The state of Washington, at the request
of the software industry, exempted "highly paid" computer
professionals who earned more than $27.63 per hour from the right
to receive overtime pay.
"Before WashTech, there was absolutely no discussion of the
problems contract employees were having," Courtney says. "People
were whispering in the offices, but they felt they couldn't
complain. WashTech changed that."
"Higher-paid" computer programmers, designers and software
engineers discovered it takes more than a few strongly worded e-
mails to attract the attention of employers. Much like railroad
workers a century ago and auto workers throughout the 1900s,
computer professionals are finding that collaborative bargaining
efforts are the best path to achieving gains in the workplace,
Courtney says.
Online union organizing activity extends far beyond the reach of
Redmond, Wash., though. Today, the high-tech approach has also
become popular with many other unions in the country, ranging from
laborers and steelworkers to service workers and sheet metal
workers.
Reaching out online
Union leaders are discovering that using the Internet to organize
makes it easier to reach a large number of workers more
efficiently. And some employers, still expecting the traditional
union approach of recruiting employees one by one by going to
their homes or meeting during work breaks, are having a difficult
time responding to this new breed of quick Internet assault.
The Internet has made workers who were once inaccessible easy to
reach. For example, the Laborers' International Union of North
America (www.liuna.org) started a campaign
two years ago to
organize the 400 technicians across the country who dispose of
unexploded ordinances such as bombs, bullets and land mines.
Before the Internet organizing drive began, getting the workers
together would have been a logistical nightmare. The workers toil
on secure military bases in remote locations such as Adak, Alaska,
and No Mans Island off the coast of Massachusetts. They also tend
to live in hotels and leave town on the weekends. It was
impossible to find them and talk to the "nomad bullet pickers,"
says Patti Devlin, assistant director of organizing at the LIUNA
in Washington, D.C.
But the workers, who are ex-military employees, are all connected
to the Web because that's the way they maintain their military
relationships. So Devlin, who says she was skeptical at first
because she came of age when union organizers went from door to
door, began contacting the workers through a Web site. E-mail
lists grew and, so far, the union has won eight of nine elections
in the past 15 months of the organizing campaign.
Think of it as a big virtual union hall: Unions are having an
easier time building relationships with each other because of the
Internet, says Laurie Clements, director of the Labor Center at
the University of Iowa in Iowa City. And the United Steelworkers
of America (www.uswa.org), which isn't
typically considered on the
cutting edge of technology, is doing more than most unions, he
says.
During a recent strike against Continental General Tire in
Charlotte, N.C., for instance, the USWA targeted the tire
distributors, which included Wal-Mart Stores. To let shoppers know
about its strike, the USWA posted its signs, brochures and fliers
online -- in four languages -- so any union could download the
material and use it. The unions didn't have to go to the printer
and didn't have to ship the literature; it was easily available at
the touch of a button. Suddenly, there were simultaneous
demonstrations hitting distributors, helping the union gain more
leverage by increasing pressure on target companies, Clements
says.
Union members around the country also downloaded the literature to
picket Ford Motor dealerships, because Ford uses Continental
General tires on its new cars, says Marco Trbovich, assistant to
the president of the USWA in Pittsburgh. The unions told the
dealers they wouldn't stop protesting until the dealers asked Ford
to find another supplier.
Trbovich didn't think the easy-to-obtain signs were such an
exciting development. But to employers they're a big worry.
"You go into the computer, hit an attachment and, boom, you have a
little banner there," says Susan M. Connelly, client services
department representative at PTI Labor Research
(www.ptilaborresearch.com), a
Houston-based firm that researches
union activities on behalf of management clients that fight union
drives. The banners that appeared frequently during the recent
Boeing strike made it appear to the community that the Society of
Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (www.speea.org)
had a lot of support, Connelly says.
The Web has also allowed union locals to stay in better contact
with each other, Clements notes. In the case of Continental
General, unions around the world began to get involved in the
North Carolina labor dispute, in which the company had 1,450
striking workers. Workers at the South African plant, for example,
went on a wildcat strike. Other union locals picketed the German
consulates and embassies about the labor practices at the German-
based company, creating real pressure back at home, Clements says.
The cybercampaign also focused on getting tire customers to e-mail
Continental General, Clements adds. The union provided the
company's e-mail on each brochure.
After nearly a year on strike, the employees won a six-year
contract with pension improvements, wage increases across the
board and a cost-of-living increase that's worth about $3,000 per
employee per year.
The company seemed surprised that one local union in Charlotte,
N.C., could win a strike against a big international company,
according to Trbovich.
Michael Polovick, director of corporate human resources at
Continental General, disputed the notion that the union's use of
the Internet, including the creation of a site dedicated to the
strike, brought any pressure to bear. It's no different than
posting a sign on a bulletin board or publishing a newsletter, he
says. The Web site may have served to buoy the strikers' spirits,
Polovick says, but he adds that he isn't aware of a customer of
any magnitude that told Continental General officials that they
better settle the dispute or it was buying its tires elsewhere. It
was little more than a nuisance for the dealers.
The viral effect
Maybe so, but union organizers also are finding ways to use the
Internet to make labor action a reality for huge groups of workers
across multiple employers.
Orell Fitzsimmons, state director at the Service Employees
International Union (www.seiu.org) Local 100
in Houston, who has
his sights set on organizing a big group of nurses, says the first
thing he does when he begins an organizing campaign is collect e-
mail addresses. That way, he can send out messages every day. It's
fast, easy and unobtrusive. "That way you don't have to go to the
parking lot," he says. "Or stand out in the sleet and rain and get
harassed by security."
But electronic organizing doesn't work for all groups, because
some people don't have a computer. Nursing home workers, for
instance, don't generally have computers, so they still have to be
contacted the old-fashioned way.
Nurses, in contrast, tend to be online, and they like a lot of
information. The SEIU, therefore, set up chat rooms so it could
talk to nurses who are already represented by the union. But
Fitzsimmons says the questions are screened because the union has
had some trouble with managers "mucking up" the chat room by
posing as unhappy union nurses.
Internet organizing has also opened up a new range of electronic
activism, says Jeffrey Fisher, co-chairman of the Chicago local of
the National Writers Union (www.nwu.org). The
union sends out
notices to its members on important pieces of legislation, such as
ergonomics and free-lance writer rights, to encourage members to
contact their senators and representatives.
And the link to the Web has opened the door to many more new
members. Matt Westendorf, membership development director in New
York City, estimates that one-third to one-half of new members
come from its site these days. The NWU's Webmaster, a technical
writer, has linked the site to a lot of sites typically visited by
writers, Westendorf says. Consequently, the union has grown to
5,700 members, an increase of about 2,000 in the past five years.
Traditionally, unions have been organized around a single
employer. But unions have been sprouting up recently -- such as
the NWU and WashTech --- that are representing people who work for
a variety of employers. While the Internet has made that kind of
organizing easier, organizing outside of a traditional collective
bargaining contract also creates another challenge: how to collect
dues.
The NWU solves that problem by providing many of its services,
such as compensation survey results, strictly to members. Members
need an access code to get that salary information from the
union's Internet site.
WashTech affiliated with the Communication Workers of America
(www.cwa-union.org) a year ago and is now
receiving financial
support from the large union. Courtney says he believes the site
eventually will be self-sustaining through voluntary memberships,
akin to the way the Sierra Club raises money. It's clear that
members need to feel as if they're getting value-added benefits,
so Courtney is thinking about offering low-cost training programs
that will allow members to keep up-to-date in a cost-effective
way.
Research made simple
The Internet has also made it easier for a union such as WashTech
to do some old-fashioned detective work. The site discovered that
Microsoft had secretly rated its contract workers and directed its
members to the site. After Microsoft cut off access, Courtney
petitioned the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries
(www.wa.gov/lni) to allow the contractors
access, because the
state allows employees to see their personnel records. An agency
official agreed that the workers do indeed have a right to access,
but Microsoft is fighting that initial ruling because it believes
the contractors should not be classified as its employees.
Microsoft collects routine customer feedback about its contractors
much like restaurant patrons are asked to comment about the food
and service they receive, says Dan Leach, a Microsoft spokesman.
But they're not Microsoft employees, he says, so it's not a
personnel file.
Besides, Leach says, the Department of Labor and Industries has
never notified the Redmond, Wash., software company that it
considers the records to be employee personnel files. Leach adds
that it isn't Microsoft's place to have an opinion about whether
its contractors should join a union.
As for the new minimum standards for the contracting companies
that do business with Microsoft, Leach says they were put into
place to ensure contractors have good benefits so the companies
can attract the very best workers.
But the phenomenon of online organizing has Microsoft, which has
seen its stock market value swell thanks to the growth of the
Internet, and other employers like it pulling out their hair.
The Web has made it so much easier for employees to find a union
to represent them that all a disgruntled worker has to do is check
the Web, and nearly every union along with many locals has its own
site, says Rob Leinwand, an employment lawyer at Littler Mendelson
(www.littler.com), a San Francisco-based
law firm that fights
union campaigns for its client companies.
That's right, says the SEIU's Fitzsimmons, who adds that he gets a
lot of leads from angry employees surfing the Web -- including a
recent one from a Houston Museum of Fine Arts employee who was
shopping for union representation.
The very workers whom unions are targeting -- young, low-wage
earners -- are exactly the people who are tied into the Internet
culture, Leinwand says. In San Francisco, for example, the
International Longshoremen's Association (www.ila2000.org)
is
using the Internet to organize bicycle messengers.
In addition, PTI recently produced a video for employers called
<I>The State of the Unions</I>, in which it chronicles the AFL-
CIO's (www.aflcio.org) goal of putting a
computer into every union
home in America by offering low-cost hardware and inexpensive
monthly Internet access. That way, the video explains in a somber
tone, union members can be mobilized overnight to participate in
protests and boycotts. PTI showed the video at a human resources
conference recently.
It's that shift in organizing tactics that has made employers
nervous.
The rise of electronic organizing poses some murky legal questions
that likely will end up being decided by the National Labor
Relations Board (www.nlrb.gov).
Federal labor laws allow a union to solicit during breaks and
nonworking hours. But it's a complicated matter when it comes to
e-mail. After all, the computers belong to the companies, which
have a right to regulate their use. However, unlike a personal
visit from a union representative that can be easily tracked, it's
not clear whether employees were at work or at home when they read
their e-mail messages from the union, according to Leinwand.
And to further complicate the situation, many companies have
policies that allow employees to send and receive personal e-mail.
Under those circumstances, a company can't stop employees from
receiving e-mail from a union any more than it can stop employees
from receiving e-mail from their relatives.
And the Internet also opens up another interesting legal issue:
Can managers snoop around on union organizing sites?
IBM employees, who are trying to organize with the help of the
CWA, put a notice on one of their sites -- the IBM Union Home Page
(www.ibmunion.com) -- that the site is a
union meeting place and
federal labor law forbids managers from spying on union meetings.
A roomful of management lawyers got a big laugh when they saw the
unfair labor practice warning, PTI's Connelly says. But notices
such as that may discourage some employers from looking.
It doesn't scare the managers at IBM, according to Ginny Roara
baugh, the IBM Union Home Page's Webmaster. She says that after
posting the times and locations for signups in the IBM parking
lots, security officers would close the gates and security
vehicles would be parked around the signup site.
Roarabaugh says in the early days, when she didn't use her name on
the Web site, her manager told her he knew she was behind it,
because another manager had investigated who had purchased the
site. There wasn't much the union could do to keep managers off
the site or even tell whether they were looking, Roara baugh says,
who used to work for IBM as a performance analyst, but still owns
the site. Sometimes it wasn't so bad to have the managers looking,
because they might be tempted to provide secret information.
The theory behind discouraging spying on union gatherings is to
prevent managers from finding out which employees may be union
supporters, says Patrick Flynn, an employment lawyer in Houston
who represents unions. But if the site doesn't require a password
to enter and there is no indication of who is a union supporter,
it would be a stretch to call management cruising a union site an
unfair labor practice, he says.
A two-way street
The Internet hasn't been all bad for employers. Sometimes, that's
where they can get some good information themselves.
Unions that have had troubled pasts and have vowed to clean
themselves up, such as the LIUNA and the International Brotherhood
of Teamsters (www.teamster.org), sometimes
post examples of
transgressions on "reform" Web sites, Connelly says.
For example, one of the reform sites discussed how a union
official was found with his hand in the cookie jar, so to speak,
by spending members' dues on fancy sports cars and exotic
vacations. The sites also routinely discuss some embezzlement
problems at their local unions.
PTI downloads the details, files them and then hauls them out when
that union begins an organizing drive at one of PTI's clients.
WashTech's Courtney hopes he never has union problems like that.
But PTI still has its antennas up and is watching unions such as
WashTech because their influence is far greater than their
membership rosters. WashTech may not have a union hall, host
political confabs or even have many members -- 260 at last count -
- but it's got clout. "Legislative aides call saying, 'What's the
deal? We're getting hundreds of e-mail on this bill,' " Courtney
recounts, after posting legislative alerts on the Web site.
That muscle gives WashTech the ability to shape policy, Courtney
says. Legislators know the Web site speaks to a large constituency
and they're paying attention to how WashTech weighs in on issues,
he says.
For unions to be successful, they have to use technology, Courtney
says. That's a lot more powerful than owning a union hall in a bad
part of town.
Getting the word out fast
By L.M. Sixel
When it comes to labor battles, union leaders sometimes prove that
they know more about moving at Web speed than the managers they
are fighting.
During an organizing drive at several Borders Books & Music
(www.borders.com) stores, company officials
took the old fashioned
route and got their messages cleared through several channels,
such as the legal department and human resources, before
distributing them to the employees.
It wasn't fast enough to keep up with the lightning speed of
electronic messages coming out of the United Food and Commercial
Workers Union, which was trying to organize the workers.
The employees set up their own site so they could chat with other
Borders' employees across the country about their problems, says
Elizabeth Belan, public relations coordinator for the union's
Local 881, in Oak Brook, Ill.
And then it didn't help that an internal memo from Borders' "Union
Awareness Training for Borders Managers" found its way onto the
organizing employees' site.
In the section "What can be done to avoid unionization in my
store," the memo explained how managers can overcome employees'
feelings of being underpaid and overqualified even though "in most
cases they are," and how to tactfully bring up to employees
exactly how much it would cost to join a union and other
"negatives."
When the memo surfaced it fueled the drive to continue organizing,
Belan says. The document crystallized for many employees a
business reality -- that the company wasn't as much centered on
family friendliness as it was on the bottom line, she says.
It was a surprise when the memo appeared on the Web, admits Ann
Binkley, manager of public relations at Borders in Ann Arbor,
Mich.. But that was about four years ago when the Internet was
fairly new. Now, it wouldn't be such a shock, she says.
Indeed, this is a Web tale without a happy ending forhe unions.
The organizing drive ended with four stores voting to join the
union, but employees later dropped their union affiliation in
"decertification" elections. There was so much turnover, Belan
says, noting that nearly all the employees who had originally
supported the union got frustrated and quit. The new employees
didn't know the problems the employees had previously, so they
decided to drop their union affiliation, she says.
Web speeds up union networking
By L.M. Sixel
For union leaders, who you know sometimes isn't as important as
what you know. An important part of any organizing drive is
uncovering volumes of information about a company. Typically, a
union sends in a "salt" posing as a regular employee to find out
the ownership structure, where the offices are located and the
number of employees.
And now that information is easily available on the Web.
"Companies are proud of themselves, and they put it on the
Internet," says E. Dale Wortham, president of the Harris County
AFL-CIO (www.aflcio.org) in Houston.
Wortham says that while trying to organize the workers at Houston-
based Quietflex Manufacturing, an air duct maker owned by Goodman
Holding, he gleaned more company information in two days by
searching the Web than he would have in two months by speaking
with a salt. He says he uncovered such gems as the polo pony-
playing habits of a top Goodman officer, the estimated wealth of
the private company and the amount it gave in charitable
donations.
That kind of detail is important in an organizing campaign,
especially when the workers are paid low wages, he notes. "You can
never have too much information," he says.
Wortham uncovered another important detail from his Web search:
The Houston plant has a union-represented plant in Iowa. All it
took was a call from the Sheet Metal Workers, the union leading
the organizing drive, and the workers in Iowa began wearing
buttons.
"We support the Quietflex workers," Wortham says. "It would have
taken six months to find out about that union connection if he had
to network the old-fashioned way."
Dan Daniel, president and chief executive of Quietflex, says he
hasn't seen any direct impact on the company from the union's use
of the Internet. But he is feeling some heat because of the
information the union collected and turned over to the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission (www.eeoc.gov).
Agency
officials, sitting at picnic tables in a park near the northwest
Houston plant, recorded 83 grievances from Hispanic workers after
the union notified the federal agency that the employees were
complaining about natural origin discrimination and retaliation.
The Hispanic workers, objecting to their wages and working
conditions, simultaneously walked off the job. Workers contended
that Quietflex treated them like second-class citizens, making
them do things not required of other ethnics -- such as clean the
lunchroom on their own time.
Daniel read letters that union officials sent to Houston political
leaders, thanking the EEOC for becoming involved. "It's
extraordinary," he says.
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