The Creation of the E-Union: The Use of ICT by Trade Unions

The starting point for this paper is a quote from "Business@The Speed Of Thought", the 1999 book written by the Microsoft Chief Executive Bill Gates:

Here on the edge of the 21st century, a fundamental new rule of business is that the Internet changes everything.

From this proposition, two conclusions can be drawn for the trade union movement. First, trade unions - like all other bodies in our society - have to re-invent themselves as e-organisations. This means that trade unions have not simply to use computers to assist certain activities, but to put the Internet at the centre of their purpose and strategy.

Second, this re-invention will affect everything that trade unions do and ought to do. This means that information and communications technologies (ICT) will influence profoundly all current union activities and, even more so, all future activities if unions are to survive and prosper.

Seven strands

The structure of this paper is to look at seven strands of trade union activity and, in each case, examine how ICT can be used to benefit trade unions and to give some practical examples of relevant activity by British trade unions.

1. Internal communications and transactions
2. External communications and transactions
3. Membership activities
4. Conference organisation
5. Bargaining
6. Education and training
7. International work

The seven strands of the e-union

INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS AND TRANSACTIONS

First, let us look at how ICT will affect internal communications and transactions:

• All memos should be electronic. The effort, cost and time involved in producing paper memos means that they should be redundant

• All meeting papers should be electronic. Some unions now issue agendas, papers and minutes for Executive meetings in electronic form (but often they issue them all in paper form as well!).

• All diaries should be electronic. It should be possible for PAs to access the diaries of all Officers and Executive members in order to arrange meetings when colleagues are free.

• All expense claims should be electronic. They already are in companies like BT.

• Electronic notice boards should be used for information and announcements. Some unions already put all personnel notices on the Head Office intranet.

EXTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS AND TRANSACTIONS

Second, let us consider the impact on external communications and transactions:

The obvious starting point here is the union's web site which enables a union to communicate directly with all its individual members and indeed others interested in the union's information and views. However, the next stage is to make such web sites both personalised and interactive.

How can a union personalise its own website? Well, when an individual union member registers on the site and provides certain basic information about him or her self, the website will welcome them by name and will direct them to those parts of the site which are most relevant, taking account of factors such as the individual's industry or occupation or gender.

To make a site more interactive, the individual should be able to search the site for specific information, e-mail specific union officials, and conduct transactions. The model is Amazon [see www.amazon.co.uk]. When a regular user accesses this site, it welcomes him or her by name, makes recommendations based on known interests, and enables ordering of goods with just one click.

• Union web sites should become much more topical. In the larger unions at least, there should be a news story every day. There could be a monthly report of the Executive - the Public & Commercial Services Union does this [see www.pcs.org.uk].
  
  
• Union web sites should host discussion groups which enable their members to discuss with each other issues of current interest or controversy in the union. This might be the union's current pay claim or some future policy initiative.
  
  
• Union web sites should also host electronic networks, enabling members with specific interests or commonalities to interact together.
  
  
• Web sites should increasingly enable the electronic purchase of goods and services from the union centrally or locally. On the TUC web site [see www.tuc.org.uk], one can effectively buy gas and electricity from Scottish Power.
  
  
• All branch communications should be electronic. Connect is one union which already does this [again see www.connectuk.org].
  
  
• All accident claims should be electronic. A secure part of the web site should have standard templates for each kind of claim.
  
  
• Finally, it is most important that there should be a careful integration of on-line and other communications. The address of the union's web site should be on every piece of off-line material: headed paper, business cards, recruitment packs, campaign literature, conference reports. Every major feature in the union's newspaper or journal should give the address of a relevant part of the union's own web site or another web site that will provide further information on that topic.

MEMBERSHIP ACTIVITIES

Third, we should look at how information technologies can shape those activities which revolve around organising, recruiting and servicing individual members which, after all, is the heart of trade union activity:

• As a starting point, every Branch of every union should have a web site which is constantly up-dated. At the last count, there were only around 250 trade union web sites in Britain.
  
  
• Unions should make greater use of electronic organising, so that for instance, if we can obtain e-mail addresses of potential members in companies that will not provide us physical access, we can communicate with the potential member electronically and directly. Often before we have recognition, there will be no branch structure, so we could communicate with members at home by e-mail. We might also see the development of the virtual branch.
  
  
• We should enable electronic registration for membership. It ought to be possible simply for a potential member to provide credit card details, so that the membership registration is completed on screen within seconds. There might be some concerns about accepting membership applications without verification techniques, but one could always make formal activation of membership rights subject to an appropriate checking procedure.
  
  
• Unions should be looking at the development of membership smart cards which would enable the membership card to contain a great deal of information about the union, its activities and its services and possibly allow the member to conduct transactions.
  
  
• We should permit the electronic change of membership details which would involve the individual member having access to his or her own membership details and no others. Over time, this would cut down the incredibly time-consuming and costly process of union head offices constantly up-dating membership details and indeed the likelihood is that it would ensure that such membership records were much more up-to-date than under current arrangements.
  
  
• Equally, Branches should be able to download full details of their own Branch members from the Head Office membership system. The Labour Party already allows constituency parties to do this through its new Labour People system [see www.labour.org.uk]
  
  
• We should be using carefully targeted, electronic circulation lists. Increasingly, union members do not identify with the union as a whole or even the local branch, but with members in the same company or employment unit and what they would really like is information from the union which is specifically targeted to their place of work delivered in timely and accessible way. Collating e-mail addresses of members in different companies or units into group lists, union officials at local, regional or national level can deliver such information at almost no cost and almost instantaneously.

CONFERENCE ORGANISATION

Fourth, these technologies can have a major impact on the nature of trade union conferences:

• The agenda and papers for all union conference should be provided not simply to the delegates themselves, but should be made available to all members via the web site. If there is a need to password protect such papers, this can easily be organised, but in general unions should operate on the basis of a policy of open government. One union which is particularly good in making available to its members in electronic form information about its annual conference is BECTU [see www.bectu.org.uk].
  
  
• The conference proceedings themselves should make much more use of PowerPoint presentations and the provision of screen-based information.
  
  
• There should be live reporting of conference proceedings on the union's web site, so that, once delivered, the speeches of the leadership and guests are immediately put in text form on the web site and an on-going record is transmitted of all those motions which have been carried, defeated or amended. The next step of course would be to have the live web casting of the proceedings of the conference.
  
  
• Finally, as regards union conferences, the web can be used to provide branches and members with an on-going report-back concerning the progressing and implementation of conference policies and decisions.

THE BARGAINING PROCESS

In effect, the 'bread and butter' activity of most unions is the bargaining process whereby, usually each year, pay and other conditions are negotiated between union and management. Therefore, fifthly, we should look at how ICT can impact on the bargaining process:

• The World Wide Web can be a fantastic source for bargaining and company data. At head and regional offices of unions, researchers will use the web to collate relevant information for the professional trade union negotiators. However, local branches can access either the union's own web site and other web sites such as those of the Labour Research Department [see www.lrd.org.uk] to obtain bargaining and other data to enable them to conduct their own more local negotiations.
  
  
• Increasingly we will see electronic balloting of members on agreements and proposals for industrial action. Indeed, in the future, we are likely to see increasing forms of action against managements by unions which have an electronic dimension.

EDUCATION AND TRAINING

Sixthly, ICT technologies are ready-made for application to the education and training functions of trade unions:

• For a start, registration for courses should be electronic, confirmation of registration should be electronic, and the provision of supporting documentation should be electronic.
  
  
• For the courses themselves, more use should be made of ICT technologies with PowerPoint presentations by lecturers and use of PCs by students becoming standard. Every course should have associated with it a section of the union's web site, where all the relevant information can be posted and where lecturers and students can continue to maintain contact with each other and have access to up-dated information.
  
  
• Increasingly we will see on-line training programmes operated by unions alone or by unions in partnership with management. This will enable union members, either working from home or in the workplace, to up-date information and skills. One union which has already done more than some in this direction is the Graphical, Paper and Media Union (GPMU) [see www.gpmu.org.uk]. On its web site, it is possible to gain access to the union's training and development handbook and book electronically for attendance on courses.

INTERNATIONAL WORK

The seventh and final union area of activity which we will look at in terms of use of ICT technologies is international work. As companies and economies become more global, this work becomes more and more central to the domestic agenda of an increasing number of trade unions:

• Obviously these technologies - especially through e-mail - enable trade unions to communicate easily across distance and time zones. It used to take a week or more to send mail to some countries and, because of the difference in time zones, telephone conversation between for instance Britain and Australia has been difficult. However, e-mail solves many of these problems.
  
  
• E-mail and the web can enable much more effective co-ordination between unions in different countries in the conduct of joint actions and joint campaigns. One recent successful instance of this was the co-operation between American and European trade unions to combat the proposed take-over of Sprint by MCI WorldCom, which would have created an anti-union telecommunications hegemoth.
  
  
• In the future, we will see some trade union internationals developing their own portals that will enable literally millions of members in hundreds of unions to access information and services on an international basis.

OBSTACLES TO THE E-UNION

What are the obstacles to this kind of e-Union? Obviously, there will be many obstacles to the kind of radical transformation which has been described in this paper. Some of the main ones will be the following :

• Many members will not have access to an Internet terminal. In fact, one of the main bargaining demands of trade unions should be access at work to both the company's Intranet and the wider Internet via company-provided terminals. In some countries, trade unions have gone further and, through their national trade union centre, negotiated special deals for the purchase of personal computers
  
  
• It will be argued that the investments in ICT are too expensive. Certainly IT development requires realistic budgets. However, in many cases, substantial investments have already been made and what effectively we are talking about is beginning to get the maximum benefits from these investments. Real savings can be made by reducing the costs of printing, copying, circulating and posting paper documents.
  
  
• In many unions, there is no authoritative IT strategy. The transformation described here, will only happen if there is strong commitment from the leadership and the exercise is driven by someone with real authority. * The e-Union will present a challenge to existing power structures. In most unions today - as indeed in most organisations today - information and power is concentrated at the top of a hierarchical decision-making structure. However, in truly electronic organisations, information and power are dispersed to those most suited to make the decisions.

WHY THE E-UNION WILL HAPPEN

Notwithstanding the obstacles that will be faced, the e-union will happen, in some instances sooner than others and more easily than others. Some of the compelling reasons that will bring it about include the following :

• We will see an explosion of Internet access. Such access will be not simply through personal computers, but through interactive television sets, mobile telephones, electronic game consoles and a whole variety of new terminals.
  
  
• We will see a collapsing of real costs of hardware, software and usage. Within a matter of years, cost will not really be a deterrent to Internet access; it will only be a matter of whether one has confidence in the use of the technology
  
  
• The membership of trade unions will increasingly demand the levels of services which can only be provided by the type of e-union which described in this paper. Our members will find that, in dealing with other organisations, they are given increasingly speedy and personalised service on a 24 hour 7 day a week basis. They will expect no less from their trade union
  
  
• The final reason why the e-union will happen is that, if it does not, then unions will face e-xtinction. In some countries, as diverse as France, the United States and Hong Kong, trade union membership is already down to 10-15%. Unless we use ICT to modernise and unless we recruit in the new companies and industries created by these technologies, we will have no right to e-xist.

CONCLUSION

It should be made very clear that none of the proposals in this paper is intended to obviate the need for unions to continue to use traditional, face-to-face methods of organising and motivating their members. The appeal is for unions to become more flexible, more inventive, and more modern in how we organise and serve each of our members.

The agenda set out may seem formidable, even intimidating. However, almost every item on that agenda is already in use somewhere - the challenge is to do it all in a systematic, pro-active way.

All unions are already in competition with employers and others to communicate a message and an image and the use of ICT can even up that contest. Indeed, as ICT technologies blur the divisions between industries and jobs, increasingly unions will be in competition with each other for members and services.

In a few years time, much of what is described in this paper will seem commonplace and we will wonder why it took us so long to adopt these technologies and techniques. The time is now and the prize is great.