Last summer, I wrote that the labor movement should begin organizing online workers. It appears that a group of eBay sellers are about to start striking boycotting, without any help from labor unions. At issue is the sudden imposition of policies by eBay which sellers deem harmful to their business. The policies will be imposed starting Feb. 20, and the strike boycott will go from Feb. 18 - 25.
There are a couple of issues at play. One is that fees will increase by as much as 66% for some sellers. Another, apparently far more explosive, issue is that eBay will soon turn off negative and neutral comments, requiring sellers to go through eBay's Security & Resolution Center to report bad behavior. This move will almost certainly tie up sellers in needless bureaucracy, in place of today's simple system for resolving disputes. CNN and Mashable have more. Follow me across the flip for some thoughts on how the labor movement should respond to this development...
Update (2/18): There are a lot of interesting comments below; sorry I didn't get to them earlier. Some of the commenters are pointing out that this action is technically a boycott, not a strike, and that's a fair point; I've corrected the text here accordingly. Note, however, that there's a fine line between the two in this case, and I think that's pretty interesting. More this weekend.
While eBay boycotts aren't new, this one appears to be much larger than previous ones, and sellers appear to be genuinely furious. The boycott is related to the resignation of eBay CEO Meg Whitman, expected in March 2008. (Whitman, incidentally, seems to be a staunch Republican; she was on Romney's campaign and has been considered a cereandidate for CA-Gov in 2010.) Her replacement, John Donahue, initiated the new fee structure and policies earlier this year.
So far eBay doesn't appear worried about the strike boycott, and it's hard to tell whether the company will budge an inch in light of the boycott campaign. More upsetting is the fact that - as far as I can tell by browing around labor blogs - labor unions seem to be entirely unaware of this grassroots strike boycott. That's a real shame, because this could be an opening into a segment of the economy which is not heavily unionized.
There are a variety of interesting challenges in this strike boycott. First, what is the standing of eBay sellers to organize a strike (assuming they might eventually want to form something like a union)? What legal reforms or litigational victories would be necessary for the striking sellers to force recognition and collective bargaining? Moreover, given that the sellers are, for the most part, individuals working independently, how can they be reached and organized effectively?
I'd like to see the labor movement take a crack at some of these challenges, because I think they are the key to organizing a new class of workers which is only going to get larger and the economy becomes increasingly digitized. These are not easy questions to answer, by a long shot, but I think there is a group of workers who are yearning to organize and be recognized, and I think the labor movement should stand in solidarity with them.
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