Last weekend's blog post on the eBay sellers boycott generated some very interesting comments, and I want to follow up with some more thoughts on organizing online workers.

As background, I've been arguing for a few months now that labor unions should do more to organize online workers.  The argument goes that folks whose primary income is derived from activities as diverse as blogging, eBay auctioneering, Second Life merchandising, and so forth, compose a new industry segment which is already quite large and will grow in the future.  Furthermore, despite the fact that these individuals are hard to organize due to the nature of online work, their livelihood is essentially at the mercy of a small group of executives at web companies like eBay and Linden Labs.  Therefore, they comprise a group who have important collective needs, and who would benefit tremendously from workplace organizing.

While I still think most of this argument holds up, I'm less and less certain that a traditional labor union is the best vehicle for organizing online workers, for a variety of reasons.  The primary reason is that online workers are not actually employees of the companies whose services they are working with; they are consumers of those services.  Thus, the eBay sellers "strike" is not a strike at all, but a boycott.  The more I think about this round peg/square hole problem, the more I believe that the solution is to just build a round hole.  In other words, alongside a thriving labor movement, we need a powerful and well-organized consumer movement.  Follow me across the flip for more, and tune in tomorrow for some practical follow-up.

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.

A few weeks ago I took a look at examples of unions using Facebook, partially inspired by Change to Win's Smack the CEO Facebook application.  Over the last few days, a mini-revolt of sorts has rolled through the Facebook labor activist community, and I've got good news: our side won!

The story begins with Derek Blackadder, a Canadian labor activist.  Blackadder tried using Facebook to organize a group of workers as his friend, and ran up against Facebook's friend limits.  Despite Derek's best efforts to stay within the bounds of Facebook's rules, he was eventually and summarily banned from the social network.  John Wood, an activist in London, sprang to Blackadder's defense, posting to his blog about the story and eventually starting a Facebook group to petition for reinstatement.  Eric Lee, who helps run LabourStart, sent an email to LabourStart readers encouraing them to join the group and email Facebook administrators.

The response was quick and effective.  Within eight hours of Lee's email, over 2,400 Facebook users signed up for the group (membership now stands at 2,683).  Within a day, Blackadder had been reinstated.

Yesterday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual survey of union membership in the US, and found that union density as a percentage of the overall workforce grew, to 12.1%.  This growth is nothing short of stunning.  Union membership as a percentage of the workforce has been in decline for every year since the BLS began collecting data, except two - this year, and 2005, when membership held steady.  The last few years worth of numbers are as follows: 2007 - 12.1%; 2006 - 12.0%; 2005 - 12.5%; 2004 - 12.5%.

 The surey is based on a sample of 60,000 households.  The survey's technical note warns that "union membership data for 2007 are not strictly comparable with data for 2006 and earlier years because of the introduction of updated population controls with the release of January data."  However, it appears that these same adjustments didn't do much to change other workforce numbers, like the unemployment rate.

This isn't exactly a full-blown labor links roundup, but I've recently found a couple examples of unions using Facebook in interesting ways, and I thought I'd share them here.

First is Change to Win's Facebook app, Smack the CEO.  Written by CtW online communications director Jason Lefkowitz, Smack the CEO is a fairly straightforward game that allows you to compare your salary to that of prominent union-busting CEOs.  When you sign up, the app asks for your salary.  After signing up, you're asked to invite friends to join you in the game.  As you recruit more friends to the application, their salaries add up; hopefully, after recruiting about a bazillion friends, your combined salaries add up to the CEO's.  For disclosure's sake - I've worked with Jason a bit on fine-tuning the instructions and help text for this application, so I have a bit of a stake in its success (although not a monetary one).  Although at first I was a little put off by the way it asks for your salary up front, more and more I think it's appropriate.  The most popular Facebook applications are really, really simple - they basically involve ornamenting your profile, playing a game, or dressing up the traditional Facebook wall/poke mechanism.  This application falls into the game genre squarely, and still it manages to a) educate Facebook users about the wage gap, and b) give users some idea of what union organizing is actually about - adding up enough of your friends to take on powerful people.  That's pretty impressive, considering the fairly rigid formula for success as a Facebook application.

Incidentally, Jason and I have discussed using Facebook for more elaborate quasi-organizing.  I'd really like to see something like that take shape.  For example, I'd love to see a some kind of widget which allows coworkers to gripe about work online, perhaps with some anonymization to prevent recriminations at work.  Or I'd love to see a "sign a union card" Facebook application, perhaps similar to Younionize but with the advantage of higher exposure.  I've suggested similar kinds of approaches to online union organizing before, but I think it would take a fairly sophisticated online community builder to make it work, since my hunch is that most people are generally very cautious about openly discussing work gripes online.

The second example of unions using Facebook recently was this clever guerrilla event which takes advantage of Facebook's new Pages feature.  The idea is to support the WGA strike by signing up as a fan of one of the shows which is currently on strike; I chose The Office.  Once the friend request is approved, you can pursue all kinds of mayhem, light writing comments on the show's wall, or changing your user photo to some graphic which indicates your support of the writers.  Of course, the idea is to embarrass the networks and encourage them to negotiate in good faith already.  This is a pretty simple idea, but I think it could have some potential.  Why not replicate this same tactic with WalMart, Verizon Wireless, American Eagle, or FedEx - all of which are currently targets of various union campaigns?  Moreover, it seems to me that this kind of campaign opens up a new avenue in eActivism applications.  Currently eActivism for non-profit advocacy organizations is limited to some pretty simple functionality - make a donation, signup for an email list, send an email to your congress person, and sign a petition (and actually, those last three actions are pretty much identical).  But why not expand the capabilities of non-profit eActivism applications to include this kind of Facebook activism?  It'll be interesting to see if the large non-profit web developers like Convio, Kintera or Grassroots Enterprise pick up the slack on this.

Finally, while it's not on Facebook, I encourage you to take American Rights at Work's FedUp with FedEx pledge: don't ship with FedEx this holiday season, unless they change their union-busting ways and allow their drivers to unionize.

Anything else interesting in the world of labor on the intertubes?  Add a link in the comments!

I wanted to write something clever and brilliant about the WGA writers' strike, but I see Nathan Newman already beat me to the punch.  Newman's take is that the writers' strike showcases perfectly how unions make sense for professionals.  In our economy, technological innovation radically reinvents the work of professional workers at a blinding clip.  For the writers, the introduction of home video in the 80's was followed quickly by DVD's in the late 90's, and Internet video delivery in the last few years.  This video explains perfectly what all these technologies mean for the writers:

With this kind of technological backdrop, effective legislation that guarantees fair rights for workers and enables industry growth is nearly impossible to craft.  The government simply doesn't move quickly enough, and technological change is accelerating, meaning the problem will only get worse.  Union contracts serve as a kind of second tier of law, allowing workers and management to creatively restructure the industry.  When workers and management work together creatively, they can determine the appropriate rights and compensation for workers while keeping up with the pace of technological change and maintaining their companies' competitive edge.  Union contracts are typically renegotiated every couple of years, whereas the government rewrites things like intellectual property law very rarely.  As a result, as Newman puts it, "contracts look quite different in the construction industry compared to the auto industry compared to Hollywood compared to baseball", as they should.

I think it's particularly interesting that one of the first shows to be affected by the strike, The Office, serves as a giant exclamation point on this argument.  Anyone who's seen the show knows that it is a constant reminder of exactly the reason for professional unionism.  Corporate policies are frequently bone-headed, and corporate management all too frequently promotes the wrong person into the wrong job.  On top of that, many offices are fraught with many tiny instances of worker abuse which by themseles aren't enough to inspire any kind of drastic action like quitting; but taken together, these thousands of paper cuts create an abusive or simply unpleasant environment which could be made considerably more pleasant with a formal grievance system, like that provided by a union and a responsive shop steward.  If you've ever worked in an office, it's easy enough for you to watch the show and sympathize with this basic point.  But if you're an office manager or corporate supervisor, you should pay even closer attention.  After all, the lack of union representation costs the fictional Dunder Mifflin Scranton branch dearly: sales are lost, good salespeople quit, and precious time is wasted routinely, all becaue the fictional office workers don't have any way in which to protest their condition without fear of being fired.  As if the point is too subtle as is, the show examined the boneheadedness of coporate union-busting quite explicitly in a recent episode.

I'm also struck, as Digby is, by the solidarity between professionals and blue-collar workers in California.  If just compensation and sane working conditions are the meat of a union contract, this kind of class-crossing solidarity is the potatoes and gravy.  White-collar and blue-collar unionism are natural complements, since white-collar and blue-collar workers often work side-by-side (in the case of Hollywood, there are several tiers: union actors from SAG, union writers from WGA, and union electricians form IATSE.)  The ability to work together with people of a different class background is a rare but important benefit in an increasingly segregated country, and outside of the labor movement, there are very few places which offer that kind of opportunity.  More than the intangible benefit of solidarity, though, white- and blue-collar unions can be powerful economic allies: one group of workers can help the other in contract and organizing disputes, by refusing to cross picket lines, slowing-down work, boycotts, and similar means.  There's no reason that white- and blue-collar workers should struggle separately under the weight of corporate greed; joint organizing can alleviate economic stress for both groups.

If you'd like to support the writers, visit United Hollywood to keep track of the strike and find out how you can help.  Let's all hope the writers succeed in getting their fair share of residuals, from DVD rentals, Internet downloads, and so-called "promos".  Let's also hope that the WGA strike serves as a call to professionals in many different industries to seriously consider the benefits of union representation.

I've got some great new labor links to share with you this week!  Check 'em out, and if there's something you don't see here, add it in the comments...

• A huge victory in New York: 28,000 child care workers joined the United Federation of Teachers, with help from both ACORN and Gov. Eliot Spitzer.  This is great news, both for the workers and the children they care for, as standards of care for children, and quality of life for the workers, will both rise, and the city as a whole will benefit.

• American Rights at Work recently re-launched its website; they are now using the open source Joomla content management system.  I know this is a very geeky thing to get excited about, but I'm lovin' their new RSS feed - it's the kind of thing that makes a blogger's day.  Check out the new site and, while you're there, flip through ARAW's new report on Verizon's Broken Promises (PDF).

• An alert reader pointed me to U1TV on YouTube - it's a channel dedicated to pro-labor video clips.  Bravo to David Williams for putting these videos online, and for adding some great Billy Bragg songs to the soundtrack.  Next up?  I'd love to see some videos about how to deal with abusive bosses, how to contact and join a union, what a union is about, etc.  Even better?  I'd like to see some of these videos make their way into mass media TV shows.

• A second round of bravos for David Williams are again in order for the recent launch of NoBusters, a site which exposes union-busting and leverages some of the videos on U1TV.

• There's a great piece in Alternet this week about Young Workers United, a new labor group which seeks to protect young workers from workplace abuse.  In These Times has also published an interesting look at the Change to Win labor federation, asking whether the split from AFL-CIO resulted in tangible results.

• Last but certainly not least - some of you may remember my series of posts about an idea for an anti-union-busting blog aimed at employers and business owners.  Well, we're all grown up now, with our own Google Group and everything.  But we're still recruiting.  So if you want to join an interesting project to help turn the tide against union busters, sign up!  Just request to join the group (either in the comments or directly through the Google Groups interface) and I'll get you signed up.

Got anything else to share?  Drop it in the comments!

Despite a brief hiatus last week, my impromptu labor links roundup appears to be picking up steam!  There are a bunch of interesting things to read this week, so be sure to check them out:

• Another key court case is coming down the pike: New York New York Hotel, LLC.  The key issue in the case boils down to who is an "employee" under the definition of the National Labor Relations Act.  Prof. Ellen Dannin, whose writing I linked to in the last round-up, wrote about this case at Working Life and filed an amicus brief arguing that NLRA defines employee as "any employee", not just the employee of the workplace being organized.  This is a key point: the framers of NLRA explicitly intended for the act to create solidarity across workplaces, not just within a workplace, and defined "employee" expansively in order to allow employees of one workplace to help organize employees of another.  From a legal perspective, this case is very interesting, because it highlights just how broadly NLRA overthrows basic common law concepts like "employee".  From an organizing perspective, this case is incredibly important, because it could, expand the rights to organize considerably, or limit them.  Check out Prof. Dannin's post, and an excerpt from her amicus brief, here.

• Global Labor Strategies posted a comprehensive critique of the UAW-GM deal, which argues that UAW missed an opportunity to "strategically retreat", thereby sowing seeds for later victories, in this case.  The post also includes some interesting labor history.  With the GM deal apparently approved and the Chrysler deal perhaps moving in the same direction, the VEBA-style agreements appear to have considerable momentum.  Nevertheless, anyone interested in making sense of the deal, and possibly getting a glimpse of the Ford contract, should certainly check out this analysis.

• A new site, We Are Labor, which aggregates labor news on the blogosphere has just launched.  Similar in some ways to the LabourStart US, We Are Labor focuses less on news accounts, and more on aggregating blog posts from a variety of sources - union blogs, progressive blogs, etc.  The site is heavy on RSS and aggregation, so fire up your blogreader and check it out!

• In news which is a bit old by now, the labor endorsements have been mildly disappointing to the Edwards campaign.  Edwards, whose chosen base constituency could be described as "labor plus netroots", has picked up some key endorsements (notably Carpenters, USW and UAW, as well as a raft of state SEIU councils).  But Clinton and Obama have combined to deny him some very big endorsements, notably the national SEIU endorsement, and rack up a couple of their own - most recently and notably, Clinton's endorsement from the AFT.  Although I generally try to keep tabs on what's up in the world of labor and am very interested in organizing and strategies for building the strength and reach of the labor movement, I don't really follow the union endorsement stories.  I'm also firmly undecided in terms of who I support for president (although major bonus points to anyone who can guess how I voted on the DFA endorsement ballot - and you have to get my first, second and third choices right.)  Still, I think Edwards has really gotten a raw deal overall.  Edwards is probably the most outspoken pro-labor presidential candidate we've seen in years, and will see for quite a long time.  My very simplistic take on the endorsements race is: if Edwards can't win broad support from labor, who on earth can?  How would Eugene Debs do in today's upside-down world of interest group politics?  Just a bit of a rant, not a real endorsement.  Still, let the presidential flame wars begin!

If you've got other labor-related tidbits to share, or if you want to try and guess how I voted in the DFA endorsement, chime in using the comments!