Third Wave CyberUnions - or No Unions (cont.)

Labor at Bat.

Labor is challenged to renew itself once again, as not since the 1930s, when it had to "invent" large-scale industrial unionism, and the mid-1990s, when it opted for the invigorating "New Voice" vision of the Sweeney team. The head of that team, after taking "the hitherto taboo step of saying that labor is in danger of becoming 'irrelevant,'" authorized an immediate step-up in the use of informatics. (Heckscher; xv)

Accordingly, in 1996, the AFL-CIO held its first major meeting to discuss Labor and the Internet. In 1998, an ad hoc committee of 12 Information Technology officers of the most progressive unions published a White Paper on making the most of computer uses. Similarly, a group of specialists inside the AFL-CIO were busy that year studying how to offer an "Intelligent Agent" to unionists.

Many American unionists, perhaps as many as 4-million, are on-line. At the same time, however, of the 74 international unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO, as late as the Fall of 1998 only 44 of the largest and most progressive variety had Web sites. Nearly half (30) were not yet participating in the biggest change in communications in modern times.

Accordingly, by about 2003 or earlier the matter should be clear: The American labor movement will either be employing computers with enviable finesse, or it will have become an inconsequential has-been, the organizational equivalent of "road kill on the Information Superhighway."

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