Traditional union organizing has relied on person-to-person contact, and this will continue to be an important line of communication well into the future.  Unions rely on a very high level of mutual trust between workers, and it's nearly impossible to establish that without face-to-face contact.  Nevertheless, online communication is a priceless tool in the arsenal of any campaign organizer, because it enables workers to look up information on the web in complete anonymity, without any fear of retribution from management.  Moreover, online communication is an efficient way to distribute information to workers are already sympathetic to the union and supportive of the campaign.

A worker who is being actively organized is likely to search for several different types of information:

• Details about the campaign, including news updates, talking points, and background information (e.g., the date of the contract vote, or the proposed text of the contract)
  
• Background information on the union organizing the campaign - i.e., what the union's history is, how it operates, where its key strengths lie, what membership means etc.
  
• Information about unionization in general - what a union is, how the organizing/contracting process works, what kinds of rights union members have, etc.
  

If all of this information is on the web, it's likely to be distributed in a number of different places.  Ideally, every organizing or contracting campaign will have its own website, which pulls together as much of this information as possible (or makes it easy for workers to find the information.)  Moreover, every local and international union should have a website which provides high-quality, easy-to-understand, and easy-to-find background information targeted at workers who are being organized.  Labor federations, working together with union-friendly website companies like Prometheus Labor, might be able to organize large-scale purchases of web development services to make high-quality websites available to campaigns and locals at affordabler rates.

Websites can do much more than simply push information into the hands of workers, of course.  The web is an excellent way to entice people to take online action, or to provide people with the tools they need to take offline action.  Progressives have already learned this lesson and have used it to strengthen, immeasurably, the campaigns of our own candidates.

In any union campaign (except, I guess, the most misguided one), there's likely to be a reasonably big contingent of workers who are sympathetic to the union.  Unions are well-served by tapping into this sympathy and activating workers to take action to support the campaign, for a number of reasons - because it's a way to get necessary work accomplished; because it allows workers to take true ownership of the campaign, and of the union; because it firms up the worker's resolve to see the campaign through to success.  Good union organizers know this lesson well, and will try to weave workers' volunteer efforts into the campaign, as much as possible.

With a little bit of creativity, it's easy to imagine how the web can help entice workers to take action.  It can be used to recruit workers to do a number of necessary tasks: make house calls on other workers; attend a meeting, rally, or other event; help organize an event; research the company, in order to find potential weaknesses; volunteer a personal story, for use in the press; help the campaign of an endorsed politician; contact a public official to ask him or her to support the union's campaign; contribute to a strike fund; and even participate in an action or join an organizing committee.  Moreover, a website can offer workers a chance to sound off on the campaign, letting workers post diaries or comments on blog posts to provide feedback on the campaign.

The technology for making these kinds of "asks" is readily available; a union need only find a good opportunity to use the technology, and deploy it as appropriate.  I've poked around a few campaign websites and, unfortunately, many of them seem to be barren of this kind of interactivity.  That's a real shame, because unions are missing a chance to activate workers.

Many campaigns focus on organizing workers who are unlikely to use the Internet, and in these cases, it's understandable that a union would not bother to develop a website dedicated to the campaign.  Indeed, I'd much rather see a campaign which successfully organizes workers who don't have the means to use the Internet, than a campaign with a shiny new website.  At the same time, it's important to realize that many workers do use the Internet, or have children or friends who do; unions ignore these workers at their peril.  Workers who are actively being organized are highly motivated to seek out information about a union campaign.  If they have access to the Internet - even indirectly, through their children or friends - they are likely to seek out information online.  Whole segments of the union-busting industry are organized around this open secret - firms like Projections, Inc. provide employers with services for developing anti-union websites, as part of the union-busting arsenal.

Unions must do more to communicate with workers online.  They must provide workers with high-quality, easy-to-understand, relevant information, to encourage them to support organizing and contracting campaigns.  Moreover, unions should do more to entice workers to support a campaign.  They can provide their supporters with the tools they need to be effective union activists.  Online communication is a key component to successful organizing in the face of increasingly strident corporate union-busting efforts.