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.

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