In life, efforts usually result in one of three outcomes: you fail, you succeed or, as is usually the case, you do some of both.

The history of the American labor movement defies that seemingly inescapable premise. Despite its position as arguably the leading progressive mass movement in American history and perhaps because of the power and expectations that position raises, our movement has all too frequently failed...abysmally.

The Internet is a classic example.

During the World Wide Web's early history (less than a decade ago) Progressives using the Internet had high hopes for Labor's involvement. Here was a movement with real resources, a pressing need to communicate with its membership and with the rest of the world, and a massive constituency. Its potential target was an industry that was growing explosively through the labor of workers in a wide variety of jobs and work place models: workers who were not only accustomed to collaborative work but understood its importance. After all, the Internet was created and continues to expand based on collaborative work by people all over the world: a living example of what the labor movement has always said about work and its potential and a good starting point for arguing in favor of a union.

It was a perfect fit and we waited anxiously. Nothing happened. Labor dropped the ball.

When you drop something, you pick it up and hopefully that undoes the damage. While the rapid advances of this explosive technology make "picking it up" more difficult, it's still possible. Not only can American Labor play a role in the Internet's future, its role can be decisive. But it has to act now and to do that, it must first identify where it failed and how. Here's what I think.

Direction

Most Internet users don't realize that the Internet is an arena of fierce struggle over its direction and the approaches to the technology's design.

One example is the web site. Labor was slow to get on the Internet bandwagon but today most major unions have websites and most of those are little more that glorified bulletin boards and information sources. They mimic the approach lots of corporations have: the web site's two purposes are to lure customers through top-down presentation and keep them through supportive information.

Important as that is, it's only a fraction of what Internet technology can do and the remaining portion is where an organizing movement can really use it effectively. The whole point of the Internet was and still is to empower the average person to not only read and learn but to write and share thinking, experiences and knowledge. It is, effectively, the most democratic mass communications technology in human history.

But very few labor websites give their organizers, stewards, reps (not to mention rank and file) the opportunity to talk to the rest of the membership. In fact, the potential a site has is to let people who are actually doing the organizing and leading the "shop site" struggles to report on those, make requests for information and support and provoked evaluation, discussion and perhaps emulation of those efforts. Sites can organize workers, allow them to communicate with each other, maintain databases so stewards and organizers can keep track of the people they are working with. The list of possibilities is as wide as the imagination of the users.

If you can't write html (the web's coding language), you can't participate in the content development of most union websites which are usually managed by one person. The content is dependent on that person's skill, limited time and, of course, access to up to date information and the potential wasted.

What's most irritating is that there are exceptions that could serve as role models for fuller site use. Several of the many union web sites we host at People Link require very little management. News and information through these sites is updated through simple, on-line forms - a few boxes and a submit button. Anyone with access (from staff to steward) fills out the form, hits submit and the information appears, fully formatted, on the site's relevant page. The technology driving that is a very popular language called PHP which stores its information on a very popular database called MYSQL: all free, all available on any decent service provider's servers, all simple to script and all, once scripted, very simple to use.

It's the way it's done by Transport Workers Union Local 100, SSEU 371 and LUANA Local 78 (New York's Asbestos and Hazardous materials removers). All frequently updated pages on these sites are managed by union personnel and members with little or no web design skills.

The International Labor Communications Association is perhaps the extreme example. Its impressive website is totally updated by ILCA staff member David Swanson.

New Technology Development

What's disturbing about this inability to seize on current, very popular technology is that is leads logically to the abandonment of a role any large progressive movement should play: the development of new technology.

Labor unions, from the Internationals on down, are mired in the same, traditional Internet technology and, with their members' dues, they are actually supporting that technology and helping assure its continued predominance.

Right now, I can name dozens of progressive technologists who are discussing ways to change the Internet, improve it, make it more open and more efficient, link it to union hall networks, make it a seamless way for union members to communicate with each other, improve security, and improve downloads times geometrically.

But they need support to make that happen. Unions have the money and resources (including equipment) to provide that support. Were the labor movement to actually develop, fund and support a program of "technological enhancement", these new directions would emerge and unions would get first crack at using them.

In fact, unions don't even support the most progressive development in Internet life: the General Public License movement. Using GPL, tens of thousands of programmers have developed and released all kinds of software that is free and can actually be altered by anyone who downloads it.

We're not talking about programs with limited use (although there are plenty of those). GPL software drives much of the Internet: from the many Unix Operating System programs to the Apache web server to email, ftp and so many other functions. It's all free. It's all GPL.

What does the labor movement do? Rather than champion these efforts and support them publicly, it spends huge amounts of money on inferior, commercially developed software -- including the Windows server systems for networks and even Internet servers. So unions are paying top dollar for an Operating System that is clunky and limited, a major security risk (most hacking is done by capturing Windows servers), and made by a company whose concept of workers' rights is erratic at best and often dismissive.

Organizing the Workforce

Nowhere has Labor failed more than in its attitude towards technology workers.

A decade ago, hundreds of thousands of Americans worked on the Internet and its related industries. They all had issues: pay, working conditions, benefits, management treatment of them. Essentially, all of this was left in the hands of the companies that employed them; when things were good, the companies were often generous.

Then things went bad. In a spasm of corporate cannibalism, big companies took over smaller ones, multi-nationals (seeing the potential) implemented elaborate strategies to take control of entire markets and industries and the Internet, and information technology in general, fell into the hands of a smaller and smaller number of owners.

They even developed a "big lie" to explain it all; that the industry had "collapsed" and many people, including many labor leaders, bought the lie. So an industry that is producing more product than ever before, offering a greater number of services to a much larger consumer base than ever before with a still apparently limitless potential is now viewed as "an industry that collapsed and shrunk".

Armed with the big lie and an unprotected work force, big corporations did what they always do: they developed ways to substitute for real workers, implemented methods that displaced workers and just picked up entire sections of production and service and moved them to Third World countries. Most computers are now manufactured using Third World labor. Most software is reproduced and packaged outside the U.S. And most large Internet providers, like Earthlink, maintain their day to day operations, including technical support, in other countries.

Where was the labor movement while this was going on? It sure wasn't in the shops of this industry. No major company in the Internet industry has been faced with so much as a shop election. Management didn't oppose union organizing; there was nothing to oppose.

Today, with a handful of exceptions like our shop and those of our "partners" at May First Technology Collective and La Lutta New Media Collective, the Internet industry is still without any union representation. Speed up is the norm, firings (often without any prior notice) occur all the time, there are no benefits to speak of and health and safety issues abound. No unions.

As a result, most Internet people know absolutely nothing about unions and, during the recent "crisis", the idea of union reprsentation seldom entered into the discussions. That now makes organizing even more difficult.

To rub salt in the wound and perpetuate the perception technologists have of labor, unions don't even respect the time-honored "buy labor" principle that guides them is so many other areas. Almost all technology work done by unions nation-wide is done by non-union labor. In most cases I know of the union people didn't even bother asking a company being considered for some project whether it was a union shop.

Some union leaders I confront with this insist that they have no alternative: after all, they argue there are almost no union shops in our industry and their service doesn't measure up. Of course, that's preposterous: all the union shops I know in our industry are among the most respected providers of their respective services.

As for the small number of union shops, it won't change as long as unions continue to support and reward companies for their anti-union policies.

The Ugly Secret

I wish I could blame ignorance and incompetence for this sorry state of affairs but I think there's more to it. While too many unions have become little more than bureaucratized service agencies for their current memberships, they have also become havens for well-paid, comfortable bureaucrats. The idea of building a system by which the rank and file can consistently and publicly express itself is frightening to them.

One huge question union leaderships often ask is whether members will be allowed to "post freely" on a web site. It's clear in these conversations that this eventuality is a perceived potential nightmare. "We have a few crazies and trouble makers who would do too much damage." There are both categories of people in every union but if a union is doing what it should, these people are easily answered and the majority of members will heed their own positive experiences rather than the occasional crazy or irresponsible posting.

In fact, that's the way what democracy and freedom of expression work.

My hunch is that many union leaders don't want any rank and file expression on their sites because they are scared of their rank and file. Perhaps they are justified. Perhaps they shouldn't be leaders. But efforts to quiet these expressions by ignoring the empowering potential of the Internet won't work. Rank and file members of all kinds of unions are already creating their own websites or using message board and blog technologies to express their experiences, criticisms and concerns.

Big labor can't quiet the Internet. The only real issue is whether the labor movement will take the politically gutsy step and get involved in the Internet in all these ways or whether it will continue to ignore it and allow technology, and the society it is driving, to make unions obsolete.