By Becky Wright, Executive Director, Unions 21 | 3 min
In a world that is becoming obsessed, for good and bad, with the impact and use of digital and AI, I was expecting the contributors to this blog series to say that unions just needed to move faster.
However, none of them did.
If the answer to the far right's speed online is not to copy it, then the useful question is what unions have that hostile actors do not, and whether the technology we buy and build is designed around it.
It’s time to think about how the democratic structures that can slow unions down are the same ones that make them powerful.
But with this comes a note of caution. Antti Mäki of Uniofy put it well:
Unions, by contrast, often think more carefully and democratically, which is a strength. But the democratic cogwheels can also turn too slowly. By the time a union has agreed its response, the moment may already have passed.
The answer is not to just get rid of our democracy, instead strengthen it and build on it along the ILO’s Triple A framework.
What unions have that hostile actors do not
Digital/Organizing, who work with unions and confederations in Switzerland, made the point most sharply:
Right-wing groups rarely manage to mobilise large numbers of people, even through technology. Who would want to hand out flyers on the street for lower corporate taxes? Left-wing forces and unions, on the other hand, can unleash "people power" using technology.
Coupled with this, I’m reminded of the other asset unions already hold and too rarely use - data.
Antti described data as the single biggest unused opportunity, and warned that GDPR too often becomes "a convenient excuse for doing nothing".
With the introduction in the UK of digital access to workers, our recent summit brought together unions to look at the challenges to reaching out to these workers with unions exploring this key aspect to help make decisions and focus resources. A key element too was ensuring that the unions were able to reflect the workforce in what they think, feel and do.
Unions were up for that challenge and that to be successful, it was going to require cutting across silos, identifying what decisions needed to be taken and knowing what capacity the union will need.
In essence, unions were thinking about how to tackle these external challenges by building tomorrow’s unions.
