Using the Internet to Create a New Labor Movement: US, UK, and Harvard experiences

ABSTRACT: With trade union membership falling relative to the work force, many workers cannot readily obtain the services that unions traditionally provided, ranging from information about their employer and the job market more broadly to representation in dealing with individual and collective problems that invariably arise at workplaces. This talk describes how unions and other worker organizations have used the Internet to provide some of these services, even in the face of employer opposition to traditional unionism. The US experience ranges from WorkingAmerica, which has quietly enlisted about 1.6 million members to greedyassociates.com, which pressured law firms to raise pay by informing law graduates about economic differences. The UK experience includes union provision of information to nonunion workers and a discussion board network for worker representatives. Harvard offers the worklifewizard, which provides information and answers work-related questions. I consider the extent to which these innovative uses of the Internet can create a new labor movement, better suited to the modern work force.

Richard B. Freeman holds the Herbert Ascherman Chair in Economics at Harvard University. He is currently serving as Faculty Director of the Labor and Worklife Program at the Harvard Law School. He is also director of the Labor Studies Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Senior Research Fellow in Labour Markets at the London School of Economics' Centre for Economic Performance, and visiting professor at the London School of Economics.

Professor Freeman is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of Sigma Xi. He has served on five panels of the National Academy of Sciences, including the Committee on National Needs for Biomedical and Behavioral Scientists. He has published over 300 articles dealing with a wide range of research interests including the job market for scientists and engineers; the growth and decline of unions; the effects of immigration and trade on inequality; restructuring European welfare states; Chinese labor markets; transitional economies; youth labor market problems; crime; self-organizing non-unions in the labor market; employee involvement programs; and income distribution and equity in the marketplace. He is currently directing the NBER / Sloan Science Engineering Workforce Project (with Daniel Goroff).