'Get Close To The Workers, Stay Close To The Workers': The Shift to Digital Organising During Covid-19

Abstract

'Get Close To The Workers, Stay Close To The Workers':The Shift to Digital Organising During Covid-19 Nicole McPherson (bio) Like many trade unions, in the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic the Finance Sector Union (FSU) had shifted from a servicing model of unionism to an organising model1. This had been an uneasy transition and remains a work in progress as unions continue to grapple with role that servicing plays in an organising union2. At the same time, unions are acknowledging that the organising model alone has not been sufficient to arrest the decline in union membership, and must to be supplemented with new ways of bringing people to their union3. Alongside this transition to an organising model of unionism has been a shift towards digital organising and campaigning. Australia's union peak body, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) has established the Innovation Hub to support digital innovation to achieve 'union growth and have a greater impact'4. Early steps saw the union employ digital marketers in the communications team (not the organising team) and saw digital as separate to 'real' organising The FSU was an early supporter of the ACTU Innovation Hub, and was eager to develop capacity for digital organising. It is instructive that in its move towards in digital organising, some of the first steps the FSU took were to implement new customer relationship management (CRM) software, and employ digital marketers and digital campaigners who sat in the communications team (not the organising team). This illustrates the FSU's early conception of digital organising as a communications channel and separate to 'real' organising. March 2020: Enter COVID-19 As COVID-19 cases rose in Australia in early 20205, many large employers started to direct their staff to work from home. FSU members working in Australian banks, insurance and superannuation firms were some of the earliest to be directed to work from home6. Many banks closed at least some of their retail branches, or reduced their operating hours7. Even where workers were still working on site, due to COVID-19 restrictions, Union organisers were generally not permitted to attend. It was no longer safe for organisers to be in the field. Until this time, FSU digital organising efforts were largely limited to email communications, and Facebook and WhatsApp groups for delegates to stay in touch. Certainly, for organising staff, their main organising methods involved getting into a car and going to speak to workers face to face. Organising was forced to shift from field to digital overnight. In mid-March, 2020, the FSU directed all of its staff to work from home indefinitely. The short time frame meant that the Union's focus was on the practical aspects of this shift-did the Union's staff have the hardware needed to work from home? In normal circumstances, the project to move staff to work remotely would have been a months-long undertaking, but like many organisations, the FSU achieved it in a matter of days when there was no alternative. What this meant though, was that there has been no opportunity to build the Union's digital organising capacity-neither of the organisers, nor of delegates and members. July 2020: Campaigning in COVID Throughout 2020 and 2021, public health directives dictated that many people work from home, but people performing 'essential' services were permitted to attend their usual place of work8. This created tension between people who were allowed (or required) to work safely from home, and those who had to expose themselves to COVID-19 by attending work in retail bank branches. At a Zoom meeting of Union members, a member suggested that people working in customer-facing environments should receive an additional payment to compensate for the increased risk they were facing. After testing the idea with members, the FSU created a petition to call on Australia's largest banks to provide a $5 per hour essential allowance to all frontline finance workers9. The immediate challenge was bringing members into this campaign without the ability to visit them. Calling people individually lacked scale. Broadcast email enabled broad but shallow engagement. In a...