As some folks may be aware, I'm a Wobbly, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. The IWW is 104 years old this year, and is not like most unions with which most people are familiar. We operate on the solidarity unionism model, which means that there's a single paid worker for the entire union. It's we, the members, who do the work, and we, the members, who run the union. The IWW has a tradition of organizing non-traditional workers. During the Great Depression, the IWW organized work camps of unemployed men to fight for better conditions, and at one time, if you tried to hop a freight train, the other hobos would demand to see your IWW union card. If you didn't have one -- out you went, your bindlestiff after you. I've spent the last four or five years organizing the Ottawa Panhandlers' Union, myself. I mention all this so you realize that I'm totally serious about what I'm proposing.

I was reading through this thread about Wikipedia as a workplace, and a thought occured to me. If Wikipedia is effectively a workplace, is there any reason why it can't be unionized?

There's no way a traditional trade union would touch Wikipedia, but the IWW, as I've explained, is not a trade union. It's unlikely such a union could ever be certified (certainly not under US legislation anyway), but the IWW has a very different philosophy from other unions. For us, a union is a group of workers who stand together for mutual aid and protection. The fact that the workers are not making money doing it is immaterial. Likewise, the IWW is totally unfazed by a lack of legal options, since we were founded on the basis of direct action. Witness the success that the IWW has been having in unionizing Starbucks, and the fear it's sowing in corporate Amerika by doing so.

So the question is this: would a union for Wikipedia workers be viable? What sort of pressure would such a union be able to apply to the WMF for better working conditions? Would people already working for Wikipedia be open to the idea, or would it require a lot of salting (sneaking people inside the structure to organize) to get it started? Bear in mind that it would be a real union, complete with union dues. Dues in the IWW are minimal (because we have only one paid staff, costs are very low) and geared to income (dues generally range from $3/mo to $18/mo at the top end) but they're real, and I'm not sure how prepared people would be to shell out union dues every month in order to engage in unpaid labour.

If nothing else, this conversation should provide some cold sweats for Jimbo. I can almost hear Ayn's crumbling fingerbones scrabbling at the lid of her coffin.

Thoughts?

It's a revolting idea.

Where do I sign up to help lead the revolt?

It raises a few interesting thoughts. WR is ineffective at organised reform from within Wikipedia as historically it has been formed from those who are external to Wikipedia.

The starting question has to be what is the aim of such a union?

Without answering the question, the principle of an organised reform movement is very attractive - people signing up to BLP reform and working as a group for example. The most interesting thought is how the only other organised power group in Wikipedia, the admins, would react to this threat. It is a fair bet that any admission, or even misplaced belief, that there was an organised group working for reform (aka a conspiracy) would mean that the admins would simply refuse to act on the basis that organised lobbying works against the amorphous principles of consensus. Indeed, where informal groups on Wikipedia do form up, the natural reaction of Wikipedia is to identify those with similar ideas as acting in an organised manner and therefore they are dismissed as disruptive, trolls and so on.

I am not sure that a union is the right answer given the disparate nature of the dispossessed of Wikipedia, but there are certainly a number of issues where an organised campaign would be appropriate. In the evolution of Wikipedia, it seems a natural progression.

In addition to DB's sensible observations:

You'd have to overcome the problem of anonymity, which most of the unpaid labourers are wedded to. I tend to think pointing at hidden identities as the single root of evil is an over-simplification, but anonymity is going to cause real problems in a venture like unionisation. What mechanisms can let you be sure you're organising people, if you know a lot of your members will turn out to be a single kook talking to himself?

Effective action may be possible, but the form it could take isn't obvious. Withdrawal of labour is obviously out, as you would be beaten to it with a blanket ban of any organised editors on spurious policy grounds. Any act requiring physical presence is going to need some imagination to pull off - not least on the basis of geographical division of the people involved.

"Better working conditions" is alien thinking for most of the group we're talking about - as you will have observed, they don't believe they are workers. And as you hint at, motivating them to do anything direct and organised is a hurdle - it will initially go against the exaggerated individualistic ideology that's so attractive to many who spend much of their lives hunched alone with a keyboard.

Well, I tried to organize a job action 3 or 4 times here — links at 11 — but you gotta realize that you're dealing more with Weenies than Wobblies.

I wish you the best of all possible lucks …

J☼N

This is one of the implied aspects of the mp3.com situation that I explored in my Akahele post this week (also implied in what Harkin says in his interview with El Reg this week):



When you've already given away your work under a free license, you're tacitly admitting, de facto, that your work has no value. Even when mp3.com decided to do the right thing and give artists a share of the ad revenue, they were able to call it a "promotion" instead of a royalty. And when it became convenient to cancel the "promotion", it was. So, trying to "bargain" for better working conditions probably won't be effective in this case, since you've already admitted to being a volunteer under the terms of the site.

Using the Civil Rights model being put forward by Danielle Citron in her recent paper for the Boston Law Review might be more effective, as it is clear that the demographics of wikipedia do favor certain segments of the general population. As distasteful as it seems, the fact that there is no clear mechanism for reporting sexual harassment might find a sympathetic ear in the Calfornia courts (or is it Florida? Does anybody know?). There are probably other angles which could be explored.

Of course, this is ignoring that Wikipedia doesn't care what the particpants do or say, since "Content is not King". They're interested in two things: 1. operating as a machine which takes copyrighted content and generating "free content" out of that by rewording, summarizing, transforming etc and 2. generating "connectivity", which generates traffic which is then supposed to generate....what? They say it generates "profit", but how? Does this type of thinking remind anyone of anything? Here's a hint: turn to the financial pages and look at pretty much any of the stories on page 1.

I never liked unions; they're just another power structure of greedy thugs. When a group I'm in had their annual convention in Las Vegas, they had to pay the hotel union workers $50 per electric cord to plug it in the hotel outlet, and $1.50 per soda can to open it; even if volunteers did those things themselves they had to pay the hotel goons those fees to stand by and watch them. I think the "geeky" types on Wikipedia are more likely to think like me than like this thread's originator, so unions (even the "nonstandard" sort he's proposing) are unlikely to get any traction. If it did succeed, what would it be... a cartel of Wikipedians that bans anybody who refuses to pay the union dues? This is superior to the current power clique there exactly how?

A functional union would need a Charter and — dare I say it? — a Social Contract.

Frankly, that's unlikely to emerge from this milieu of fursuited fanficrants.

But in the event that it did, it could conceivably cure the cancer and save the project from the mad cow disease that has been turning the brains of the upper echelon into mush.

Moulton:

Any union (or association, or whatever) that forms NOW can say "this (link) is the social contract we are using... wanna be in? accept it"(*), and that's that. Every member will be governed, voluntarily, by that social contract. Easy peasy.

The hard part is to get a voluntary association to matter. Kind of a "who bells the cat" problem.

But... you want a social contract? Write one. Then start a union. See who joins. I'd like to see you actually write a workable one, I think it would be interesting to see what you come up with. You can crib from ones you did before, if you like, but I would want to see a document that stood alone, without requiring that the reader follow links elsewhere to understand what it said, or why it said it.

Depending on the odds offered, I would be willing to bet you can't do it, Not won't, can't, i.e. you agree to try, and then fail (as judged by your peers). But I'd also be willing to bet you won't do it... it's far easier to stand around and take potshots than it is to try to actually do something and you strike me as more of a talker than a doer. (pot calls kettle black, I guess, film at 11)

Who wants the other side of those bets and what odds do you offer?

* - you know, kinda like a website ToS. Not that you know anything about those, but still.

Unionising a bunch of teenage/twenty something upper-middle class white boys without many obligations in their lives?
Sounds like fun.

dtobias' attitude is probably the one you would get from most. Being a twenty-something middle class white boy, without any dependents, I can say I have never had anyone take my back when I have defended unions. And even I might have been a hard sell if I did not come from a union family.

Wikipedia is 99 per cent liberal lefty, so it would probably work. The sort of union where there is no real need of any member to actually be in a union.

Then again, as a card-carrying member of the Conservative & Unionist Party, my views on trade unions should probably be ignored

I can probably top that story, I had an 11,000 USD amex bill one time from a Vegas trade show which covered charges for... nothing that we could see that was actual value add and some things that were actual negatives (being charged for UNplugging things we plugged in, and the like)

Ugh. I hope I don't stumble into you on a dark night.


I think it's the reverse. Genuine Left Wingers are rare. I can't get over how Right Wing people are in the Wikiverse.

Though my definition of "Left Wing" is someone aligned with the Trade Union movements, Co-operative Movements and so on. So that discounts most of those Liberal American types.

Agree, it does depend on the definition. I suppose I'd class Wikipedia as full of Champagne Socialists, namely middle-class, privileged upbringings who, even though it will never effect them, like to adopt the working class as pets.

There's very little "Socialist" about Wikipedia editors at all. I don't know where you get that from? The place seems to be largely driven by Right Wing / Libertarians / Liberals. Wales is a classic case and sets the tone. Socialists of any stripe do not seem compatible.

Well, there's not much socialist about Champagne Socialists. They are middle-class, privileged liberals and I'd agree that Wales is a classic example, albeit a non-British one.

You've already lost the bet, Lar.

A few months ago, Geoff Plourde on Wikiversity made the same proposal, and I took him up on it.

He and I jointly crafted a Model Social Contract for Wikiversity.

It's short enough that I'll repost it here:

Too bad you don't have a clue what a social contract is.

Jon

You're mistaken. Wikipedia, like much of the Internet, is overrun by teenaged libertarians, and as a result is very likely to resist unionization, as joining a union means giving up some of your autonomy.

As far as "conservatives" (big "C" or little "c") are concerned a socialist is anyone who's to the left of Atilla the Hun. Anarchists, however, tend to think of socialists and conservatives as being right-wing in the sense that both groupings believe in authoritarianism, statism and hierarchy. Libertarianism, or at least the horribly corrupted modern American version is also seen by Anarchists (and anyone else with an IQ greater than their shoe-size) as right-wing in that it's simply capitalism squared. Anarchism is the only true left-wing philosophy. Those few sentences tend to cause a lot of drama when uttered, which is why I like stating them. Fuss fuss fuss.

As to the unionization of Wiki workers, the best way of finding out if it would work would be to try doing it. The end result would be, I think, a tiny (if dedicated) group who would be picked-off one by one by the Randroids and their Libertarian/conservative puppets. The apolitical majority probably wouldn't give a shit about the whole thing. Fuss fuss fuss.

Freedom is a scary thing
Not many people really want it
- Laurie Anderson, "Statue Of Liberty", from the album 'Life on a String'.

Dunno if you aimed that snarky barb at Lar or at me, but in either event, here is a clue, supplied by a notable scholar whom I daresay you respect more than moi.

Hah, written by a bunch of Barry-Come-Latelies from some geeky PolyTech Skool where they probably never had a Soc Sci class in their lives.

The Social Contract, and all of its Clauses, and all of its Terms, are metaphors — "What's a Meta Phor?" you wonder? — well, it's not a bunch of bytes on a screen, and if it's in force at all then it's a writ you signed onto long before you learned how to write.

Here, try reading the dude who wrote The Book On It.


Again, it's not the literal words that matter — if you don't already have the "contract" in force, then all the words in the world will not add a single whit to it.

Which is precisely why everything you do in WikiVarsity is so whitless.

J☼N

Of my two co-authors on that 2002 conference paper, one is a professor of journalism at a western land-grant university, where she teaches undergraduate courses in public affairs reporting, media ethics, and online journalism. My other co-author is an Ed.D from U-Mass Amherst whose career is in public school education. He is the Secretary of the IEEE Education Society.

See what I mean about taking things literally …

J☼N

Yes that is the usual way. In fact union membership pre-shadowed ToS with "check-off" for membership long before the internet. It would be possible to do it Moulton's way however. You could organize up to a certain point then throw open the agenda and procedures to the tentative membership. This would be more democratic and participatory. The downside would be cat herding that would ensue, even in normal groups.

All of this assumes that there was something worthwhile to organize for. Not the case with the Wikipedia "community." The problem with these people isn't that they are not "empowered" relative to the WMF. Lar for instance would have been in a much better position if he would have had a normal volunteer relationship with WMF than dealing with "the community."

What you actually seem to need to address recent developments in community dysfunction is some kind of self defense against the roving "death squads." All of this is just analogy and hyperbole so I'm not encouraging anyone to go off the deep end here.

Take a look at what just showed up today on Facebook...

The major drawback of unions, to the membership, is that they are organisations - that is, someone needs to do the organising. Most people are, in truth, quite happy to be organised by someone else, providing it does not interfere with their personal freedoms, or whatever else it is that provides them with motivation. There is also the case, as exemplified by the comments about hotel bill charges, that there is a suspicion that those who are (being allowed to be) doing the organising will ensure that the organisers will reap any benefit long before it filters down to a membership level. The wobbly kind of union often appears even less appealing, since the membership is required to spend a portion of its free time in organising themselves and their brethren (with less chance of getting a taste of the perks than in traditional unions). The upshot is that traditional unions often result in the power being wielded by those who do not represent the membership - although a few believe they do, and another faction believe they represent what the membership would want if they were aware of the issues - simply because the investment in effort is only worthwhile to those with an agenda.

The only times unions really do recruit is when the conditions are so poor that only the strength in numbers value system can achieve parity with the employer/state apparatus/position of authority. Whatever the doubts expressed here and elsewhere regarding WP, the fact is it is a voluntary project and that by and large the conditions are perfectly pleasant. Very few peoples livelihoods are effected by editing a wiki.

Two obvious questions:

1. Will Wikipedia's teen and tween editors need their parents' permission to join the union?

2. Which one of us is going to collect the union dues?

I imagine it is now just a matter of a few days before you get an email that says "Please come and rule us."

Now, now, boys.

You all have valid points. Although it's interesting to me that no one pointed out
the obvious thing: Jimbo and Co. have done a remarkable job of presenting the
organization to the world as "left-leaning", despite their own sometimes-crackpot
libertarian viewpoints. The comments in this thread about WP being left-ish are
similar to other WR threads. ( And they in the past were usually spread by
conservatives like Wales Hunter, who tend to be a bit paranoid about such things.)

If you talked to some of the paid WMF staffers, they'd probably also reveal a vague
belief that Wikipedia is leftist in general bent. Given that the project's "rulebook" is
a deranged mess and their office is now in wacky San Franciscky (the leftiest city in
America, where you can walk down the street in drag with your genitals hanging
out on display if you wish), it's easy to see that a LOT of people have been hoodwinked.

Trust me. The actual behavior of Jimbo, Cary Bass, Gerard etc. is clearly libertarian
in the American mold--meaning, ill-defined and based on Randian selfishness.
They did a great job of fooling other people, mostly young contributors, regardless
of their background or politics -- limousine liberals or what-have-you.

A Wikipedia editor's union or group would be a great idea. Sadly, I just don't see
how to pull it off. They are just like MMORPG kiddies, getting them to agree on anything
is akin to the old saw about herding cats.
Which is a major reason why WP's "governance" is such a joke. And obviously Wales
has realized it--he's COUNTING on chaos, to help maintain his "control".
Why else do people keep looking to HIM for "guidance"? Because there's nobody else.

It's been a long time since I read a post that merited one of these —


J☼N

I think Berkeley, just across the bay from SF, may give it a run for the money regarding that title. I believe some of the free newspapers handed out on the street there are overtly Communist.

Um, the actual behavior of high-commissar Politburo muckimucks in real Communist societies (USSR, Cuba, name your own) was the same. They did whatever the hell they wanted. It means precisely nothing about the politics of The Followers. It's like the not-very-devout and possibly atheistic leaders of Muslim countries who go to Dubai to get drunk and laid, you know? The Big Bosses of any organization don't believe rules apply to them, and thus might as well be anarchists. Or libertarians. Or children not grown up. Or whatever your favorite word for that kind of person is.

Here's what I see happening (not saying it should)...

Any wikiunion formed will be considered a cabal by those who do not participate in the Union who will make accusations that they are using their power to influence content or protect those with bad behavior whether real or perceived. This will happen even if any collective bargaining or social contract is created to claim otherwise and is practiced by most in this union.

It might be worth while to reference what I said about this in another thread 10 months ago (a necro-comment):

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&sh...indpost&p=91747

Well, yeah, that's the whole thing about standing on a Wiki-Picket Line — you have to be able to Hold Your Water.

Ja Ja Doin Da Wiki-P² Dance

Right here. I'm a Wobbly delegate which means I can also sign you up to the union myself and issue a union card.






Tradtionally, union organizing requires an inside committee and an outside committee. Wobblies are used to organizing hostile organizations where the penalty of being caught is not just being fired, but even being beaten or killed. The outside committee provides support, engages in activities which would otherwise indentify the people inside, and acts as the face of the union where necessary for dealing with the press or the State so that those inside need not risk identifying themselves, at least in the early stages.



The IWW is a revolutionary organization. It makes it very clear right in its preamble that it is not interested in reforming an inherently unjust and oppressive system. The same must hold true for Wikipedia. It must not be reformed, it must be replaced. Wikipedia must be made responsible to those about whom it collects information; it must be made accountable to both its workers and its users; and its hierarchy must be swept away entirely, to be replaced with a cooperative of those who have most stake in the organizations, its workers and users.



My initial thought is to keep members anonymous from each other. The IWW of course requires everyone's real identities, which allows us to know who is involved without the employer or any potential spies within the job shop being able to target individuals. Members of the IWW get an "x-number" -- unique to each individual -- which can be used as identifiers with each other until the union is large and strong enough to withstand any kind of organized reprisals by the employer.



The nice thing about being part of a real union like the Wobblies, who have members all over every US state and many other countries is that we can therefore provide boots on the ground wherever it becomes necessary. If we need to picket the WMF or flyer Jimbo's neighbourhood, the Wobs will be able to assist. The whole point of the OBU (the "One Big Union") concept is that it is able to provide such support to its members, amplifying the power of every individual combined.



Join the club. I don't like most unions myself. And most trade unions (or as we call them, "bureaucratic unions") don't like the Wobblies much either. We have no bureaucracy, no bosses, and our union dues are tiny compared to most unions. We don't play by the rules. We don't care whether the State acknowledges and officially sanctions our job shops. If argument, debate, and polite placard-waving can get the job done, great; but the Wobblies have a tradition of "debaters and dynamiters" (to use Big Bill Haywood's phrase), so we're perfectly happy to use direct action both inside and outside the law. We don't give a shit about making nice with the bosses. We fight to win.



Not a cartel. A syndicate. There are no "bosses" in the IWW. It's the members themselves who run things. Union dues are miniscule because there's only a single paid worker for the whole union, and a large portion of the union dues stay with the shop itself for its own expenses. The money which gets sent back to the IWW HQ is used entirely for organizing expenses -- and is still subject to member oversight every year at the AGM, which all members can attend. You need to discard the idea of a union as a bunch of mobsters and Bolsheviks using ordinary workers to do their dirty work to forge an empire. The Wobblies are the antithesis of -- and cure for -- that.



The Wobblies have a constitution which sets out its rules and mandate, a constitution which has worked successfully for 104 years now in the face of some of the most violent State and corporate
oppression imaginable. Each Wobbly shop, however, is also free to sit down and write up its own bylaws and such, so long as they do not violate the existing IWW constitution.

And the fact that Wikipedians are not the sort of people who generally join a union is actually a great advantage, not a drawback. Remember that my own connection to the Wobblies is as an organizer with the Ottawa Panhandlers' Union, another group not generally associated with the labour movement. The benefit is that people who would otherwise be unfamiliar with the benefits of solidarity get to experience it first-hand, and get to see that it's not some repressive kind of crypto-Bolshevik lockstep into communism, but rather a coming together of individuals, each with her or his own needs, for the purpose of mutual aid and protection.

Φunny, that sounds just like what Wiki-Populism was cracked up to be, but ain't.

Jon

I don't think Wikipedia is a workplace.

A workplace is a place where people go to earn their subsistence; if they don't go there, they earn no money.

Wikipedia is a place where people are free to go or not to go, so it is not a workplace.

It looks much more like a park we can no longer stroll at, because it is pestered with thugs, gangs, and gangs of thugs. And policemen who don't care about the gangs, but will blackmail and extort innocent citizens.

Luís Henrique

"The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man. You may raise money enough to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business. An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed." -- Henry David Thoreau, Life Without Principle

The fact that a person is not paid for her or his work does not make it invalid as work. Without unpaid labour, our society would in fact collapse overnight. Contrary to most people's beliefs, the majority of strikes are not about wages, but rather about working conditions. People need to feel pride and accomplishment from their labour, whether that labour is paid or unpaid -- and in fact, it is more important for unpaid labour because it lacks even pecuniary reward which might otherwise offset such disrespect. The IWW has had a long and successful tradition of organizing unpaid labour, whether in be workcamps in the Great Depression or panhandlers this very day. It is only by organizing that workers can wield sufficient power to demand respect for their labours, since the bosses have proven they hold their workers in the utmost contempt (also known as "WikiLove").

But one thing is to say that what we do on WP is work. Another, quite different, is to say that WP is a workplace.

Luís Henrique

Or, as I've heard, and believe, the bosses give priority to accomplishing the organization's mission (and thereby their own happiness and satisfaction by advancement, prestige, and accumulating wealth) and give secondary consideration to the happiness and satisfaction of their workers. Thus, in order to get the bosses' attention, the workers sometimes have to threaten to derail the accomplishment of the organization's mission.

I understand the torturers down at Gitmo, along with their justifying lawyers up in Washington, have some issues with their working conditions and seem to be troubled by their recent lack of respect.