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March 13, 2009

Cory Doctorow reminds the internet that labour matters

Posted by Graham F. Scott at 11:04 AM ET

It was a nice surprise this morning to run across Cory Doctorow's blog post on Boing Boing about Thomas Geoghegan's book Which Side Are You On?, a memoir/history of the labour movement. I haven't read the book, although now I intend to. But the reason it was a nice surprise is because labour is a huge blind spot in the mainstream blogosphere.

There's a pervasive notion in many online communities that the web is a meritocracy, a level playing field where technology demolishes all barriers and equalizes everyone. Nick Denton, founder of the Gawker Media blog network, coined the phrase "anarcho-capitalist" to describe this vibe: decentralized, anti-authority, profit-hungry, and post-political. The economics of blogging mean that most writers for online outlets write for peanuts, seldom see each other in person, and work alone. Organizing for better wages and benefits isn't on the radar: even if there was the will to do it, the business model doesn't produce enough income to pay contributors enough anyway, so why bother?

The young, globalized, culturally schizoid generation that writes and consumes blogs sees the labour movement as out of touch and irrelevant at best, obstructive and corrupt at worst. The gains in working conditions, wages, benefits, and worker safety made by labour are taken for granted by a whole swathe of young people for whom the movement is ancient history. That Doctorow, who is hugely influential in the blogosphere, is talking to his audience now about the goals and achievements of the labour movement is important and valuable.

Some of what he says:

Throughout, Geoghegan keep the focus where it belongs: on the injustices faced by working people -- from labor, from management, from government -- and on the failures of these systems to improve their lot on life, and looks deeply into history, politics and sociology to explain why and how labor has failed laborers.

Geoghegan is a lifelong, old-time labor lawyer whose practice has encompassed defending unions from management to defending workers from unions -- representing clients whose corrupt Work Agents have had them beaten up, smeared and excluded; representing workers who've been robbed of their pensions, unfairly dismissed, even arrested, under the most shameful, sleazy circumstances. He writes like a poet, like a Hunter Thompson crossed with Studs Terkel, full of humility, wry humor, and a burning anger at all that's wrong in the world. He tells the stories of the fights he's fought -- with, for and against the Teamsters, the mine workers, nurses, pilots -- from union elections to wildcat strikes.

Geoghegan is unabashedly pro-union, even though he's seen the worst of what unions can become. In a world in which employers hold all the cards -- times like now, when every worker worries about job security -- workers who fight on their own to demand justice (fair pay, safe working conditions, fair treatment, pensions) always lose. Workers who fight together can win -- have won, anyway.

More entries on: Labour

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Reader comments:

Please don't use schizoid; it's lazy and incorrect. My mum was a psychiatric nurse and it used to drive her nuts. Split is a perfectly good word, as is paradoxical.

I will read the book too, however, so thanks for pointing it out.

Posted by: Francis Fish at March 17, 2009 11:57 AM

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