Class struggle by email

Email campaigning has been one of the surprise success stories of the last few years in labour struggle.

Who could have guessed that quickfire appeals for people to simply sign and send stock emails to company bosses over disputes, as so ably demonstrated by the campaigning website Labourstart, would make such an enduring impact? From the recent maritime dispute in New Zealand, to union organiser Derek Blackadder’s banning from Facebook, campaigns have seen not only workers’ morale boosted from the feeling they’re not alone, but company chiefs sent scurrying back to the negotiating table saying ‘please call off the email campaign’.

But what is it about a few emails which terrifies company bosses so much?

Is it an ever-present fear in their crazed little capitalist minds that all these missives add up to a commie conspiracy and they’ll see a new Red Army marching over the horizon any minute? Is it the shock of being petitioned for the first time (compare company reactions with the UK government, which has set up its own website for them to be comfortably channelled into and blithely repeats ‘we’re listening’ while sailing off into the sunset)? Is it that the mere sight of a full inbox has them crying like newborns?

It’s surely not that they think they’ll lose business from the 2-3 thousand people who generally respond to Labourstart webmaster Eric Lee’s requests every week. Facebook has an audience of tens of millions and has been ignoring the far larger ‘can we have a socialist option’ campaign for years. New Zealand shipping isn’t even interested in the consumer’s viewpoint, it’s interested in the distributors who aren’t part of or affected by these protests. Maybe it’s that they just don’t like being disliked by the wider world, and are worried about their brand’s reputation or the possibility of such campaigns spreading further.

The potential impact of larger email campaigns, particularly when they are against companies who don’t have a direct link to the high street, is minimal in economic terms. The worst that’s likely to happen is a half-arsed boycott, with only the smallest outside chance of something spectacular happening like the Spanish dockers in 2000 who refused to unload scab cargoes from the US and saved their union brothers’ jobs and conditions as a result.

Psychology though may well play an important part. Company bosses today are used to being unaccountable and free of public opprobrium for their actions in a way that governments aren’t. It’s very rare that strikes see widespread public support or from the mass media, and rarer that communities band together to support strikers on the picket, because companies are considered private entities and thus not something the public has any stake or interest in. For many bosses, while they’ll be used to the dislike of their workers, the idea that thousands of people they haven’t directly screwed over also take exception to them must come as something of a shock.

There are echoes in all this of the prison letter-writing campaigns which have been going on since the 19th century or earlier, where anarchist prisoners are saved from victimisation by the sheer fact that governors know their activities are being watched by people on the outside who they can’t threaten or control.

What’s interesting about this newer phenomenon is that apparently, an effective and lightning-fast support of large groups through a simple series of clicks on the computer has become possible – and it’s a tool which has a huge potential for growth.