At Congress 2008 in Brighton, which is turning out as interesting as ever – spending a week in the company of pretty much every element of the UK labour movement.

I spoke at a fringe today on online organising, along with Eric Lee and APT’s Paul Smith. For the 99.995% of trade unionists who didn’t make it along, here’s part of what I had to say – my 4 predictions on how unions (or at any rate unionists) will be using Web 2.0 in the next couple of years:

Prediction 1: Grassw00ts? – Empowering the grass roots

I think we’re going to see much more use of the internet by unions to directly empower the grass-roots (local reps and other would-be activists), and reduce the pressure on the central organisations. Unions rely on volunteers to get most of their day-to-day work done, but volunteers naturally find it hard to meet or work together with each other, because of the distances involved and the constraints on their time and funds. Union-paid staff bridge the gap between volunteer groups, but they can’t do enough to help everyone.

The TUC’s network for shop stewards is a case in point (unionreps.org.uk). Using this, reps discuss problems relevant to their roles and share resources with each other.

It uses the principle of the wisdom of crowds. The 13,000 users are a lot more likely to know the answer to a question than any one paid expert. The site is cheap(ish) and cheerful(ish), but is a significant boost to union capacity (for example, research shows reps using it call their full time officers 20% less often), and it helps volunteers coach each other to become much more expert in their dealings with employers.

One especially interesting area for the next few years is going to be the idea of extending online grass-roots linking internationally. Faced with the pressures of globalisation and the growth of multinational employers, which can be relevant to several national unions in different countries, union activists are going to start to form connections internationally, trying to link people working for an employer in one country with their colleagues all around the world, and enabling more knowledge sharing and joint working on employment relations.

The General Motors Workers’ blog set up by the EMF is a first step towards this. It lets workers for General Motors in any of their plants around the world connect with each other, which can be very useful when bargaining for working conditions with local managers. I think we’re going to see much more of this kind of thing, either as a central project coordinated by organisations like the global unions, or more ad-hoc, using technologies such as RSS to link together a number of separate union projects, into a coherent new picture of an international situation.

Prediction 2: Campaigning 2.0

I think we’re going to see more creative online campaigning, and not just from the oganisations’ central comms teams.

Digital creative technology such as cameras and camcorders is getting cheaper and better all the time. If you think back 10 years, the only people with a mobile or a laptop were senior execs who could get it on exes. These days things are turned on their heads, and the kids get first crack at video-streaming mobiles, or iPhones (whilst the CEOs are still asking their secretaries how they answer an SMS), and activists can now produce material of near-professional quality – if they have the talent.

Participatory web tools like YouTube are helping activists to find an audience for their grassroots campaigns. (look at the great stuff from the Writers Guild of America strike on YouTube, or the IBM Italy strike in Second Life).

Unions themselves will start to run more innovative campaigns, but so will their activists, and I hope that unions will try to court digitally creative individuals, to encourage them to contribute to their campaigns.

I’ve already blogged an example that I often use of what I mean by this. It’s one of the most popular UK union videos on YouTube, from the time of last year’s postal dispute. I think it’s also one of the most important union videos out there in terms of the change it represents. (go check it out!).

Digital activists will be able to say things in a tone that the union never could (unions are serious organisations, and it’s not appropriate for us to make the kind of crude or silly jokes that could end up being wildly popular), and they have the advantage of being more deniable if the union is challenged over what they say. They may be loose cannons sure, but if you could line up 1,000 loose cannons pointed in half-way the right direction, I know which side I’d rather be standing.

Prediction 3. Union democracy

I think there will be an improvement in the speed and reach of workplace democracy, and union internal democracy.

In many cases, consultation between employers and unions will become much faster and more inclusive, as the members will be able to reply more quickly when the union asks them.

Similarly, unions’ internal processes will improve as the lower costs of online mass balloting makes it easier to find out exactly what the members want.
Whilst unions are still banned from using the technology in statutory ballots (thanks to an unfixed quirk of legislation), trials in the UK have shown small but significant increases in participation, and cost savings, which will increase as more people become used to the technology.

Prediction 4: Reaching out

Lastly, I think we’ll also see unions reaching out from their traditional messages and offering to members, and using the internet in new ways to attract people who would otherwise never consider joining them.

As an example, in the USA, the union SEIU has started an innovative partnership with a number of social foundations, a network called Qvisory. This site is aimed at young workers, who are mainly not in unions.

The union has identified that younger people in the United States have major concerns around healthcare and their financial future. Qvisory is a community and set of online tools to help young people to tackle their problems themselves. There is no hard sell for union membership, but two of the union’s key campaign objectives are to improve healthcare and pensions provision nationally, so building a network of energised young people concerned with these issues will help them a lot in their campaigning objectives.

So – four predictions for Unions 2.0. I’m hereby burying them in a blogcapsule and will dig them up in two years and see how close I was. Anyone have any other suggestions for 2010’s unions online?