The union I work for is about to make a significant move to online learning as a complement to its traditional face-to-face education program. The project will provide internet-based resources for new members, to introduce them to the union. To prepare for this project, a focus group was held with new members to check on their opinions and perceptions. The results showed that, for all their ease with technology, these new members still rely on human contact with their co-workers to find information about the union. They still hunger for chances to meet a union representative face to face and are still delighted to sit down and talk with another human being about their views of the union.
We are living in a time of blindingly fast technological change. We have access to all kinds of fascinating gadgets for communication, persuasion and connection. And we perceive the younger generation, in particular, as “hooked” on new technology. (Although, not exclusively: sit in on any union meeting of middle-aged people and watch them with their iPhones and Blackberries.) So, in our effort to remain relevant and to reach out to future union members, we might conclude that unions must reorient our education and communication programs toward social networking and online communication in general. The concern is, if members can’t engage with us on their phones, they won’t engage with us at all.
Call me a tech skeptic, but I’m convinced that union educators need to proceed with caution. As we approach the boundary between traditional face-to-face education and education mediated by some electronic device connected to the internet, we should resist the temptation to jump clean over to the other side. Instead, let’s keep one foot firmly planted on the “traditional” side. Rather than replacing face-to-face education with e-learning, let’s use e-learning to complement in-person methods when and as they are effective. (This was the conclusion of labour educators at the June 2012 e-learning conference sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Education and Work at OISE/UT. While we had different levels of experience using e-learning, we shared the belief that e-learning could add to, but not take the place of, in-person education events for union building.)
It is tempting to think that technology is the magic bullet that will win organizing, mobilizing, lobbying and political campaigns. Instead of all those hours spent knocking on doors, dialling telephones, standing in the cold outside office doors and plant gates, and talking over cups of coffee — presto! — we can get results at the click of a mouse. And it’s so inexpensive, too. But it can’t work that magic, and we wouldn’t want it to work anyway.
It can’t work because human beings don’t evolve that quickly. Certainly not as quickly as our capacity to churn out new i-things. We are still much like we were thousands of years ago in terms of how we process information and respond to approaches from others. So, the world’s increasing use of the internet does not signal a fundamental change in how humans learn and interact. But it does tempt us to think we can do away with the undoubtedly great expenditures in human time, energy and other costs of face-to-face educating, organizing, mobilizing and communication.
Research in different fields shows the power of human contact. Robert Cialdini, professor of psychology and the author of Influence: Science and Practice, found that modern human beings have a need for consistency: when we promise to do something, particularly out loud and in front of others, it’s much harder for us not to do it. “Face-to-face contact is the most effective way to change someone’s behaviour and attitudes,” concludes communications and campaign strategist Alex White. “The whole purpose of digital campaigning and social media … is to facilitate and strengthen those face-to-face interactions.” From 2005 to 2006, the Saskatchewan Government and General Employees’ Union conducted a massive research project with its stewards and found that three-quarters of them decided to run or volunteer for the role, not on a personal whim, but because someone else asked them to. The power of the personal approach is tremendous.
In recent years, I’ve had the privilege to work with a number of other labour educators on a course about conflict transformation. It has deepened my understanding of the power of listening, good questioning and patient relationship-building in the context of union organizing. I tell participants that we need to conceive of shopfloor union work as a “long game.” Members won’t (always) agree to do what a steward or other union representative tells them to do just because of the position that person holds. Members will be more likely to come on board if they know and trust the person and if they have learned over time that their views are respected. They will help their union do what is important to the organization when they know that the union (in the form of the steward, local leader, union educator, organizer) has also responded to their priorities. And the only way to solidly build that relationship is through repeated face-to-face communication over time. Two people, sitting down and talking.
In the present climate, it feels like it may be getting harder to maintain and expand a form of union learning as simple and unadorned as sitting down and listening to grassroots union members. We have so many other battles to fight, including attacks from governments at all levels on fundamental union rights, growing apathy, and economic and environmental turmoil. And everyone’s life is so busy just making a living and attending to family and community responsibilities. “It would be so much easier,” we daydream, “if we could dispense with time-consuming conversations and listening to everyone’s opinions and having to debate issues; can’t we just send out an email telling everyone what to do? Can’t we just make a YouTube video and have done with it?” It’s tempting. It would leave time for so many other pressing things.
But we can’t, and mustn’t, leave face-to-face contact behind. Education, especially within unions and other progressive movements, isn’t a transaction. It’s a social process that unfolds through interaction with others.
We learn by relating new information to our already-lived experience. So, effective union learning needs to provide opportunities for that reflection and connection to take place, through face-to-face dialogue and engagement with other people. Educational practice and, by extension, unions’ practice of internal and external mobilizing and organizing, should be a process of accompanying the member/learner; of being present physically to listen to and talk with them, of building mutual trust through the shared experience of caring about the learner’s reality, priorities and needs.
This human connection builds our sense of justice and enhances the possibility of changing minds and hearts. It’s a connection we can’t build by virtual means alone. Because unions are all about creating a better kind of human community, we shouldn’t want connections between workers to be made by virtual means alone. Learning is a social process and unions are social movements, both rooted in the processes of human interaction.
In Canada, unions are one of the few remaining democratic, collective spaces where citizens can engage with their peers, in all their diversity. So, let’s keep one foot planted firmly on the traditional side of the divide as we try to gain a foothold in the future. We have to be able to connect with members/workers/citizens in ways that still resonate with them, even as we also work to provide informative and interactive web pages and e-learning resources.
If we cross over and leave the offline world behind us, if we don’t pay attention to our fundamental need for human connection and the way we still learn best, we’ll be knitting with one needle, fighting with one hand tied behind our back. Whatever the metaphor, the result will be ineffectiveness if we frame this as an “either/or” choice. Instead, let’s see the internet and all its applications as an opportunity to add some new tools to what always will and must be labour-intensive work: human transformation for social change.
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Adriane Paavo is a trade unionist and popular educator currently working as the education officer for the Saskatchewan Government and General Employees’ Union.
This article first appeared in Vol. 31 No. 2 2013 of
Our Times. Reprinted with permission. For more information about
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The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily CAUT.
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