Trade Unions and Access to the Internet

Abstract

Trade unions need the new communications technologies. These technologies create opportunities for unions at the same time as they produce challenges for all of us. The emergence of national information infrastructures and global networks has to inspire concern within trade unions about the impact of advanced multimedia communications on employment, the economy and society. Yet demand is being generated within those same unions for technological solutions to employment, economic and organizational problems. New concepts and new ways of working have changed the worlds of industry, business and politics — and must do so in the world of trade unionism, if unions are to survive.