Last summer, I wrote that the labor movement should begin organizing online workers. It appears that a group of eBay sellers are about to start striking, without any help from labor unions. At issue is the sudden imposition of policies by eBay which sellers deem harmful to their business. The policies will be imposed starting Feb. 20, and the strike will go from Feb. 18 - 25.
There are a couple of issues at play. One is that fees will increase by as much as 66% for some sellers. Another, apparently far more explosive, issue, is that eBay will soon turn off negative and neutral comments, requiring sellers to go through eBay's Security & Resolution Center to report bad behavior. This move will almost certainly tie up sellers in needless bureaucracy, in place of today's simple system for resolving disputes. CNN and Mashable have more.
While eBay boycotts aren't new, this one appears to be much larger than previous ones, and sellers appear to be genuinely furious. The boycott is related to the resignation of eBay CEO Meg Whitman, expected in March 2008. (Whitman, incidentally, seems to be a staunch Republican; she was on Romney's campaign and has been considered a cereandidate for CA-Gov in 2010.) Her replacement, John Donahue, initiated the new fee structure and policies earlier this year.
So far eBay doesn't appear worried about the strike, and it's hard to tell whether the company will budge an inch in light of the boycott campaign. More upsetting is the fact that - as far as I can tell by browing around labor blogs - labor unions seem to be entirely unaware of this grassroots strike. That's a real shame, because this could be an opening into a segment of the economy which is not heavily unionized.
There are a variety of interesting challenges in this strike. First, what is the standing of eBay sellers to organize a strike? What legal reforms or litigational victories would be necessary for the striking sellers to force recognition and collective bargaining? Moreover, given that the sellers are, for the most part, individuals working independently, how can they be reached and organized effectively?
I'd like to see the labor movement take a crack at some of these challenges, because I think they are the key to organizing a new class of workers which is only going to get larger and the economy becomes increasingly digitized. These are not easy questions to answer, by a long shot, but I think there is a group of workers who are yearning to organize and be recognized, and I think the labor movement should stand in solidarity with them.
Comments
I wonder if the strikers will use other social networks?
It seems to me that the strikers have a shot at using other social networks to help make their case: YouTube, obviously, but also Facebook (a group with tens or hundreds of thousands of sellers and supporters?), MySpace, Yahoo! Groups, and maybe even Amazon (not quite sure how, but using recommendations and reading lists in some way). This will help not only help them publicize their cause, but make the threat a lot clearer to eBay: sure, right now they're the largest, but that could change really quickly.
jon
already are, somewhat
It's funny you should mention this: I first got wind of this boycott via a Facebook group that a friend of mine started.
On the whole, though, I've been surprised by how remarkably old school this boycott has been. Mostly they're organizing via forums, without using social networking tools very much. I suppose their sizable presence on YouTube is an exception to the rule.
I agree, though, that there are tools out there, and why not use them? Amazon recommendations are a creative idea I hadn't thought of, but sure, why not?
In any event, this is somewhat of an ad hoc action, thrown together in just a couple of weeks. It's hard to take this group to task for failing to use every available tool, considering the inherent challenge of organizing such a large and distributed group. I think eBay sellers would probably benefit from having some kind of standing membership association capable of planning and organizing such actions in a more coherent way, and I'll probably write more about that soon.