The increased flexibility to work remotely has been liberating in many ways for workers however it also poses challenges when it comes to organizing.
I’ve found that the primary means of communication between remote workers is owned by the company, for example slack and teams. This leads to a reluctance to discuss unionization due to the perceived threat of the company eavesdropping and taking action against them.
There are also less opportunities for the kinds of informal conversations that lead to solidarity and organizing that would usually happen over lunch or after work at the bar or pub.
What challenges have you faced in organising remote workers and what solutions have you found?
I think one option is to seize on a galvanizing moment like a round of redundancies, contract change or merger and use this to get people in to a private group where they can express their opinions with less fear of reprisals.
Of course you would still have to initially communicate via some company owned channel. For this I’ve found people are more willing to talk one on one via voice/webcam than text. Make sure any transcription feature is disabled.
Obviously a big problem here is that you are already on the backfoot since you are relying on the the company’s actions to create the right conditions. You can try instead be proactive with these chats but the momentum is much weaker.