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?
Use unofficial emails that are for personal social matters.
Also while Corporate may own Slack or Teams they wouldn’t have ownership of a discord server where the employees just hang out to talk about off topic memes.
Simply put have a digital space that is outside the corporate infrastructure.
I think getting people on to a neutral platform is definitely the goal. In my experience though many remote workers just do their jobs and keep to themselves so enticing them to these spaces is difficult. The ones I’ve had best luck building solidarity with are those that have attended at least one in-person event and built rapport.
What tactics do you think would work to win the others over in this environment?