Trade Union Use of Digital Communications Technology: Interview data, 2023-2024

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This research was designed to investigate the ways in which trade unions use digital communications technology to communicate with and amongst their members, and at how digitally-enabled communications fit in with wider campaigning and organising practices, including industrial action such as strikes. The use of digital communications technologies in established and mainstream trade union settings has been (and, to date, continues to be) significantly under-researched. The data in this collection comprises transcripts of a series of interviews from a case study of the National Education Union (NEU). There are two groups of interview transcripts. One comes from individual interviews with five full-time officers (FTOs) and staff at NEU head office (HQ), who work in and/or have responsibility for national digital communications and associated data-analysis and data-management functions. The second group comes from group interviews (GIs) carried out with seven groups of local union reps and branch officers from different parts of England. We focussed on England because the management of schools is now different in each of the four devolved nations of the UK, and England has the most fragmented system, which provides the greatest challenges to the NEU's traditional organising model. Sites for GIs were selected for geographical spread (three in London, one in the North of England and one in the South), plus we selected for different school governance models; specifically, we wanted to interview reps from Multi-Academy Trusts, a relatively new type of school that presents novel challenges for teaching unions. The selection of sites for rep interviews was also significantly influenced by access considerations, being wholly dependent on arrangements made by NEU FTOs and branch officers, as well as the willingness of reps to give up their time during a period of intense union activity – notably, a national pay campaign, including strikes, which followed a period of significant stress and workplace conflict over school closures and related issues during the COVID-19 pandemic – in addition to the usual heavy workloads associated with classroom teaching. As a result, the GIs carried out were varied in terms of the number and composition of reps present (varying between two and 13 participants), and were always pressed for time (which significantly restricted the gathering of demographic data). The data is therefore somewhat patchy and unrepresentative, but nevertheless generated rich insights and achieved a reasonable degree of saturation on important issues. Key findings include overlapping but sometimes different approaches between NEU HQ and local reps, as well as sophisticated understandings by reps of the use of different digital communications technologies for different purposes, the relationship between technological and in-person communications, and the place of each in wider union campaigning and activism.

The Digital Futures at Work Research Centre (Dig.IT) will establish itself as an essential resource for those wanting to understand how new digital technologies are profoundly reshaping the world of work. Digitalisation is a topical feature of contemporary debate. For evangelists, technology offers new opportunities for those seeking work and increased flexibility and autonomy for those in work. More pessimistic visions, in contrast, see a future where jobs are either destroyed by robots or degraded through increasingly precarious contracts and computerised monitoring. Take Uber as an example: the company claims it is creating opportunities for self-employed entrepreneurs; while workers' groups increasingly challenge such claims through legal means to improve their rights at work. While such positive and pessimistic scenarios abound of an increasingly fragmented, digitalised and flexible transformation of work across the globe, theoretical understanding of contemporary developments remains underdeveloped and systematic empirical analyses are lacking. We know, for example, that employers and governments are struggling to cope with and understand the pace and consequences of digital change, while individuals face new uncertainties over how to become and stay 'connected' in turbulent labour markets. Yet, we have no real understanding of what it means to be a 'connected worker' in an increasing 'connected' economy. Drawing resources from different academic fields of study, Dig.IT will provide an empirically innovative and international broad body of knowledge that will offer authoritative insights into the impact of digitalisation on the future of work. The Dig.IT centre will be jointly led by the Universities of Sussex and Leeds, supported by leading experts from Aberdeen, Cambridge, Manchester and Monash Universities. Its core research programme will cover four broad-ranging research themes. Theme one will set the conceptual and quantitative base for the centre's activities. Theme two involves a large-scale survey of Employers' Digital Practices at Work. Theme three involves qualitative research on employers' and employees' experiences of digitalisation at work across 4 sectors (Creative industries, Business Services, Consumer Services, Public Services). Theme 4 examines how the disconnected attempt to reconnect, through Public Employment Services, the growth of new types of self-employment, platform work and workers' responses to building new forms of voice and representation in an international context. Specific projects include: 1. The Impact of Digitalisation on Work and Employment -Conceptualising digital futures, historically, regionally and internationally -Comparative regulation of digital employment - Mapping regional and international trends of digital technology and work 2. Employers' Digital Practices at Work Survey 3. Employers' and employees' experiences of digital work across sectors -Changing management processes and practices -Workers' experiences of digital transformation 4. Reconnecting the disconnected: new channels of voice and representation - displaced workers, job search and the public employment service - self-employment, interest representation and voice Dig.IT will establish a Data Observatory on digital futures at work to promote our findings through an interactive website, report on a series of methodological seminars and new experimental methods and deliver extensive outreach activities. It will act as a one-platform library of resources at the forefront of research on digital work and will establish itself as a focal point for decision-makers across the policy spectrum, connecting with industrial strategy, employment and welfare policy. It will also manage an Innovation Fund designed to fund novel research ideas, from across the academic community as they emerge over the life course of the centre.