Last February, Italian clothing brand Benetton agreed to contribute to a compensation fund for victims of the Rana Plaza disaster (c.f. article No. 8912). This last minute turnaround by the company came about not from union pressure but instead from a million signatures on an e-petition that had been put online by Avaaz the cyber activist site. With the advent of online petition sites like Change.org or Avaaz, causes that would have formerly been purely union supported are now being scaled up by millions of online signatures. Far from criticizing this development, on the contrary, unions see it as presenting new opportunities for battle. However for businesses it is more a question of a new and bald risk to their reputation that needs careful handling.
Online petitions are becoming more and more common and encompass the world of business. Mobilization headquarters are now virtual spaces that allow millions of people to get involved in specific issues, in just a matter of a few clicks. Issues in which they would not necessarily have got involved in from the ‘real’ world platforms.
LabourStart: the unions’ platform. Trade unions are far from being on the back foot over this technology. For some years now they have been using a specialist militan
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