From deke@wps.com Tue Jun 14 20:00:28 1994 Received: from localhost by fido.wps.com (8.6.5/wps.com-hackery) id NAA22587; Tue, 14 Jun 1994 13:00:15 -0700 From: deke (Deke Motif Nihilson) Message-Id: <199406142000.NAA22587@wps.com> Subject: Online organizing? To: iww-list Date: Tue, 14 Jun 1994 13:00:15 -0700 (PDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 4844 X-Status: Status: OR from the San Francisco Examiner, 6/13/94, p. B1 col. 4 (Business Section) TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE OF WARNING: The following was excerpted from the daily capitalist press. Coverage of the issues is distorted by such, in the form of a bias of interests. ***start of article*** WELL-organized Boycott Hits H-P by Elizabeth Weise, in her column ON THE NET Take a bunch of net-heads arguing about personal liberty, add a moral stand and mix in what the Internet does best-- collecting and dissemenating information-- and you get either a benchmark of democracy or a public relation firm's worst nightmare. Or maybe both. It began when freelance technical writer William Knutson was told in late May that he'd have to take a urine drug test before he could get his next job with Palo Alto computer giant Hewlett-Packard Co. Knutson, a mild-mannered 34-year-old who says he leads such a quiet life that an exciting night is putting good pesto on his pasta, refused. "I don't do this lightly," he said of his decision to forgo a contract with the company that provides 80 percent of his income and which he says he respects a great deal. "People should be treated based on their performance. I consider it a civil liberties issue. The moral point is that I have a right to the privacy of my body." He could have railed to his friends. He could have written a letter to the editor. He could have sent nasty mail to the company. Instead he posted a two-line note on the WELL, a small computer conferencing system on the Internet. "Hewlett-Packard has just instituted a policy of urine-testing all contractors. Does anyone know if they also urine-test full-time employees?" Ask a question on the Net and you'll get not just an answer, but a Response. That first message was posted Tuesday afternoon. On Thursday, 40 messages later, a new topic on the WELL opened with this salvo: "We in the WELL and our friends on the Net have two tasks ahead of us: Let H-P know that many people know about and disapprove of their policies... and find work for William Knutson." Only a small fraction of the 10,000 people who make their virtual home on the Sausalito-based WELL, the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, got involved. But if there's anything folks on the Net are good at, it's finding information and then spreading it around. The prospect of taking on the country's second-largest computer manufacturer over an issue of principle appealed mightily. Within a day they'd gathered addresses, fax and phone numbers for Hewlett-Packard officials and begun to cobble together a plan. People posted e-mail addresses for national radio shows, and began to create a list of alternative purchases people could make if they chose to boycott H-P because of its policy. Within a week more than 250 messages were posted. Someone found an e-mail address for the Online Career Center, to help Knutson find another job. Someone else posted tips on how to refill Hewlett-Packard-made deskjet printer cartridges at a fraction of the cost of a new cartridge. It was participatory democracy at its most exuberant and messy. Becayse this is the Net-- and the WELL at that, a notoriously high-minded computer network known for philosophical discussions and the kind of hairsplitting any medieval rabbi would recognize-- there were also a great many words devoted to the ethical questions involved. But while some complained there wasn't enough data to act and quoted Goethe as saying, "Nothing is more frightening than ignorance ina ction," others began writing letters to Lewis Platt, chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard. According to Knutson, who said he'd spoken with the Hewlett-Packard official in charge of of the drug testing program, within two weeks the company had received numerous letters and an unspecified number of calls from other contractors who respectfully declined to work for H-P as long as the policy was in effect. That was only from the small pond of the WELL. On Thursday the combined research and information collected by the WELLites was posted to several Usenet groups-- groups read not by thousands but tens of thousands of Net users. They included misc.job.misc, talk.politics.drugs, misc.headlines, and alt.society.civil-liberty. Hewlett-Packard spokeswoman Mary Lou Simmermacher said the company had reluctantly accepted the need for drug testing as a reality in today's world, but that it takes input from its customers very seriously. While it seems unlikely a company with 97,000 employees worldwide will change its policies based on a few letters, it's clear that a new organizing tool is being born. As one writer said: maybe it's time for the Net to pick on something its own size. ***** Elizabeth Weise can be reached at