IBM Second Life Protest: Protesting within a Virtual World to Change a Real Life Situation

In September 2007 a “virtual strike” was organised within Second Life due to a dispute between IBM and its employers. More than 1800 avatars swarmed the IBM campus in Second Life and participated in a twelve-hour protest. The demonstrations were reported within Second Life and broadcast through the Internet. At the end, due to the persistence of the protesters and the extent of the publicity, the company decided to move to negotiations with the union, and finally gave the employees their pay back.

Figures 5-6: The protesters in the “Union Island” (left) and the IBM Island (right), (IBM SL Protest Organization, 2007).

During the negotiations of the collective agreement in IBM Italy, the Italian works council asked for a salary increase. In response, IBM decided to cancel a union

agreement that cost each employee approximately 1000€ per year. The employers then decided to go on a worldwide strike and a demonstration that would take place within

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Second Life on the 27^th of September. First, the protesters informed the public by posting blog articles and by setting up an online petition against the company’s

management. Then, they formed a strike committee that convened in Second Life. They created a special region for their gatherings, the "Union Island” that could host up to 400 avatars and they developed applications in three languages so that protesters from different origins could join. A “strike kit” was also designed for the avatars, comprising of colourful t-shirts and signs to enrich their demonstrations (fig.5-6). Finally, they agreed on their strike’s locations and meeting points, that were publicly announced only twenty four hours in advance. The virtual strike attracted 1853 avatars from more than thirty different countries that occupied the official IBM Business Island in Second Life for twelve hours². The protesters managed to interrupt a meeting by the company’s managers within Second Life so that IBM, unable to react otherwise, decided to close down the entire island for a while. Twenty days later the Italian managing director resigned and the union agreement that the protesters have been asking for was signed.

"The union is expecting hundreds of avatars of Italian IBM workers, as well as IBM staff from around the world, and other trades unionists, to converge flash-mob style later this month, to demonstrate and spread the word about the dispute." (Au, 2007d)

Interestingly the protest is here displayed as a “Flash Mob-like” event, in the same way that many real-life demonstrations – sometimes even riots – are lately, especially when they project some sort of “fun” aspect instead of an aggressive attitude. Clearly this event was not organised just for the event’s sake and lasted longer than ten minutes and as such it cannot constitute a Flash Mob, however many connections to the Flash Crowd and the Flash Mobs can be drawn here. The crowd that assembled in IBM’s

2 “The demonstration was also a moment with music and many discussions between the avatars about IBM and its strategy related to outsources and impacts on affected employees. We occupied the IBM main reception for 4 hours (!!!), stopping their activities (meet customers, give business information to the public) cause the sim reached the maximum allowed number of people, and no more avatars were able to come to IBM reception. No reactions from the IBMers that were working in the reception... but IBM sent many people to control what was happening inside its most important meeting point....

Some groups of protesters went in parallel to Reuters (the most famous journalist was present and discussed with the protesters) and Manpower !

Some protesters interrupted the business of Manpower and after a while been banned from their site.

But no grief or problems: all the protesters were peaceful and respected all SL rules.” (IBM SL Protest Organization, 2007)

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Second Life Island was definitely political as they had very clear positions and specific demands and by running this virtual campaign they aimed not a being enjoyable or entertaining, but rather, global. They were decided to oppose a multinational company and for this reason a strike and a gathering of the Italian employees seemed inefficient.

Instead, they decided to stage their protest at a platform that anyone (and from

anywhere) could easily access. And since no place on earth was appropriate for that (as teleportation is not an option yet) this platform had to be a constructed artificial ground that would be able to gather this complex crowd. By demonstrating at the IBM’s region in Second Life they could address the company as a mass [avatar] body of IBM’s employees from all the different countries simultaneously.

The protesters attempted to resolve a problem of the contemporary times: if we are running global so that multinational companies are not based in any specific place, where and how could one directly address them? Clearly Second Life and virtual reality environments in general may provide the [artificial] ground for this kind of encounters.

And however contradictory this might seem, employers had the opportunity to express their demands in a better way and thus have a more direct communication with their executives via their avatars. The “IBM Global Demonstration”, as they called it (IBM SL Protest Organization, 2007), asked for the active support of people all over the world. IBM staff globally and also many more supporters and activists were mobilised and engaged to this common cause³. All they had to do was to build up an avatar (if they had not one already) and teleport to the specific Second Life location. Moreover, they were to decide on the level of anonymity – or pseudonymity – they desired. They could associate their avatar with their “first life” name and their professional email address if they wished to reveal their real life identity, or they could keep everything secret. Then the protest operated in different levels. Apart from the people that took part in Second Life, the events were continuously reported through blogs and websites. In addition to that, they were broadcast in the web so that people could watch in real-time.

In many cases, projections were organised by IBM employees in different countries within their offices in support of the actions (fig. 7-8). At the end of the day, colleagues

3 “Confirmed participation from: Belgium, Italy, Spain, France, USA, Canada, Germany and other countries. Supporters also from UK and Switzerland.” (IBM SL Protest Organization, 2007)

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that had never met before, located in different places of the world, had collaborated for a common cause and they succeeded.

Figures 7-8: Employees in Belgium (left) and in Slovenia (right) watching the virtual protest, (IBM SL Protest Organization, 2007).

When the protest came to an end, 550 IBM employers had signed the online petition (Against outsource from IBM to AT&T) and 1853 avatars had participated at the virtual demonstration. Unlike the real life demonstrations, where protest organisers and

authorities always end up disputing the number of participants, in the computerised world everything is monitored and as such measurable and clear. Here anything can be expressed in numbers and then converted in data so that it can be analysed in detail. As Bill Wasik argues, “in viral culture, we are all driven by the rating, the numbers, the Internet equivalent of the box-office gross” (Wasik, 2009, p. 15). In this way, activities and behaviours can be transformed into statistics and thus be “objectified” for different purposes. In the case of the IBM protest, the record of more than 1800 people opposing the company (and their live broadcast online) cannot but have strongly affected the final outcome. Although many of the protesters chose to keep their real life identity secret, there was no doubt that behind each one of those avatars there was a real person who wished to join the crowd and support the common cause.

4.5.2 The Kiss Artwork Demonstration: a Virtual Demonstration Triggered by an