There’s a whole lot of labor activity going on over here these days, and they are organizing on the web and through the use of mobile technology. This is no great surprise to anyone who has followed the adoption of such technology and seen its effectiveness in getting the message out to the public on a large scale (e.g. Bird Flu, natural disasters).

Keither Bradsher and David Barboza have an excellent piece in the New York Times on the use of Internet/mobile technology by labor activists.

The 1,700 workers who went on strike at the Honda Lock auto parts factory here are mostly poor migrants with middle-school educations.

But they are surprisingly tech-savvy.

Hours into a strike that began last week, they started posting detailed accounts of the walkout online, spreading word not only among themselves but also to restive and striking workers elsewhere in China.

They fired off cellphone text messages urging colleagues to resist pressure from factory bosses. They logged onto a state-controlled Web site — workercn.cn — that is emerging as a digital hub of the Chinese labor movement. And armed with desktop computers, they uploaded video of Honda Lock’s security guards roughing up employees.

The story of how workers are using IT tools to organize sounds like a microcosm of the labor movement in general, with a very interesting dynamic between labor and government.

The government has thus far allowed for limited gains to be made by labor, which has mostly targeted foreign firms and gone after higher wages. The government can live with this. However, the leaders of the strikes have not fared well on an individual basis, and the government has been keeping a very close eye on organizational efforts. I wrote about this in more detail last week on china/divide.

Similarly, the government has allowed striking workers to use certain communications tools, including SMS, web sites, email, and video file sharing, to spread their message and organize. But as Bradsher and Barboza explain, the big question now is how long this will last and to what extent will the government shut down these communication channels:

A looming question now, in fact, is whether and when the government might seek to quash the current worker uprisings if they become too big a threat to the established social order. Already, the government has started cracking down on strike-related Web sites and deleted many of the blog posts about the strikes.

Perhaps an even bigger question is whether the labor movement, as well as environmental and other movements, will “force” the government to institute ever-draconian Internet restrictions in an attempt to reign in activism.