In general, the trade unions movements are facing “hard times” (Chaison, 1996) since the 70s. Trying to overcome the problem, they are implementing a set of actions towards their revitalization (Frege and Heery, 2003). The adoption of the ICTs, mainly the Internet, emerges as an important tool for supporting those actions. The unions adopted the ICTs later than their counterparts (Pinnock, 2005), but the competitive advantages they offer and their flexibility encouraged them to adopt ICTs more and more. Everywhere, they are making an investment in this domain using them for several purposes. Some studies reveal that they have a relevant impact in the organizing issues but a more mitigate one in the overall unions’ efficiency (Fiorito et al, 2002). However, some authors go forward and, in a cyber-optimistic view as Castells (2012), state that ICTs have a relevant contribution for a qualitative transformation of the unions’ nature. According to them, namely the Internet, gives an important contribution to the deepening of union democracy by the possibility it offers to create new spaces that encourage participation and the accountability of the leaders. So, a new union form emerged called “cyberunion” (Shostak, 2002), “e-union” (Darlington, 2000), “open-source unionism” (Freeman and Rogers, 2002) or “trade unionism 2.0“ (Gutiérrez-Rubi, 2009). In this paper we intend to analyze the presence on the Internet of the Portuguese teacher unions and understand whether they are or not to withdraw all the potential of Web 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2005) and to build a networking unionism that give a contribution to their revitalization. Our main conclusion is that these organizations are very far from achieving this goal and that they are closer to what Shostak (2002) called a Cyber Drift.

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Unions,Internet,health sector,Portugal