johninnit

People sometimes ask me “John, why should trades unions get involved with Twitter?” No, honest, they really do, my life is *that* exciting at times…

My standard response is that it all depends. The microblogging service Twitter is potentially attractive to unions as it’s something of a liberal and Labour ghetto, and it gets a lot of column inches for being flavour of the moment and making people look modern. However, Twitter is almost a platform in search of a utility, and different people/unions might get very different things out of it, or of course nothing at all, depending on how they naturally want to communicate. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a new toy for Friday. The TUC has been working on electoral reform issues again, after a break of 50 years. A motion at Congress this year called for the TUC to restart debate in the movement on a fairer voting system for UK elections.

There’s a new ToUChstone report out today on the background to the issue of electoral reform, and a roundup of the options on the table and the impact each might have (you can download it here), and you can also take a practical walkthrough yourself online with the electoral reform test.  Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to Clifford for this week’s image challenge – A different take on Mr Cameron’s slightly creepy airbrushed bill board ads.

Here’s mine (click for biggie) – I reckon the Cameron illusion is all mad CGI skillz rather than airbrushing! I did get the right Cameron, right?

Anyways, you can see a bunch of other excellent attempts at this over at MyDavidCameron.com “Airbrushed for Change”.

From the Beeb:

A strike by British Airways cabin crew planned for Christmas has been declared illegal in a High Court ruling. The court agreed with BA that the cabin crew’s union, Unite, had not correctly balloted its members on the strike action. BA complained that staff in the process of leaving the company had been balloted, breaching industrial relations law.

Isn’t this a technicality? The union need under law to get a majority of those voting within a bargaining unit, and they did – with a huge 90% voting on an equally impressive 80% turnout. Even if some voting were ineligible to strike, the turnout was so high that removing the suggested up to 1000 votes would surely still clearly carry the ballot – especially as you’d have to reduce the size of the overall bargaining unit by those who weren’t eligible (thus lowering the threshold even further for the ballot).

I’m not too proud of having been a lousy student. I don’t think I ever got an assignment in on time, and really found it a struggle to get much information out of libraries or lectures and into my head. Of course, since leaving uni for the world of work, I’ve found a big sop for my wounded pride in managmenty self awareness tests. It’s all because I’m an activist learner you see (not my fault whatsoever, honest!), and find it awkward to learn something unless I’m actually in the process of trying it at the same time.

So when I was asked to do an essay on union activists and social media for US academic journal WorkingUSA, I was a bit panicked. Luckily I managed to work it out by developing a presentation on many of the themes I wanted to cover, so I could test it out with different audiences first. The final essay “Connecting Activists” is now published in the current issue of WorkingUSA – go buy/loan a copy now! Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve seen a whole bunch more union related blogs over the last year, at all levels of the movement (check out the lists at TIGMOO.co.uk for many of them). But one thing I’ve noticed has impressed me in particular, and that’s the first attempts at cleverly using other people’s blogs to talk to members. I’m not talking about the Gen Sec posts that pop up on Comment Is Free every now and then, or the more mainstream political blogs, but something much closer to unions’ membership – the online trade press. Read the rest of this entry »

Back to my roots in the Solent town of Gosport this weekend. It’s a quiet sort of place, 80,000 or so inhabitants, neighbouring and utterly overshadowed by Portsmouth. It’s one claim to fame of recent years is probably one it would rather forget – the town MP Sir Peter Viggers got caught out attempting to claim for a now legendary ‘floating duck island‘ on Parliamentary expenses. Read the rest of this entry »

Another day, another aggregator. I’m getting quite into union aggregator sites of late, and think there could be something in this cheap and cheerful technology that could really be powerful for unions.

The latest experiment is Union Newswire. It collates and republishes links to union press releases from 19 UK organisations. The idea is to make a one-stop shop for journalists, bloggers or students following developments in unions. Rather than remember to check 19 sites, it gives you a choice of ways to stay up to date with the news you need from each of them, depending on how you want to work – web, email, RSS or Twitter. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re involved in trade unions, you’re likely hearing a new buzzword right now: “Just Transition”. My guess is that if you’re like me, the frequent repetition of this neologism doesn’t help clarify anything whatsoever, but it’s worth sticking with, as it’s an interesting concept, and one where unions may really be able to make a contribution. Read the rest of this entry »

Lucky to get a sneak preview of The Marseille Figs’ latest EP “Jumbo”, as my pre-order CD won’t be around for another week, though you can already buy downloads, and it is likely to feature on very heavy rotation on my MP3 to liven up my commutes.
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