Greetings earthlings from the world’s first virtual reality picket line. It’s spread over a huge are of IBM corporate campus in virtual world Second Life. I’ve seen quite a lot of people, flown around some fun places, and had a chat to some nice IBM staff who were clearing up the 80 foot “Oi IBM, No!” sign I made for their sandbox. Read the rest of this entry »

Aussies will soon be going to the polls, as current speculation suggests Howard will call within a couple of weeks. One thing that might cause an upset this year is that crafty Mr Howard has tightened up the voter registration regulations, meaning that the same evening that he calls the election, any late registration will be suspended. Read the rest of this entry »

Look at this. It certainly looks the business.

In recent years, Labour seem to have eschewed the Tories’ strategy of slick New Media launches, aimed at offline column inches rather than online impact. From ‘Dave in India’, through Webcameron’s diminishing returns, to the recent banner ads, the Tories have very pragmatically spent online in order to look innovative to the offline majority, who will never actually bother with this politico-geekery themselves. It didn’t matter really what they did, so long as they looked stylish, modern and open, and had enough buzzwords on-site to impress the scribblers.

Put against this, Labour seem in the last year to have taken this web stuff all a bit too seriously. Rather than media launches, they’ve worked through a bunch of policy consultations, and tools designed to up their supporters’ web literacy. The byzantine MPURLs system is a world away from Webcameron, and seems to show a party actually looking for ways to take the technology seriously. Focusing internaly has had benefits in building a core of activists who are web literate, and I think is the correct strategy long term, but it’s let the Tories lap us more than once in the race to be seen as innovative. Read the rest of this entry »

A lunchtime spent in the company of union colleagues from TUC, ATL, NASUWT, PCS, Unite and the ZCTU, ACTSA supporters and Zimbabwean expats outside Zimbabwe House on the Strand, protesting in support of the ZCTU’s 2 day stay away from work. Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone work near Charing Cross in London? If so, pop down to the Strand for your lunch break to join in an ACTSA/PCS/TUC demo in support of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions’ “stay away” from work. Read the rest of this entry »

Italian union members at IBM are taking a novel form of action, to highlight their current dispute over pay cuts. Later this month, they’re planning on mounting the world’s first virtual reality union demo, in trendy 3D world Second Life.

IBM put great stock in their lovely corporate headquarters in Second Life, which makes them a a good target for a virtual campaign, publicising the dispute to IBM customers and clients visiting SL. The novelty angle too should get lots of publicity for the dispute.

The action is going to take place, flash mob style, at a currently secret time, date and place. If you’d like to join the picket in solidarity with the IBM workers, you can sign up to the mailing list at the UNI Global website (which also has a helpful “absolute beginners’ guide” to using Second Life), and they’ll keep you in touch.

Then pop over to the UNI virtual office to pick up your kit (also available at Tigmoo Corner and several other union Second Life hangouts). The kit has a virtual T-shirt for you to wear, virtual banners for you to wave, a giant rotating fish for you to… well, I’m not sure what that’s for, but I hope it’ll become apparent later, and instructions on what to do next.

Should be a fun event to get involved in (for union webby trainspotters like me), and an interesting development in global solidarity. Great if you speak some Italian I guess, but no worries if you don’t - there should be a good number of people there from around the world, trades unionists, activists and international IBM employees. Indeed, this could be the first steps in building an international union network at IBM, from union members from this multinational employer’s locations all around the world.

Hope to see you there - if only because this is one union picket that definitely won’t get rained on!

UPDATE: Wagner James Au at the excellent New World Notes has a short interview on the action with union avatar UNIglobalunion Oh - the first virtual union press interview I’ve seen so far!

Well, that’s another Congress over. I watched a pretty empty looking hall on telly for the last words, which this year went to David Hencke of the Guardian, with the traditional less-than-serious “Reply from the Media”.

He proposed a new round of Union Modernisation money to be spent entirely on high-tech innovations. The upcoming “Winter of Discontent”  would be replaced by a “Summer of Fun” Wi-Fi beach festival instead of next year’s Congress, with motions downloadable as podcasts for a individually customisable event, and unions would go entirely online to conduct their disputes through hacking and phreaking.

Might work. In fact online might already be how they’re organising the GC elections, given the results 

Stung by their employer’s decision to ban access to Facebook during their work breaks, staff at Medway Hospital have voiced their protest by, you guessed it, starting a Facebook group.

On a slightly less arch note, you can also join a Facebook group to support the staff at Fremantle Trust in their dispute against an employer who have slashed pay and conditions after taking over the public sector care contract from Barnet Council. Unison rep Andrew Rogers has been sacked in the latest twist to this long running dispute, so please join the group and take this online action.

I remember writing an email of complaint to their Chief Exec Carole Sawyer many months ago, and getting back a remarkably snotty reply, so it’s not a great surprise that they’re trying to intimidate LabourStart, who are running the action. The LabourStart activists aren’t backing down, but their ISP got cold feet after a letter from Fremantle, and told them to remove the campaign, which is now back up on another server. Sign up now - they can’t sue us all

Thanks to the tenacious Lancaster UAF blog for this story about the BNP-linked union Solidarity’s latest campaign.

A County Durham teacher and former BNP candidate, Mark Walker, has been suspended for something related to computer misuse. Solidarity claim it was the innocent popular past-time of visiting the BNP’s website. The head claims it was something else. Lancaster UAF’s rumour mill suggests looking at far-right sites whilst he should have been teaching.

A nice illustration of the personal surfing in the workplace story from last week. It’s not unreasonable to be allowed to use the web in your own time at work, and a good employer will have a policy to support this, albeit with a couple of important caveats:

• So long as it’s your *own* time. That means breaktime, downtime, however your employer defines it. Their definition is unlikely to include “on the clock” or whilst you’re really supposed to be teaching for example.
• So long as what you do on the web isn’t something which could damage your employer or cause offence, like, ooh erm I don’t know… accessing racist and offensive material online maybe?

Unfortunately for Walker, as a member of Solidarity, rather than one of the proper (and recognised) teaching unions, his support is coming from the presumably rather overworked Pat Harrington and in lieu of sympathetic colleagues from the union branch, a motley crew from the BNP, their front groups, and adverts on nazi chatrooms, who popped down to hassle the school on the first day of term.

Fortunately for the rest of us, Walker’s alleged activities put him in a rather different boat from the rest of the nation’s lunchbreak surfers, so if he goes (deservedly) down, he shouldn’t spoil the office daily poke for everyone.