Writers’ Guild of Great Britain members (though outnumbered in this pic 2:1 by NUJ members) were out in force yesterday, to mark an international day of solidarity with the striking screenwriters of the Writers’ Guild of America. I managed to pop by for the end of it, after an exciting (no, really) team away day morning a few streets over. Read the rest of this entry »

I went shopping earlier this year, to find myself a new t-shirt. I’m very hard to please when it comes to t-shirts, and a good shirt hunt can take me quite a way across the city. On this occasion I happened onto the Firetrap shop at London’s Seven Dials, where I found a nice tailored, black, soft cotton shirt, stitched with a large eagle crest. I quite like Firetrap clothes, when I can fit into them, but what really sold me on this one was the legend writ large around the eagle: “Firetrap: Union made”. Read the rest of this entry »

A very interesting project from the European Metalworkers’ Federation (though they’re a bit shy and you wouldn’t know it was them from looking at the site).

The General Motors Workers’ Blog lets workers at General Motors around the world sign up and add their own posts to a central news service of what GM management is up to in each others’ countries.

The idea is to beat divide-and-conquer management and deal more effectively with an employer who is able to move around the globe at will, and play country off against country and plant against plant.

It’s a bit clunky (as most things run by union federations tend to be - it’s always a huge pain co-ordinating people and sites in a second language, and on a limited budget), but I think it’s a pretty good idea, and I’ll be fascinated to see how it goes. My main concern would be that the lack of polish (as opposed to Polish - which is catered for!) and easy explanation of how to work with it may turn off those people who aren’t bloggers already (ie. most people).

Good luck to all the GM bloggers, and let’s hope this is the first of many.

I got a round robin email recently from Derek Blackadder, LabourStart’s man in Canada, drawing my attention to a new virtual international union network called New Unionism.

It looks quite interesting. They have a manifesto for the future of trade unionism, which seeks to unite the two schools of western unionism, Organising and Partnership. They contend that far from being opposites, if you want either of them done properly, they need to be done in conjunction with the other - two sides of the same coin.

We on the left are very fond of splitterism, and it’s easy for two groups who agree on 99% of something to be more concerned about the 1% where they differ in approach. Hence each technique’s camp tends to start to use the other word as shorthand to define that group rather than the technique itself, and we lose sight a bit maybe of the considerable benefits that both the techniques offer.

I like Derek so reckon anything he’s involved with must be pretty kosher. He and the others (including a good number from UK unions) who have signed up to this are being commendably open in signing up to a position which might see them shot at from both sides.

It seems to be a bit of a Euston Manifesto for unions (just without the pub). A statement which isn’t really that contentious to all but the most hardened splitters, focusing on the things we can agree on, and trying to reinvigorate the basic principles the movement, to make us more appropriate to the times.

The site’s a bit tricky to find your way around at first, and a lot of it is hidden for members only, but there is still quite a lot to take in there, including a very interesting summary of the UK’s attempts at New Unionism in the late 90’s - which has gathered some pretty illuminating comments (the kind of thing which suggests others are taking them seriously).

Less information on what they’ll actually be able to do though. This is maybe unfair, as they’ve only just started building a network, but as people are signing in a personal capacity, rather than on behalf of their unions, they’re not necessarily committing any organisations to put resources behind it. No bad thing maybe as they plan to work out a lot of what they will do democratically as they go along, using the strengths of the web to collaborate.

The idea is a nice one though - and I can agree with the principles behind their approach. Will have to think a bit more about it - Anyone else thinking of signing?