UnionBook is a brand new social network, but one specifically for international union activists and supporters.
You probably have accounts already on Facebook, YouTube, flickr and a dozen more, and are wondering why on earth we would need a dedicated service for unions.
Two reasons… (more…)
I’m not a Unite Amicus member, so haven’t been following the current General Secretary election particularly closely, but I was interested to notice today that it seems to be the first union election where all the candidates have properly interactive online tools to promote their campaigns (last year’s NUJ DGS election nearly got there, but given it’s the new media union you’d expect them to).
This is interesting though, as it means all the candidates are potentially opening themselves (or at least their campaigns) up to comments and contact direct from members. (more…)
Welcome to my latest attempt at long-tail-stretching – laborgeek.org, a reading list for Web2.0 technology in the international labour movement.
This isn’t really a site in its own right – All it does is signpost the way to current resources that you might find useful. Of course, this is working on my slightly unconventional definition of the word ‘useful’, which appliesto people similarly obsessed with new media technologies as they apply to this glorious movement of ours (citation needed). (more…)
At Congress 2008 in Brighton, which is turning out as interesting as ever – spending a week in the company of pretty much every element of the UK labour movement.
I spoke at a fringe today on online organising, along with Eric Lee and APT’s Paul Smith. For the 99.995% of trade unionists who didn’t make it along, here’s part of what I had to say – my 4 predictions on how unions (or at any rate unionists) will be using Web 2.0 in the next couple of years: (more…)
This courtesy of Brian Shaler’s very cute crappy graphs graph-maker.
So… I reckon a number of unions and some membership organisations are having problems in taking up as much of the 2.0 whizziness as they could because we’ve been a bit too used to our organisational structures too long. (more…)
Worrying news out of Italy for us labor-geeks. Davide Barillari, a rep with IBM Italy, and one of the prime movers behind the international web-based linking and virtual world protests of the last year, is concerned his union may be trying to sideline his attempts to evangelise for the transition to a 2.0 organisation, by removing him from international responsibilities through a snap works council election.
He feels so strongly about this that he’s set up a blog (”WE trust in Davide“) and an online petition to give his side of the story. He thinks he’s probably been trying to move the union too far too fast – not to mention irking his employer – and this is the reaction to it. (more…)
Sure you love being a trade unionist, but if you’re the type who’s ever thought it might be *even* nicer to be a trade unionist on a private mediterranean island, with lovely views, free beer and the superpower of flight, this might just be one for you.
Come join the fun on Union Island, the movement’s new resort in virtual world Second Life. Okay, you can’t actually get in just yet (in the manner of the best foreign holidays, the accommodation is still being built), but you can look at the piccies and sign up for the user group, to get notified of developments and have your 4pworth on how it’s going. The site is at www.slunions.org (more…)
I’ve been very slack on the blogging front in recent months (blame john 2.2, who starts wailing whenever I so much as look at a keyboard), and so I’ve kept a pile of things to write about in a bit more detail, and then gradually discarded them over the months as they sunk further from topicality.
One I shouldn’t really ignore though is Eric’s railings late last year against conducting union campaigns via the good book. He has a thoughtful and provocative post on his blog (go read it now), arguing that for unions, Facebook is pretty much a waste of time. It’s a bandwagon, and one which whilst immediately seductive to unions in being easy and free, locks us into dependency on a privately owned system we might outgrow, and that might at any time arbitrarily eject us. (more…)
For me, one of the most interesting things about the screenwriters’ dispute in the States (click here to support it!), is the use that individual Writers’ Guild members have been making of online video to contribute to the overall campaign. Here are a few of them (hat tip: James). (more…)
We in TIGMOO love our folk art. Enamel badges and glorious banners are a kind of comfort to unionists – showing us our place alongside the millions who’ve taken that route before.
As unions merge or modernise though, the painted banners of old, with the quasi-heraldic panels showing members’ trades, union heroes and famous incidents are giving way to large, bold logo prints and slogans (though to be fair I guess it’s also as some of them are now precious antiques that we need to preserve a bit better than hoicking them around Clerkenwell in the rain). (more…)
