Eric Lee

Last night, the second largest union in Britain, Unison, voted to call for "an economic, cultural, academic and sporting boycott" of Israel. This follows similar calls by two other unions -- the NUJ and UCU.

If you oppose the boycott, please print out this A4 sized full colour poster proclaiming "No to racist boycotts! Israelis and Palestinians welcome here!" and hang it in your workplace and in your home. (The poster is in PDF format.)

And please encourage other opponents of racist boycotts to link to this page and to download the poster themselves.

Posted by Eric Lee at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

In the last several weeks, unions in a number of countries have been engaged in a wide-ranging and often acrimonious debate over the subject of boycotting Israel.

In Britain, both the National Union of Journalists and the University and College Union -- together representing some 155,000 journalists and university lecturers -- have called for a boycott of Israel. At its upcoming conference, the country's second largest union, the 1.4 million member Unison, is likely to do the same -- or else pass a somewhat watered-down version of the call. The unions and professional associations of architects and doctors are considering similar steps.

At a recent conference in London organised by the South East Region of the Trades Union Congress, the lay president of the TUC found herself alone and somewhat isolated defending the national centre's traditional position of support for a two-state solution and engaging with both the Palestinian and Israeli unions.

Nearly all the major unions in Britain have rallied behind the newly-formed "Enough" coalition which is calling for widespread protest against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands forty years after the June 1967 Six Day War.

The debate is not confined to Britain alone. South African unions have long been champions of the Palestinian cause and have recently intensified their involvement in demonstrations and boycott calls. In Canada, the decision in 2006 by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in Ontario to call for a boycott of Israel made headlines. Several years ago, Norwegian unions backed a call for a boycott of products produced in the Jewish state.

But lest one think that there is a consensus in the international trade union movement, there is not.

The decision by the UCU to call for a boycott of Israel produced a strong response not only within Britain, but overseas as well. The giant American Federation of Teachers (with 1.3 million members) strongly condemned the UCU decision. And when CUPE Ontario decided to back the boycott, they were condemned publicly by, among others, the head of the Canadian Auto Workers, Buzz Hargrove.

The reaction of the Israeli unions themselves has been swift and strong. The head of the union in Israel's ports has already threatened to instruct members to stop unloading British ships and planes if the boycott threat becomes real. The leader of the Histadrut national trade union centre, Ofer Eini, has issued a public call on British unions to back down.

Meanwhile, many Palestinian trade unionists have publicly backed the call for a boycott of Israel, though there have some exceptions -- including university teachers.

It is a debate which is tearing apart the international trade union movement and at its core is a workers' rights issue.

Proponents of the boycott within the trade union movement are basically giving up on the Israeli left and peace movements, and on the Histradrut national trade union centre, and saying that only external pressure will persuade Israel to end the occupation. Many of them reject the traditional trade union support for a two-state solution, and call for an end to the Zionist state itself.

Opponents of the boycott are urging support for those elements within Israel who are seeking a solution to the decades-old conflict with Palestine and the Arab countries. Nearly all of them believe that the only solution is a partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, living side by side in peace.

The proponents are claiming that the violation of human rights in general, and workers' rights in particular, is so extreme in Israel that extreme measures are called for.

Opponents point out that there are many countries in which human rights violations are far worse -- including Sudan (Darfur), Saudi Arabia, China, Colombia and so on.

That last point is an interesting one. China is a country that has no free trade unions. The national centre is state-controlled and always has been. Independent trade union activists are routinely jailed, strikes and demonsrations are broken up, and the lives of many millions of workers are miserable as a result. (You wouldn't want your worst enemy to work in a Chinese mine, for example.)

And yet there does not seem to be any movement anywhere -- at least not in the trade unions -- calling for a boycott of Chinese products.

In Britain, part of the reason given by the union-backed Palestine Solidarity Campaign for focussing on Palestine is that the U.K. has a special connection -- all of Palestine was once a British mandate territory. But of course a case could be made that Britain has a special connection with China as well. Until ten years ago, Hong Kong was a British colony.

Ask proponents of the boycott why they want to boycott Israeli goods but not Chinese ones and they'll likely answer that a boycott of China wouldn't be effective. The Chinese economy is too big, too strong, it simply wouldn't work. Israel, on the other hand, is a much smaller country and is therefore more vulnerable.

In the schoolyard, this kind of behaviour is called "bullying". Israel is being targetted by some groups because it is vulnerable, because it is a tiny country dependent upon exports to survive.

The general rule for unions in dealing with boycotts is to talk to our colleagues in the country concerned. We wouldn't support a boycott of apartheid South Africa if the workers' organisations there didn't call for one. We'd only back a boycott of Chinese goods if independent and democratic Chinese unions were to call for one. Workers' rights violations take place all the time on plantations around the world, but the only way we'd consider backing a boycott call directed against Dole or Chiquita would be if the unions themselves called for one.

The Israeli unions have been absolutely clear on this point: A boycott of Israel spearheaded by unions overseas strengthens the Israeli right, which always argues that country is alone and friendless in the world. And it does nothing for the Palestinians. It is simply a continuation of the official Arab boycott which began in 1945, and which picked up where the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses ended. It is the inheritor of a disgraceful tradition.

It is right for unions around the world to be discussing the plight of the Palestinians and seeking ways to provide assistance to them. But they should be doing so in partnership with the Israeli trade union movement, not in opposition to it.

Posted by Eric Lee at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)

Over the course of the last few weeks, I've installed a new operating system on my computer. I no longer use Microsoft Windows XP and instead now use Ubuntu Linux. That's nice, you may be thinking, but what does that have to do with the trade union movement?

Before I answer that, I should mention that I have access to some privileged information about unions and computer operating systems. As the founding editor of the LabourStart website, I get to look at the statistics. I know how many people visit our site every day, I know what countries they come from and which web browsers they use. And I know which operating systems they are using as well.

In the last couple of days, over 91% of those visiting LabourStart were using Microsoft Windows. Seven percent were using Apple Macintosh. And just 1.16% were using Linux.

I'm sure that most union websites are having the same experience.

Linux has been around since the early 1990s. I first used it more than a decade ago. I bought my first desktop running Linux instead of Windows back in 2002. I and many others have been writing about open source software, including Linux, for several years now. And yet the vast majority of you are not listening, and are sticking with Microsoft Windows on your desktops and laptops.

I should qualify that: there is one case where you are listening. Millions of you have chosen Mozilla Firefox, the open source web browser, instead of Microsoft Internet Explorer. Less than 70% of the visitors to LabourStart use Microsoft's web browser to reach the site. Over 20% are using Mozilla. So at least some open source software has an appeal for you.

But Linux has not taken off, at least not in the trade union movement, and without trying to analyze why that is the case (I hope some of you will tell me), I want to point out five very good reasons why trade unionists should consider making the switch.

First of all, there's the issue of cost. Dell is now selling computers for the first time with a user-friendly version of Linux. In the USA, those computers cost on average $50 less than computers with Microsoft Windows. (You can pick up a brand new Dell laptop running Ubuntu Linux for less than $600.) The reason for the price difference is that Linux is usually distributed free of charge, while Windows is paid for.

If you buy a copy of Windows Vista, the latest version of the Microsoft operating system, it can set you back US $400. (Amazon.com will sell you a copy of Vista at a huge discount -- "only" $300.) Meanwhile, a copy of the latest version of Ubuntu Linux costs nothing at all. In fact, Ubuntu can be sent to you on CD completely free of charge. (And you can download it from the net as well.)

If you have CDs or DVDs with Linux on them, you can legally copy them and distribute them to friends and colleagues. You can pass around your CD at work. Try doing that with Windows.

Second, this brings up the issue of legality. When I mentioned to a colleague that Linux was particularly appropriate to -- and becoming wildly popular in -- the world's developing countries, I was told that no one pays for their Windows software there anyway. That may be true; pirated software is very popular and not only in the world's South.

But companies that use pirated software quickly learn that they are taking a business risk. They can be sued, their assets can be seized, and they live under the constant threat of discovery by Microsoft and its agents. Unions face the same threat, and any union using illegal, pirated software is vulnerable to legal action.

Third, there's the issue of security. Most trade unionists are not IT specialists. They know little or nothing about firewalls and anti-virus software. If they're lucky, the union has sorted out a subscription to keep their anti-virus software up-to-date, and the IT department in their union has made sure their firewall is turned on and is working.

(There's a cost issue here as well. Norton's security suite costs around US $70 to buy, and then $60 per year to keep up to date.)

In Linux, there are no viruses and in most cases (such as in Ubuntu Linux) there's no need for a firewall either. Your computers are completely secure, and you've saved your union $70.

If you're an IT pro, you don't really need Linux because you know all about trojan horses, defragmenting, viruses, firewalls, and so on. You've mastered all those issues. But if you're a normal human being, you want to use your computer to send and receive emails, surf the web, listen to music -- and you don't want to have to choose which firewall or anti-virus is best, and to ensure you've got the latest updates every day. Linux is by far the more secure and easier solution.

Fourth, if you really love monopoly capitalism and companies like Microsoft earning billions in profits just warms your heart, go ahead -- keep using Windows. But if you like the idea of a society in which goods and services might be distributed for free (does "to each according to his need" ring a bell?), you might find the free and open source software movement of some interest. For ideological reasons, unions should be lining up behind and aggressively promoting this one sector of the modern economy in which there is a real alternative to giant, profit-driven transnational capital.

Fifth and finally, you should switch because you can. A decade ago, Linux was for geeks only. It was hard to use and made no pretense at being a competitor to Microsoft Windows on the desktop. Five years ago, when I first tried it, I admit that it was still unfriendly, hard to get it to work with printers and the like, and wouldn't have recommended it to anyone else. Today, with Ubuntu Linux, I can't think of single thing I used to do with Windows that I can't do now on my PC. I am running a faster, more secure machine, and spending nothing on software.

It's time for unions to save their members' money, to make their offices more efficient and secure, and to support the free and open source software movement. It's time for unions to switch over to Ubuntu Linux.

Posted by Eric Lee at 09:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (34)

I realize that my original plan was to try out Ubuntu Linux using the Wubi dual-boot system, making sure that everything worked and then after a full month, switching over. But I lost patience -- having Windows on my disk was slowing me down, consuming scores of gigabytes of space, and forcing me to postpone what was becoming increasingly inevitable.

As a result, I took the decision last night to spend this morning backing up everything I had of value in Windows, and then making a clean install of Ubuntu Linux 7.04. As of a few minutes ago, Linux is the only operating system on my computer.

See my earlier entries to see why I chose Linux in the first place and my experience in two weeks of using it. Below are some notes on the install for anyone considering doing what I've done.

These notes are in no particular order -- just observations:

1. Wubi is not Ubuntu. There are differences. A couple that came up: Skype comes pre-installed with Ubuntu, but not with Wubi. gFTP comes with Wubi, but not with Ubuntu. I'm sure I'll discover more.

2. In the middle of the install, there was a moment when the progress bar stopped. The on-screen message said something about 'downloading'. Downloading? I was installing from a free DVD that came with Linux Format magazine. So I clicked on the icon for my wireless Internet connection, which worked, and the install proceeded. Every computer magazine on sale in Britain today has Ubuntu on the CD or DVD which comes with the magazine, but if you don't want to deal with that and are prepared to wait, the people behind Ubuntu will happily send you a CD for free in the post. (I find this amazing.)

3. The longest part of the whole process, by far, was cleaning up Windows, finding what I wanted to keep, and backing it up to an external hard drive. Setting up Ubuntu took only a few minutes, though there was the added wait caused by 81 updates which I needed to download. (The automatic downloading of updates for all software is a fantastic feature of Ubuntu Linux. Having known people whose PCs have never been updated, who use the software which came with the PC out of the box, for this reason alone people who lack IT skills should use Linux instead of Windows.)

4. Ubuntu popped up a warning early on about some of these updates being non-authenticated. I'm not sure what that means and hadn't seen it before, even though I went through a similar process with Wubi. This is not a helpful message, especially to newbies, and should be changed.

5. Moving the files I had created while using Wubi was quite easy -- I simply copied them back from the external hard drive, and they nearly all worked without a hitch. My emails were retrieved, it found my old ones, my browser bookmarks and saved passwords for the web were still there, gFTP (once installed) found all my bookmarks, and so on.

6. I wasn't able to restore data from GnoTIME, a time tracker program. Apparently these are held in XML format and for some reason didn't survive the migration. Fearing that this might be the case, I printed out the results of the last two weeks before making the move. For the moment, I'm using a web-based time tracking tool, Harvest.

7. Finally, I thought I'd take a look, see how much disk space I now had. A few hours ago, I was down to 21 GB of free space on my hard drive, which is actually not very much. The machine ran slowly. Right now, I'm up to 46 GB of free space. In fact, I've got more than 80% of my hard drive free to use again. (And no need, ever, to defragment.)

With no anti-virus software running, the system works lightning-fast. I feel as if I've bought a new computer.

Posted by Eric Lee at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I've reached a decision. In another 18 days -- on the first day of summer -- I will completely shut down Microsoft Windows XP on my computer and move over to using Ubuntu Linux as my sole operating system. I'm waiting 18 more days because I want to be absolutely sure after one month of using Linux that everything works. So far, it all does.

I've had several positive experiences lately which I thought I'd share with skeptics. (And remember that when I started this thing I was a skeptic myself -- having been burned by a bad experience with Red Hat Linux back in 2002 -- see here, here and here.)

Digital photos: I took a couple of photos, removed the SD card and inserted it into my USB card reader which I inserted into a free USB port on the computer. A second later and I could see this as a new disk, could edit and copy the photos. Just like that. Couldn't be simpler.

Digital music: Slightly more complicated. I bought a new headset and couldn't initially get it to work. Had to adjust sound settings -- all done through the graphic interface, with no command line stuff, no arcane lines of code. One drawback of Ubuntu is that it doesn't build in MP3, and this for reasons having to do with MP3 being a proprietary format, with OGG Vorbis as the default open source audio format. That's all very nice, but it added a layer of difficulty which is unncessary. It took a few minutes to figure out how to allow MP3s to play on my computer again. In the end, the easiest way to convert some files to or from OGG and MP3 was to do it with a wonderful online service called Zamzar.

Disk space: This is a Wubi issue -- when I set up Ubuntu as a Windows application (rather than with the usual way, which is to partition one's disk) I guess it didn't get a lot of space. So when I tried to move over large music files, it warned me that there wasn't any room. When I got rid of those files, I had no problems. This is one of the reasons why I want to move toward a proper, native installation of Ubuntu without any Windows around -- to ensure that all the space on the hard drive (and it's not a giant hard drive) is accessible.

I have broken one of my rules and invested around £27 in the Ubuntu Linux Bible, published by Wiley. I thought that if everything crashed and I lost all access to the net, etc., this would be the closest I'll get to technical support. In terms of kilograms per penny, this hefty volume seemed the best of an ever-growing list of specifically Ubuntu titles available in shops (Foyles in London has around seven Ubuntu titles, one more than Waterstones).

So, 18 days and counting. If nothing major goes wrong before the 21st, on that day I will put Microsoft Windows XP behind me forever.

P.S. I just discovered that I actually begin running Linux for the first time ten years ago. Google has become my external memory.

Posted by Eric Lee at 09:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Two things are happening to software that should be of interest to trade unionists. First, software that used to cost a great deal of money is now often available completely free of charge. Second, that software – which used to come on CD-ROMs – now is often available for use online, through your web browser.

A good example of this is photo editing software. We have all faced the problem of wanting to put images on our websites, but also wanting such simple things as reducing the image size, or cropping the image, or even getting rid of the dreaded 'red-eye' that appears in photos.

In the bad old days, doing this meant purchasing software such as Adobe Photoshop, which today sells for over £500. I used to recommend to unions that they invest in something less expensive such as Photoshop Elements (around £60) or Adobe's fiercest competitor, Corel Paint Shop Pro, which sells for around £50.

For branches and individual activists, I used to recommend using free software which despite having fewer features could still meet the needs of a small website. The most popular programs were The Gimp and the enormously popular IrfanView (which has had more than 26 million downloads).

All of these programs, from the expensive Photoshop to the free IrfanView required that they be installed on your computer. But the newest software doesn't even require that – it runs from within your web browser. You don't need a CD and you don't need to download anything. And you can use the software on any computer – even one that isn't yours.

A good example of free, web-based software to do image editing is Picnik (note the spelling), which is available online at http://www.picnik.com .

Using Picnik, we can take digital photos that we want to put on our websites or blogs, and edit them in the same way that we would using software that can cost hundreds of pounds.

The savings is not only in the cost of the software, but in the time it takes to learn how to use it. Software like Photoshop can be the subject of university-level courses. Books about Photoshop make very effective door-stops as they can includes hundreds of pages of text. But using software like Picnik is far simpler and much more intuitive.

The people selling expensive tools like Photoshop (and the courses, and the publishers of the books) will tell you that Photoshop can do much more than Picnik, which is true. But if you are honest about what you actually need for your website or blog, the range of features offered by Picnik is pretty comprehensive.

Picnik is currently free of charge and you don't even have to register to use it. A premium version offering more features will soon be available.

Posted by Eric Lee at 07:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"Their suffering is continuing, and that it is unacceptable. Everyday there are Palestinians arrested, imprisoned for no reason. People are killed on a daily basis. The economic suffering is terrible ... absolute despair after nearly 40 years of Israeli occupation which has been supported by the West. ... the British worked to bring about the state of Israel, which is the cause of all the suffering of ... the Palestinian people."

From a resolution passed by a British trade union condemning Israel and calling for a boycott?

Not exactly.

Posted by Eric Lee at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)