Eric Lee

There's a saying the in the trade union movement that if workers can last one day longer than the employer during a strike, they will have won.

I was reminded of this while reading an appeal from striking Ford workers at a factory near St. Petersburg, Russia. Those workers have been engaged in an extraordinary struggle -- the longest strike in Russia this century. While most strikes end after one day, these workers have been out for nearly three weeks and still counting. Meanwhile, the company refuses to negotiate with them until they return to work.

Our colleagues in Russia have asked to us to use the Internet to try to raise strike funds for the union. As I write these words, the union has only about four day's worth of funds left. Amazingly, workers all over Russia have been donating from their own pockets to help the Ford strikers. Everyone seems to understand the historic significance of this dispute.

In early December LabourStart launched an online fund-raising campaign with the modest aim of raising enough money to keep the strike going for one more day -- $20 per worker for 700 workers, or $14,000 total.

It is raising the money in a way which is both transparent (so the union in Russia will know how much is being donated) and which is also designed to encourage people to give generously.

We've long raised money online using PayPal, which is a secure way to donate with a credit or debit card.

But what we're doing now is using a service called ChipIn (http://www.chipin.com) which acts as a kind of filter between our donors and PayPal, and which automatically updates a little Flash movie that shows the rising total of donations (in real time) and how many donors have contributed. That Flash movie is embedded on LabourStart's front page (http://www.labourstart.org).

ChipIn also gives us a little blog-like page to post updates about this current fund-raising drive.

ChipIn was created to give charities a way to easily raise money -- especially those which do not have the means to accept credit card donations. It can also be used by unions for their own fundraising drives, as we're doing now.

Posted by Eric Lee at 08:48 AM | Permalink

Nearly four years ago, after weeks of experimenting reading electronic books on my Palm handheld computer, I wrote a short essay here called "Hooked on Ebooks". I thought that the electronic book as displayed on a small handheld device was an idea whose time had come. I was wrong. Or rather, I was ahead of my time.

Last week's edition of Newsweek had a cover story with a photo of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, clutching his company's brand-new Kindle device (pictured, left). The cover story went over much old ground -- like how amazing it would be to have a device that could bring you any book you want within a minute, or that could carry a whole bag full of books (for a long trip) in a single, tiny device.

Of course, all this was true in early 2004 as well. The big difference is that the Kindle will have a much bigger, better and clearer screen.

But the basic idea -- tiny handheld device, easy-to-download books whenever you want, carries loads of books -- hasn't changed.

And so far, the new products aren't blowing me away.

The Kindle only works in America. So does the Sony Reader.

And the one device they seem to be selling over here in the UK is the iLiad (pictured, right) -- and it costs a staggering £433 -- that's $870 to you over there in the US.

Amazon's product costs its US consumers "only" $400 -- less than half of an iLiad -- but still a whopping sum. The cheapest of the three is the Sony Reader, now going for $280.

Meanwhile, I continue to read my ebooks on my trusty, still-functioning Palm Tungsten C. And you can pick up one of these on eBay for less than $100.

I've bought books from two online shops in the last few days -- one of which is charging a whopping $20 to download the latest blockbuster from James Patterson. The other -- which I stumbled on via Google -- is charging only $10, for the same book. There may be better bargains elsewhere.

I've read two ebooks this weekend already -- and I remain hooked on them. But I won't pay $870 to buy an ebook reader, thank you.

Posted by Eric Lee at 01:33 PM | Permalink