It seems like every day, there’s another way to publish information on the net. There are traditional websites, RSS feeds, Twitter, blogs, social networks, SMS text messages and of course email. Union members are using all of these to get their news and information. And union communicators may be finding it increasingly difficult to navigate their way through the complex choices involved.
That was the title of a debate held on Thursday evening at Durham University and hosted by the Durham Union Society. I was invited to be one of the three proponents.
Other speakers included Jonathan Hoffman of the Zionist Federation and Douglas Murray of the Centre for Social Cohesion as proponents. The opponents were Keith Sonnet from UNISON, Dr Ghada Karmi, a Palestinian academic who lives in the U.K., and a student who substituted for a speaker who could not attend.
Steve Early’s article “Reading, Writing and Union Building” is an excellent overview of the state of union book sales and publishing. As he quotes from something I wrote four years ago, I thought it might be useful to provide an update – and perhaps a glimmer of hope.
Read the rest of this article on Talking Union.
Unionprofessionals.org.uk is a new website built by the TUC for people who work for trade unions. Unlike the much-better known Unionreps.org.uk which is used by thousands of union reps across the UK, this site is aimed solely at those who are employed by unions.
One of the ironies of the twentieth century was that as capitalism globalised, the labour movement retreated from its internationalist tradition.
But the emergence of the Internet in the early 1990s seemed set to offer a second chance to trade unions – an opportunity to give new meaning to tired old slogans, and to begin to challenge global corporate power from a position of strength.
LabourStart, the news and campaigning website of the international trade union movement, has been at the very centre of this process. Over more than a decade we have created a network of tens of thousands of trade unionists who can be mobilized instantly – and whose voices are increasingly heard.
Ungeachtet der drohenden Repression hat die Lehrergewerkschaft im Iran einen landesweiten Streik angekündigt. Auch im Irak ist die Regierung nicht erfreut über unabhängige Gewerkschaften.