When unions take the plunge and use social networking websites they shouldn't limit themselves to Facebook. With most large websites taking on aspects of social networking, there are many sites where unions could reach out to members, potential members (including young people) and the general public.
Continue reading "Taking our message to where the users are: Internet campaigning beyond Facebook" »
One of Canada's largest unions, the 340,000 member National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE), has joined the battle to defend net neutrality. The fact that most trade unionists won't even understand what that means underlines how significant NUPGE's decision actually is.
A recent column by web useability expert Jakob Nielsen should be of particular interest to trade unionists. Nielsen is an internationally recognized speaker and author who has pioneered studies in how people actually use the Internet, leading to some major shifts in the way websites are designed.
Continue reading "New research on how middle-aged people use the web: a trade union view" »
Trade unionists as much as anyone else need to make the most of their time – and the web is now full of time-management tools that promise to make all of us more efficient.
I've been using web-based tools for years to do several tasks which many of us probably still do with pen and paper – or on desktop PCs.
Continue reading "Web-based time-management tools for trade unionists" »
March 6th 2008 has been declared a global day of action in support of Iranian workers by two leading international trade union bodies. The International Trade Union Confederation, which unites national trade union centres such as the TUC, and the International Transport Workers Federation, a global union whose UK affiliates include Unite, the RMT, Unison and Aslef, are behind the call.
A glance at how those unions are using the Internet in support of the day of action reveals just how far we have come in a few short years.
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.
The decision by the TUC to launch a slick new website in Polish (http://www.pracawbrytanii.eu/) represents a huge step forward.
Continue reading "TUC website in Polish - a big step forward" »
"Tigmoo" is one of those expressions that newcomers to the British labour movement will be unfamiliar with. It's an acronym for "this great movement of ours" which was one of the most common cliches used by union orators in the past. The term has been revived in all its glorious irony as the name of a new website which unites British union blogs and bloggers.
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.
Continue reading "Life's a Picnik - free photo-editing software you don't have to download" »
The issue of private equity has suddenly burst onto the trade union scene, almost out of nowhere. In the last few weeks, the GMB and other unions have picketed, demonstrated, issued press releases and campaigned to raise public awareness of the problem. And media attention has not been lacking either. The prospect of giant companies (and major employers) such as Alliance Boots or Sainsburys being taken over by shadowy private firms with reputations as asset strippers has not gone unnoticed in the mainstream media.
From the very earliest days of the web, browsers had something called a 'home page'. This was the default web page that would come up when you'd launch your browser and connect to the net.
Most people never change their home pages; they use whatever they were given. This could be the home page of their employer, or their Internet Service Provider, or even the home page of the browser itself.
In many unions, staff were given computers with the union's website installed as the browser home page (even if that website rarely changed). And my guess is that most union staff would barely glance at the home page and quickly move on, using their bookmarks and Google to get around the web to more useful sites.
And yet the idea of a home page remains a potent one.
Long before the Internet became a household word, the founders of Sun Microsystems coined a corporate slogan which – at the time – made little sense: “The network is the computer.”
I thought of that slogan when reviewing a number of web-based applications. Web-based applications are computer software that sit not on your own computer, but are centrally-hosted elsewhere. Nearly everyone reading this article will have at least some experience with what is increasingly being called “webware.” For example, if you use any kind of web-based email (such as Hotmail), that is what you are doing.
Often when left-wing people talk about the Internet, the subject of a “digital divide” comes up. According to the common wisdom, the Internet is all well and good when we're talking about well-paid, educated people living in rich countries, but it's useless as a way of communicating with the poor – and not only overseas. Even in places like Britain, it remains true that the more money you have, the more likely you are to be online.
Every union in Britain can start saving money today by abandoning Microsoft Office and switching over to use OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org).
Continue reading "OpenOffice: What are unions waiting for?" »
I often tell people that I work with unions and the new communications technologies and get asked if that means email and the web. It doesn't; it means those technologies plus others, including some which have not been invented yet.
Continue reading "Beyond email and the web: A union uses text messaging to mobilize its members" »
Back in 2003, I wrote a short article for this magazine about a new online encyclopedia called the Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org). At the time, the Wikipedia had 180,000 articles in English alone, which at the time seemed pretty impressive. Today it has grown to 1.4 million articles in English, and nearly four million more in 228 other languages. It is a truly massive project, entirely run by volunteers.
Several years ago, one could already detect that their were two types of websites. The first type consisted of online brochures. People spoke about "online publishing" and the idea was that you could use the web as a replacement for things like newsletters. But there was also a second type of website that was interactive and allowed people reading the sites to contribute content to them.
Continue reading "Unions can learn things by asking questions of their websites' visitors" »
A few weeks ago, union-backed campaigners managed to get a billboard erected not far from the corporate headquarters of Wal-Mart, the world's largest employer. The ad called upon Wal-Mart management to recognize workers' rights -- and was promptly taken down once company officials spotted it. Unions raged that it was a violation of their constitutional right to free speech, but you sort of expect this kind of thing to happen in Bentonville, Arkansas.
At the recent May Day march and rally in London, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber made a strong call for "a Trade Union Freedom Bill to allow unions to properly protect their members". I wonder how many in the audience had ever heard of the proposed Bill, and went looking online to see what I could find out.
If one thing has become clear in trade union use of the Internet over the last decade, it is this: without a list of your members' and supporters' email addresses, there is almost no point in having a website.
But how do you set up a mailing list? There are basically two approaches: host one yourself, or pay someone to host a mailing list for you.
With nearly 7,000 votes cast, a winner has emerged in the 9th annual Labour Website of the Year competition -- and for the third time, it goes to a British website.
The 200,000 member NASUWT won an easy victory over hundreds of other union websites from around the world. This represents a considerably better performance for British union websites than last year, when not a single one of the top 10 sites was from the U.K.
The process by which the NASUWT was chosen revealed a few things about how the Internet has changed since the first competition was held in late 1997.
Continue reading "Labour website competition teaches us how the net has changed" »
Ajax was a mythical Greek hero who faught against Troy. Ajax is also a powder you'd use to clean dishes and sinks. And today it is the name of a group of technologies which together create an utterly different experience for users of the world wide web.
Continue reading "Ajax: A powerful new tool for trade union activists on the web" »
A few years back, the TUC launched a website specifically aimed at union reps. It was called "unionreps.org.uk". The site has a few features, such as news (including a LabourStart newswire), a directory of resources, and so on. But at its heart, it is a giant discussion forum.
Continue reading "The website for union reps that 96% of union reps don't use" »
I haven't done a careful academic study of this, but it seems to me that few unions in Britain offer more opportunities for members to express themselves online than Napo -- the union for family court and probation staff. Napo is a small union and was a late-comer to setting up a website. But its members have embraced the technology and are constantly inventing new ways of using the web for discussion.
Continue reading "Using the web for discussion and debate: Napo's experience" »
The following article, published in the most recent issue of Labour Research magazine, was out of date before it ever saw print. Working together with the union and the global union federations, we were able to make use of online campaigning tools both to send protest messages and to raise money. Nevertheless, the article does point out the importance of launching such campaigns on time -- striking while the iron is hot.
Continue reading "Gate Gourmet: The need for an online campaign" »
Unions that want to recruit new members will make it as easy as possible to join. In this century, that means allowing people to join unions online.
For the first time in memory -- perhaps the first time ever -- American unions are discussing their future. And that discussion is taking place, in large part, on the web.
Continue reading "American unions discuss their future - online" »
Most unions that have websites have sections that are devoted to health and safety issues. But frequently those are among the more static parts of a website. Once set up, they are rarely updated. To keep up with all the breaking developments in the field of health and safety was beyond the capacity of most union websites -- until now.
Unions tend to be fairly conservative, particularly when it comes to technology. They are not known as "early adopters". And that means that sometimes, while they wait for certain technologies to come down in price, or become easier to use, new technologies appear. One example of this is the use of sound in union websites. Very few union websites make any use of the fact that the vast majority of their members have computers with sound cards and speakers.
It's that time of year again -- voting has begun the Labour Website of the Year. This annual competition, which began in 1997, allows trade unionists around the world to vote for their favourite union websites.
The Labour Website of the Year is the only global competition open to all trade union websites and aims to encourage excellence in website design in the international trade union movement.
Imagine this as David Blaine's next trick He stops a person on the street, stares into the stranger's eyes and says -- "Your web browser is . . . Internet Explorer!" Instead of being amazed, you'd probably burst out laughing. After all, with well over 90% of the market share, almost everyone uses Internet Explorer. Were Blaine to attempt such a 'trick', he'd be considered an idiot. But the real idiot may be person who's still using Internet Explorer.
These days, when you want to communicate, you have a real choice. It used to be that you'd either phone or send a letter. Then came fax machines, then email, then text messaging. These days, for those of us who are online, the choice is usually between a phone call, a text message or an email. (Faxes and letters sent by post are in terminal decline.)
But there's another technology, instant messaging, which should fit in somewhere between text messaging and email. Surprisingly, unions have been making very little use of it.
A couple of years ago, I attended a meeting with the staff of the IT department of one of Britain's largest trade unions. We were discussing a plan for me to train union officials to make better use of e-mail. One of the issues I raised was training people to avoid getting spam. "No need for that," I was told. "Spam is not a problem."
Several months ago, a local union affiliated to the Canadian Auto Workers waged a successful strike against a major employer. Email and the web proved essential to their success. According to an internal 16-page report summing up the experience, at one point in the dispute, the union website was getting 3,000 hits to its home page every hour.
When I read that and contrasted it with what I am seeing on the websites of major British unions, I can see that we have a long way to go.
Timely and relevant content is essential if a website is to be worth anything to union members. While most major U.K. trade union sites are now updated at least several times a week, this is not yet good enough.
Continue reading "Timely, relevant content key to website success" »
You can also listen to this essay on Radio LabourStart or read it in print in next month's issue of Labour Research.
Seven Stories Press is a US publisher you probably never heard of. But you have heard of some of their authors (like Noam Chomsky) and if you're reading this, you'd probably be intrigued by some of their titles (such as "10 Reasons to Abolish the IMF and the World Bank").
Like many other publishers, Seven Stories began experimenting with electronic books (ebooks) some time ago, but sales were slim. The various gadgets built to display ebooks never really took off. People didn't like reading books on their computer screens.
Sometimes it really does just hit you. The Internet really does change the way we look at things. I was struck by this as I look back upon the recent tumultuous events in Haiti.
Watching television news here in Britain – which is how most of us get our news, especially foreign news – the story we saw played out was of a once-democratic leader (Jean-Bertrand Aristide) who had somehow gone bad and was tossed out of office by a popular rebellion. But only hours after the departure of Haiti's elected president, we heard of dramatic developments taking place at a textile factory in the north east of the country. The news came via email.
As I write these words, it's becoming increasingly likely that John Kerry is going to be the Democratic Party's presidential candidate in 2004. I was looking at Kerry's website the other day and was struck by how far advanced the U.S. Presidential candidates were in their use of the net.
More than three million homes and businesses in the UK now have broadband access to the Internet, with 40,000 new connections being made every week. By the end of 2005, it should be possible to connect every home in the country to a high-speed version of the net.
The very rapid uptake of broadband Internet by British consumers has implications for organisations which use the Internet, many of which are adapting to the new possibilities.
For example, it is now possible to hear reliable, high-quality audio streams through the net. After years of hype, Internet radio has become a reality.
Just one service live365.com is currently broadcasting 22,000 stations online. Compared to that, the digital radio sets that so many Britons received for Christmas, with their promise of up to 40 stations, seem rather limited.
Continue reading "Broadband internet opens new possibilities for unions" »
The sharing of information is fundamental to what we do in the trade union movement and it is fundamental to the Internet as well. But until fairly recently, this is not what we were doing online.
Yes, every union in the U.K. seems to have a website of its own, and each union website (if it's any good) will have a health and section section, or a section about employment rights, or equal opportunities. And of course the TUC website is a treasure-chest full of useful information, as are many other sites closely tied to the labour movement including the websites of the LRD, Hazards, and LabourStart.
We have created a vast library of information online, but sometimes what we want is not a library. It's an encyclopedia.
Continue reading "Sometimes you don't need a library you need an encyclopedia" »
Way back in the early days of the Internet (in December 1996, to be exact), I noticed something new on the Amazon.com website. It was called an "affiliate program". It offered websites something extraordinary: the chance to share in Amazon's soon-to-be multibillion dollar revenue stream. I jumped at the chance and began selling Amazon's books through my own website, collecting around ten percent of the cover price of every book I could sell.
But soon it became clear that Amazon was pursuing a ruthlessly anti-union policy as it expanded, and being that my site was a union site, I couldn't very well continue as a partner with this company even if it was bringing in some badly-needed income.
They are what the Dutch web activist Oskar van Rijswijk calls "throw-away websites" a new approach to building websites that may be uniquely suited for trade unions. The idea is basically this: sometimes we need websites for a specific purpose, such as a campaign or event. Such a website should be as full of features as possible, look great, be easy to use, and packed with information, just like any good website. But such a site should also be extremely inexpensive and quick to set up. The good news is that such "throw-away websites" are being built every day, and trade unions in the UK are making increasing use of them.