The possibility of using Twitter as a campaigning tool was recently tested by LabourStart. We were inspired by the example of American Rights at Work (ARAW), a union-supported campaigning organisation, that has recently taken on…
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In late October, LabourStart conducted the first-ever global study of the use of Twitter by trade unionists. Nearly 1,600 trade unionists participated, with the largest single group (360) coming from the U.K. While all those…
This article first appeared in Labour Research magazine. In the course of the last decade, two colleagues of mine — both senior trade unionists — have suffered catastrophic losses of data. One lost his address…
This article appears in the current issue of Labour Research. To emphasize the importance of email, I used to tell unions that given the choice between a great website and a list of all members’…
This article appears in the current issue of Labour Research. “It’s not enough for working people to feed our bodies with bread — we also have to nourish our hearts and spirits with art.” Those…
The increasing diversity in the world of information and communications technology poses new challenges to trade unionists.
A few years ago, no one ever heard of a “smartphone”. A few years from now, every one of us will own one. This has implications for trade unions which we’re not yet facing up…
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…
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…
If you want to know how to make your union website better, ask your members. And if you really, really want it to be better, use the most powerful Web 2.0 tools to do so.