Towards a new labour media movement?

“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” — this well-known quotation from Karl Marx was chosen by one speaker to open his presentation at an extraordinary conference which has just taken place in Cape Town, South Africa.
The conference, sponsored by the International Federation of Workers Education Associations (IFWEA) and one of its South African affiliates, Workers World Media Productions (WWMP), was entitled “Workers’ Education and Workers’ Media in a Global Economy“. Participants came from North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. They represented some of the most innovative projects in the labour movement today.


Among them were, for example, Myoung Joon Kim and Jiyoung Lee, whose Labor News Productions in South Korea have produced nearly 90 videos in the last few years — and have specialized in training workers to make their own videos. Shanta Koshti and Namrati Bali came from the Self Employed Womens Association (SEWA) in India — and presented their extraordinary video project which has empowered many women who are members of the 800,000-strong movement, providing them with equipment and training. And Martin Jansen of WWMP presented the group’s weekly one hour long labour news radio program which is aired on some 40 community radio stations in South Africa as well as the South African Broadcasting Corporation, reaching a potential audience of some 15 million listeners.
They came together with trade unionists, worker educators and other activists for three days of workshops and plenaries, as well as Cape Town’s first-even Labour Film Festival, but they did more than just talk. For the conference aimed from the very beginning to produce concrete results — in fact, to create the beginnings of a new movement.
As the conference’s final draft statement concluded, “there is an enormous wealth of knowledge and experience” among he participants but “until now, the diffusion and awareness of this knowledge and experience has been largely limited to the national or regional arena.” The group set out to “establish an international network” uniting “workers’ media and educational organisations” to carry out four tasks: Distribution of workers’ media; Co-operative production of new media;
Development of new cultural forms and tools in the new media; Training in the development of skills and confidence.
Having attended a number of labour and technology conferences over the years, mostly in Britain and North America, I have to say worker-activists in the developing world — are not usually participants in such events — are not even remotely lagging behind. In some areas, they are actually far ahead of those in the developed countries.
Nevertheless, one major theme of the conference — possibly because its location in Africa and the presence of activists from Nigeria, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Angola, Tanzania and elsewhere — was the so-called “digital divide”. Conference participants were constantly being reminded of the fact that in many parts of Africa, it was not so much a question of Internet access as access to electricity.
In light of that, it was particularly interesting to hear the WWMP report that in creating its weekly radio show, which could be heard on battery-powered portable radios in the most remote areas of South Africa, they always choose three local news stories and three global ones. The global ones are taken off the LabourStart website. This was one example of many showing how the technologies, both new and old, could be merged and how something utterly new could be created. Workers living in villages without electricity, possibly unable to read or write, are benefitting from a global website created by other workers using the very latest in the new communications technology. This does give one hope.
The ruling ideas of our age may well be the competitive and individualistic values of our ruling classes — but this group of determined media activists and educators give hope that alternative ideas might well reach audiences too. I was honored to be elected a member of the preparatory committee, so I should be able to report in a few weeks and months and progress. Until then, stay tuned.

15 Comments on "Towards a new labour media movement?"

  1. Thanks for this report, Eric – and welcome back to London.

  2. Mike Keelan | 12/04/2006 at 01:01 |

    Have you bookmarked in Courtenay BC, Canada. Good organizing! Thanks – and looking forward to the next installment.

  3. Diane Simpson | 12/04/2006 at 21:48 |

    Congratulations to the African workers who are organizing now, in spite of the difficulties. This is the way to go, and I surely wish them well. Thank you for reporting this. More big steps for Africa?
    Hurray!

  4. Michael Hacking | 13/04/2006 at 16:25 |

    Simply. Interesting that developing countries are not ‘lagging behind’ developed countries. Not suprising, though! Worker-Activists’ disappeared in Britain under Margaret Thatcher’s government! There is no Working Class in Britain. Even if you are perpetually unemployed you are Middle Class, if you have a TV and running water.

  5. Jeanne C Majors | 13/04/2006 at 23:42 |

    Congrats on the African workers seeking labor organization even in the most remote areas. Imagine in this day and age electricity is still a problem in remote areas.

  6. Jonathon Troy | 14/04/2006 at 07:53 |

    I was wondering if you had heard about the Australian Rights at work campaign site http://www.rightsatwork.com.au which is fighting the Howard governements changes to workplace laws here in Australia. The site includes rights watch which is like a blog where people can leave comments and even descriptions of their experiances etc

  7. Mohamed Alli | 14/04/2006 at 21:01 |

    Thanks Eric,
    Your organization is diong a great job keeping us informed of what is going on in the World with LABOUR.
    Some of us don’t have the luxury of recieving or being informed of the problems workers are facing in other countries or in our own country.
    I am happy to participate in the cause ‘SOLIDARITY’.
    Mohamed Alli

  8. max Halber | 15/04/2006 at 00:34 |

    I am 85 but I do fervently hope that this is the beginning of a world revolution, hopefully peaceful but bloody if necssary. I would give my life for it because I think that capitalism is evil.

  9. Ovidiu Gherghe | 15/04/2006 at 00:59 |

    I enjoyed this news info and I look forward to brief updates from time-to-time. Thank you for a great and encouraging piece.

  10. Mary Maron | 15/04/2006 at 10:47 |

    While reading this letter Mr. Lee, I felt a faint glimmer of hope for a better world. I hadn’t realized just how cynical I had become until I felt the contrast of the dark despair and the faint glimmer in my mind. Your website is a work of technological art and you are in my lexicon of heroes with Nelson Mandela, Ralph Nader Jane Fonda, Martha Stewart, etc. Mary Maron.

  11. Vegard Thonstad | 15/04/2006 at 12:27 |

    Just excellent that the working class are taking up the battle against capitalist-monopoly media wich displays the world form a bourgeoise point of view, wich is far from our viewpoint and moral of standards. Non-commercial tv owned and directed by the working class is a major contribution to the class-struggle against capitalism and imperialism. Video-documentarys about war, imperialisme, labour-rights, class-organizing, libertaion-movements and other importans issue to be shown for the worlds working class and the majority of the worlds people – should be effectivily distributed amongst the different working-class organisations, parties, movements, internet-sites and etc. Education for the working-class is also totally different to the bourgeoise-thinking education. Education in marxist-leninist theory f.example, working-class history, about imperialism and capitalism, the socialist alternative, the perople of the world large and richful history etc etc is also a contribution to the class-struggle.

  12. Shaun Newman | 15/04/2006 at 21:20 |

    This is a welcome move, for all working people, perhaps the next move made should be to have a collection of all working people to buy shares in existing non union companies, to apply pressure for those companies to accept unions?

  13. Mary McEachern | 15/04/2006 at 22:30 |

    I am thrilled to know what an inclusive network you have created and especially enjoyed Mohammed Alli’s comments. Someone nine years older than I am can still have a word to say in the world of work. In this globalized anti-labor environment, workers are connected by new technology to empower each other!

  14. I found your report on the meeting and actions in developing countries to be of great interst. I would invite all to take a look at two of our web sites http://www.votepal.com and http://www.ourunion.com
    Respectfully, Richard D. Foley Chairman of The Ownership Union, OU®

  15. Ray Menon | 16/04/2006 at 06:52 |

    Thanks for keeping us up to date on the recent developments in Africa. There seems to be an urgent need to address the gap in technology in assisting Third World unions in catching up with computer technology and basics like electricity. Perhaps First World based peak union bodies such as ICFTU should seriously consider addressing this issue, by asking First World universities to come up with alternate technologies to assist third world unions!

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