We have establish our very own status.net social network site. This is both an example of what labor unions and social movement organizations can do with free and open source software. The software used here is the same software that powers identi.ca. In the future we will test out plugins and other features. If you are interested in an account please contact us it is currently invite only to control spam.  

The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service has release new guidance on social media and unions.

UnionBook is the social network for trade unionists. It currently has around 4,000 members, and unless it reaches 5,000 by September, it will be shut down.

I like to keep an eye on academic work on cyberunionism. There’s not a lot of it about, probably because trade union use of new technology is still fairly minimal. Also, the fast pace of technological change doesn’t fit in well with the academic cycle: it takes time to research, analyse, write, peer review and publish a piece of work, and the fast pace of change means the article can quite possibly be obsolete by the time it is published.

Here is a presentation I created for a union conference. It aims to give union reps an overview of using new technology for organising. Please feel free to reuse and adapt it if you find it useful.

If you’re using Facebook for your organising, you need an exit strategy. For a lot of unions, online organising starts and ends with Facebook. Many union communicators are fairly uncritical of Facebook, and seem to think it’s important to get people to ‘like’ your union’s Facebook pag

Building an open source labour movement. The cyberunions podcast is a weekly talk show exploring the intersection between trade union organising and new technology.