Earlier this year, I asked readers of this website to help me with some research by completing a survey. This was for a Masters dissertation I was doing for the International Labour and Trade Union Studies course at Ruskin College, Oxford. It’s a great course with experienced and supportive tutors, and a wide range of students from all over the world. I recommend it highly.
The subject of my dissertation was Cyberunions: new technologies, distributed discourse and union renewal, and I submitted it at the end of June.
It has just been marked, and I got a distinction for it, so I am confident that it is a reasonable piece of work. If you’re interested, you can download it here.
It is, of course, long, and you may find nothing new in it: I have posted many of the key insights on this site. But if you’re researching a similar field, there might be some things in it that are useful to you.
At some point I hope to create a user-friendly summary of it – I’ll keep you posted.
Walton hi, I just read your thesis in one breath! It is a very clearly written text, you have put the anaysis and argument extremely well. It is also great joy to see that we think very similar. Your argument supports what I had in mind when thinking of the SNU idea. Which clearly inspired by Peter Waterman’s work. I don’t know if you could see what we were discussing in the group with Peter W and Peter HJ and Gordon from the IWW but anyway the direction of the discussion was showing that we can pursue two strategies:
1. improving the idea in order to promote exsisting unions
2. inventing an external new (common/participatory/wiki/open/cyber/grassroots/transnational) union based on SMU and SNU principles and start organising.
The former strategy needs more disccusion on the SNU concept and to promote it within the unions. In order to move forward with the 2. approach however yesterday I have formed an experimental space on OpenFSM site, to start an online organising in facebook, twitter etc. Than linking into the real world, or defining more appropriate strategy to spread. OpenFSM is an open space operates in conjunction with world social froum and it is free to join. The SNU I have created is called GAIA (Global Alliance for Immediate Alteration).
It is an experiement and at the moment Peter HJ from the New Unionism Network has joined it.
That would be great if you would check it and make pro or counter suggestions, criticisms on it, and join in if you like. What ever contribution you can make is desired.
All the best in 2011,
Orsan
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