Author Archive: leischa
My dissertation
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 […]
Continue readingUnion activists’ guide to new technology
I’ve created a very short introduction to new technologies for trade union activists. It’s a four page PDF that gives an overview of some of the technologies I think are most useful, and some ideas about using them to build a narrative to counter the coalition government’s insistence that a large scale assault on the […]
Continue readingWhat can unions learn from Facebook?
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 […]
Continue readingUnionbook 2.0
I’ve written before about the problems with Facebook: it violates your privacy, it mines data for advertisers and it spams you with requests to play Farmville. Yet many trade unionists, myself included, use it for organising. Despite it’s flaws, it has its uses, because there are so many people there, and it is really easy […]
Continue readingWei Ji: uprising in China and crisis as laboratory
The financial crisis and the resulting job and budget cuts means there is an urgent need for consolidated action by unions. We are also seeing web 2.0 tools making coordination between union activists easier than ever before. This is a perfect storm of circumstance, and we are likely to see trade union activists make increased […]
Continue readingWhy Open Source and Creative Commons are important for unions
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) offers powerful, free tools for trade unions and their activists, and a serious attempt should be made to adopt them, and to defend the freedom of the Internet. In the UK, this includes working to repeal the Digital Economy Act. The idea of Creative Commons should not be strange […]
Continue readingSurvey results
Thanks you to every one who took part in the survey. Here is an initial overview of the results. Analysis will follow later, and I will also make the raw data available, with personal information removed. An overview of survey responses A hundred and seventy five trade union activists completed the survey on their use […]
Continue readingWeb 2.0 and trade unions: UNI Global Union video
Appropriately for a global union federation representing communication workers, UNI Global Union is pretty innovative when it comes to using new technology. There were the organisers of the Second Life strike, have an active twitter feed and forum for union communicators. This is their introduction to Web 2.0 for trade unions: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em8XLIaGm-E]
Continue readingFacebook – dangerous for unions?
Eric Lee of LabourStart thinks so. Take a listen to his podcast here: Facebook is the most widely used social networking website in the world, with 400 million active users. Because it reaches such a large audience, it seems important for trade unions to use. For Eric, the biggest danger is that you have no control […]
Continue readingCyberspace as space: the ideology of the Internet
While new technologies offer activists new tools to use for union activity, it is important to conceptualise cyperspace as space, and to understand activity taking place there as being in a new realm with its own possibilities, ethics and practice. Peter Waterman feels that most trade union use of new technology “…represents a belated response […]
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