The Changing World of Work: New Forms of Labour Organisation

Colleagues,

I was with a first class group of trade unionists from across the European Union brought together by the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) to develop their English language skills. Thanks again to John Stirling and Glynis Brydon for facilitating my session. Thanks also to the group for asking a challenging range of questions and working hard on the range of activities.

This post is for the students from the session yesterday and provides a response to the some of the discussion.

Online Labour Movement Organising Strategy
- There is a significant body of material that analyses the work to-date of labour movement organisations in applying new technology for organing purposes. Send me an e-mail and I will send a sample. Here is an example: http://www.btinternet.com/~davidbeaumont/msf/hogan.html

- Don't forget to use UnionBook (http://www.unionbook.org/) to develop/maintain links between trade unionists. Why not start a UnionBook forum to facilitate long-term dialogue between the group of students on the course?

- Use LabourStart (http://www.labourstart.org/) to check on trade union/labour movement developmens globally

- Eric Lee created LabourStart and UnionBook and advises union's globally on their strategies to adopt new technology for a range of purposes, including organising. You should encourage your unions to contract him to advise your union on its strategy. Please e-mail me and I will forward Eric's contact details. Read more about Eric: http://www.ericlee.info/1955/07/about_eric_lee_1.html

- If you are interested in contacting the BPO e-Union their web-site is: http://bpounion.wordpress.com/

Organising in the Informal Economy
- Again, their is a large body of material on both how to organise workers in the informal economy and material that analyses trade union strategy. E-mail me for a sample of this material.

- A very good example of the materials available has been produced by IFWEA: http://www.ifwea.org/resources/0001/buildRightsBuildUnionsDVD.pdf

Social Movement Unionism
- Once again, a lot of material available on this, please e-mail for examples.

- Here is an example of the material available from LabourNet Germany: http://www.labournet.de/diskussion/gewerkschaft/smu/The_New_Unions_Crit_Soc.htm

- It was suggested yesterday that these alliances could be relatively weak. Here is an article that provides an example of this: http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/2/2/9/2/pages22923/p22923-1.php

My Blog
You will find in my blog an extensive range of links to a wide body of labour and trade movement (and related) organisations. Please also keep an eye on my blog for the reporting of developments in labour movements globally.

It was good to meet you all yesterday, and I do wish you well in your work as part of the global labour movement.

Yours Fraternally

Ian