WiredTradeUnionism

Imagine weblogged union activists organizing a GlobalStrike against international companies.

For example, Swoosh Corp. think they can get away with making trainers in secret sweatshops in the free trade zones of third world countries. These countries crack down on unions because Swoosh Corp. threaten to move to another country if they get too much trouble.

However, if union organizers were connected through weblogs, they could co-ordinate 1 day global strikes across all the factories working for Swoosh Corp. in the world. The result, Swoosh Corp. learn that they can run but they can't hide in any impoverished backwater. Unions are empowered as negotiators, and Swoosh Corp learn to be at least half decent employers.

• Social Network Unions

• CyberUnions
• The Commons’ enters in the Resolution of Trade Union Assembly on Labour and Environment in Rio

CoryDoctorow on Revenge of the Chickenized Reverse Centaurs: https://doctorow.medium.com/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs-b2e8d5cda826

See also :

• BigTech and BigTechUnionBusting need smart, technologically empowered unions to combat.
• http://www.workerscontrol.net/ is a site documenting the patterns of WorkersControl.
• more ideas on wired trade unions : MoreThanJustTinkering
• WiredSweatshops

Three attempts so far:

• Hosting Problems – MarkDilley and DaveChristensen's Labor Union Wiki : http://www.seedwiki.com/page.cfm?doc=LaborUnionWiki&wikiid=2301
• Hosting Problems – MarkDilley's OneBigStruggle http://onebigstruggle.wiki.taoriver.net/moin.cgi/OneBigStruggle
• WikiCities is currently a possible space for this wiki... http://activism.wikicities.com/wiki/Union_Wiki Ah, great to see that wiki continuing. :-) Will contribute if I have any relevant ideas – PhilJones

• Smarter striking : http://www.labornotes.org/archives/2003/05/g.html

• NoLogo,

• http://www.fightforthefuture.org/blog/

• Union related discussions on

** Meatball : http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?LaborUnion

** Wiki : http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?OpenSourceUnionism

• TechUnions
• TradeUnionsAndPensionFunds,
• UnionsStrengthenTheEconomy,
• CollectiveActionProblems
• According to MatthewYglesias, more unions are popular(ish) in the US. Links here : http://www.motherjones.com/news/specialreports/2004/06/resultsrefined.html?plq=11&plr=5

Feedback

Interesting Phil, I was trying to get the [Labor http://www.labornotes.org/ Labor Notes] conference in September to use a wiki for its planning, but maybe making some type of presentation on this subject at the conference would be in order. – Best, MarkDilley

Mark, what happened when you tried this? A lot of the union sites I've seen have tended to follow the corporate brochureware tradition rather than take advantage of SocialSoftware. I notice [Labor http://www.labornotes.org/ Labor Notes] doesn't seem to have any open discussion with it's readers. (Or even a "comments" section at the bottom of the stories.) Were they open to the suggestion? – PhilJones

The person I was working with, moved on. So I don't have an in with the organization currently. But it is difficult to explain why they would want this. . . all union websites I have seen take on corporate stuctures. We, [geo http://www.umgeo.org geo]] use a weblog in the last round of negotiations. Which was really effective.

– MarkDilley

Counter

PaulGraham has an interesting theory of unions ( ) http://paulgraham.com/unions.html ) which suggests that they were essentially a result of a genuine shortage of labour rather than being a cartel to artificially increase the price of labour. I guess you could distinguish one from the other with some sufficiently sophisticated statistics.

LinkBin

Added 2018-10-08 : Originally 2018-07-26

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/26/tech-workers-us-immigration-protests-activism

CategoryPolitics