UNI Communicators' Forum

UNI Communicators are union staff members (web people, press officers, journalists, organisers and campaign officers) who meet every year to share knowledge and experience on using communications to strengthen our organisations.

Over 150 avatars joined in virutally for May Day in Second Lifei, making several visits to different sessions, coming from Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Mongolia, Norway, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and USA, surely more, as organisers didn't get a chance to meet everyone.

Many unions worldwide have to cope with a decreasing number in members. Membership is ageing rapiidly while in the meantime, unions struggle with the fact that younger workers are not easily convinced of the advantages of joining the union.
The De Unie trade union in the Netherlands is directly concerned with this issue. It’s not so much reaching out to new members, but also how to adapt current union services to meet the demands of the new generation workers.

Message from Davide Barillari, RSU Italy:

<< I was thinking about internet privacy for our activities (to avoid "trade union" traffic analysis from management or other people), comparing new communication tools with built-in privacy features.
I suggest the following tools:
http://www.torproject.org (virtual tunnelling network).

UNION ISLAND MAY DAY STATEMENT ON ZIMBAWE

“Lev”

WE the unionists participating in this first and historic virtual May Day celebrations are outraged by the developments in Zimbabwe.

Philip Bowyer, Deputy General Secretary of UNI Global Union
Cape Town, South Africa, 11th April 2008

For the last two days you have been discussing all the different ways in which you communicate.  How you get the stories, information and messages across to members and the wider public.

In the next fifteen minutes I want to talk about what the message is.  What are the issues which are important to UNI that we need to communicate to our members.