UNI Communicators' Forum

Here's a copy of my presentation on social networking for unions - both what union activists are doing with commercial social networks, and what unions could do to make social networking tools for our own activists.

UnionBook is the social networking website for trade unionists at
http://www.unionbook.org

UnionBook offers:

* Free blogis for all trade unionists.
* The possibility to create Groups for your union -- and each group can have its own message board, group pages, files (including photos) and more.
* A fully-configurable Dashboard (home page) featuring drag and drop "widgets" such as your friends, your files, your pages, etc.
* A Twitteri-like short message feature called The Wire.
* And much more.

A lot of you will know Derek Blackadder of Labourstart (pictured here).

Well, we just had one of the shortest ever campaigns, to get him reinstated on Facebooki, after he was banned from it.

And we won - very quickly, and all thanks to Labourstart

Follow the links here:

Eric Lee has a challenging post up on his blog, about the dangers of relying on proprietary networks for campaigning (of which the most popular at the moment is Facebooki). I reckon anyone thinking about using Facebook should definitely read it first.

Some strong points about ownership of the medium (similar to those made by Hermann and others in Singapore), and some practical considerations to bear in mind, but I don't think it's a zero sum between union campaigns in one medium or others.

We've got a new application for Facebooki, which is trying to make unions a little more visible in everyday life, as well as make more members aware of their own unions' Facebook groups (if they have them - around 6 unions in the UK are starting to build official groups, to publicise campaigns or to co-ordinate activists).

A recent organising campaign at Kettle Chips, a UK potato chip company, was defeated with the help of US unionbusters, The Burke Group. However, two Facebooki groups set up by concerned members of the public helped to raise the profile of the dispute, without union involvement. Guardian journalist David Hencke believes the union missed a big opportunity by not reacting quickly enough to get involved online, and has a good blog post on this at Comment Is Free.

Following on from our story on employers banning Facebook last week, a group of employees whose employer banned access to Facebooki have started a campaign to get it back. And where better place to start it than with a Facebook group of their own?