Inside LabourStart

This a draft outline prepared by Derek Blackadder for a book which we aim to get published sometime in the next year — it will be jointly authored by a number of us, and Derek, working together with Art Shostak and others, will be editing and coordinating this project.

Title: Online Unions: Organizing in the 21^st Century

Introduction: How and Why Unions Are Failing to Make Effective Use of the ‘New’ Media

Part 1: The Dark Ages

A.    The BBS Period

B.    SOLINET

C.    The First Web Generation

Part 2: The LabourStart Experience

A.    History and Structure – Why LabourStart Has Been Able to Do What it Does as Well as it Does

B.    How LS Campaigns – design, relationships with unions/GUFs

C.    Services to Union – newswires etc., the contests,

D.    What Union Partners Think and Why They Use LabourStart Rather Than Developing Their Own Capacities

Part 3: Going Global

A.    Changing Role of GUFs

B.    Transnational Union Campaigns

C. How the Internet Fits…or Not

D. Worker-to-Worker Level International Solidarity

Part 4: Unions and the Internet

A.    Why is Your Union Less Interactive Than Your Curling Club?

B.    Going Where No Union Has Gone Before: COSATU’s Online

C. Online Campaigns

D.    Online Organizing

E.    Online Education

F.    Use of Commercial Sites and Facilities (FB, Google, Second Life etc.)

G. On the South Side of the Digital Divide: Does the Mobile Phone Mean the Revolution Will be a Flash Mob?

Part 5: The Unofficial Stories

A. Digital Rats: Self-organizing All Around Us

B. Insurgencies on the Net: Lessons From Internal Union Struggles

C. Are Workers Leapfrogging Union Structures?

Part 6: What Our Allies are Up To

A. Amnesty

B. Clean Clothes

C. ILRF

Part 7: The Future

A.    The End of Face-to-Face?  Is Cyber Unionism Possible? Desireable? Review of experiences of Second Life etc.

B.    Is There Life After E-mail?

C.    Internet Neutrality for Unions

D.   Union 2.0. Can Unions Adapt? What Would a User-generated Union Look Like?

Conclusion