This is the place for trade unionists from all over the world to meet and talk about the new technology that has so many of us excited -- the Internet and the World Wide Web. Feel free to jump right in and join the discussion.
Important: this new web forum is for trade union webmasters only. If you maintain a web site, design graphics or write text for one, or are a trade union official with responsibility for the site, you're invited to join the group.
The Labour Webmasters' Forum is located at:
http://www.village2000.com/labour/forum/index.html
In addition to COSATU, the Labour Channel today added the Global Labour Directory of Directories to its service.
LaborTECH (USA): Waiting for the Reports
The LaborTECH conference was held in San Francisco on 12-13 July, and here's what the conference website is saying today:
The LaborTECH Home Page is in the process of being updated and enlivened with papers submitted by some of the conference panelists as well as papers submitted by others on the subject of labor and technology. We have an array of digital photos that will appear here soon. Further, we would like this site to be a reference point for the subject of Labor & Technology - to this end we invite you to send your papers, announcements, insights, events to labortech@labornet.org and we will post pertinent information on the site. ** Please be patient as the updating is being done by volunteer labor and there is a lot of work here!**
Postponed: Labourtel (UK)
The Labour Telematics Centre in Manchester, England posted the following notice to its Website recently:
Dear Friends,
Our conference to which so many of you have contributed ideas and support has had to be postponed.
Unfortunately our Conference Organiser unpredictably fell ill at this crucial stage of our organisation. Being a small and under resourced organisation, we have been unable to draft in a suitably qualified person at such short notice to take up the reins to ensure marketing and management of the conference is successful.
We are in discussion with our partners and sponsors in order to hold a similar conference or series of colloquiums in the first half of 1998. We will continue to hold open our website and would appreciate any suggestions for programmes, subjects for discussion and so on.
We will of course refund conference fees and supporting donations in full within the next few weeks.
We thank all of you for your positive support and we look forward to continuing the fruitful co -operation which has come from years of work together.
We will let you know our thinking as we make progress.
Peter Waterman has written an interesting letter which has been posted to the Web by Labornet about this conference.
It is urgent concern of labor movement how to use the communication media
including video, radio, internet, etc and how to deal with the impacts
caused by the rapidly developing technologies. The difficulties, challenges
and possibilities based on the technological changes are more apparent at
the end of this century and the debates on organizing new structure of
network consisting of the activists in the communication area.
In that sense, in spite of total lack of financial resources and
experiences, we, the Korean activists are trying to organize a conference
on "Labor Movement and Media : Workers, Information Technology and
Solidarity" and the international labor video and film festival in Seoul,
Korea. As the nationwide general strike showed not only the energy of the
working class who want to fight against the capitalist attack on the global
level, but also the ability of using the communication media such as the
internet and the video for information-sharing and strengthening the
solidarity on the national and international level,(See
http://kpd.sing-kr.org/strike) this place can be a symbolic and realistic space for all of
you to discuss the various issues facing the working people.
For three days, there will be a conference and also a festival by
participants from diverse activists in Korea and all over the world. In
addition, at the previous day of the conference there will be an annual
mass rally will be organized by KCTU (Korean confederation of trade unions
which organized the general strike in January) and it will be a great
opportunity to see and feel the impetus of the struggle of the Korean labor
movement. We hope the conference can be the participatory and interactive
during the whole preparatory process. The issues presenters mentioned here
in this proposal are still abstract and temporary plan and can be amended
and improved with your suggestion and participation. We will be waiting for
your messages of any kind such as the subjects, the presenters, the titles
of the film and videos, and funding. And your suggestion and participation
is the essential part of our organizing process !
Seoul International LaborMedia '97 Committee
Readers of these pages will remember that on 8 May we awarded the Labour Website of the Week to Eugene's terrific one-man labour website based in Edmonton, Alberta.
Now we want to draw attention to a project Plawiuk initiated shortly thereafter -- the Union Ring, part of the global web ring networks.
The way the Union Ring works is this: trade union websites register at the main Union Ring page --
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5202/unionring.html -- and copy some HTML code into their home page. People visiting the site will then have the option to work their way through the ring, visiting as many of the 47 sites currently registered as they'd like.
For an example of what this looks like, return to the bottom of the home page of the Labour Movement and the Internet website.
Union Ring members seem to mostly come from Canada and the United States, including a large number of trade union locals. In additon to these, there's the giant International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions based in Brussels, the Division of Labor Studies at Indiana University in South Bend, LabourNet in the UK (another Labour Website of the Week winner -- 19.12.96), NATCAVoice in the USA (which will be familiar to subscribers to the Labour Channel), the Canadian Committee on Labour History, and -- of course -- Plawiuk's own delightful home page.
If your own trade union website hasn't signed up, I encourage you to check this out today. In addition to boosting hits to your own site, and encouraging the very important sense of community among all labour websites, you'll get occasional statistics from Eugene about the Union Ring which are quite interesting to read. A wonderful initiative.
Coming Up: Labor Movement and Media: Workers, Information Technology and Solidarity (Seoul, Korea)
Monday, 10 November - Wednesday, 12 November
For details on the conference:
tel : +82-2-855-1913
fax : +82-2-858-1913
e-mail : labormedia@mail.sing-kr.org
Those who want to get the updated information can
use the web site and also the mailing list. To subscribe to the mailing list, send a message with the text "subscribe lm" (no quotation marks) to the address: list@mail.sing-kr.org. The address of the mailing list itself
is as follows LM@mail.sing-kr.org. 2 August 1997
Union Ring - A webring for trade unionists
Eugene Plawiuk has done it again.
June-July 1997
/ May 1997
April 1997
/ March 1997
/ February 1997
/ January 1997
December 1996
/ November 1996
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Copyright 1997 by Eric Lee.
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