{"id":1137,"date":"2010-05-07T12:38:04","date_gmt":"2010-05-07T10:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/?p=1137"},"modified":"2010-05-07T14:11:15","modified_gmt":"2010-05-07T12:11:15","slug":"eric-lees-presentation-to-laborcomm-2010-ankara-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/?p=1137","title":{"rendered":"Eric Lee’s presentation to LaborComm 2010 – Ankara, Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is the video<\/a> and here is the text of my notes in English. (The Turkish language version is here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Networked union communications: The LabourStart experience<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Past<\/p>\n

What is LabourStart?<\/p>\n

The news and campaigning website of the international trade union movement, founded in 1998
\nLaunched originally, by me, as a \u201cportal\u201d site \u2013 where trade unionists would start their day on the net.<\/p>\n

From English to a multi-lingual system<\/p>\n

For its first 4 years, site operated in English only; later we added Dutch and Norwegian versions.
\nToday LabourStart news works in 24 languages including Turkish.
\nThe news is not translated \u2013 each of the sites is autonomous and relies upon volunteer correspondents.\u00a0 (More on this later.)
\n6,000 spoken languages in the world today.\u00a0 Many have millions of speakers (66 languages are spoken by at least 10 million people each).
\nBut trade union websites including those of the global union federations generally ignore all but a handful.
\nTurkish, for example, is not found on most global union sites.<\/p>\n

From promoting existing campaigns to creating our own<\/p>\n

When we started \u2013 links to ICEM and other GUF-run campaigns; these were not very effective
\nEventually, we wrote our own, multilingual software that is integrated with our news database and that is syndicated through RSS and other news feeds
\nWe harvest the email addresses of those who sign up to our campaigns to create our mailing lists (more below)<\/p>\n

The importance of experimentation<\/p>\n

We’ve tried all kinds of things that didn’t necessarily work very well
\nFor example:
\nOnline chat
\nDiscussion forums
\nA jobs board for jobs in the trade union movement
\nA branded web-based email tool
\nA \u201cunion browser\u201d launched with Opera
\nWe’ve learned what works and what doesn’t \u2013 but the important thing was to try
\nUnions don’t like to experiment, but we must<\/p>\n

Building a new kind of network<\/p>\n

LabourStart has grown to be much more than a list of links to labour news stories
\nThe key is the building of a global network of trade union activists at every level of the unions<\/p>\n

The Present<\/p>\n

News<\/p>\n

This remains our core activity \u2013 posting links to news stories about trade unions 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in 24 languages
\nOn average, we post 250 stories per day \u2013 90,000 per year; that’s a lot of news about unions
\nThese news links are posted by our network of 762 volunteer correspondents
\nYou can see the top global stories, top stories by country, stories focussing on health and safety, stories about women workers.
\nYou can search by company name, the entire archive is online.<\/p>\n

Mailing lists<\/p>\n

67,500 people currently on our lists
\nWhen I last saw Onder in 2002 it was 3,000 names
\nThis is the only large-scale global network of trade unionists in existence.
\nEnglish list is the largest with 56,000 names;
\nBut Turkish list only has 61.
\nThese lists \u2013 which we mail to 2-3 times per week \u2013 is more important than our website.
\nThe mailings drive our campaigns.<\/p>\n

Campaigns<\/p>\n

We have had our own online campaign system since 2002, and have conducted many campaigns on behalf of unions.
\nA significant number of these have involved Turkey \u2013 including a current campaign in support of Seher T\u00fcmer, Branch Secretary of PSI affiliate SES (the trade union of public employees in health and social services) \u2013 with over 4,000 messages sent in 9 languages (but not Turkish) to the Turkish government.
\nLast July, we ran a campaign to protest the jailing of leaders of KESK.
\nA year ago, we ran an online campaign in support of the right of Turkish workers to demonstrate in Taksim square on May Day.
\nAnd 6 more campaigns in support of Turkish workers before that \u2013 in support of sacked metal workers, leather workers at DESA, another jailed woman leader of SES, jailed members of the road transport union, and strikers at Novamed, the first ever strike in a Turkish free trade zone back in 2006.
\nSome of our campaigns succeed, others fail.
\nOur campaigns are much larger today than they used to be but we need them to be in the Turkish language and to involve Turkish trade unionists in their thousands.<\/p>\n

Radio LabourStart<\/p>\n

Launched a few years ago as an actual Internet radio channel on Live365, this is now a page on LabourStart that lists on a daily basis radio broadcasts by trade unions \u2013 you can click and listen to them, but they are almost all in English.
\nWe’re very excited by the launch of Radio Labour, initiated by Marc Belanger, formerly of the ILO workers’ education center in Turin.<\/p>\n

LabourStart.tv<\/p>\n

As with Radio LabourStart, LabourStart.tv consists of links to union videos available online, updated throughout the day.
\nThis year we sponsored our first-ever global labour video of the year competition, and we cosponsor\u00a0 online databases of labour films and labour film festivals.<\/p>\n

Facebook<\/p>\n

We have had a LabourStart group on the social networking site Facebook for several years; if you use Facebook you should sign up.
\nIt currently has about 3,000 members.<\/p>\n

Twitter<\/p>\n

We were among the very first trade union groups to use the Twitter micro-blogging service which was initially quite appealing because it allowed us to send out SMS messages around the world for free.\u00a0 This is no longer the case.
\nStill, we update it throughout the day \u2013 automatically \u2013 and we have over 2,000 followers.<\/p>\n

UnionBook<\/p>\n

UnionBook was created last year by LabourStart as a trade union alternative to Facebook.
\nAlmost 5,000 trade unionists have opened accounts and have created hundreds of groups.
\nUnlike Facebook, UnionBook has no advertising.
\nIt respects the privacy of its members.
\nAnd it will never throw someone out for using the site to organize workers or campaigns.
\n(Which has happened on Facebook.)<\/p>\n

Upcoming global solidarity conference in July<\/p>\n

Though LabourStart has had a number of small, invitation-only conferences in 2002, 2008 and 2009 in London and Washington, we’ve never before attempted to hold a public conference open to all trade unionist but are doing so this summer in Canada.
\nAt the moment, no one from Turkey has registered to attend.<\/p>\n

The Future<\/p>\n

Worker-generated news<\/p>\n

We’re hoping to link to more and more news created by workers and their unions and to rely less on mainstream media.
\nWorkers should be encouraged and trained to create content online, and not only text but also audio and video.
\nWhen a strike or demonstration takes place, we’d like to be able to highlight the account given by workers who were there \u2013 in their own words.<\/p>\n

The challenge of language<\/p>\n

We need to move beyond global trade union websites that are only available in English, French, German and Spanish, such as the website of the ITUC which claims to represent 175 million workers in 155 countries.
\nThe vast majority of them cannot read their website because it’s not in a language they understand.
\nWe need to explore all the methods \u2013 such as using volunteer translators and machine translation \u2013 to involve millions more workers in our global movement.<\/p>\n

Handheld devices \u2013 and Internet everywhere<\/p>\n

The days when you accessed the Internet from your desktop PC in your office are rapidly ending \u2013 at least in the rich Western countries.
\nTwo technologies are driving the change \u2013 first of all, the rise of small, handheld devices (smartphones, PDAs, tablet computers) and second, widespread wireless Internet.
\nThis will drive changes in how we campaign, report news and communicate in the trade union movement.<\/p>\n

Personalization<\/p>\n

One-size-fits-all websites make no sense, but unions still use them.\u00a0 Visit a good commercial site (like Amazon.com) and it recognizes you, knows what you like and are interested in, and gives you a customized, unique experience.
\nLabourStart has barely scratched the surface of this by recognizing you if you’ve signed up to a campaign and suggesting \u2013 based on your country \u2013 that you might be interested in news from that country.
\nWe intend to do much more, and unions should also do much more.<\/p>\n

Beyond the online network \u2013 taking solidarity into the real world<\/p>\n

Finally, the whole point of doing all this work online is to make changes in the real world.
\nIt’s all well and good to build an online network, but that network will be much more powerful and effective if it operates offline as well.
\nNo strike will ever be won online; there is no substitute for a picket line or a street demonstration, or a well-organized trade union.
\nWhat we are doing is creating the conditions for the emergence of a new, networked global labour movement for the 21st century.
\nThe new technology is making possible the realization of the dream of an international working class movement as proclaimed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels back in 1848 when they wrote the historic words, \u201cWorkers of all countries, unite!\u201d<\/p>\n

-end-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is the video and here is the text of my notes in English. (The Turkish language version is here.) Networked union communications: The LabourStart experience<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1137"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1140,"href":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137\/revisions\/1140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}