Let us begin . . .

As a first step toward realizing some of the points which were raised in that discussion, I have created a client-side image map which appears as a red navigation bar on the top of this page. (If you want to copy this navigation bar to your own sites, simply copy and paste from the source. I've made it simple and clear; there's no need to download any files.)

This navigation bar points visitors to the most comprehensive directory of trade unions on the net (The Cyber Picket Line), to the Global Labour Directory of Directories with its pointers to alternative mega-lists (including some which do not limit themselves to trade union sites), to a powerful new search engine which works on hundreds of labour sites, and to two very useful tools for promoting trade union sites and getting them to work together -- the Union Ring and the Labour Link Exchange.

I don't think that this navigation bar is The Solution to anything, but I do consider it a step forward and encourage other webmasters to adopt it -- or something similar. (Please let us know if you do -- tell the Labour Webmasters' Forum.)

And now to some of the points made in the discussion -- listed in no particular order:

• It's important to combine the power of a search engine, directory, ad link exchange, and web ring. That's what I've tried to do with the navigation bar above.

• Remember how Yahoo! began. Directories and search engines are the most popular sites on the net by far. The directories and search engines for the labour movement will be the most heavily-trafficked labour websites.

• Our directories must not exclude personal sites or sites which are not, strictly speaking, trade union sites. That's why I've included the Global Labour Directory of Directories in the navigation bar -- it points to such directories as the one sponsored by Labour Left Briefing, which includes perhaps the most comprehensive list of left organizations on the net -- which are not included in the Cyber Picket Line. No one is calling for shutting down all the various directories -- there are clear advantages to different styles and approaches.

• A search engine is critical. Chris Croome gave an excellent example of how the Ontario teachers' search engine was a lot more useful than the "mainstream" ones like Alta Vista. It is also important to include internal search engines on websites, as I have done on this site. (I explained how in the Labour Webmasters' Forum.)

• An ideal labour directory doesn't yet exist. It would include a number of features you won't find in the Cyber Picket Line, despite its immense size. Among these are reviews or comments on the different websites. Or alternate forms of organizing the sites (not only by geographic area, but by topic). Also, as Chris Croome has correctly pointed out, the perfect global labour directory will not be built by hand, but will rely on a searchable database.

• Let's not reinvent the wheel! Dan McHugh made this point very clearly -- we don't need to call for the creation of a union mega-directory or a search engine; these things already exist. As Phil Davies put it, we must "focus our power". Let us use the excellent tools people like Dan McHugh (Union Search), Steve Davies (Cyber Picket Line), and Eugene Plawiuk (Union Ring) have created.

• Unions should list their affiliates on their sites. Bob Ramsay of FIET made this point and he's absolutely right. FIET should list every union which belongs to it on their website -- and this will be the most accurate and up-to-date list on the net on that subject. Similarly, union locals (branches) should include links to their national unions. The purpose of the mega-lists is to ensure that trade union webmasters in local and national unions are not repeating the work already being done by the compilers of the global lists of links.

• We cannot give up on Yahoo! Or on the other "mainstream" directories and indexes either. In December 1997, of the top 10 websites (in terms of traffic), five were directories or search engines -- Yahoo!, Excite, AltaVista, Infoseek and Lycos (in that order). Tens of millions of people -- many of them trade unionists -- rely upon those search engines and directories. We must continue to make sure that our sites are listed in those directories too, constantly pressuring them to include union sites and even categories for our sites (which usually don't appear).

"The method is quite simple: we just agree to do what Eric suggests." If only it were so simple! I've quoted this sentence to my five year old son, Yonatan, but so far it hasn't had any effect ...

9 January 1998

A Waste of Time!

This was brought home to me the other day as I visited the websites one by one of the major trade unions in the USA. As a way of building interest in this site, I was checking out if these unions had lists of links to which I could submit Global Labournet, the Labour Website of the Week, and so forth. And to my amazement, they all did.

Every one of them. Every union has a person whose job it is -- or part of whose job it is -- to maintain a list of links. To add new links. To delete old ones and keep the list current.

Every single labour website I visited had such a list. Some are terrific, well organized, up to date. Others were created back in late 1994 and show links to Jurassic-era websites which no longer exist.

This duplication of effort is unbearable to see. And when you calculate that there are at least 1,500 active trade union websites today (according to the list at Cyber Picket Line), you are talking about an enormous waste of time and effort going on here.

Furthermore, it is nearly impossible to keep up with the constant changes, or to select the very best websites. There are tons of errors on these lists, there are pointers to the wrong sites, the lists frequently ignore the very best or most-frequently-updated sites. And this is inevitable because the people doing the links lists are usually doing a million other things too.

Now I'm not suggesting that an organization like, for example, the United Auto Workers in the USA, shouldn't have a list of links to its union locals. It should. But does it need its own list of links to labour resources on the net? I don't think so.

A call to action!

I suggest we launch a minor international campaign to begin closing down the individual links lists (except in the cases I mentioned above, like a union linking to its locals) and all our sites begin linking to one or more of the comprehensive lists being created -- the largest of which are listed in the Global Labour Directory of Directories.

If a number of large union sites do this, those large directories will begin getting a very large number of hits, making it possible, eventually, for them to actually assign people to work part time or even full time on the task of maintaining the labour movement's answer to Yahoo!.

A labour website getting thousands of hits per day -- and this could only happen if we pool our resources and point our visitors to the same place -- might even be able to sustain itself through advertising. (Why wouldn't an online bookstore like Amazon.com or a left-wing publisher like Pluto Press advertise on a site attracting thousands of trade unionists every day?).

Such a site could rapidly become the most popular labour website, just as Yahoo! by merely being a terrific directory is the most popular website in general. Imagine having such a resource we could all use, a central location on the Web to advertise important international campaigns like the ICEM's current effort to focus attention on the Russian wage arrears issue.

Let me know what you think by sending me a note, or better yet -- post your answers to everyone to read at the Labour Webmasters' Forum.

1 January 1998

1998:
My 8 Predictions for the New Year

1. A lot more trade unionists will get online. I emphasize "trade unionists" because all studies of net demographics now reveal that not only are more people coming online every second, but the average income of those coming online is constantly dropping. In other words, the Internet is becoming less and less a playground for elites and more and more a communications tool for the rest of us.

2. The labour presence on the Web is going to grow absolutely and relatively. Every business on the planet now seems to have a website, and for now, business dominates the web. But as tens of thousands of trade unions launch new websites -- right now, the Cyber Picket Line has about 1,500 sites listed -- and as existing sites expand and improve, the labour presence on the Web will be felt much more deeply.

3. There is going to be a lot more labour interactivity on the Web. The era of online brochures is ending as more and more labour sites introduce live chat rooms and web-based discussion forums. Trade unionists are going to visit sites that offer slick graphics only once; they will return again and again to sites that allow them to talk with each other. Webforums and chat rooms will increasingly take the place of USENET news groups (like alt.society.labor-unions), though mailing lists like Labor-L and Union-D will remain important tools. As for the closed, proprietary forums, like those maintained by IGC and Geonet, they are finished.

4. 1998 will see the emergence of an online labour news network. The beginnings are already in place. The hundreds (perhaps more) press releases and news articles now scattered around scores of national and global labour sites will begin to come together in news sites modelled on the many successful news sites in other areas. For examples of today's pioneering attempts, see the two labournet sites -- Labournet (UK) and Labornet (USA).

5. Labour radio and TV broadcasts will become common. We've already seen the first uses of streaming audio and video by labour websites in 1997 -- the live broadcast of LaborMedia 97 in Seoul, the FreeSpeech TV website, and video broadcasts at the Canadian Auto Workers site. This year, more and more labour sites will broadcast recorded and live material as we move toward the realization of the old dream of a global labour TV and radio network.

6. National borders in labour cyberspace will begin to disappear. Already, labour websites are being forced to take into account the fact that many visitors are not coming from the host country. The two labo(u)rnet sites and many others are more and more global in character, as are many of the online discussions. The trade union movement will begin to think globally and act globally.

7. The first labour/left periodical will break the taboo and shut down its print edition. There are already some labour and left publications that only exist on the Web with no print counterpart. But sometime in 1998, somewhere in the world, a labour publication is going to decide to cut costs by dropping their print edition. My guess: one of the many magazines and newsletters of the various global institutions of the movement, such as the international trade secretariats. (A precondition is a publication many or most of whose readers already have web access -- meaning, a publication aimed at union staff and officers.)

8. There will be increasing coordination by labour websites. The launch of the Labour Webmasters' Forum in September 1997 was a step in this direction. There is already talk among some labour webmasters of coordinating efforts to make labour sites compatible with each other and unique on the Web using the new Extensible Markup Language (XML) which will become popular in 1998. Sites will increasingly coordinate their solidarity efforts, as was demonstrated recently with the focus on South Korea and on the ICEM's cyber-campaign on behalf of unpaid Russian workers.

What do you think will happen to labour on the net in 1998? Click here to tell me, and I'll post some of the more interesting responses to this page.

Back to Solinet.

Copyright 1997 by Eric Lee.

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