Mapping Social Network Unionism Worldwide

Supported by transform! europe, Transnational Institute, Networked Politics and IGOPNet, an international seminar on Networked Labour was held in Amsterdam from 7 to 9 May.

Around 25 activists, practitioners, researchers and theorists from various networks , organisations and backgrounds came together to contribute to the on-going debates on the changing nature of the capitalist modes of production, linking it to emerging new social forces and political actors.

The program of the seminar was constructed in an open sourced way. The ‘code’ draft program was designed and shared online prior to the event. According to it, the focus was the impact of internet and telecommunication on production modes, work organisation, and political protest and organisation.

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  1. Introduction 2. Will the internet set us free? Myths and realities of the social media revolution 3. The viral effect 4. Some political and communications principles 5. Winning the PR war...

Today I was witness to the frontline of an attack on workers’ rights in Turkey.

I was at the barricades when police and security forces, on the orders of their government, fired tear gas at small groups of workers.

The transnationalisation of production, along with the rise of global supply chains, informalisation, financialisation, and connecting of world markets through informationalisation have all hit hard on workers. It seems to have become impossible to overcome the resulting divisions among working classes, who have been so radically abused by capital. These new structural forces have created an immense need for connected self-organisations of workers, built from the bottom up, and operating simultaneously at local, national and international levels. This article argues for a new global unionism that goes beyond the IWW experience and allows workers to connect local, national, regional and international struggles by aligning with other struggles in life.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013 is the official first day of production under workers control in the factory of Viomichaniki Metalleutiki (Vio.Me) in Thessaloniki, Greece. This means production organized without bosses and hierarchy, and instead planned with directly democratic assemblies of the workers. The workers assemblies have declared an end to unequal division of resources, and will have equal and fair remuneration, decided collectively. The factory produces building materials, and they have declared that they plan to move towards a production of these goods that is not harmful for the environment, and in a way that is not toxic or damaging.

CoCreatie en OpenSource, Delen als waarde-toevoeging, en mentaliteit. Schetsen op een interactie-platform

The globalisation of world trade in combination with the use of information and communications technologies is bringing about a new international division of labour, not just in manufacturing industries, as in the past, but also in work involving the processing of information.
       Organisational restructuring shatters the unity of the traditional workplace, both contractually and spatially, dispersing work across the globe in ever-more attenuated value chains. 
        A new ‘cybertariat’ is in the making, sharing common labour processes, but working in remote offices and call centres which may be continents apart and occupying very different cultural and economic places in local economies.

SACOM’s main goal is to monitor and campaign against corporate misbehavior that violates worker’s rights, health, safety, welfare, and dignity in China.

As the Walmart empire grows overseas in China the same mistreatment of workers takes place, inciting mass protest from Chinese workers.

The proposal to hold a summit of alternative social and political movements in Athens on June 7-9, 2013, constitutes a serious attempt to create a European social and political front for the struggles against austerity and an authoritarian turning...

Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) is a new nonprofit organization founded in Hong Kong in June 2005. SACOM originated from a students’ movement devoted to improving the labor conditions of cleaning workers and security guards under the outsourcing policy. The movement attained relative success and created an opportunity for students to engage in local and global labor issues. SACOM aims at bringing concerned students, scholars, labor activists, and consumers together to monitor corporate behavior and to advocate for workers’ rights.

 

We believe that the most effective means of monitoring is to collaborate closely with workers at the workplace level. We team up with labor NGOs to provide in-factory training to workers in South China. Through democratic elections, we support worker-based committees that can represent the voices of the majority of workers.

For a peer to peer, transnational, commons, and hyperempowered labour class movement (by OrsanSenalp)

Into the Fire is up! Here's the link you can use to embed Into the Fire on your website or blog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMOnuD0SQJs&cc_load_policy=1 Into the Fire is being crowd-release...

Sure, there are federations of unions operating at global level, and they do a lot of great work. However, that's not the same as groups of workers organising themselves internationally, whether it be around supply chain, occupation, industry and/or employer. THAT'S what we're here to discuss. (Note: It's not instead of, but as well as!). If you aren't convinced this conversation is necessary, then this isn't the place for you. We've gone past the "whether or not" debate and are wanting to discuss "how".

The Emergency Labor Network (ELN) is a network of labor organizations and individuals united in support of a program calling upon labor to wage a more militant and robust fightback against the many assaults targeting working people. We say “NO!” to cuts and concessions for workers in both the private and public sectors, as well as for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. We are guided by the 15 principles adopted at our founding meeting held in Cleveland March 4–5, 2011. We not only seek to protect the gains and achievements won by labor over centuries of struggle but we also urge the labor movement to break new ground in winning jobs for all; health care for all; quality education for our youth; full rights for all working people in the U.S., regardless of country of origin; organizing the South; independent labor political action; and redirecting war spending to meet human needs, including modernizing the crumbling infrastructure.

“Workers of the world unite!” says the traditional slogan of the Industrial Workers of the World. The Wobblies, since their founding in 1905, have envisioned a global union capable of waging a worldwide general strike. By its height in the 1920s, the union was capable of mobilizing hundreds of thousands of workers. But while the Wobblies never fully realized international unity among workers, there is new promise for its vision today — thanks not to a union, but to a union-busting corporation: Walmart.

KAYIKI PRESS RELEASE 18.01.2013 “Grief itself is not enough” On Sunday January 13, 2013 three corpses have been found on the seashore of south Chios Island. They belonged to refugees trying to cros...

SACOM’s main goal is to monitor and campaign against corporate misbehavior that violates worker’s rights, health, safety, welfare, and dignity in China.

Security in-a-box is a collaborative effort of the Tactical Technology Collective and Front Line. It was created to meet the digital security and privacy needs of advocates and human rights defenders. Security in-a-box includes a How-to Booklet, which addresses a number of important digital security issues. It also provides a collection of Hands-on Guides, each of which includes a particular freeware or open source software tool, as well as instructions on how you can use that tool to secure your computer, protect your information or maintain the privacy of your Internet communication.