Hundreds of millions not if billions of workers in the world are out of reach for the established trade union mechanisms and structures, so they are not protected at all. Peter Waterman calls them 'Labour's others', for some others they are the new working class; the precariat composed of people who holds no property and even secure job.
What kind of trade union structure will go beyond the ongoing problems and the crisis of unionism, which was born out of well known problems and will become the change maker of our time. Can Unionbook ensemble a model for such future union organisation through the net?
There are already many good examples of action and organising taking place via the net and incredible results are getting reached , as it happened in 2007 when financial support has been mobilized from the wealthier segments of the Western working classes for the Ford worker's first ever strike organised in Russia since the beginning of the 20th Century.
For already some times social networks are gaining ground as an important and dynamic forms of communication and collective action tools. Many activists are involved today in one or another social network on the net, or on the real world. Is time came to transform this tool into a new generation social movement union.
There is a need to start discussion can this happen, can it work, and how? How would we build and gain legal ground for such a union, is it possible, or necessary? How would such union look like, be governed and function against the offensive coming from the employer and the state?
'Social Network Unionism' working group has recently been created with the aim of promoting such discussion and providing a space for comprehensive work in order to experiment with Social Network Union idea by utilizing the opportunity created by LabourStart team and Eric Lee, by creating the unique space of Unionbook and bringing hundreds of unionist together on the net.
I want to suggest that this is actually the discussion towards the New Unionism for the 21st century. With this call I would like to invite all who involved one way or other in labour and trade union movements to join and contribute this working group.
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The initial discussion and exchange below on the Comment Wall has been a clustering around the SNU idea, its definition, possible implications, usage etc. To provide clarity and focus for the overall dlscussion I have suggested to split the discussion into two piece.
Below forum now can focus on what is SNU about, its definition, it's feasibility, cotribution, usefullness, limits, how can we promote the concept within existing unions? and so on.
For such discussion, Peter HJ's New Unionism, SIGTUR's TNCs, and PSI's own experiements here in UnionBook provide live examples of developing SNU.
For the second line of discussion a group has been created. Focus of that discussion has been suggested as actually how to create one global grassroots social network union, in order to complete the first discussion by both pressurring on existing unions to change -without contending them-and challneging capital and state elite to stop attacing on life, peace and justice immediately -by bringing all progreesive and revolutionary social forces into one counter hegemonic bloc.
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