CONNECTING ACTIVISTS: UNIONS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING: A REPORT FROM THE U.K.

CONNECTING ACTIVISTS: UNIONS ANDSOCIAL NETWORKING: A REPORTFROM THE U.K.wusa_264 629..640

John Wood

Online social networking has become a huge global phenomenon in only a few years, with hundreds ofmillions now regularly using social networks to coordinate their personal lives, or to network and collaborateprofessionally in ways never before possible. These new technologies are still starting to be exploited by tradesunions and their activists in the U.K., but they are already showing signs that they could offer significantgains to the movement.

In 2008 there were around 200,000 volunteer workplace representatives(local union activists, known as reps) in the U.K. This was within an overallunion membership of around 6.9 million union members, which represents adensity of 27.4 percent of the working population (spread as 15.5 percent in theprivate sector and 57.1 percent in the public sector). Union reps are present in13 percent of U.K. workplaces.1

Reps are elected within their workplaces and are the face of the union to mostunion members. The majority (89 percent) are allowed some paid facility time bythe employer to coordinate the union branch, recruiting new members, deliveringunion services, and negotiating with employers on behalf of the membership.Many reps have specialist responsibilities, such as health and safety in theworkplace, equalities monitoring, or organizing learning and skills initiatives.

The Workplace Employment Relations Survey 2004 survey found that only24 percent of union reps did less than one hour of union-related work per week,with 43 percent doing more than five hours. While some larger workplaces havemultiple reps who can share the workload, around 40 percent of workplaces withreps have only one person covering this role, and the average ratio of ordinarymembers to reps is 55:1. The Trades Union Congress (TUC) and reps’ ownunions provide training and advice channels, but these can be stretched, andthere is little time or resource for many of these activists to engage in networkingactivity.

Internet take-up is relatively high in the U.K. Seventy percent of Britonsidentify themselves as internet users, and 96 percent of Internet-using house-holds in the U.K. have a broadband connection, though there are significantly

Workingusa

The Journal of Labor and Society

WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society · 1089-7011 · Volume 12 · December 2009 · pp. 629–639© Copyright the Author

Journal Compilation © 2009 Immanuel Ness and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

lower levels of take up among the oldest and lowest income groups of society.2

This compares favorably to the rest of Western Europe (though the Nordicstates have higher levels of internet penetration), and is broadly comparable with74.4 percent in the U.S.3 Reps (not tending to be of retirement age or fromlowest income groups) are fairly typical of the rest of the U.K. population interms of Internet use. A 2004 survey of 1,200 reps by Richard Freeman andMarit Rehavi4 found that 45 percent of reps used the Internet daily, with 32percent claiming to use it regularly in support of their role as a rep.

Social networking take-up in the U.K. is also high, though again slightlybehind that of the United States. Ofcom research in 2008 found that 22 percentof the adult (16+) population had created a profile on one or more socialnetworking sites,5 though this rose to 54 percent in the 16–24 age group. Themost popular social networks in the U.K. are mainly those that have originatedand already become popular in the U.S. (unlike some other countries wherelanguage constraints have helped locally developed networks to become morepopular, such as Hyves in the Netherlands).

In recent years, reps have also started to make more use of social media andsocial networking, in their union work, their own jobs and their personal lives.I surveyed 796 reps6 who use one or more TUC (the national federation forunions in England) websites, and found that 8.92 percent used the socialnetwork Facebook in their union work. 2.26 percent used Twitter for unionwork, 6.66 percent YouTube, 0.88 percent LinkedIn, 1.01 percent MySpace, and1.26 percent Flickr. 2.14 percent maintained a blog for their union work.

While these numbers are still some way behind more traditional websiteusage, with 83.29 percent seeking information from their own union’s nationalweb site, and 44.72 percent using a local union website, there is considerablescope for reps’ union-related use of social media to increase when we considerthe much larger numbers who are already using these services in their personallives. 40.7 percent of those surveyed have a Facebook account, 9.05 percentuse Twitter, 42.71 percent YouTube, 3.89 percent LinkedIn, 10.93 percentMySpace, 7.66 percent Flickr, and 4.9 percent maintain a personal blog.

Opportunities for Unions on Online Social Networks

There are many reasons why engagement with social networks might be anattractive prospect to trades unions. Using the major networks is free (or cheapin terms of advertising or feature development), and it is easy to conduct initialexperiments on a small scale. The networks have already signed up a highproportion of the unions’ members and potential members, making them auseful platform to be seen on. Facebook has over 250 million members inter-nationally, the U.K.’s 18.6 million Facebook members7 far outnumbering thecountry’s 6.4 million trade unionists.

Unlike traditional website publishing, publishing content on social networksby definition requires no more skill or equipment than would be needed anywayas a user of the network. Only deeper interaction or specific feature development

630 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

requires programming skills, and design skills are less of a concern, opening upcontent creation and participation to many more people within the union.

There is scope for grassroots networking on an unprecedented global basis,with organizers and activists able to leverage the wisdom of crowds to solveproblems. The connections between members on social networks may also helpunions to strengthen a sense of belonging among activists and members. Manyactivists may only know a couple of other activists and their full time officer atthe national union. Making and maintaining more relationships online may helpthem to more clearly see their place in the network as a whole, and to develoployalties to their other network contacts as well as to the union in general.

Opportunities in Research and Organizing

A number of union activists and organizers in the U.K. are starting to makeuse of social networking for research and building first contacts for organizing.Social networks are all about creating and strengthening connections betweenpeople. They allow groups to form around any common interest or identifier,not limited by geographical location. And of course, for many people, one of themost important identifiers is work—their sector, profession, employer, or work-place. This is obviously true with the work-focused social networks such asLinkedIn or Xing (where a union could easily leverage the contacts of thecontacts of their members to map out target companies within the same sector)but also a strong theme on the more general networks as well.

For example, running a quick search on Facebook for a major U.K. companytends to bring up a variety of groups; consumer fan groups, complaint groups,and employee groups, either official or more likely unofficial. A few minutesresearch into employee groups at an organizing target not only helps organizersto identify issues of concern to employees, but also provides names, faces, andhelpful background information for an organizing drive. There is a potential torecruit key activists as well among the owners and administrators of workplace-specific group—the kind of people who would want to discuss their work, andwho would be comfortable acting as a network hub, are possibly also the typeswho might do well as a workplace union rep.

Opportunities in Outreach and Campaigning

Some U.K. unions are using a presence in social networking to engage withtheir members and prospective members. Unions can be intimidating to thoseunfamiliar with how they work (or, of course, to people who know too well howthey work). Younger people, who might not be comfortable approaching a unionorganizer, attending a branch meeting, or actually reading a rulebook, arepossibly more likely to consider talking to a union if they are in an environmentin which they feel more comfortable and in control.

The National Union of Journalists in the U.K. has one of the largest andmost active union Facebook groups, with 2,196 members, around 6 percent of

631WOOD: UNIONS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING

their total membership (helped by the natural obsession for Facebook amongBritish journalists). They use it to facilitate members’ discussion, helping tohumanize the union to new members, and potential members. On at least oneoccasion they have managed to recruit a nonmember journalist who found thegroup. Their Facebook presence is also effective in advertising upcoming unionevents. Members might be cautious about attending meetings and social events,but if they can see others they know who have committed to attend, they may bemore likely to go themselves.

The U.K. general union Unite have also amassed a large Facebook group,which they use to launch new online campaigns and actions—taking advantageof Facebook users’ increased willingness to experiment and take online actionduring time spent on the site. The Musicians’ Union have developed profiles onMySpace, a social network popular with musicians, to allow members to contactthem in they way they feel most comfortable, and to raise the union’s profileamong members’ musician friends by appearing on members’ pages as a contact.

As social networks are built around friends (or contacts) sharing informationwith their own friends, and the major networks have such huge memberships,there is a potential for “viral” transmission of messages between users. TheTUC’s own Facebook application My-Union.org seeks to make use of this toraise the profile of unions with members’ friends, by displaying badges of U.K.and Irish unions on users’ profiles.

The Dangers of Social Networking

Just as there are many opportunities for unions in online social networking,there are also a number of hazards. Unions seeking to engage should plan foreach of these eventualities, as difficulties in social media can arise extremelyquickly, and grow out of hand if the organization or activists are unable torespond quickly enough themselves.

Organizational Culture vs. Open Source Culture

While many U.K. unions have been considerably improving their Internetcommunications in recent years, most are still unprepared to make the best ofsocial networking. Union websites are effective at circulating information tomembers, and increasingly at online campaigning, but these are activities thatare able to scale easily, without an increase in resources beyond unions’ smallin-house web teams. As a series of small conversations, social networking ismuch less scalable. To increase the impact, a union really needs to be able to holdmore conversations, which means allocating more people to work on it. Inpractice, social networking use needs to expand from the small communicationsdepartments that have traditionally been the Internet experts within unions tothe larger organizing departments.

Without the proper resources behind social networking activity, many unioncampaigns on social networking platforms may fail. By entering social networks,


unions are in effect offering to develop some form relationship with networkusers, and will increase those users’ expectations of a genuine interaction withthe union. If this expectation cannot be fulfilled, the disappointment coulddamage users’ perspectives of the union.

Entering into open and rapidly responsive discussion online may also causedifficulties for the organizational culture of many national unions. There maybe concerns around jeopardizing the accountability of unions’ representativedemocracies in favor of the rough direct democracy of the networks. Unions’capacities and cultures may also mean they are unable to respond quickly enoughwhen they need to seize an opportunity. There may also be concern that issuespreviously kept internal to the organization are now being discussed in public,and an attempt to silence discussion rather than seeking to understand andengage with it.

Unions will also find a special difficulty in keeping the appearance of unityso vital in employment disputes. Social networking offers union activists a way tonetwork and share much more quickly in disputes, and some recent disputesin the U.K. have been effectively coordinated and boosted by activists throughblogs and Facebook groups. This form of open discussion may cause problemsthough in that employers may perceive a weakening of discipline and resolve onthe part of workers in a dispute if hitherto hidden differences of opinion amongthe union members were identifiable in public. Indeed it would even be possiblefor employers’ agents to plant the seeds of discord in public groups.

The pressures of central resources and speed of response might mean thatsome unions could currently be more suited to social networking at a grass-roots level, with local reps and activists interacting with smaller local groups,and needing to focus only on a smaller and more sustainable number ofconversations.

In future years, new networking projects aimed at union paid staff, such asthe TUC’s own network unionprofessionals.org.uk (currently a year old andwith 2,000 of the U.K.’s estimated 5,000 union staffers signed up) and majorpublic sector union UNISON’s current development of a dedicated network fortheir own organizers, may start to change the organizational culture of unions tomore readily support online networking initiatives in a wider context.

How Safe is Your Account?

The commercial social networks are not a very firm foundation for tradeunion activism. There have been a number of cases internationally in recentyears of union or political activists being ejected from social networks, losing thehard work they have invested in building up contacts and content.

This is not because of some anti-union conspiracy among big networks suchas Facebook (despite the horror stories about their board members8), but comesdown to basic business priorities on their part.

It is sometimes easy to have a false perception of web2.0 services as beingfundamentally progressive and democratic, based on the open management


styles of services such as Wikipedia, or open source projects. Commercial socialnetworks are hard-nosed businesses however, and may be paper-rich but cash-poor. In 2008, Facebook had only around a hundred customer service operatives,coordinating the needs of a community of sixty five million active users.

Online community has a huge overhead in moderation—it is about facili-tating one to one conversation, which is very moderator intensive once thecommunity grows larger. With Facebook, revenue per user is extremely low—few users click on the ads they are shown, and the cost per click is not very high.The business only works because of the astronomical user numbers being shownthe adverts.

As a result, Facebook abdicates any serious attempt at community modera-tion, using its scarce human resources to investigate urgent and business-threatening cases such as child protection. First-line moderation is managed bydetection software, which looks for usage patterns that might suggest abuse ofthe service, and warn or ban offending users accordingly. Unfortunately forunion activists, an organizer rapidly adding new contacts and sending regularmass mail updates once a campaign or dispute suddenly breaks, looks to a robota lot like a spammer, using a short window before detection to send as manyunwanted advertisements as possible.

This happened in early 2008 to a Canadian unionist, Derek Blackadder, whohad his Facebook account closed for adding too many friends too rapidly (aftera popular campaign to reinstate him succeeded, he was swiftly banned again, thistime for answering his hundreds of solidarity messages too rapidly).9

Complaints from union campaign targets, especially those with a potentiallegal dimension, are likely to have similar results for trade unionists. During anSEIU drive to organize a casino in Halifax, Canada, the campaign’s profile pagewas deleted from Facebook (though here the union were technically on thewrong side of Facebook’s terms of service in the way the account was estab-lished). A U.K. political activist claimed her Facebook account was deleted afteran anonymous party had suggested, without evidence, that she was violating theterms of service.10 And in late 2008, a Canadian satirical campaigning video onYouTube was deleted after legal threats from the employer who had beenparodied, even though the complaint was later shown to be purely vexatious.11

When a conflict arises, as it inevitably will on a social network, it is simplyeasier and safer for a commercial network to act swiftly and decisively, even ifthey often make the wrong decision. The cost of spending time moderating aconflict far outweighs the cost of losing a few users, even power users. Unionsseeking to engage with the big social networks need to take this to heart and planbackup channels for their campaigns, in case they find that they lose an impor-tant account or page at a critical moment.

Activists at Risk

There is an even greater risk to union activists though, if their activities onlinedisplease their employer. Social networks offer powerful coordination tools to


activists who want to connect with members, but those connections and commu-nications are stored and searchable online, and in many cases could be discoveredby employers or other parties. Union activists could end up being scrutinizedonline by hostile employers, looking for evidence to act against them.

Unions could do more to promote access to ICT and social media as a keypart of facility provision offered by employers to union reps. In the survey of repsusing TUC websites, I found that while 74.37 percent of reps were specificallyallowed by their employer to use their normal work computer for their unionwork, only 7.91 percent were specifically allowed to use social networking sitesto coordinate their union. Another 3.02 percent were using social networkingfor their union work, not knowing whether their employer allowed it or not andpotentially putting them at greater risk. Updating and promoting codes ofpractice like UNI Global Union’s On-line Rights At Work12 code may helpmake reps’ position on information technology (IT) use, monitoring and privacyclearer as regards social networking.

Also, given that union activists will likely also be using social media toconduct their own personal lives, any social media activism is likely to be linkedwith their personal activity. If avoiding pseudonymous use (something whichdoes not inspire confidence from prospective members, and which in any casecontravenes some networks’ terms of use), activists will have to reveal moreabout their union activity to their personal friends, and more about their per-sonal lives to their union contacts. This could lead to stress from loss of personalspace and a sense of being activists 24/7, or could cause awkward momentsfor activists if union contacts seek further connections that they would findinappropriate.

Increased training on privacy settings for major networks could help activiststo compartmentalize their union activity, keeping their jobs and personal lives alittle safer. Though of course, even with the best privacy settings in place, peoplecan still be placed at risk. For example, a young woman on work experience inthe U.K. was sacked because her employer found she’d described her work asbeing boring on Facebook. She had been careful to restrict the information tofriends with her privacy settings, so her employer would not see, but she had notbeen prepared for one of her friends to inform their manager about it.13

This highlights that even if reps are able to stay safe online themselves, theywill be increasingly called upon to defend their members in web and social mediacases. The survey of 797 reps using TUC websites showed that 34.67 percenthad already had to deal with issues of members’ Internet access at work (59.42percent claimed their employer specifically blocked access to some social net-working services from work computers), and 19 percent had faced cases aroundtheir members’ privacy using social media.

The TUC has developed an online IT privacy and security training kit,14

featuring video advice from industry experts and interactive personal prescrip-tions. However, there is a lot more for us to do in integrating more thoroughonline privacy awareness in union organizing training, and in educating employ-ers in how to maintain their valid concerns about breaches of confidentiality


while adopting a more realistic approach to their workers’ personal conductonline. Most employers would not dream of following workers to the pub onFriday nights, to see if they were complaining about their work to their friends.Just because they can now do something akin to this online does not mean thatthey should.

Unionreps.org.uk—Networking for Reps

The TUC’s response to the opportunities around online social networkinghas been to create a closed community for U.K. union representatives, calledunionreps.org.uk. The community started in 2003 with a bulletin board, and hassince grown into a more fully featured network.

Now with over 14,000 registered users, the site features themed bulletinboards to share information and useful files, personal profile pages and privatemessaging, and a “friending” system to follow other contributors. Google mapintegration allows the site to localize information on other members, localresources for reps, training courses and user-provided event details. Users createand categorize the majority of the site content, free-tagging everything to allowauto-generated links between discussions and legal advice content (syndicated invia XML from another advice project), and building a jargon database, whichautomatically links uncommon or technical terms to definitions provided by thecommunity itself.

Comparing the reps who answered our survey on TUC websites, those whohave joined the unionreps.org.uk network do not differ by any significantamount on age or length of tenure as a rep, though they are slightly less likely tobe female (30.94 percent of respondents who were members of unionreps.org.ukwere female, compared to 37.01 percent among those who had not joined and 44percent of all reps). Unionreps.org.uk members do, however, have a higherincidence of specialisms as either safety reps or learning reps, possibly indicatingthey are more likely to be seeking connections with people with other morehighly specialized knowledge.

They also seem to fit an “early adopter” profile more when it comes to socialnetworking. While both groups seem to use union websites and the mainstreamsocial networks Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and MySpace to similar levels intheir personal lives, those who chose to join unionreps.org.uk are more likely touse the more niche network LinkedIn, or the newer network Twitter. They arealso more likely to use any of these networks in context of their union work thanthose online reps that do not use the network, with the exception of Flickr.

Unionreps.org.uk has become highly valued by its users, and generatessignificant volumes of content. Almost 8,500 topic threads have been started onthe boards since it started, and only around 2 percent of recent topics in the mainboards have not been answered by at least one other user.

Unionreps.org.uk opens up entirely new opportunities to exchange experi-ence with people that reps would otherwise never get the chance to meet—fromother workplaces, employers, regions, or unions. It excels in providing moral


support and encouragement in a way that more formal advice channels wouldfind difficult, but it also helps to answer very specialized or specific questions,thanks to the large numbers of people taking part. For example, one veryspecialist question on the safe drying time of isocyanate paints received its firstanswer within just one hour and forty-five minutes.

Freeman and Rehavi’s survey of unionreps.org.uk users found that reps whoused the site claimed to contact their unions’ full time officers 20 percent lessoften, as they found the answers they wanted through the network instead,freeing up the unions’ officers to work on other cases.

The online community are able to follow up on issues faced by users, and wehave witnessed a desire to cement connections by meeting in person. Reps fromseveral unions have arranged meet-ups of unionreps.org.uk users at their unions’national conferences, and geographically isolated users in Scotland are currentlyplanning a meet-up. The TUC organized a successful “unionrepsLIVE” eventin the West Midlands in 2008, a networking lunch session for reps, with speakerson online campaigning and organizing trends, and are looking to repeat theexercise in other locations during 2009.

Disputes are rare on the network (less than one incident requiring modera-tor assistance per month) and are mainly resolved satisfactorily by users discuss-ing between themselves, or flagging content for the attention of moderators.

The focused and professional conduct on the network is in part because theservice is very tightly focused around reps’ roles in the workplace. Users’ contentis marked with their real names and union affiliation, and clearly divided intosections covering the distinct roles of the different rep specialisms (organizing,legal assistance, safety, equalities, environment, and pensions). While users areable to private message each other on any topic, there is no open space forgeneral discussion, and no facility for self-organizing groups.

Some users would like to see more space for mention of off-topic campaignsthat might be of interest, or for political discussion, but when the issue hasarisen, the majority of feedback has been that the clear focus on workplace issuesis valued, as reps appreciate the consistent quality of the site, and can find otherplaces for more varied discussion. A similar issue has been anonymity. If weallowed people to create anonymous accounts, they would feel freer to discusssensitive issues around their work. This has to be weighed against the muchhigher level of trust that users can place on contacts with named individuals.

The site’s priorities for technical development are decided in regular con-sultation with users, though there is always a tension between the enthusiasm of“early adopters” who understand social networking and are ready for moreadvanced features, and those for whom the whole concept is new. A consciousdecision has been taken not to alienate novice users, even though this may meanfrustrating power users on occasion. For example, a number of users haverequested threaded discussions on the boards, to allow more complex branchingof questions within topics on the site. We have not developed this though,staying with a basic “wall” approach that will be more immediately obvious topeople less familiar with online discussion boards.


UnionBook—A Secure Space for Activism

Taking a very different approach to a similar situation is a social networkingproject from labor activist group LabourStart. Unionbook.org is a network forany union activists, anywhere in the world. It is structured to be as open aspossible, letting users find their own ways to use its core suite of powerfulnetworking tools; blogs, profiles, status wires, file sharing, and public or privategroups. Users are union reps, union officers, union members or other labormovement fellow travellers.

The idea is to reduce unions’ dependency on commercial networks likeFacebook. This is not to suggest unions should attempt to use it in memberresearch or outreach activity, as it will never attract the huge general audiencesof the major networks. Rather activists will be able to make use of its suite oftools and its supportive grassroots community in their own online projects,without running the risk of losing their account and work. Launched early 2009,it now has over 4,000 members, who are using it to run their own blogs andgroups on very diverse aspects and issues of the labor movement, as are of mostinterest to them.

Initiatives like unionreps.org.uk and UnionBook are internally focused, andwhile they may be a boost to union activists’ capacity and understanding of socialnetworking, if unions are to expand to the under-represented younger workerswho find social networking such a natural activity, they will need to venture outinto the public networks. Training and protecting our activists better, and learn-ing to make our organizations more responsive in public online debate will bejust as important if unions are to make the most of the new opportunities insocial networking.

John Wood is Campaigns and New Media Officer for the Trades Union Con-gress, the United Kingdom’s national labor union federation. He has a back-ground in online publishing, campaigning and fundraising for charity, and blogson labor and technology at johninnit.co.uk and laborgeek.org. Address corre-spondence to John Wood, TUC, Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3LS,U.K. Tel: +00 44 207 467 1269. Fax: +00 44 207 467 1241. E-mail: [email protected].

Notes

1. Taken from Inside the Workplace: Findings from the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey byBarbara Kersley, Carmen Alpin, John Forth, Alex Bryson, Helen Bewley, Gill Dix and Sarah Oxenbridge.Published 2006 by Routledge. http://www.wers2004.info.

2. Taken from Oxford Internet Institute’s Oxford Internet Survey 2009. OxIS is a biennial survey coveringInternet access in the U.K., user attitudes and impact on society. Published 22 June 2009. http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/microsites/oxis.

3. Taken from Internet World Stats website, data for March 2009. The U.K. has a lower Internetpenetration rate than the Nordic countries, and only slightly higher than France and Germany.http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats4.htm.


4. Richard Freeman and Marit Rehavi surveyed 857 reps during 2003/4 through the TUC’s educationprogramme, as well as more detailed work with 411 reps using unionreps.org.uk. Their findings werepublished as the NBER working paper “Helping Workers Online and Offline: Innovations In Union AndWorker Organization Using The Internet?”, March 2008. Also see Freeman & Rogers (2002), “Opensource unionism”, WorkingUSA, No.Spring, Vol 5, no 4.

5. Ofcom (U.K. telecoms watchdog organization) submission to the Byron Review on children’s use of theInternet, March 27 2008. http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/telecoms/reports/byron/.

6. 796 reps responded to an online survey on social networking, conducted for this article in June and July2009. The survey was addressed at reps already using TUC online resources and was advertised on sitesand email alerts of unionreps.org.uk and tuc.org.uk.

7. Taken from CheckFacebook.com’s report into Facebook usage at January 8, 2009 http://www.checkfacebook.com.

8. “With friends like these . . .” by Tom Hodgkinson, the Guardian, January 14, 2008. An account of thepolitical outlook and business dealings of Facebook’s board members.

9. Coverage of Derek Blackadder’s ejection from Facebook, the subsequent campaign mounted to reinstatehim, and related stories on my personal blog: http://www.johninnit.co.uk/tag/facebans.

10. Welsh political blogger Pippa Wagstaff’s account of the deletion of her Facebook account, followinganonymous complaints about her. http://onewalesgovernment.blogspot.com/2008/08/wiped-from-face-book-of-earth.html.

11. “How Canada Post censored union vids on YouTube, and why our laws need to catch up” by MichaelGeint, The Tyee, January 27, 2009. Background to a vexatious legal complaint resulting in union contentbeing deleted from a social network.

12. UNI Global Union On-line Rights at Work code of practice, http://www.union-network.org/uniibitsn.nsf/0b216cc03f4649f6c125710f0044be29/$FILE/CodeEng.pdf.

13. Facebook remark teenager is fired, BBC News Online, 27 February 2009 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/essex/7914415.stm.

14. “Not Safe For Work”, TUC / Get Safe Online / DIUS partnership project, 2008.http://www.worksmart.org.uk/nsfw.

References

BBC News Online. 2009. (February 27), http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/essex/7914415.stm (accessedSeptember 10, 2009).

CheckFacebook.com. 2009. (January 8), http://www.checkfacebook.com (accessed September 10, 2009).Freeman, R., and J. Rogers. 2002. Helping workers online and offline: Innovations in union and worker

organization using the internet? National Bureau of Employment Research. Working paper, March.Freeman, R., and M. Rehavi. 2008. Helping workers online and offline: Innovations in union and worker

organization using the internet? National Bureau of Employment Research. Working paper, March.Geint, M. 2009. How Canada Post censored union vids on YouTube, and why our laws need to catch up. The

Tyee, January 27.Hodgkinson, T. 2008. With friends like these . . . The Guardian, January 14.Internet World Stats. 2009. (March), http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats4.htm (accessed on September

10, 2009).Kersley, B., C. Alpin, J. Forth, A. Bryson, H. Bewley, G. Dix, and S. Oxenbridge. 2006. Inside the workplace:

Findings from the 2004 workplace employment relations survey. London: Routledge.Ofcom. 2008. (March 27), http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/telecoms/reports/byron (accessed September

10, 2009).OxIS. 2009. Oxford Internet Institute’s Oxford Internet Survey 2009 (June 22), http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/

microsites/oxis (accessed September 10, 2009).TUC. 2008. Not Safe For Work, TUC/Get Safe Online / DIUS partnership Project

http://www.worksmart.org.uk/nsfw (accessed September 10, 2009).UNI Global Union On-line Rights at Work Code of Practice. http://www.union-network.org/uniibitsn.nsf/

0b216cc03f4649f6c125710f0044be29/$FILE/CodeEng.pdf (accessed September 10, 2009).


CONNECTING ACTIVISTS: UNIONS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING: A REPORT FROM THE U.K.

Documents

Transcript of CONNECTING ACTIVISTS: UNIONS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING: A REPORT FROM THE U.K.