Trade union Twitter survey findings

As previously posted on this blog, LabourStart is looking at how trade unions can make use of Twitter.

The findings have now been published.

Key points:

A small but growing number of trade unionists use Twitter, though few are intensive users.

Only a tiny number use Twitter for trade union purposes.

Re-tweeting, the Twitter equivalent of forwarding an email, is not widely used.

Of all the other social networks, only Facebook is widely used and giant sites like MySpace and Bebo are off union members's radar.

Unions that do use Twitter are probably not very good at communicating this fact to members, as most did not know if their unions used Twitter.

Finally, there are considerable differences of opinion among union members online as to the value of Twitter.

Click here for more details.

50% plus USA workers say American dream is 'unattainable'

I've not blogged for a while due to the usual high workload at the end of the academic year.

Fortunately, from time-to-time, good work-related stories get delivered to my email in-box and I don't have go looking for interesting and new stuff.

Today I got to hear via The Marlin Company of a new national survey based on USA workers.

The report is available here by clicking on the heading - New National Survey: US Workers Report They Are Bitter and Blame the Political System for the Death of The American Dream.

The main finding, as the headline suggests, concerns "nearly three-quarters of US workers (74.7 per cent) say the American dream is not as attainable today was it was eight years ago; 52.4 per cent say it is simply unattainable for the average American.

It seems that it's the government that is to blame with, for instance, "more than three-fourths (77.2 per cent) of US workers say they feel unrepresented by the political system on workplace issues."

Participants required to take part in work-life balance survey

If you want to help find out what is going in British workplaces then please find the time to fill in this questionnaire.

It's part of an ongoing project and I filled a questionnaire in some time ago - it won't take long and it's quite good to know someone out there is building up a picture of what it's like to balance home and work at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Some further details to go on if you are so far unconvinced:

This questionnaire is being conducted by the Work Life Balance Centre together with the University of Wolverhampton and Coventry University to discover what is happening in today's workplace.

Work life balance is the way you divide up your time between work, your family, your hobbies or other aspects of your private life.

If one part of your life dominates all of the others and you do not want it to be that way, your life is out of balance.

The survey is trying to uncover to what extent work is dominating many people's lives, and the effect this has.

The information collected in this survey is completely confidential.

The answers given will be used to draw up a general picture of what is happening at work today and what could be done about any problems revealed.

Your help in completing the survey is very much appreciated.

Please feel free to inform colleagues and friends about the survey or forward this site address to them.