Show your union credentials on Facebook

The TUC has just announced a new initiative - a Facebook application for union members.

Details from the TUC include:

It lets you add a little badge [see mine above or visit my blog to view it] to your Facebook profile to show everyone which trade union you're a member of.

You can also see which unions your friends are members of.

The application was initially developed for use by unions in the UK, but it is hoped we'll be able to make it available to more countries, through other national trade union federations.

You can get details of the creator of the initiative and how to add the application to your Facebook profile by visiting My Union.

Thanks to John for letting me know about the initiative - which I think is very encouraging, by-the-way.

New research paper on employee use of Web 2.0 communication technology

I've just finished a rough draft of a paper I will presenting at a conference later this week.

I'm making it available on my blog in the hope that it some might read it and offer me their opinions on my ideas.

The paper is similar to the one I wrote earlier this year on work blogging, which went through a similar reviewing process, and is now being reviewed for an academic journal.

In as few words as possible, the paper is about employees increasingly pursuing their employment-related interests through Web 2.0 communication technology, e.g. career development and job search, e-activism, e-misbehaviour, and when at work doing what workers are supposed to do!

It is called - Workers are doing it for themselves: Examining creative employee application of Web 2.0 communication technology - and available for download here.

The abstract of the paper is as follows:

The paper should be of interest to academics, trade unionists, employers and governmental officials who have an interest in new forms of Web communication technology and how new Web communication technologies may affect the future direction of industrial relations.

The main foci of the paper is Web 2.0, or the recent transformation of the World-Wide-Web to allow ordinary people to get involved in creating on-line content (e.g. blogs, wikis and social networking platforms), and, increasing evidence that non-organized workers are applying this new wave of communication technologies for work and employment-related ends.

It is put forward that non-organized workers are progressively making more use of such technology as a means to develop their careers, take action against employers, and, as a mean to misbehave and survive work.

The method applied to assess the proposed trends involves reviewing scholarly research, anecdotal accounts of worker activity from newspapers, and observations of Internet activity noted by the author of the paper.

The conclusions suggest there is superficial, yet strong evidence to suggest workers are increasingly experimenting and being highly creative with Web 2.0 communication technology, for a range of work and employment-related ends.

Due to the newness of the technology, however, the results generate far more unknowns than answers.

Guidance for future research activities are summarised in the conclusions.

Like I said before, the this is an early draft and will probably be modified several times once the many reviewing processes take place.