Solidarity Message from Asia

The 2nd Seoul international LaborMedia '99

Pacific Workers Solidarity Links

The 2nd Seoul international LaborMedia '99

Rubina Jamil

Coordinator

Asia Pacific Workers Solidarity Links (APWSL)

Dear Friends,

Asia Pacific Workers Solidarity Links is a regional organization and struggling for the right of working class in Asian Pacific Countries, APWSL have 35 networking groups in 15 Asia Pacific Countries.

We are very much concern about the issues of working women in Asia as well as all over the world.  As you know in Asian male dominated society women are not getting equal jobs, they have very low literacy rate, discriminatory laws and attitude provide them  little chance to use latest technology. Generally it is the  opinion that the technology skill is only for men not for women, so that  it is preached that the home work is the real place of the women.

As you know the imperialist forces and bosses are attacking on working class movement in different ways, but unfortunately they are not considering that women are human being, they think that women have not been able to work for the development of country.

On behalf of Asia Pacific Workers Solidarity Links I really appreciate the organizer of 2nd International Conference  on the theme of " Barriers Preventing the Female Workers from getting On-Line and Strategies to Overcome Them and Why are there no Female Workers in Cyber Space? and we feel it is a necessity of the time to organize this event and involve women workers to discuss and find out the strategies about the involvement of women in Cyber Space.

We fully support you on this important event  and express our solidarity for the success of this conference as well as to Find out the strategies to remove the barriers against women and involve them to use latest communication technology.

Wish the success of the Conference.

Longlive Working Class

Longlive International  Solidarity

14-N, Industrial Area, Gulberg, Lahore 54660 Pakistan.

Tel:  92-42-5759838 / 92-42-5715252

Fax: 92-42-5715252

The 2nd Seoul international LaborMedia '99

Email: rjapwsl@nexlinx.net.pk

★ Content ★

The 2nd Seoul international LaborMedia '99

	Schdule	6
	Program of Seoul International Labor Media Conference	8
Session 1	Keynote Speech by Convenor of Organizing Committee	13
Session 2	Challenge of Labor Movements worldwide and International Communication Strategy.	19
	What is to be done for the 21st Century?	19
	Labor Challenges & Potential In Global Economy The 2nd Seoul international LaborMedia '99 Telecommunications, Democracy, Mobilization & Power For The 21st Century	25

Workshop 1	Experiences of LaborNets and Perspectives	31
	Labornet Facing 2000, Tasks & Opportunities	31
	LabourNet Germany as the Virtual Meeting Place of the Left in the Unions and the Workplace	35

Workshop 2	The Labor Unionists□ Strategy for New Communication	43
	Labor Union and Communiction	47
	What Really Happened?	53
	Labour and globalisation: the dialogue of which millennium?	61

Workshop 3	Labor Video Movement	77
	Experience with the New Communication Technologies in Turkey	77
	Japan□s Labor Movement and Labor Video	83
	Class Struggle Heightens Use Of US Labor Video	87
	The situation of the Korean Labor Video Activism and a Proposal about International Networking	91

Workshop 4	Barriers to Women Workers On-line Access, and How to Overcome	97
	The Utilization of Electronic Communication and Women Workers Movement	97
	Two lies in 'digital age' prophecies - How we can overcome barriers between women(workers) and cyberspace?	101
	Women's strategy in cyberspace : More political imagination	107

Workshop 5	Possibility and Perspective of Internet broadcasting(?)	115
	Internet Video Streaming Workshop	115
	Webcasting - One producers personal experience	117
	Possibility and Limit of Internet Broadcasting as an Alternative Media - Based on Progressive Network Center's Experience and Plan	125

Workshop 6	Information Technology, Social Surveillance and Response by Labor Movement	141
	Surveillance and the interception of communications	141
	For the immediate action against watch and control	151
	A report of the struggle for people's privacy against Japanese Government	163

Workshop 7	Imformatization Experiences of Trade Unions and their Perspective	169
	Informatization of Science and Technology Labor Union through Using Homepage The 2nd Seoul international LaborMedia '99	169
	The State of Labor Media in South Africa in 1999	177
	Organized Labor's Best Bet?: CyberUnions!	185

Workshop 8	WTO New Round and Workers struggle	197
	No to WTO! No to New Round! Turn Around!	197

Workshop 9	Movement for Independent Channel and its Perspective	201
	Independent Media in the Digital Age	201
	National Labor Channel -Efforts in the United States	205
	The Valuation and Outlook of □Citizen□s Stockholder Broadcast Foundation□ Movement	213

Workshop 10	Utilizing Linux in the Labor Movement	217
	Real Information Society and Social Implications of □GNU/LINUX□	217
	Usability of Linux in the social movement including labor movement - Case study of some groups in domestic and foreign countries	219

Workshop 11	Workers Struggle and Perspective for Global LaborNet	231
	The labour movement and the Internet	231

	Appendix	239

The 2nd Seoul International Labor Media '99

SCHEDULE

* Registration

November 14, Sunday	15:00 - 22:00

November 15, Monday	09:00 - 22:00

* Session & Workshop schedule

- place

(A) is 'kwan-ak-san' conference room

(B) is 'mo-ran-bong' conference room

(C) is 'chapel '

November 15, Monday

10:00

Opening Ceremony(C)

Session I(C) : Keynote Speech by Convener of Organizing Committee

13:00

Workshop 1(B) : Experiences of LaborNets and Perspectives

Workshop 2(A) : The Labor Unionists' Strategy for New Communication

15:30

Workshop 3(B) : Labor Video Movement

Workshop 4(A) : Barriers to Women Workers On-line Access, and How to Overcome

November 16, Tuesday

09:30

Workshop 5(B) : Possibility and Perspective of Internet broadcasting(?)

Workshop 6(A) : Information Technology, Social Surveillance and Response by Labor Movement

13:00

Session II(A) : Challenge of Labor Movements worldwide and International Communication Strategy.

15:30

Workshop 7(B) : Imformatization Experiences of Trade Unions and their Perspective

Workshop 8(A) : WTO New Round and Workers struggle

November 17, Wednesday

10:00

Workshop  9(A) : Movement for Independent Channel and its Perspective

13:30

Workshop 10(B) : Utilizing Linux in the Labor Movement

Workshop 11(A) : Workers Struggle and Perspective for Global LaborNet

16:30

Session III(A) : Report from Workshops, Floor Discussion & Closing Ceremony(A)

* Program of Seoul International Labor Media Conference

1. Sessions

Session I : Keynote Speech -- Perspective of this conference

Speaker : Kim Jinkyoon, Convener of Organizing Committee, Professor of Sociology Department of  Seoul National University

Session II : Challenge of Labor Movements worldwide and International Communication Strategy

Moderator : Won Youngsu, Korean Institute for Labor Studies and Policies (KILSP)

Presentations

- What is to be done for the 21st Century?

Che Mansoo, Deputy Director of Korean Institute for Labor Studies and Policies

- Labor Challenges and Potential in Global Economy : Telecommunication, Democracy, Mobilization and Power for the 21st Century

Steve Zeltzer, LaborNet US & Labor Video Project

Commentary

- Asia : Bong Angeles, Asian Monitoring and Resouce Centre (AMRC)

- South Africa : Anna Weeks, South African Municipal Workers Union(SAMWU)

- Turkey : Fedra Koc, DISK Basin-IS Union(Press workers)

- India : J. John, (CEC)

Session III : Report from Workshop and Discussion

Moderator : Rev. Jang Changwon, Chair of Steering Committee, LaborNet Korea

2. Workshops

(1) Experiences of LaborNets and Perspectives

moderator : Chris Bailey, LabouNet UK

presentations :

- LaborNet Facing 2000. Tasks and Opportunities

Steve Zeltzer, LaborNet US

- LabourNet Germany as the Virtual Meeting Place of the Left in the Unions and Workplcae

David Hollis, Labor Net Germany

- Korea : Experience of Launching NodongNet

Lee Yonggeun, Coordinator of LaborNet Korea

- Turkey : Experience with the New Communication Technologies in Turkey

Onder Ozdemir, Videotek

(2) The Labor Unionists Strategy for New Communication

Different Information Changes The Way of Struggle

moderator : Park Canggeun, Hyundai Precision Trade Union

presentations

- Labor Union and Communication : Mutual Understanding Or Delivery

Im Inae, Millennium Report Team, LAN

- What Really Happened? The language of the Common Workers. the Language of the Guidance division

Hong Eunyoung, Millennium Report Team

(3) Labor Video Movement

moderator : Kim Hyunsook, Seoul National University of Technology

presentations

- Experience with the New Communication Technologies in Turkey

Onder Ozdemir & Funda Basaran, Videotek, Turkey

- Japan's Labor Movement and Labor Video

Akira Mazbara, Video Press

- Class Struggle Hightens Use of US Labor Video

Steve Zeltzer, Labor Video Project

- Canadian Experience of Labor Video Movement

Julius Fisher, Working TV

- The situation of the Korean Labor Video Activism an da Proposal about International Networking

Kim Myungjoon, Labor Video Production

(3) Barriers to Women Workers On-line Access, and How to Overcome

moderator : Jung Yanghee, Chair of Seoul Women Workers Union

presentations

- The Utilization of Electronic Communication and Women Workers Movement

Lai NganYin, Committee of Asian Women (CAW)

- Two lies in 'digital age' prophecies

- How we can overcome  barriers between women(workers) and cyberspace?

Sita, Currently in masters program in sociology, Yonsei University

- Women's strategy in cyberspace : More political imagination

Chang Yeokyung, Jinbo Network

Comment

- Asia : Bong Angeles, AMRC

- South Africa : Anna Weeks, SAMWU

(5) Possibility and Perspective for Internet Broadcasting(?)

moderator :

- Internet Video Streaming Workshop

Brian Drolet, Free Speech TV

- Webcasting - One producers personal experience

Julius Fisher, Working TV

- Possibility and Limit of Internet Broadcasting as an Alternative Media

- Based on Progressive Network Center's Experience and Plan

Hong Seokman, JinboNet

(6) Information Technology, Social Surveillance and Response by Labor Movement

moderator : Kwon Soonwon (lecturer, Seoul National University)

presentations

- Surveillance and the interception of communications

Chris Bailey, LabourNet UK

- Labor Control through Information Technology at the Workplace and Workers Response

a unionist from Junju Branch of Hyndai Motors

- For the immediate action against watch and control

Kim Youngshik, Cyber Rights Team of JinboNet

- A report of the struggle for people's privacy against Japanese Government

Yasuda Yukihiro, JCA-NET

(7) Imformatization Experiences of Trade Unions and their Perspective

moderator : Lee Yonggeun, Coordinator of LaborNet Korea

presentations

- Situation and Perspective of Trade Union Informatization

Kim Hyekyung, Task Group for Labor Informatization (TGLI)

- Workers Struggle, and Utilizing Inforamtion Technology and Media

Lyu Kwonkeun, LaborNet Korea

- Informatization of Science and Technology Labor Union through Using Homepage

Lim Iksung, unionist from National Science and Technology Trade Union

- Local Experience of Workers Communication Network: Case of Ulsan

Jin Kwanguk, communication officer of KCTU Ulsan Regional Council

- The State of Labor Media in South Africa in 1999

Anna Weeks, SAMWU

- Organized Labor's Best Bet?: CyberUnions!

Arthur Shostak, Professor of Sociology Drexel University, Dept. of Psychology and Sociology

(8) WTO New Round and Workers struggle

moderator : Lee Jonghoi, Coordinator, People's Solidarity for Social Progress (PSSP)

presentations

- No to WTO, No to New Round. Turn Around!

Lee Changgeun, Policy and Information Center for International Solidarity (PICIS)

(9) Workshop : Movement for Independent Channel and its Perspective

moderator : Kim Myungjoon, Labor New Production

presentations

- Independent Media in the Digital Age

Brian Drolet and Eric Galatas, Free Speech TV

- National Labor Channel - Efforts in the United States

Wes Brain and Suzi Aufderheide, UPPNET and NorthWest Alliance for Community Media

- The Valuation and Outlook of □Citizen□s Stockholder Broadcast Foundation□ Movemen

Choi yungmook, researcher, Korea Broadcasting Institute

(10) Utilizing Linux in the Labor Movement

moderator : Yang Sungji, Research Group on Intellectual Property

presentations

- Real Information Society and Social Implications of □GNU/LINUX□

Hong Seongtae, Research Group on Intellectual Property

- Usability of Linux in the social movement including labor movement

- Case study of some groups in domestic and foreign countries

Oh Byngil, Jinbo Network

(11) Workers Struggle and Perspective for Global LaborNet

moderator : Steve Zeltzer, LaborNet US

presentations

- Labor Movement and Internet

Chris Bailey, LabourNet UK

- Workers Struggle and Perspective for Global LaborNet

Won Youngsu, KILSP

Seoul International Labor Media □99 Session 1 : Keynote Speech

On the significance and

keynote of this conference

Jinkyoon Kim (Convener of Organizing Committee)

First of all, I would like express my welcome and gratitude for the comrades who are here after long journey, in behalf of Korean workers and activists. It's really nice to meet again some of friends, who they joined the 1997 labor media conference. For two years, we have experienced lots of changes.

Just after the last conference in 1997, the Korean capitalism was driven into an economic crisis, all the burdens of which were shouldered to the workers and people. In this context, Korean workers has waged the struggle for their basic right of livelihood, against the neoliberal structural adjustment of the state and capital.

Now we are here to assess our struggle and activities and to pursue a new perspective. I hope all the comrades here will be able to reach constructive strategy for their labor media and communication activities by sharing experiences and exchanging creative ideas.

Seoul International Labor Media 1997

Above all, look back at Seoul International Labor Media 19997. That conference was held on the basis of activities of telecommunication and media task groups to support the general strike, which broke out against the abrupt revisions of the labor laws. This general strike was one of the international labor struggles against neoliberalism, and it awakened to Korean activists the importance of international solidarity and communication, as lots of oversea activists came to Seoul to support Korean workers struggle, and with aid of ardent activities of telecommunication task group, workers and activists all over the world sent a lot of messages for solidarity and support. On the basis of these experiences of struggle, at last, in November 1997, the first international media conference was held at the site of struggle: "Labor Movement and Media : Workers, Information Technology and Solidarity."

This conference focused on the general topic of informatization and tasks of labor movement in the context of globalization, at the sessions of "Globalization, Informatization and Labor Movement", and "Informatization, Change in Workplace, and Challenge for Labor Movement." And at workshops we had discussions on the important issues in specific sectors: "International Labor Video Movement: Its Conditions and Tasks", "Media and Labor Movement", "Labor Movement and Informatization", and "International Solidarity though Network of Labor Movements."

This conference was joined by important labor communication and media activists, like Chris Bailey, Steve Zeltzer, Peter Waterman, Eric Lee, Julius fisher and so on, and thereby provided an opportunity to introduce international discussions on these issues, arousing interests in labor communication and media among the activists in Korea. And also the dynamics of Korean labor movement was a creative stimulation for the foreign activists. For example, Eric Lee opened his own website called Solidarity with Korean Labor Movement, which was later developed into Labour Start, an important source for worldwide workers struggle.

And internally, this conference upgraded the mind on media and communication among the unionists and activists, and the process of preparing and hosting the conference was the decisive momentum to start discussing on LaborNet Korea. As a result of one year's discussion and organization, we succeeded in launching Jinbo Network Center and LaborNet Korea, November 1998.

Now, Jinbo Network is an independent network center which provides the PC communication and Internet service, and continues to grow, with the membership of about 2,300 thousand unionists and activist. And NodongNet, LaborNet Korea, is organized by the participation of the two labor federation, KCTU and FKTU, hundred of trade unions and dozens of labor activity groups, and as a central network at Jinbo Network, has more than 170 CUGs for sharing information and communication among the unionists and activists.

On the other hand, the labornets which, in 1997, existed just in couple of countries like US and UK, have been spread to other countries of Canada, Austria, Germany, and Korea. We have also seen the similar efforts spreading all over the globe. Furthermore, a variety of websites by trade unions, labor organizations, and individuals were interlinked in the cyberspace. And now the labornets are functioning as a venue for information, communication and discussion, connecting with labor movements worldwide.

Seoul International Labor Media 1999

Labor Movement, New Media and Communication : Workers Global Network Strategy against Neoliberal Offensive of Capital

Now we are here again at the exact end of the century. This conference is held on the basis of our efforts and achievements of the first Seoul International Labor Media and the subsequent activities nationally and internationally. This conference will make an exact and objective appraisal of these activities and achievements, and take a further step toward elaborating our perspective and orientation

In this conference, we will discuss the network strategy of labor movements to  further strengthen the worldwide struggle by means of active international solidarity, considering the growing trend of international workers struggle against neoliberal offensive. For this task, this conference should serve as a momentum to share the recent development of labor movements on the different continents, to expand labor media movement through communication networks and new media, and to build international struggle networks fighting against the transnational capital.

In short, this labor media conference regards it as its focal task to discuss the workers network strategy to fight, on the global level, against neoliberal offensive of global capitalism, which is destroying the basic livelihood and living standard of workers around the world by such policies as structural adjustment, privatization, liberalization, deregulation, labor flexibilization, union busting, and so on. This strategy can be discussed in three dimension: firstly, network strategy of labor movements against neoliberal offensive; secondly, communication and democracy strategy with labor movement, nationally and internationally; and finally, media strategy based on the need of rank and file workers.

Network Strategy of Labor Movements

The more prevalent the neoliberal globalization and dominance by transnational capital is getting at the global level, the more necessary it is for the labor movements to go beyond national borders and build the international solidarity. Basically, this kind of solidarity is based on their common conditions and experiences of workers and their movements. Despite common experiences, it is true that the specifically different features have brought abut uneven developments among the different labor movements.

However, recent experiences of communication and network provides the possibility of joint response and everday solidarity at the global level, as well as sharing experiences. In this aspect, it is an urgent need to elaborate the network strategy for consolidating solidarity activities beyond unevenness among workers and trade unions. This conference will be an opportunity to discuss in detail the concrete plan to build  network of labor movements which will connect and coordinate international struggles, for instance, struggle to control the transnational capital, to reduce working hours, and movements of the unemployed.

Democracy and Communicaton of Labor Movement

In spite of ever-growing attacks on workers by globalization and neoliberalism, most of trade unions are faced with deep crisis, with dominant ideology of business unionism and social partnership and drastically decreasing union density. Not only the trade unions in the advanced countries which have strong tradition of class collaboratism, but also the trade unions in the developing countries, such as South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, and Korea, which led an independent and militant current in the international terrain, are now often confronted with similar crisis. As a result, national trade unions and international labor organizations, faced with strong critique from within and without, are forced to find a new role and perspective.

On the other hand, rank and file workers, with unprecedented rich information and experiences, are raising their voice of reform and renovation for the independent and democratic unionism. Furthermore, besides official unions, grassroots groups and rank and file workers are getting involved in important struggle of trade unions, and in the various activities for international solidarity. In this context, this conference will discuss the tasks for creating a democratic structure for labor communication, and also tasks and plans for democratic renovation of trade union movement.

Media Strategy of Labor Movement

In the past when the freedom of press and expression was under severe oppression in some countries including Korea, the illegal press, such as under ground newspaper and broadcast, played a significant role. But recently, under evergrowing neoliberal offensive, alternative media strategy is not raised, and especially in the labor movements, there is little attempt to activate the alternative media and most of efforts are focused on the media reform, so that it's difficult to find any significant project of independent labor media activities for rank and file workers.

Recently, with the development of communication and media technology, media activities are being active in the labor movements, and the new media, such as the internet broadcast and satellite channel, stimulates alternative media activities. More than acquisition of media, these new media activities should make an allowance for the changed environment, that is, the trend that, with the emergence of new media and development of information technology, the old media, such as newspaper and broadcast, is combined with new one.

On the conference program

The Second Seoul International Labor Media '99 is composed of diverse programs on the basis of above-mentioned keynote: Labor Media Conference, and Labor Video and Film Festival, Special Internet Broadcast, Union Bulletin Exhibition, and Information Education for Activists.

This Labor Media Conference is composed of the sessions and the workshops. Following the first session 1 of his keynote speech, the second session will discuss the labor movement in general under the title of "The Challenges of Labor Movement in the 21st Century and its International Communication Strategy." And the final session will be a venue for sharing workshop reports and further discussion.

Basically, the workshops will deal with more detailed, specific issues of media and communication. In this conference, we have 11 workshop of different issues.

First of all, the main characteristics of the workshops is that they deal with diverse and specific issues. For example, in the media-related workshops, we will discuss new and specific issues of independent channel and internet broadcast, as well as labor video. And another feature is that, in addition to traditional issues of informatization experiences of unions and international labornets, the workshops will deal with even broader topics beyond the union issues, such as the information technology and electronic surveillance, on-line access barrier to women workers, and so on. These programs are the improved version, compared with the first labor media.

In conclusion

Now the conference is at its starting point. Please join us and get together to achieve meaningful result. Under the title of this conference, Labor Movement, New Media and Communication : Workers Global Network Strategy against Neoliberal Offensive of Capital, through diverse and creative problem-raising, discussions and debates, let's make this conference an precious opportunity to broaden the perspective for international labor movement and media activities nationally and internationally.

Thank you.

What Is To Be Done For The 21st Century?

Mahn Soo Chae

(Deputy Director, Korean Institute For Labor Studies & Policy)

I

As all the world is in uproar, we are now entering into the 21st century. Well, but with what prospects? Or, what kind of society will it be? □□□ A post-industrial society? An information age? A knowledge-based society?

Yes, it may become that kind of society.

However, we musk ask again. Is it a free and equal society? Is it a society without exploitation and/or oppression? Is it a society for mankind, not for profit? Is it a society where everyone can develop his or her gifted art and talent as man?

Yes, it will be that kind of society at last. But, not yet. Not for the time being as well.

Why not? □□□ It's because the people headed by labour class are not yet prepared to build up such a society.

Labour class opened the 20th century with robust revolutionary struggles and actually with a great Revolution, that is, with glory. However, they have largely failed in protecting and developing the Revolution as well as in eternalizing it. And, they are now closing the century with deep remorse, wandering and groping.

What has obstructed the advance of workers? For what has the labour class in the 20th century got frustrated in preserving and expanding their revolution?

The causes are numerous in number, and complicated in structure. Some factors are located within the labour movement or labour politics, and some others are forming the conditions thereof. We can touch only on a few, but essential, factors or causes.

II

One of the most important objective causes is, needless to say, the blockades, attacks and subversive activities by the imperialism.

Aside from the Interference Wars which had been committed to subvert the newly born Revolution in the early days of October Revolution, to overthrow the socialistic governments have the imperialism and their allies strictly blockaded the Soviet Union, Socialistic East Europe, and other socialistic countries, and increasingly manipulated the subversive activities there. Nevertheless, they slandered, on the contrary, the USSR and the Eastern European socialistic countries as being behind the "Iron Curtain", and imputed the malicious political and military stratagems such as their own subversive activities to the communists as being "intrigues of Commies, or of Reds". Very naturally, some would-be communists who were affected by that kind of demagogies committed faults to mistake the vicious tactics of monopoly capital for the means unavoidable for revolution, and therefore to help consequently and objectively the sinister propaganda. Some other self-appointed 'truly internationalistic' communists went so far as actively participate in the wicked propaganda. □□□ We, of course, must fight against those fallacious lines.

These blockades and subversive activities by imperialism, together with immaturity of high productivity which is required as the material preconditions and foundation for socialism, have compelled some mal-functions upon the socialistic systems, which have corroded people's spontaneous commitment to construction of socialistic societies. The ostensible magnificence and affluence of the advanced capitalism would also have been a strong lure to the young generations of the USSR and Eastern European countries in late 20th century who had never experienced such a commercial gorgeousness and mass poverty veiled under it. However, in the 21st century these kinds of circumstances will never be formed again, for the social revolutions will certainly be the matters in the imperialistic countries themselves where the contradictions between productivity and production relation have reached their utmost.

In order to blockade previously and to crush the revolutionary political organizations of workers and the revolutions, imperialists and their puppets have indeed tortured and slaughtered millions of labourers, activities, and revolutionaries all over the world. For the great cause of protecting and promoting free democracy!

On the other hand, very rapid advance in productivity and some political consideration of the capitalist class not to stimulate and to emasculate the labour movement and politics under the situations of Cold War made it possible for the workers in the advanced capitalistic countries to enjoy somewhat comfortable social security as well as somewhat increased real wages, which actually contributed to eroding the revolutionary spirit of mass workers.

Setting aside the overt turncoats, many of the leaders and ideologues of labour movement and/or labour politics in the advanced capitalistic countries have virtually submitted to the intimidation of this homicidal violence, and to deceptive rhetoric of so-called free democracy. Furthermore, they not only considered the workers' state in Russia, the great outcome of the October Revolution, to be the other, but also were in fact hostile to it. Therefore, they have indulged themselves in some socialism different from original or traditional socialism, or from communism, such as democratic socialism, or social democracy, or socialism with human face, or mild socialism, or new socialism, et cetera et cetera. They find out reasoning for their new lines from the material comfort allowed very narrowly, and from the so-called inhumanity of the communism. However, the former is a very coarse one limited essentially by just the capitalistic production relation itself, and is one supported by the imperialistic exploitation and plunder. The latter is, of course, a false ideology formed by the capitalistic demagogies. It is needless to say that the new lines are the very way to guarantee economical and political comfort to the labour leaders.

Hence the real problem of labour movement and politics in the 20th century, and the tasks for the 21st century.

III

The core of the problem of labour movement and politics in the 20th century is the so-called social democracy, or civilianism in other words : the emasculation of labour movement and/or politics and political acquiescence or servitude of labour class to monopoly capital.

Therefore, the heart of the tasks of labour class for the 21st century is to liquidate that kind of acquiescence or servitude, or to overcome the social democracy or civilianism. In other words, it is to restore the real, not superficial nor vulgar, science and fundamentalism in the labour movement and labour politics.

Taking the case of America, AFL-CIO, the national center of trade union movement in US, adopted a resolution in the annual convention in last October to support El Gore, the strong Democrat contender for presidency candidate in the presidential election next year. The resolution ran after the long habitual practices of the organization. However, those kinds of practices are not confined only to the AFL-CIO. Even the U.S. Communist Party largely supports the Democrats in every election. Their excuse is : "We support Democrats, who are relatively friendly to labor class, as the second good or as the second devil, as there is no other alternatives." □□□ This is evidently a political spiritlessness and/or extreme opportunism which must be liquidated for to advance to the 21st century. Labour class must pursue seriously its own independent and revolution-oriented political lines.

Various kinds of social democratic programmes must be liquidated as well.

For example, the illusion of workers' participation in management must be liquidated. A lot of social democratic elements in labour movement praise the German system for workers' participation in management as an exemplary model, saying : "Main business policies are decided in a labour-management council composed of same numbers of representatives from both labour and management." However, the admirers wish to be silent about the fact that the chairperson of the council is an additional member and always comes from the capital. What does it mean that the chairperson as an additional member comes always from the capital? It means that all the policies, that represent the unignorable interest contradictions between labour and capital, are decided in favour of the capital. It means that workers' opinions and will can be reflected only on the spots where the interests between labour and capital do not conflict with each other, or where the conflicts can be ignored. Then, the so-called exemplary German system is nothing more than a deceptive apparatus devised for to win the workers over into capitalistic system.

By the way, what is business manager? It is nothing more than a personification of capital as a value increase itself. Managers are capitalists. Business management means management of exploitation. Thus, the so-called workers' participation in management means that workers themselves participate in the exploitation of their own surplus labour, or means that they serve to the increase of exploitation. It is not only a contradiction but also very antagonistic to the interest of labour class.

The so-called employee-stock-holding system, the people's stock system, and so on as another social democratic project are also harmful to labour class and people. This kind of system are not only the apparatus devised for to disarm the class consciousness of workers and for to intensify exploitation. It is also a mechanism through which the workers and people frequently come across serious economic difficulties. Through this mechanism workers and people are dragged into speculation of the stock markets, where they lose at last all their household reserve as a part of reproduction costs of labour power.

This system inoculates workers with the illusion that they are participating in the distribution of profit. However, the illusion comes from the ignorance about the fact that the profit itself is nothing more than the surplus value extracted from themselves, and it deepens the ignorance. Furthermore, the dividends being allotted to, for example, employee-stock-holders are merely a disguised form of some part of the wages of the workers. It is because, in order to meet the necessary requirements of capitalistic production that the wage earners as proletarians must be ceaselessly reproduced (in the enlarged scale), the dividends must also keep the workers to be wage earners instead of making the workers the independent producers or merchants, or capitalists.

Bourgeois parliamentarism is also one of main social democratic programmes which must be liquidated, for it is a apparatus which, under the name of representative democracy, does away with the workers' and people's actual activities from the political fields. Indeed, workers and people can not enjoy any substantial political rights but the very formal rights to vote in modern bourgeois democracy. It is a kind of oligarchy or aristocracy of monopoly capital, where only a few giant men of properties and their puppets can participate in. The social democrats as the other face of monopoly capital cling to the parliamentarism, and they mobilize workers as instruments for sectarian strifes to seize the political power.

There are a lot of other important reasons that the labour class must overcome the various forms of social democracy, such as :

The social democrats are the strong supporter for statism in labour movement and politics.

The social democrats are the inspirators of competitive power ideology in labour movement.

The social democrats are the proponents of mal-scientific conveniencism in labour movement and politics.

Recently the social democrats have overtly run to neo-liberalistc camp under name of The third way or neue Mitte.

et cetera et cetera.

IV

Therefore, as far as the labour movement and/or labour politics follow after the illusions created by social democracy, as in Western Europe where the labour movement and politics have been led by social democratic leaders, and as in many of newly industrialized countries where the movement and politics have been guided by the covert followers to social democracy, there can't be any future. There can be only the 21st century as a mere extension of the 20th century.

Restoration of scientific fundamentalism of labour movement and politics, or to build up the robust independent political line of labour class, liquidating the social democracy. This is the most urgent and essential task of the labour class who are advancing towards the 21st century as an age of liberation.

Finally speaking, construction of disciplined vanguard party of the labour class is the concrete process and form through and by which the labour class accomplish the task. We must rejected the undisciplined and shapeless mass party or electoral party which is vigorously propagandized by the social democrats or opportunists, for the vanguard party itself is the most excellent and real mass party, and above all, for there can't be any future of the labour class to that kind of undisciplined party.

The neo-liberalistic attacks and the difficulties of labour class caused by the rapid advance in scientific and technological revolutions. These all are creating crisis in the living of workers right now. However, at the same time they are stimulators for the development of labour movement, or are the material preconditions for a new world.

Labor Challenges &

Potential In Global Economy

Telecommunications, Democracy, Mobilization & Power For The 21st Century

Steve Zeltzer

(LaborNet US)

The growing crisis of organized labor as it faces the 21st century is wrought with contradictions. While the global economy has led to seamless operations of multi-nationals that control the world's wealth and exploitation of workers and peasants worldwide, the trade union movement has been unable to challenge the growing capitalist juggernaut.

The coming protest by US and other unions around the world to the World Trade Organization's Seattle November 99  conference is a clear example of this paralysis. The WTO and it's collaborating organizations such as the IMF and World Bank were established to strengthen world capitalism and to dominate not only the working class of the world but to further subjugate the poorer countries of the world. The ICFTU and the AFL-CIO while supporting a labor protest at the WTO meeting seek to pressure for

the "reform" of these international financial organizations. John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO  has said that he wants a "place at the table" to discuss labor conditions and other concerns. His view and the view of the ICFTU leadership is that the solution to the global attack on the world working class is to establish a "social contract" with the WTO, IMF, World Bank and the multi-nationals that control them.

It is clear however, that like NAFTA, the EC and other corporate trade driven trade and financial agreements, there will be no real role and voice for the working class and it's allies in the implementation of these agreements. Despite this reality, the official labor movement of the world has yet to develop or even discuss an alternative vision orstrategy.

The need for a "World Labor Bank" that allocates capital on the basis of the needs of working people and the oppressed is desperately needed. The establishment of such an institution however will never take place  when the entire international monetary system is designed and controlled for the protection and growth of world's largest capitalists andmulti-nationals.

In order to seriously challenge the structure and designs of global capitalism, world labor needs itself, to develop and build new structures based on a democratic organization of the working class. This runs opposite the general direction of the AFL-CIO and other unions around the world. At the recent AFL-CIO convention, the leadership of the AFL-CIO voted to take even  more control away from the independence of state, local and regional labor councils. Unlike the British Trades Council movement there was no organized opposition.

The structure of the trade unions of the world for the most part do not allow a democratic debate among all layers. In fact, the rank and file of most unions in the United States do not elect the staff of the union, the national leadership of their union or the national leadership of the AFL-CIO. There is a growing disenfranchisement of the rank and file from the structure of the unions that logically flows from the view of the leadership that the trade unions must be accomplices with the corporations and capital even when they themselves are being destroyed.

The lack of checks and balances between the rank and file not only leads to greater centralization and less democracy but also a growing corruption crisis. This is tied to the transfer of tens of millions of dollars to corporate controlled politicians of the Democratic party. This money again is not voted on by the rank and file but is decided on by the top leadership with little consultation.

The United Steelworkers Of America (USWA) is a union under threat. From the Kaiser Aluminum workers and Oregon Steel to Titan Tire workers, one corporation after another is laying down the gauntlet against this union. Despite spending $24 million dollars on organizing and sending workers throughout the country in the campaign, the union has been unable to reverse this attack. At the same time that the union is fighting battles from coast to coast it continues to support the Democratic party which is leading the charge for the WTO, NAFTA and other agreements that help destroy their ability to fight.

The millions of organized workers in the United States and the tens of millions around the world have the power to challenge global capital but it requires a radical break with not only  with business/corporate unionism which dominates the US AFL-CIO but national unionism.

What is required now are global contracts based on shop steward level links of workers around the world in the same companies and industries. Recently, IMB workers in the United States have begun to move toward unionization and this potential shows that workers in most advanced industries when they come under attack can take collective action in conjunction with organized labor. The IBM workers were faced with a sharp attack on their pension plan and through the use of the internet were able to build links nationally and internationally and helped push forward the fight for unionization. The IBM workers themselves were surprised at their ability to directly rally the rank and file against this corporate attack.

In order to build an effective challenge to the world multi-nationals and global capitalism the working class has obviously to organize globally. This is beginning to take place in a number of areas already. In the air line industry, the global partnerships between the world airlines are now linking the unions in these countries with each other so they can potentially act collectively in worldwide strikes and protests. From American Airlines to Japan Airlines to United and Lufthansa, the pilots unions are now linked up globally with each other and the potential for global collective action is on the agenda.

Tied to this is the powerful use of the internet and telecommunications. In a recent contract of the Northwest Flight Attendants who are organized in Local 2000 of the International Brotherhood Of Teamsters, the workers were able to develop an email list of 2500 flight attendants worldwide. They were able to put up rank and file controlled web pages and put the entire proposed contract on the web for discussion and debate.

The contract which contained many concessions was voted down by the IBT flight attendants despite the union leadership effort at a massive publicity campaign costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. They sent a video touting the contract to every flight attendant's home.

What the flight attendants had done was to break the one sided communication that presently dominates not only US unions but most unions of the world.

This example while significant is only the beginning of a growing use of the internet and other technologies to break through the rigidity and bureaucratization of the trade union movement. This was the first time in the history of the union that every rank and file worker had a copy of the proposed contract on line prior to the vote and had  the opportunity to debate and discuss it's contents. (www.cleardaze.com) (www.nwafacontract).

This network  among the NWA flight attendants was established by rank and file workers without support from their International and despite efforts to quash it.

This example of rank and file control of information is critical if labor is to organize and mobilize locally, nationally and internationally. At a recent report at the Labor On Line Conference in New York, the web masters of the UAW, SEIU, AFSMCE, CWA reported that they could not have interactive sites due to limits put on by the union leadership.	This fear of rank and file communication that breaks the controlled

barriers set up by the formal union structure will not only grow but explode in the future.

An example of this was in the NWA Flight Attendants  contract. The New York Times in reporting the rejection of the contract did not rely on the statements of the union leadership but went instead to web page of the rank and file flight attendants.

At the convention of the AFL-CIO International Labor Communication Association, the Faye Hale, assistant editor of the LIUNA(Laborers) paper admitted that more and more members were getting their information through the web site of a rank and file group, Laborers For Justice & Democracy at (www.laborers.org).

The ability of workers in every industry, every trade and every region to link up with one another is a key element in confronting the assault of global capitalism. It opens the way for a new movement and new organization of workers worldwide that has the potential of beginning to act collectively against the attacks.

The previous examples of the Liverpool Dockers and their international day of action could only have been organized through the internet and the web. The International Transport Workers Federation as well as the UK

Transport and General Workers Union refused to mobilize their resources to confront not only the Tory government but the Labor government. This political paralysis that the trade unions are locked into has led to splits and growing divisions with the social democratic parties that many unions have supported. From Germany and New Zealand to Canada, organized labor has be left in the lurch by parties that promised to defend labor and ended up joining the corporate agenda.

A major reason for this is obvious. No one country can withstand the power of global capitalism which operates through the machinery of the international financial organizations and the multi-nationals of the world.

Only a worldwide simultaneous labor political and organizational offensive is capable of throwing back these assaults. The pressing need for such action cannot be put off. When the present economic speculative frenzy that is gripping the United States bursts, it will lead to profound consequences not only in the US but in every country of the world.

We must prepare now for that eventuality and that challenge. We have no other choice.

Labornet Facing 2000, Tasks & Opportunities

Steve Zeltzer

(LaborNet US)

LaborNet was the first democratic cross union communication network in the world. It was established after a conference of LaborTech in the early 90s in San Francisco. This LaborTech conference had brought together labor video, computer and media activists from around the world.

The vision of LaborNet was and continues to be, that in order to educate and develop instantaneous global labor solidarity, we needed to use the tools of the internet as well as other communication technology.

We can now say many years after the establishment of LaborNet that more and more of the world labor movement is using the internet and the web to organize and to build solidarity. At the recent AFL-CIO convention, over 15 minutes was spent on a presentation on how the new AFL-CIO web initiative would help educate and mobilize labor.

LaborNet has now entered a new phase. For nearly the last few years, LaborNet has been under the control of the Institute For Global Communication (IGC). In our view, we have not been able to develop the use of new technology and other tools that are required if Labornet is to be of value to workers not only in the United States but internationally.

On August 30 of this year, LaborNet formally became an independent network. We are presently reworking our web pages and links and they will be available directly at www.labornet.org in the next few weeks.

What are our opportunities in light of the new developments technologically, organizationally and politically for Labornet?

LaborNet will seek to be a portal for all points of view in the labor movement. We will not censor the necessary debate and discussion that must go on in the labor movement. We also will continue to be a portal for information and news from around the US and internationally. At the same time we seek to become a democratically run network based on subscribers to LaborNet. We also support a link with the Association of Progressive Communication (APC) which is the largest non-profit computer network in the world.

We believe that the organizational, technical and political development of labor in the United States is critical in the battles ahead. LaborNet can play an important part in helping to educate workers about the value and use of the internet and communication technology. US workers are now beginning to use the net to get their struggles out and break the information blockade against labor and other movements by the corporate media.

The development of labor solidarity, activism and communication in the US labor movement must be a key component to the new labor movement. LaborNet is well placed to take on this task.

Using the internet and the web we have helped workers in struggle from one side of the country to the other as well as building international campaigns. At the same time there are great threats to the use of this technology by privatization of the internet, the monopolization of capital and the control of the internet by a smaller and smaller number of companies.

LaborNet supporters such as Ken Hamidi of www.faceintel.com have had their web sites threatened and are being sued to stop them from using email to communciate with workers in their industry. We believe that US LaborNet and all Labrnets internationally must develop a united effort to defend our right to communicate without censorship and control by the media/technology robber barons. Let us have no illusions about this. As the class struggle heats up, every effort will be made to thwart the use of the internet in the battle with capital. The control of these tools will play an important role is who wins this battle. This has already occured in some cases with Labrnets around the world.

We believe that LaborNet must play a vital role in rallying workers and the organized labor movement to defend democratic rights on the internet. We plan to also provide a forum and information center for workers who want to organize unions. At present only 13% of the workers in the United States are organized into unions and the internet can play a vital role in helping to build unionization.

LaborNet must also play an important role in linking up with other LaborNets around the world. The growth of labor communication on an international is a very positive sign that the labor movement is beginning not only to get on line but to begin to develop strategies that uses these communication tools to fight the critical battles that labor faces.

We at LaborNet have aways seen our selves as part of an international network of workers worldwide using these tools to communicate and build our solidarity. Labornet has sought to contribute to the d evelopment of workers struggles from Korea to Liverpool an South Africa. For the 21 century much still has to be done.

The use of LaborNet to help build a multi-media global communication network for labor is vital. This network should be easily searchable and seamless from one union to another as well as from one country to another. It should also be multi-lingual.

The linking together of the world labornets can lead to many possiblities. A worldwide labor daily electronic newspaper is now possible as well as a worldwide dialy labor video report in many languages. The web is now the vehicle for this information/media stream and LaborNet must play a key role not only in helping to develop this for labor but also making labor aware of the possibilities.

In the United States, the multi-cultural and multi-national character of the country means that it is even more important that LaborNet tap into the great potential. It is also the center of many multi-nationals that dominate most of the earth. The need for supporting rank and file labor links/web pages as well as supporting the web pages for workers of every multi-national of the world is another task for LaborNet.

We will be having a number of meetings and discussions on the future of LaborNet with our supporters in the United States. This discussion of how we are structured and where we go is important to the future of LaborNet and we invite your thoughts and comments.

LabourNet Germany as the Virtual Meeting Place of the Left in the Unions and the Workplace

Dave Hollis and Mag Wompel (LabourNet Germany)

Introduction

As we started using the slogan mentioned in the title, we really did not expect there to be any problems with its use.

More so: We honestly thought that all those doing such work must belong to the left. Who else would advocate using communications to the benefit of the rank and file? Who else would have supported the dockers in the way that the original LabourNet UK did? Right-wingers? Supporters of Capital?

One has only have to pose the question to see how ridiculous it is. Before we look into how we do our work in LabourNet Germany and what lessons we think should be drawn from our work, we would like to make one point abundantly clear: We position ourselves openly and demonstrably as part of the left. We make no secret of this and have meanwhile added our slogan to the banner at the top of the frontpage. No one should be able to say that they have been fooled into reading our frontpage or contributing to our site.

This does not mean, however, that we openly or secretly pursue any one particular political  line. Our material originates from a number of sources: rank and file unionists, trade union bodies (from local branches right up to conference decisions), left-wing newspapers and even articles from the mainstream press. Ourselves and our supporters/helpers originate from various political backgrounds  - both Mag and I belong to no political organisation. What we have in common is that we both are active participants in the union  movement - as  are most of our helpers and supporters, too. We strive for a broad discussion and scope of ideas, and, to large extent have a wide range of material - especially (but not only) on our discussion pages.

How we made our name known outside of union circles

There is a saying that war is good for business. Although we make no money and only have debts, we can say with certainty that our work against the Kosovo war made our name outside a circle of union activists in Germany.

Before we go into the details, it is yet again important to emphasise a very important  point: We  took no concrete position on the  war. We advocated no political program. Both of us were united by our opposition to the war. What we did was to document union opposition to the war. We were the only site that carried all union opposition to the war. During its course we extended our documentation to include various background articles to the war. Here, too, the articles came from a wide range of sources and were politically very diverse. In fact, much of the material we published was of an exclusive nature.

Of course, it should be obvious to any thinking person that the selection of what articles a LabourNet publicises, and what emphasis is placed, reveals the political leanings of those doing the editorial work. So in our case. We were opposed to the war and wanted to make this known and encourage other unionists to follow the examples we published.

Union Opposition To The War

In Germany  the war  was overwhelmingly  supported by  members of  the SPD/Greens government and their respective political organisations. There was a grand coalition in support of the war. Despite resolutions in the years before and opposition to such wars, the German TUC, the DGB, came out very quickly in support of the war. In the case of the Greens it was even more crass.

It took us over a week before we reacted to the situation. As a site dealing with questions of the union movement we had no union angle to a question that is normally situated within the peace movement.

Then a resolution from a factory committee of the metal workers union, the IGM, arrived in our mailbox. The committee had passed a resolution against the war and wanted to make this public and wrote to us that they hoped that others would follow their example.

Armed with this resolution and an English copy of an article by Chomsky, we decided  to take  the plunge  and start  a page  documenting union opposition to the war. Chomskys article was exclusively translated by one of our supporters and in the ensuing weeks was copied by or linked to by just about everyone.

As luck would have it, all hell broke lose. Within days resolutions and statements against the war came pouring in. We even received a resolution from a factory in White Russia! At all levels of the unions heated debates took place and were reflected  in the number and  quality of what we received. During the war we started updating the site at least once if not twice a day.

A number of regional bodies of the German TUC came out against the war. During its course even a number of union executives (inclusive of the massive metal workers union, IGM) passed resolutions against the war and the illegal German intervention in it. This was an indication of how many rank-and-file activists felt about the German intervention in the war. At the rank-and-file level we received resolutions from most of the unions.

Interestingly, the IGM started a discussion  page on  Kosovo, which undoubtedly became one of its best frequented pages. Our work against the war became very well known outside union circles. The site of the main-stream left linked to us as being the place to read about union opposition to the war. A number of sites from the peace movement linked to us, too, for the same reasons.

By the end of the war we had a reputation as being a fast-moving site where one could find daily new material on and from the union movement - and not only on the question of the war in Kosovo. Although the war is now over, the  Deutschmark as official currency has been introduced into Kosovo, our site continues to be updated daily.

Site Structure

As with any web site, the structure of our site changed and was adapted to meet the requirements of the material we receive.

On the frontpage the left column is a menu column and the right column contains our  current highlights. The menus consist of the following topics:

- Information about LabourNet Germany

- LabourNet Germany Mailing List

- Citicritic - a site of the ex-employees of the Citibank in Bochum

- A column:  A Hitchhikers  Guide through the Internet  - Economic  Conspiracies with links

- Meetings calendar

- International News

- Solidarity is necessary - help for workers in struggle

- Initiative for Networking the Union Left

- Kosovo

- Discussion  Pages (Working Conditions, Economic and union  politics, Ver.Di - a cooperation between unions in the public and private service industries, union strategy, work and unemployment)

- Sectors (Car Industry, Chemical Industry, Building, Mining and Energy, Media and IT, public and private services, other industries)

- LabourNets In the scope of this paper it is not possible to cover all details of our site. At the last count the printed version of the menu items mentioned above totals over 80 A4 pages!

Sectors

These pages cover both news from the  various industries  and also newspapers produced by oppositional groupings within the workforce. In the car-industry and chemical industry we meanwhile cover most of the main manufacturers.

Discussion Pages

The articles published here are meant to provoke discussion. These pages are a mixture of interesting articles we come across and those we have been sent. Those sent tend to be original material. In fact, many articles are first published by us on the site and later in left-wing newspapers. A mechanism for discussing published articles is in preparation.

Initiative for Networking the Union Left

This project began with a debate over a year in length both regionally and in the periodicals "Sozialismus" and "express". Meanwhile two conferences have taken place and a third is scheduled for December. LabourNet Germany is the web site for this initiative and we were also one of the sponsors of the last conference. Mag as LabourNet Germany is one of the initiators.

Solidarity Required

The index file is one of the longest in the whole site. Both national and international disputes are covered. This page has made us so well known that we are the first people to hear about workers' disputes. In general these people have had no contact to us before then. This news and news from the  other sectors is published in  other papers, with a direct indication that it has come from us.

Even the publication of the German TUC, Einblick, had a special reference to us on their cover page, as the site that carries union news that you will not find in any other newspaper.

International

As the name implies, LabourNet Germany is a site orientated towards German workers. However, our orientation on the site is international. In a globalised capitalist world workers must also act globally. Like it  or not, the international language  is English. Most of the international mails we receive are in English and their content is either of interest to unionists in Germany or of importance. Since we have no unlimited capacity to translate our material into German, we have been forced to publish some material in English. To help our readers understand it we provide German summaries of the reports.

We know from our readers that there is a great interest to hear about what is going on outside of the borders of  Germany. New tactics, e.g. the question of the Canadian use of an "Unstrike", has generated more than casual interest.

For the future this part of the site will get more emphasis. Above all else, we will try and get more capacity to have material translated as we have done to date. What lessons can be drawn from our work? First and foremost: we have had very good experience with our unambiguous and very clear orientation as being part of the left. LabourNet as a site of the struggle of the Liverpool dockers was not very well known here. We had no real international reputation to build on. We started more or less from scratch.

Our recognition among union activists speaks for itself. We went out and earned it - and it was hard work. We can see from our mailing list - currently 150 strong and growing daily - that most of the members have had nothing to do with our network to date.

Furthermore, we are being more often invited to congresses and to give lectures in our capacity as LabourNet Germany. Secondly, a rank-and-file site is best run by people  involved in the struggle. Our contacts and our day-to-day work in the movement opens up far more doors than can be imagined.

If you want a site to be read and your work to be respected, the site has to be updated daily. In our case we now have enough work to keep both of us busy full-time. Currently we finish the job for which we get paid for and then, in a second shift, we do the work for which no one pays a penny.

Towards A Global LabourNet?

In our opinion, it is going to be a long haul to a "Global LabourNet"

The first step needed is a coordination of material. Who is doing what and who has material and needs material? It would help the work a lot if we knew what each other was up to. In the case of LabourNet UK and LabourNet Germany we are members of each others mailing lists. We are, of course, assuming that when such a list (or lists) are available that they are also used every time the site is updated!

Secondly, we need a Global LabourNet site that can be accessed by all LabourNets with no restrictions. After the experience with the "LabourNet International" site we do not want that any one person can pull the plug because they think he/she is the "keeper of the faith".

Thirdly, any decisions have to be taken democratically. In the case of a Global LabourNet site, the initial decisions would have to be on how the site should be structured. Otherwise there should be no restrictions on the material. No one LabourNet and no one person knows all the answers to the problems we are facing in the world of neo-liberalism. We need a clash of ideas and an exchange of experiences regardless of how banal or wrong they may seem to other participants in such a project.

Fourthly, we all will have to recognise that such a project will have to grow and develop. With the passage of time it may change radically.

Finally, we need the necessary resources to run such a site. A provider, a maintainer for the site and the money to pay it all. A very touchy subject!

Dave Hollis, N rnberg, Germany. david.hollis@labournet.de

Mag Wompel, Bochum, Germany.

The Labor Unionists' Strategy for New Communication

- Different Information Changes the Ways of Struggle

We are labor reporters in Korea hosting workshop on 'The Strategy of the Common Members for New Communication' at The Second Seoul International LaborMedia. We deeply sympathized with your idea in the topic discussion at the first LaborMedia and your writings afterwards, and on the occasion of the workshop above we would like to extend a formal invitation to you to participate in  the workshop as one of the presenters.

The topics of the presentation are as follows, and concerning our matter of interest, please refer to the introduction to our statement following this page.

The traditional labor movement is being institutionalized and turning rightist on an international scale.

Also the progressiveness of labor movement reached its limitations on a local scale. Diverse discussions and issue-raising on labor movement and communication are needed.

Do labor unions actually represent the common members?

Do labor unions really try to communicate with the common members?

Communication is not simply a matter of transmission and reception of information.  Communication cannot not estimated by the degree of feedback of information. Dilemma of communication in labour unions. Crisis of labour unions' representativeness.

We are looking forward to a resolute and straightforward disclosure of your

insight into the cause of those circumstances and current situations.

In the winter of 1999, where are the members of the Korean Federation of

Trade Unions who fought in the field of struggle in the winter of 96-97 and

the summer of 98?

Under the circumstances that the ultranational capital are isolating and dividing them,

why don't they turn up in the cyber space, the another strategic space for new communication beyond the disrupted real world?

What is their reason to hesitate to appear?

What on earth is their reason not to try on-line?

Where are they?

1. Introduction

We remember two cases which activated the possibility of labourers' international solidarity on internet - the struggle of the harbor workers in Liverpool and general strike of KCTU in 1996-7.

Especially, during the KCTU's general strike, Korean workers came to have the first-hand experience of the encounter of real space and cyber space. The support to the strike in the cyber space which arose public opinions, stimulated the material struggle in the real space out of the cyber space.

These experiences confirmed their belief that the cyber space is not a closed circuit but an open space for workers' struggle. From that time, our expectation for 'New Communication of More Workers' in the cyber space has begun.

However, Peter Waterman in the topic discussion at '97 LaborMedia made a critical comment on KCTU and indirectly suggested the difficulties of new communication in Korean labour movement.

Focusing on political attitude as one of the conditions for new international communication, he argued "This event was certainly a marker on the road to a new communicative internationalism, or the communicating of a new internationalism. It should not, however, be mythologized. There were reminders that even if we were involved in a new kind of international social movement, many of us(particularly from outside Korea) were still the old kind of political people. The movement and event, moreover, will not necessarily be more than such. The militant KCTU looked ready to adopt a social-reformist posture if and when Korean capital and state were ready t adopt liberal-democratic ones.."

He continues "The internationalism of the KCTU has been, so far, one of seeking support for its national needs, not -as was admitted- of providing this, nor of working with others (also beyond the labour movement) for an alternative global civilization...(omitted)... And the response of the KCTU to the IMF's vicious neo-liberal impositions was one that could have been

produced by the reference to either globalisation or global solidarity. The saving grace is that these documents were made immediately available, in English, worldwide, on the Internet, thus making them a contribution to international discussion on how to confront neo-liberal globalization. The conference, however, provided a reminder that workers increasingly live in a world both universal and realm that the experience of even exotic others are increasingly relevant everywhere....(omitted)... Information opens the possibility of creating one of mutual learning..."

With an insight into the need for a new international solidarity and an importance of communication, he critically points out the attitude and its future direction of KCTU, which appealed for international support only for their internal purpose. He pays attention to values, ways of speech, styles as well as political attitudes related to the communication strategy mainly from the internationalist view point, and, however, he provides a guideline to comprehensive image of workers' communication. This also means that the new workers' communication is not completed only by using information technologies and cyber space.

Therefore, Peter Waterman's viewpoint on KCTU based on his experience of the first meeting is related not only to international solidarity but also to the way of communication with the common members. This seems to raise an issue of internal communication in general labour movement not confining to the problem of KCTU as the superior group.

It has been two years since then.

The interest in cyber space as a new media is dramatically increasing.

Lots of labour  unions and  workers' group  as well  as KCTU  constructed CUG  and opened their own homepages on Internet.

Nevertheless, in this stage, we are faced with two serious problems of 'absence of new communication' and 'absence of common members'. We do not consider it natural phenomena in the beginning, temporary recession against ultranational capital or inevitable limitation of institutionalized labour movement. We see it as the problems of power relationship in the Korean labour movement and the difference in communication strategies.

Now, there comes conflicts between the leaders' group and the common members in Korean labour movement with power relationship in internal communication. In addition, the difference in their visions of communication through new media causes discord in international unions, strategy of the common members and, as a whole, a consistent attitude. As a result, these problems seem intermingled.

For more elaborate  analyses of  these problems,  we would  like to  examine ways  of communication and flows  of informations  inside recent  labor movement,  in both real space and cyber space. Strike at Hyundai Motors in 1998 and other situations will be chosen as concrete  cases.

However, Hyundai Motors' Strike itself is not the main concern, though it represents that kind of cases in that it went on as Peter Waterman had anticipated.

Reviewing the ways and the structure of communication through various media(meetings, hand-outs, communication) in the scene of strike, the characteristics and flows of the information, communication among the common members outside the official media, we are going toward the theme of the strategy for the common members' communication beyond the specific case and its medioscopic issue of Hyundai Motors' in Ulsan.

According to the way of production and communication of information and its resulting contents, labourers' struggle and action change enormously. Its result will have a decisive influence on the common members' life who tend to leave those matters to their representatives considering it someone else's business. Now, they are not in the position to say 'I don't know... they will handle it.", "I joined the meeting. What else do you want me to do?", "I can't afford to take care of it. I'm stuck to my working place."

Sometimes, their representatives act against them, which can be fatal. That is, they can be victimized themselves, unless they themselves become producers of information and that of communication strategy.

Information and communication... these are not a problem of high-tech nor abstruse concept but a break-through in survival strategies of the common members in the institutionalized labour movement.

Labor union and communication

― mutual understanding or delivery?

Im in ai (LAN)

● Prologue : endless, communication breakdown - communication among workers incident 1

August 23, 1999.  Hyundai motors labor union self regulated restaurant union member training camp.

A documentary called, "a struggle unfinished'" made by the labor union cinema group was shown.  After the presentation, woman workers in the restaurant screamed in rage, "who did you make this film for?  Why are none of us in this film?"

Cinema is a new medium for the workers.  By filming last year's struggles as a documentary and by showing it to the workers, cinema group aimed to achieve sympathy from the workers.  But as soon as the struggle was put into a film it seized to exist as a simple record but as a certain message to its viewers.  Woman workers saw themselves excluded from the message and from this communication breakdown, expressed their alienation and rupture.  In this documentary there were obviously certain territories of interest and specific views at looking at last year's struggle.  Woman workers, forced to accept an one sided information, refused to acknowledge it as a convincing information.,

example 2

January 1999.  National worker's cinema group training camp. 30 minute version of a similar film called, "Our beautiful struggle" was shown.,  A discussion was held between those who argued that an sensitive struggle such as this one should exclude the director's view points and those who believed that if the worker's cinema group were to exclude their viewpoints, then they would only end up being union's proxy.  A question we must ask ourselves; when viewpoints or opinions clash, should one stand behind the union's views or the maker of the medium?  Worker's desires for the new communication was starting to arise from such confusions.

1. The dilemma of labor union communication

But unity ideology of the worker's struggle sometimes hindered active discussions of various opinions.  This is because there were no double plans for the moment to unite and to clash.  In the scene of the strike,  where only unity or division exist, opposing opinions are ignored.  Orders unreasonable are self censored and never questioned upon because it might disrupt the strike scene and everyone accepts the system in which guidance division makes all the decisions.  Communication in dilemma.  In the end prints that reads 'union members who do not follow the guidance division's decisions will be considered as spies from the company' are distributed naturally and no one says a word.

In an interview from the 98 Hyundai motors strike, the workers' fears for their communication breakdown is apparent.

"Everything about this struggle is wrong.  But we don't want division."

"We are dissatisfied.  But if we split up what good is it going to do?"

2.  They were so different

Common union members also put out a slogan supporting the decisions of the guidance division.  But their opinions on the acceptance of the government arbitrament are different.

"There are many who left the scene.  Some were so angry that they dumped trash into the tent and left."

"Just like government deceives the people, guidance division deceived its members.  Foolish people...foolish workers..."

But from the beginning the choice was between accepting or refusing the guidance division's decisions.  There was never a third choice in the first place.  The incomplete communication, once shaken, could not be reconciled.

People shouting, "without the withdrawal of the adjustment dismissal we refuse to move!"  for 36days were shocked with the decision of accepting the adjustment dismissal.

"There's only disrespect and feeling of betrayal towards the union...what good is the labor movement?  I say it's all over now."

"The result being this, I only feel resentment.  I trusted and followed the union.  They only deceived us..."

The message from the chairman of the committee, "to save the members, this was the second best policy" was not received by the members.  Nor was the message from the members, "chairman of the committee, we must not seize to fight" accepted.  Communication failed.  Members replied by burning the union t-shirts and furnitures in the union house.  From this point on, we will point out some problems regarding the communication breakdown in the labor movement.

3.Assembly and communication

- from a place of powerful communication to a place of fossilized messages

Assembly and leaflets were the dominant medium of communication for the Korean labor movement and it will continue to be so for a while.  Looking back on the 87 struggles, assembly was a place where workers fought and gave each other informations.  It was a creative place where cool strategies and smart tactics were made.  A place of great immediateness and concurrency.  But all  of a sudden assembly turns into a place where guidance division give out its messages.  Instead of common members, guidance division decides forehand and tells the members what has been 'decided.'  It is no longer a place for discussions, a place for members to decide collectively what is right and what is wrong.  One side speaks, the other listens.  The podium and the listeners are divided.  Guidance division, without any new ideas or messages, only repeat the same slogans over and over again.  The failure of communication, common members are gone and only the activists remain at the scene.  Participation of the common members is always a problem at the regional assemblies.  An endless need to mobilize...there is no longer communication what so ever.

4. Just answer, "yes"

Let us look at the widely known 96,97 labor law reform struggle.

December 26, 1999 - A day after labor law was passed, Ulsan Taewha riverside assembly.

a crowd of about a 1000 gathered .  union members were coming in like ocean.  But the usual sequence and the usual speech were only suffocating the workers who knew exactly why they had gathered here  today at the assembly.  Members beneath the podium gave up listening,  They only clapped their usual claps and shouted their usual slogans.  And maybe that is because from time to time the speaker asks the crowd, " am I right ladies and gentleman?"  The crowd responses with a usual "yes."  The endless repetition of "yes."  It only makes the fighting spirit to dwindle.

Just answer, "yes...." the policy is already decided.  Follow the guidance division.  This was the basic structure.  The labor law reform struggle that shocked the whole world,  Ulsan assembly began like this.  For the purpose of non-violent struggle, order maintenance group was assembled and no action that even remotely resembled a violent act was soon controlled.  Hence the line between violence and non-violence have been decided, any creative movements and decisions were restricted.  The clever tactics of the workers which ran the gamut of violence and non-violence were discarded.  The energy of the common members were now only a part of the big march and it was now only party of the giant spectacle.  While the guidance division failed to recognize the common worker's energy, common worker's passive attitudes seemed natural and peaceful.  There was no need for communication.  Thus the strike was withdrawn and an year later, January of 1998, their representative signed the adjustment dismissal law.  Speakers who shouted, "believe in victory and follow the guidance division!" at the December 26 1999 assembly were also there to sign the law.  At this point common workers begin to think of the speeches from the podium as a political rhetoric.  They begin to have an insight to tell apart the assemblies which is used as a political agreement and assemblies for real fights, for unity.  communication or unilateral message?....silent as they are common workers know the difference.

One more.  on that assembly Hyundai heavy industry chairman said something very down to earth in a honest manner.

".....4000 from the Hyundai heavy industry here.  I am very sorry.  Hyundai motors is near, they have 35thousand members.  Hyundai heavy industry has 40thousand.  There should have been more from the motors.  Brothers from small factories such as Sae-jong industry and Dong-yang nylon are all gathered here.  If brothers in Ulsan get up to fight, the whole country shakes.  All the working brothers in this country is looking at Ulsan and they expect something from us....."

In the speech of the speaker who spoke so honestly, revealed an obsession about the sub conscious distinction between the bigger and smaller work place.  It also showed the ideology of the vertical solidarity.  Assembly, regardless of experience of struggle or size, is a place for solidarity.  There should never be roll-calls regardless of work place size.  Division between workers should-even if it is done subconsciously-never be used.

If the expression is formal, then the message is also formal.  If the expression is the same, only that much message gets through.  If one tries to measure the fighting spirit by numbers, there is only presence and absence.  What are the mediums to approach the common workers if not by assembly?  Is there a third strategy?...What are the thoughts and hidden motifs of the common workers?....What is , ultimately, assembly communication....Guidance division fails to recognize any of this.

5. A lock out-is it communication or message?

Not only in the assembly but up until now, for the workers the traditional way of communication is as follows.  There is a sender on the one side and a receiver on the other.

message (information)

sender - - - - - - - - - - - ->receiver

Thus, one side speaks and the other listens.  The receiver and the sender are alienated, and meet artificially.  The option for information or message is solely on the sender's hands.  Receiver only has an option to accept or to refuse.  And up until now receiver has always been the guidance division.  Assembly, worker's newspapers, leaflets, films were used by the senders to give information to the receiver.  In this structure, information can only be unilateral.  Senders seldom become receivers themselves.  But as the intervention in creases, the message becomes dry and unclear.  Sometimes they become a totally different message and sometimes they become cacophonous garbage.

6. For a better communication

Nighttime, August 21, 1998.  Common workers demand to the chairman that they go up to the podium and have their say.  A breaking of rules.  Common workers stand and replace the speakers on the podium.  common workers, after a long time, become senders.  But they did not insist on just sending messages.  The new speakers' speeches were filled with questions.  They did not ask for a simple 'yes.'  But subjective questions.  It was more than a change of seat between the senders and the receivers.  The distinction between the sender and the receiver vanished.  A new expression, free from the traditional ways of communication began.  Authoritarian rhetorics vanished and instead of the monopoly of speech, new expressions and communications were taking place.  A new experience, memories of the younger days of labor movement, they felt as though they recaptured the feeling of assembly communication.

But.

Their speeches were no more than just simple demands.  And guidance division probably understood it as a feedback.  common workers were still only demanding and protesting at the guidance division.  The decision, utility and the transmission of information was still in the guidance division's hands.  It is still unclear how the guidance division who is the sender, the authority and the common workers will start a new communication. a new relationship.  We can only, through the experience of failure, comprehend that communication is not that of sending and receiving, feedback, but is comprised of breaking the barriers, rearranging the passageways.  Thus August 21. 1998....is unclear whether it was just a protest or a sincere approach to build a new communication.  But it was still indeed a powerful breakup we must all reveal.  From the speeches made on that day, we must try to understand the common worker's tactics and thoughts.  They talked about management participation, the means to protect the few in the labor union, the standard for the adjustment dismissal, the true nature of the capital-labor negotiations, tactics for the negotiations, the truth and lie behind the instigation, specific ideas for the negotiating team, how to fight the public power, and their rich ideas about the labor and struggle.  Hundreds of treatise were spoken here and somethings not even the guidance division ever thought about were spoken here.  We can no longer perceive them as just the receivers or ask them to just answer, 'yes.'  We must rather ask them endlessly and let them make the decisions.  Rebuilding the relationship between the common workers and the guidance division....New communication begins here.

Epilogue-Will the traditional communication be overthrown in the new media.

image, communication, and the internet....Many are looking forward to this new media.  In communication, the medium is always important.  But it cannot be all.  Even if a new medium is given to the worker, it does no automatically become a new communication for the workers.  Whether internet, or the cyberspace becomes our new means to communicate or just another space for messages and meaningless optimism, is completely up to our imagination.

What really happened?

―The language of the common workers,

the language of the guidance division

Im in ai (LAN)

The strike scene of the 98 strike scene was in itself a giant communication ground.  For 36 days they endlessly discussed the means of the struggle and moved constantly.  Communication scale was diverse.  Emergency countermeasure committee, members of the committee, self protection committee, culture committee, election district tent, family countermeasure, jobsite discussions, talks between casual acquaintances, message between security members etc.  Furthermore, with news coming out from the television set from every tent, information routes were truly diverse.

A man called Kim**is a member of the self protection committee, belongs to the factory number 2, at scene a, and a representative.  Then he must first receive the emergency countermeasure's schedule from the self protection committee or the representative meeting and share it with people at factory number 2, and he must also discuss with the people at the scene.  He must also compare his information with the information given out from the news.  And if there is a small unit meeting he attends to, he must also discuss with this group also.

Lee**of the culture committee is the same.  If he is also a representative, it gets more complicated.  And the situations he must face are furthermore complicated.  He must make programs for the family countermeasure, hold tent tour assembly, and help the chairman on his tour of the strike scene; he had to work with many different units.

All this was managed by an assembly held twice a day, and was distributed by a leaflet called emergency countermeasure news bulletin.  Family countermeasure and the scene organization distributed leaflets of their own.

Negotiations and assembly, leaflets, the cug where the emergency countermeasure leaflets come from, culture committee, family committee, the parade of the woman workers of the restaurant, the movements of the self protective committee, the speeches of the guidance division and representatives of the scene organization, discussions between union members of the tent, the articles written by the reporters at the press center....these were the information given out about this strike.  But these are not enough to fully describe the strike scene.  The official means of the communication and the unofficial ones were very different.  Movements uncaught, subconscious not expressed, body languages, unofficial contact, discussion between small units....fragments left out from the giant discourses were floating everywhere.  To truly understand the distinctive feature of the strike, we  must put all these fragments into place like a puzzle.  And this was no easy work.

July and August 1998, the summer of Ulsan Hyundai motors was strange.  This hot weather, burning the body...this was a hot summer.

But suffocating more than the weather was the different ideas vaguely floating among the people.  It was very complicated.  And we, the end of the century scene report team were trying to observe every different opinions and thoughts.  They were sometimes expressed but most of the time they did not secede from the official opinion.

August 10 1998, 9 am.

A message from the factory 1 told us that strike destroyers and managers came into the factory to operate the factory.

Self protection committee ran out to the factory 1.

"Get out!  If you don't want to get beat up, get out!" "If you don't get out, we'll push you out!"

"We're risking our lives! Do you understand, bastards?"

People were pushing and shoving; a fight broke loose.

And then someone orders at the self protection committee, "Sit down!"

The young committee members, still in rage, sits down.

"Please..self protection members..sit down!"  "Let's follow the order!  Please sit down!"

Guidance division, to put things in matter, honestly speaks their opinion.

"Self protection committee, you can leave now!  We don't need to use meaningless violence."

Self protection committee members, hiding their faces behind masks, were filled with rage.

"We were beaten up as well.  Outside, there's bunch of members who'd been beaten up.  And you tell us not to be violent?"

"No...there's no exact evidence on exactly who had beaten up the people on the outside.  We can't even press charges on such stuff.  So we can't use violence on the managers."

"They came into operate the factory, didn't they?  We have to chase them out don't we?"

"The truth is, we self protection members are angry.  We have to stop them now so that they won't do the same thing to factories number 2,3,and 4."

At the same time, managers of the higher rank rushed in from the other side.

"Look at them.  They still haven't learned!"

"Lord knows what's going to happen if we leave here!"

"But please listen to the guidance division!"

"We can't tolerate any violent act here, please listen to us!"

But the self protection members refused to listen and faced the managers.

"Get out, where do you think this is?"  "You think this is your office?"

"Cockroaches like you, we're not going to be responsible if anything happens."

"Get out!"  "Get the hell out!"  "Bastards..leave the scene!"

The faces of the self protection committee members, unable to hold their rage, become distorted.  And sometimes, in their angry eyes, a trace of tear is shown.  People fighting, people trying to stop the fight...suddenly the scene is beginning to get organized.  "Control!"  "Retreat!"  "Control!"  "Retreat!"  "An order from the chairman.  Leave immediately, self protection committee!"  "Self protection committee.  Leave at once!"

Not quite understanding the situation, self protection committee starts to leave the factory.  And that morning the motors did not operate.

This lasted for 30minutes.

This was one of the actual incidents at the 1998 Hyundai motors strike scene.  These days fighting in complete rage, throwing theirselves, acting as their emotions tell them to, are not called a struggle.  Portion of the self protection committee members who fought this strange fight were adjustment dismissed and others were put to a temporary rest and still others are maintaining their jobs.

August 11, 1998.  Site 2.  An interview with a self protection committee member.

"When an higher union tells us not to use any means of violence, I just think this isn't right...This ain't violence...I mean my means of survival, my family's been destroyed and when they call our acts violence and all that, that's like treading on us, killing us twice, you know?  I mean like those acts shown at the beginning of the strike, burning and destroying the desks and some managers getting beaten up and computers getting fucked up and all that...I just think they are natural acts..Look at what they're doing to us..I call it massacre.  Massacre...I mean that's all they get for all this massacre...it's nothing compared to what we go through."

"When the company has already started adjustment dismissals, I don't think they'll retreat by negotiating.  Think about it, they'll never retreat by negotiating.  Opinions between the guidance division and those who got fired, they're totally different I think.  Even now.  However big the strike force maybe, if we don't get ourselves armed, we're nothing.  What kind of force will we be if we keep this non-violent free of arm struggle tactics?  We just fought for a month 'neath the tent, that's all we're gonna get.  The feelings at the tent is that, lets just do'em as they done to us...If we don't get a retreat, let's just destroy the factory.  But the tactics of the guidance division is different.  They're thinking about the future of the labor movement so they're stopping us from doing what we want."

"The capital stops, try to stop this system where profit is made...So I suggested my idea to the guidance division once.  Why don't we burn our instruments in front of them...Or make an error and give it back to them.  Then the factory won't operate.  Let's do that.  Let's show'em our anger.  If that doesn't work, we're going to have to press them harder.  See they can't make adjustment dismissals that way.  Let's completely destroy them until they give up.  This is what we people at the scene thought and decided.  If we're really thinking about our future, we have to finish the fight here.  But the guidance division, wants to build the scene's future with safe negotiations.  We're that much different."

August 14, 1998.  Common worker's tent....

"If the guidance division tells us the stop the factory operation, we're gonna destroy it."

"If they're gonna cut us, that's fine.  But we're going together.  That's why I'm still here.  If I ever thought about money, I should've already left.  I don't wanna regret my life, y'know...I''m not leaving this way."

August 18, 1998.  Night Assembly...

"I ask of you sincerely as the chairman.  Please abide by this.  Do not destroy the manufactured cars.  Don't touch the mechanics...Let's not destroy and burn.  Please I ask of you..."

"Guidance division is our lives!  Protect them till the end!"

Let's all die together and let the some of us live.....adjustment dismissal with a countermeasure or a fight with the public powers...Some expressions became informations and some expressions were forgotten.  The official flow and the unofficial desires were endlessly crossing each other on what kinds of tactics were chosen.  But the problem didn't stop there.  There was second dragnet.  The second dragnet, this giant system was catching even those bits and pieces uncaught by the first dragnet.  This started on the 17 of August, a giant spectalce, with Labor-company-politics committee, government arbitration and the house represantatives, minister of labor all having a part of their role.  This lasted till the 24 of August, early morning.  This was a political drama.  20, August 9:50 p.m.

Even Democratic labor union's chairman Gap Yong Lee, together with congressman Won Ki Kim seem like a vague minor part for the labor peace in front of the cameras.  At the same time the security members, wearing white rain coats were holding their iron sticks.  But they also were now, a simple prop, and the barricades and even the public powers seemed like a simple prop for this drama.  The strike scene was a stage.  On that stage, congressman Mu Hyun Roh was everywhere.  and handsome look of the minister of labor Ki Ho Lee and pretentious look of president Mong Kyu Chung were definitely the high light.  And that was how everything was set up.  Under this giant system it was hard to analyze the characteristics of the Hyundai emergency countermeasure team.  It was nearly impossible to be out of the strange system.  It was a very tight and secured dragnet.

August 20,. 1998.  An article from the Korean Economics Daily....

...And thus from the morning of the 20, the government arbitration team began meeting both sides of the labor and the employee representatives and also the individual guidance division of the labor unions, trying to come up with last minute arbitration.

August 21, 1998, 6 p.m.

"They were going to sign the paper, so why in hell did they make us do all this stuff for 30days?  Bastards...same goes for the activists.  We should be doing what we're supposed to be doing...There's nothing.  No activists...It's all over now...People like us, who are uneducated, we just do as we're told.  That's what they want us to do..."

August 22 10:45 p.m. In front of the main building press center.  Press meeting with the arbitration team representative, congressman Mu Hyun, Roh.

"Are there any benefits to the company offered by the government?"

"None, I believe.  Yes?"

"I am wondering what the processes were for the labor union to accept the adjustment dismissal?"

"I don't know that either."

Suddenly Roh makes an amusing smile.

Soon both sides realized that they were saying the different things and the reporter asks again.

"I'm curious how you persuaded the labor union.."

Silence fill the room for a while and someone from the arbitration team speaks.

"I believe it was because congressman Roh has always had a tight relationship with the labor unions.  Official or unofficial, that is how I believe..um...we reached the settlement..."

Then congressman Roh speaks.

"Accepting the adjustment dismissal is what our time asks us...but for the labor union it was a hard thing to swallow.  So there were conflicts, but with the situation being that Hyundai motors going through the adjustment dismissal..Korean Labor Union or the Democratic Labor Union, they'll both have to change some of their alignment.

Now then, who's going to bear the cross first....

All the labor movement refuses to accept this.  Then who's going to be the bad guy first...

The most dauntless leader is going to  bear the cross first....to accept the adjustment dismissal...that labor union leader!  The chairman of the Hyundai motors is such a leader.  Now people can say you sold out you made a compromise...but someone had to do it, and I call it honesty and courage...a responsible decision made by a leader.  And we arbitration camp, are helping him, the necessity of this...I cannot tell you the specific details of the negotiation."

August 22 1998, 8:30, commonworker's tent...

"You know congressman Roh and the government arbitration camp, they knew all the cards themselves.  Us labor union's been used, I think."

"So this is how we open the door to destruction...I can't believe the guidance division...like opening the box of Pandora.."

August 23 1998, 4p.m.  Assembly at the Tae Hwa river, a speech made by Sung Hyun Moon (presently chairman of the metal union)

"It's been 10days.  It's been 20days.  A month.  And so we asked the government for arbitration.  And now we know who the real anti government forces are in this land.  The minister of labor came, government arbitration team came, the political parties came and they sympathized with our struggle.  so we gave them our arbitration plan."

August 23 1998 11 p.m. Common worker's tent...

"The fact that while fighting the adjustment laws the guidance division called for the government arbitration means that it is possible that the guidance division may deceive us.  We too, were stupid not to have noticed guidance division's schemes."

"They pieced it all together.  The law, they signed it .."

August 23 1998 2:10 a.m.  Common worker's tent...

"With the adjustment dismissal it's all over now anyway..."

"We didn't have to come all the way down here to see this kind of negotiation done.."

"Let's just wait some more."

"Hey, it's all over."

"You know the reason they're there at the main building, they're not there to find a passageway out of here.  They're just trying to see which way the wind blows...they just don't know the common worker's thoughts..."

"So the chairman's gonna go his own way, huh...Tomorrow morning, the whole world's gonna know..."

August 24 1998 2:47 p.m. Coming out from the negotiation building...

"We haven't reached an agreement yet.  So please....reporters would you leave...No agreement."

August 24 1998 4:50 p.m.  Press center, congressman Sung Jun Choe.

"Soon we will announce our agreement. ...Today is exactly 6 months since president Kim's inauguration.  A brand new relationship between the employee and the workers, heading out to a good start."

And after 2 more hours, as minister of labor Ki Ho Lee said, like a "baby after several miscarriages", the negotiation, broadcasted live, is announced.

Not working for 36days, first since they came into Hyundai motors, the common workers and their family who had shouted,"we won't leave with out the withdrawal of the adjustment dismissal!" are leaving the factory with despondency.

August 24 1998 noon.  The end of the strike...

The security guards at the main gate began to inspect the motor bikes leaving the strike scene..  Union members, inspected in front of their family leaves the building and heads home.  As though from the beginning they knew there were no parts for them in this act.  ...Hastily they leave.

An year passed.  And the puzzle game of 98 is yet to be finished.  From 2:35 a.m. to 47 August 24 1998, why did they come out in order, the Labor-Company-Government committee (minister of labor Ki Ho Lee, president Mong Kyu Chung, chairman Kwang Shik Kim) just to lie about the agreement to be announced just 3 hours later?  3 hours!  What was the variable they feared so much?  At that time at the strike scene, more than half of its union members had left the scene already.  There were no accidents.  But all these situations had clues for the negotiation tactics.  These pieces of puzzle were everywhere on that Hyundai motors strike scene.  Different opinions, different expressions, different languages refused to communicate.  Some tactics were chosen and some left out.  Some information were known and some were restricted.  The rhetorics between the guidance division and the common workers were distinctively different but were self controlled.  The 3 scene organizations who were constantly critical about the guidance division and activists and common workers, all of them...all agreed in the name of order and labor movement.  There were no real communication.  No one was out of this.  So there it was the face of Korean labor movement, a complete communication breakdown.  Someone must face the truth now.  And at the same time someone must search and understand the thoughts and acts free from the 2 dragnets.  That is where the puzzle game of the 98 Hyundai strike ends.  But we don't conceive it as a hope.  It is rather, our face we did not recognize in the midst of acts not seen in the political game, information left out.

Labour and globalisation

― the dialogue of which millennium?

Peter Waterman (Retired from International Social Science)

I recall here - vaguely given the passage of time - Philip Roth's scandalous novel of the 1960s, Portnoy's Complaint. After a couple of hundred pages of hilarious but anguished sexual confession, it turns out that we are in the psychiatrist's chamber. And Dr Rosenstein-Gildenstern (or whoever) says to the narrator, `Gut. Shall ve begin?' (or whatever). Much of Labour's Complaint, as reported above, seems to have been taken on board by the Conference on Organised Labour in the 21st Century (COL21). Now to be seen on a computer screen near you.

This international, trilingual, electronic conference is intended to contribute to a four-year research programme on the same subject, run by the ILO's International Institute of Labour Studies (IILS). COL21 is co-sponsored by the ILO and the ICFTU. Although officially launched in mid-September 1999, the conference site has an early list of contributions from 1998. In mid-August 1999, when I signed up to participate, the site further reported a December 1998 consultation, and published the contributions of three participants. It also published a Background Document, identifying as key areas for discussion:

□	the changing patterns of employment and union membership,

□	change in management-labour relations; the public status of unions,

□	the impact of a hostile economic environment,

□	the threat/challenge posed to national unions by economic internationalisation.

The conference is `aimed at trade unionists and labour researchers', intended to be open, and to allow for some kind of dialogue. Thus, there is offered the chance to respond to the two opening speakers, Juan Somavia, General Director of the ILO and Bill Jordan, General Secretary of the ICFTU. The opening statements of Somavia (1999) and Jordan (1999) were received too late for them to be added to, or substituted for, the statements discussed below. That of Somavia adds little either in quantitative or qualitative terms, reiterating the compromise at the origin of the ILO: `Yes to the market economy and no to the market society'. That of Jordan is more substantial in both terms, addressing itself to globalisation, the nation-state, global institutions, the corporations, the NGOs, and to the national and international union movement itself. It still, however, seems to be deeply divided in its concerns and address. Thus, it tries to combine a concern with `balance' and `fairness' within a globalising market society (which it does not call capitalist), with a morality that is in conflict with such. In the absence of specification, any such ethical appeal as might be here suggested is bound to be diffuse in meaning and blunt in effect. And the ICFTU address seems to be as much to governments, interstate organisations and corporations (persuading them to act in more civil ways) as to workers and citizens (mobilising them to civilise the hegemonic forces). Perhaps the most interesting parts are those concerned with the unions themselves and with their relations with the NGOs. It is to be hoped that these matters will be taken up during COL21.

Guest speakers will be regularly invited to act as panellists on subjects related to the above document. In a further specification, themes are extended to:

□	employment and development,

□	law and unions,

□	responses to globalisation,

□	unions and structural adjustment,

□	collective bargaining and social dialogue,

□	informal sector and marginalised workers,

□	social protection,

□	recruitment and organising,

□	political strategy (relations with parties and NGOs),

□	women,

□	youth,

□	union structures and services.

This event appears to have not only high web visibility but also legitimacy within at least parts of the labour movement internationally. My concern is that the initiative be not limited by the apparent ideological, institutional or even electronic parameters of the event. Let us consider these.

The theoretical/ideological parameter: assuming that which requires questioning?

I am here going to consider the three initial `non-interactive' papers posted on the COL21 site in 1999. Whilst not being ILO papers, they were obviously invited and posted on ILO initiative. They may be taken as suggesting at least the initial ideological extent and limitations of the planned event.

A couple of quotes from the COL21 paper of Henk Thomas (1999), a Dutch social-democratic professor of labour studies at an institute of development studies, reveal an analysis that not only assumes uncritically the past, present and future development of capitalism, in all its emanations (and under all its pseudonyms), but also an existing interstate hierarchy, with unions everywhere in the female inferior position, i.e. providing a service to male superiors. Thus, in

Western European countries□the labour movement has continued to acquire a high degree of legitimacy in addressing issues of the wider social agenda. One may□mention the role of the labour movement□in restructuring the economy, such as the need for wage restraints in the eighties when global competitive forces had a huge impact on the reshaping of Western European economic structures as well as on major characteristics of labour markets. Also, the distinct role that trade unions have played in enterprise restructuring, such as in the restructuring of the automobile industry in the United States, is proof of union strength and potential[□]

A special policy issue forms the role which development co-operation may play in strengthening the position of trade unions in weak labour markets and in situations where as yet no organisational labour strength could be built. Development cooperation - both bilateral and multilateral - has at times allowed for generous donations to the trade union movement. For example, special subsidies granted to donor trade unions to enable programmes of institutional building for the receiving labour organisations. Such funding may have a national approach and thus contribute to the building and expansion of strong programmes of international co-operation. Also, cases such as the Danish one with a strong preference for multilateral channelling of funds, e.g. through the ILO or ICFTU, each with its regional headquarters, have become part of the current donor scene.

I will not go into the assumption about union legitimacy within Western societies (widely noted as falling, since the 1960s, along with that of government, political parties, the churches, business, the judiciary, the press). Nor about the, now-rejected, US auto union's `company-union love-fest' (Moody 1998: 63). The major point to be made is that the argument uncritically assumes: a certain underlying institutional framework (if we include particular labour market patterns); the `developmental' function of trade unions within both `developed' and `developing' countries; that those of the former should act as (state-funded) patrons/missionaries/intermediaries in relation to those of the latter. `Development' here, everywhere, means the development of capitalism. There is an assumption, further, that developed capitalism means developed unions, with the best developed union/capitalism relation being in states like The Netherlands and Denmark, which also have extensive state-funded programmes for `developing' countries. The notion that, particularly with globalisation, we are in one world of struggle, in which the first may be the last and the last may be the first (earlier, admittedly, a Christian notion than a Social-Democratic one), appears foreign to Thomas. There is here accepted, in other words, almost everything that has been questioned or problematised in the earlier part of this essay. The analysis, it must be said, also lacks any sense of crisis and seems motivated or informed less by any academic discipline, theoretical school, social values or humane ethic than by the purpose of advertising a policy or consultancy service to `development co-operation' in general, the ILO and ICFTU in particular! As such the piece seems unlikely to be of value to those within these institutions who recognise that the crisis of labour internationally is a crisis not only for but also of these institutions.  Or who, unlike Thomas, recognise the existence of  globalisation - or at least `globalisation'.

Robert Taylor is the labour specialist of the Financial Times in London (a fact curiously omitted by the ILO). His contribution (1999) is consistent with the pieces of Breitenfellner and Ramsay, covering much of the same ground. It also assumes tripartism, therefore ruling this out of discussion. In line with a tripartite view of the world, he is as much concerned to adjust unions to global capitalism as global capitalism to unions. And he considers that (inter)government organisations can or should play the articulating role between these:

[I]t is evident trade unions□need to demonstrate their approach is not incompatible with the creation of successful market economies. Trade union rights are good for workers but they are also good for business. The most affluent countries in the world are the ones which not only have trade unions but also integrate them successfully into their societies through forms of corporate governance and in alliance with non-governmental associations.

Few trade unions have managed so far to come to terms with the new world of increasing globalisation but if they hope to survive and grow again they will have to make radical accommodations□[T]he need for more transnational industrial relations requires the trade unions to reassert their primary objectives in a modern language that resonates in the flexible labour markets and workplaces□But the attitude of governments cannot remain passive and disinterested. A sympathetic public policy approach is required if trade unions are to develop, providing legal frameworks that do not prevent the development of transnational industrial relations[□]

For success, more trade unions at international level will need to forge links with non-governmental organisations. In its 1997 report on the state in a changing world, the World Bank called for a public strategy that required trade unions to establish networks that embrace the wider civil society beyond any specific workplace or industry with environmental, community and women's groups. In this way, it is argued, they can reach common cause, integrating producer with consumer interests and helping to revive a more active and ethically responsible social citizenship. This will be helped by the changing role of the state from being less the direct provider of rights and services to being the enabler of diverse and pluralistic activities in a society which encourages and promotes secondary and autonomous civil associations. It means also trade unions will have to make a strategic break with their more traditional workplace-centred culture and embrace more decentralised and flexible structures that appeal more to individual employees both as workers and consumers.

It is somewhat alarming for myself - as an advocate of a unionism oriented toward social movements and civil society - to here discover how rapidly the World Bank has adopted and adapted these into something functional to its own hegemonic purposes (though this is, as argued below, a game that subalterns can also play). More alarming is to see Taylor depending on the state and interstate organisations to legitimise social alliances between movements that, in recent decades, have themselves identified capital, state, technocracy, patriarchy and the World Bank as the source of the problem rather than the means to a solution (George and Sabelli 1994:223-51)! Global civil society is here reduced to a global neo-Keynesianism.

Richard Hyman (1999b) is a professor of industrial relations, and a reputation as a Marxist  theorist on labour. He also falls amongst my institutionalists, but his point of reference and address is clearly the labour movement rather than `industrial peace', `development' or tripartism. In confronting the multiple global crises - of work/lessness, of unionism and of society more generally - he seeks solutions within the labour movement itself, or around it amongst  allies. His central argument is the necessity for labour to begin a new battle of ideas. In part this is by entering the institutional/ideological terrain of the new workplace and processes, revealing their contradictions or duplicities, and bending them to worker interests. He proposes a new labour project addressed to Security, Opportunity, Democracy, Community and Solidarity.  This is a thoughtful and provocative piece that should appeal to the more modern and/or radical international unionists. Above all, it reconnects a contemporary or future unionism to its origins, and with a broader social and international history:

Solidarity forever is one of the most fundamental trade union slogans. Solidarity has a double meaning: support by union members for each others struggles, but also support by the stronger for the weaker within society (or indeed between nations). The broader, moral underpinnings of collective action have in many countries become eroded; if solidarity is to survive, it must be re-invented. The diversity of work and labour market situations in the contemporary world means that a traditional, standardised trade union agenda can be neither practically effective nor ideologically resonant. The task is to move from an old model of mechanical solidarity to an new model of organic solidarity□Any project aiming to create such a model must recognise and respect differentiations of circumstances and interests: within the constituencies of individual trade unions, between unions within national labour movements, between workers in different countries. The alignment and integration of diverse interests is a complex and difficult task which requires continuous processes of negotiation; real solidarity cannot be imposed by administrative fiat, or even by majority vote. Its achievement is possible to the extent that unions rediscover the conviction, and persuade both their own members and members of civil society more generally, that they have a mission as a sword of justice.

I am not convinced that the Hyman strategy, of against-from-within, is one that can connect the labour movement with others that begin from non-, anti- or post-capitalist premises. Nor am I sure whether the `continuous process of negotiation' between workers, between unions, between countries, can be carried out in a forum hosted by the ILO, sponsored by that organisation and the ICFTU.

The institutional parameter: the ideologies of the structures

We are, today, increasingly sensitive to the power relations underlying and surrounding, as well as within, our theoretical, ideological, analytical or strategic utterances. The notion of a `Conference on Organised Labour in the 21st Century'; that it is hosted by the International Labour Organisation; that it is sponsored by the Director of the ILO and the General Secretary of the ICFTU; that it is meant to contribute to a project of the ILO's research institute; that this dialogue is being monitored by the ILO; that it is in all or part copyrighted - all these must be seen as part of the process, and therefore likewise open to analysis and challenge. The notion that structures carry their own ideologies comes, relevantly, from a critique of the ILO by Jeff Harrod (1977). Harrod's paper actually gives an overview of the history, structure, activities and functioning of the ILO, with a particular focus on the `developing countries'. It therefore also deals with the `ideology of the programmes', and the tensions between the two ideologies. Along with the elsewhere mentioned work of Robert Cox, it provides an essential point of reference for a contemporary critique of the ILO.

Both the ILO (as the highest instance of international labour relations, norms, laws) and the ICFTU (as the major international representative of unionism) are today suffering something of an identity crisis. This is, as already suggested, a result of a revolution within capitalism which is tending to undermine and/or circumvent them. Both the ILO and the ICFTU are products of the national/industrial/colonial stage of capitalist development. Both were products of massive (inter)national social movements, conflicts and consequent world wars. The ILO, and the ICFTU's forerunner, the IFTU, came out of the social conflicts that preceded WWI. They represent a surprisingly long-lived and durable international compact between unionised labour, capital and state. They could also be seen as having offered, jointly, a cosmopolitan and reformist alternative to the Communist International and revolutionism. The ICFTU came, similarly, out of WWII, being even more marked by what now became the Cold War between the liberal capitalist West and the authoritarian Communist East - with each trying to control the de-colonising South. Both the ICFTU and the ILO are literally international in the sense of their constituents being defined in terms of nation-state identity.

Jointly these institutions have expressed a liberal-cum-social-democratic project of bipartite or tripartite labour relations. The 19th Century `social problem', Labour versus Capital, became the 20th Century `social compromise', with the State as supposedly neutral arbiter. Since 1945 the ILO and ICFTU have increasingly shifted the focus of their attention (and funding) from the socially unstable capitalist core to the socially unstable capitalist periphery, and their primary discourse from `industrial peace' to `development'. The ILO might be surviving better than the ICFTU in so far as it long ago discovered how far `work' goes beyond the sphere of bi- or tripartite industrial relations. What is more, it continues to be a state-funded organisation (despite continuing tensions with the US), has massive staff and resources, and is part of a family of United Nations agencies. The ICFTU, on the other hand, has a tiny staff, its affiliates grant their international a token one percent of their national income, and it is thus dependent for 40 percent of its income on state or inter-state `development co-operation' funds.

The ILO and ICFTU were also marginalised, in different ways, during the UN-sponsored Social Summit of 1995. The ICFTU found itself defined as one non-governmental organisation amongst a myriad, rather than the privileged representative of the poor. It was reduced to publicly arguing that the event should have been run by the ILO, or on ILO lines, which would have put Labour proudly on the podium, as a partner of Capital and State, patronising the `single issue' NGOs! Yet the ICFTU is for 40 percent of its activity, the kind of development NGO it was, until just after the Social Summit, either dismissing or denigrating.

Given all the above, it seems reasonable to speculate that Bill Jordan and Juan Somavia (who was Chair of the 1995 Social Summit!) are jointly concerned to either restore their organisations as the central international institutions of labour representation, dialogue, compromise and norm-setting for the 21st century.  Although a well-informed respondent to a draft of this paper assures me that it was an ITS initiative, with the ILO being suggested as a less-partisan convenor of such a dialogue than the ICFTU itself.

In so far as the ILO represents a contribution toward a cosmopolitan law above that of competing and conflicting capitals and nation states, one should be in favour of not only preserving but extending it. This would be compatible with the argument of Forman, as well as of more substantial arguments in favour of cosmopolitan democracy and global citizenship (Held 1995). Held, indeed, even seems to consider the ILO, with its tripartite structure, to be some kind of model for a reformed set of UN institutions open to civil society. I do not know, to start with, whether significant representatives of capital, capable of taking decisions on behalf of their constituency and/or imposing `best practice' standards upon them, are interested to take part. I am, moreover, not sure whether labour should favour structuring capital/management into interstate bodies of any kind. Most radical-democratic global movements are trying to reduce the direct or indirect influence of capital within such.

The current crisis of the ILO. I cannot claim current expertise on the ILO. Indeed, I am not sure who has such. Twenty years ago, a detailed, professional and damning criticism of the ILO was made by Robert Cox, a former insider, a highly-respected innovator in   international and industrial relations theory (Cox 1996). This suggested it was bureaucratic, authoritarian, secretive and over-anxious to mollify the then-hostile government and unions of the USA. The ILO was thus apparently unfit to play its international liberal-democratic role even in the Old World Order. One would like to know whether it has become more democratic, flexible and independent of the hegemonic states in the intervening period.

But I am  generally aware of the challenge presented to it by the development of new interstate institutions more central, or more appropriate, to the development of a neoliberal and globalised capitalism. And of the concern of itself and its supporters that the ILO should both assert itself and adapt itself to neoliberalism, globalisation, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation. As Breitenfellner (1997:544) says:

[T]he□ILO□is unique in that it is tripartite□offering an example of how a future `global social partnership might function'. If the ILO were strengthened, it could take its place beside the□WTO□IMF□and the World bank in the concert of world economic organisations' (Breitenfellner 1997:544)

And, as the ICFTU (1996) put it, in a defensive and diplomatic statement, addressed to the ILO's Governing Body, it should

□	□ensure that any steps to modify ILO procedures or structures are taken in full respect of the organisation's established mandate and with the aim of advancing its objects;

□	□continue to promote the ILO's role in international economic and social policy-making, particularly through enhanced and balanced co-operation with the IMF, the World Bank, the UNDP and the WTO, with a view to ensuring that considerations of social justice are taken into full account, and that workers' rights are respected;

The problem for the ILO is that the major corporations, capitalist powers, and the others involved in this concert, consider the ILO and long-standing labour rights and procedures as obstacles to `free trade'. And that the ILO, like most traditional liberal or social-democratic organisations, feels obliged to persuade these other parties that it is not so. One major way it has been trying to do this is through a new Declaration on Fundamental Principles (ILO 1998) that allows governments to accept the traditional standards - but without actually ratifying or applying them. The earlier-mentioned campaigning body, the Open World Conference, which has collected hundreds of labour movement signatures to a letter addressed to the WTO 1999 Conference, puts it like this:

In June 1998, under pressure from the WTO and IMF to create a `less constraining framework for ensuring international labour standards', the ILO adopted a new `Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work'. The principles and rights promoted in this declaration correspond to seven of the existing ILO Conventions. On June 20, 1999, the G8 Summit in Cologne, Germany, issued a communiqu□ pledging to `promote effective implementation' of this new ILO declaration.

We, the undersigned, state categorically: If this ILO `Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work' is to be of any value to working people the world over, the seven corresponding Conventions of the ILO must be ratified, implemented and enforced fully by every government participating in the WTO Summit in Seattle! (OWC 1999a)

As an inter-state organ, the ILO has never been able to impose the standards it sets. Rhetoric has always been more important than enforcement. This might be no bad thing in a movement or organisation addressed to the mobilisation of civil society. But this is hardly the image created by the ILO. And now it is confronting its crisis by further reducing such power as it might have had and reinforcing the rhetoric. Two questions arise in my mind here. The first is whether a policy of concession or appeasement is the wise posture to adopt in the face of fundamentalism. All labour and democratic history suggests the opposite. The second question is whether the ILO should even be trying to establish a niche as an international financial or economic development institution rather than the international labour rights one. I do not pretend to have an answer to this one. But, in any case, it does seem clear that the ILO is in need of not simply defence or reform but of reinvention in the light of the labour problem and the relevant social forces, as they exist under globalisation, in the 21st Century.

The current crisis of the ICFTU. As for the ICFTU, it seems to have been emasculated by not only the neoliberal assault but the very collapse of Communism! The ideological identity and often fragile cohesion of the ICFTU has, since its foundation, been largely dependent on being the enemy of its enemy. The loss of its own evil empire has left the ICFTU no other enemy than one which has not only become extremely powerful, aggressive and elusive (the Castells argument), but which appears not particularly interested to compete in the International Tripartite Games.  Indeed, this is also true of Social Democratic national governments, including `Third Way' New Labour in the UK. See New Statesman 1999). One wonders how the attitudes of such might be projected within the ILO.

It is true that the ICFTU has, in the footsteps of Amnesty International, proven capable of sharply criticising the USA, the core capitalist state (which combines the maximum labour rights rhetoric with the minimum national and international implementation of ILO standards). In a detailed 15-page statement it declares that

The USA has ratified only one of the seven core labour standards, which cover the right to organise a trade union, to bargain, the prohibition of discrimination and child labour, as specified by the UN's International Labour Organisation (ILO). This is one of the worst ratification records in the world... (ICFTU 1999)

But it shows little or no capacity to address the international labour movement and public opinion about such issues, far less to mobilise them for visible and effective action. Indeed, I was only made aware of this document by the campaigning, mobilising, international labour network, the One World Conference (mentioned above and below). On globalisation, however, the ICFTU repeatedly finds itself outflanked. Whilst it was proposing or negotiating for a social clause in the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, a network of campaigning social movements and NGOs not only opposed the MAI but (taking advantage of inter-state contradictions) destroyed it. And whilst the ICFTU seeks for a place within the existing international financial institutions, others are insisting on the need and possibility of surpassing them with more relevant and democratic alternatives (Held 1998).

We thus seem to be faced with a major problem concerning what I would call `the principle of articulation for international labour and labour internationalism'.  This is not only a matter of union ideology/ies, nor of their limited, varying or even declining representation of  both labour-in-general (including that of women, the casualised, the self-employed) and the waged/salaried. It is a matter also of the relevance of even meaningfully representative-democratic organisations to both a globalised and networked capitalism and to any kind of labour movement. It has been suggested in a number of places above that the appropriate form for movements (national and international) today is that of the network, coalition or alliance. It is these that can be, as Enzensburger (1976) said of the electronic media, `As free as dancers, as aware as football players, as surprising as guerrillas'. Yet it would seem madness to reject the representative-democratic organisation that is, for millions of workers world-wide, their only defence against an increasingly global, aggressive and destructive capitalism.

Perhaps the solution lies, precisely, in distinguishing between labour representation and labour movement, between international labour and labour internationalism. The first should be seen as carried by the organisation, the second as advanced by the network. This may seem to be the empirical case when we consider the various conferences on labour and globalisation mentioned below. For the traditional international institutions of labour representation this would imply three steps:

□	Abandoning the notion that they are either the sole or the privileged representative of labour. This is, after all, a privilege that, since it relates to the passing period of national-industrial capitalism, is also a prison;

□	Recognising the network and networking as the source of movement and innovation. This would mean welcoming labour and labour-allied networks or NGOs into their fora - including that of the ILO;

□	Recognising that the new internationalism is, primarily, a communications internationalism, with electronic media as primary means and a global solidarity culture as central value.

Much of such a programme of reinvention is, I think, either implicit or explicit in the earlier reviewed material. The rest is being, or could be, advanced by the networks.

Just as the networks in and around labour provide the - or at least a major - source for re-invention, so could and should institutionalised international labour be for the ILO. International labour surely needs to see the ILO not so much as a fortress that protects it than as a public platform from which it can address not only capital and state but global civil society (here understood as a site of permanent struggle against the ideological and institutional hegemony of market and state). I have already suggested the necessity for the inclusion of all relevant expressions of labour discontent (whether women's, environmental, petty-entrepreneurial, rural, etc). I have here no model in mind, but critical reflection on the UN Conferences and Summits of the 1990s might produce one.

The computer/communicational parameter: no parameters?

Participation in COL21, after just a week or so in August 1999, was impressive, in terms of numbers (462 signed up, almost 100 introductions/contributions), as well as of the interests and backgrounds of respondents. I had expected the response to be strongly skewed toward the US and UK, the academy, and the usual on-line suspects - Young, White, Male, Professional, Northern. For a direct contribution to COL21 (unpublished as of mid-October) from an Old, White, Male, Professional, Northern, Academic, see Waterman 1999c.

A rapid and impressionistic analysis, based on some 48 contributions, spread over four days in late-August, revealed the following: 43 were from core capitalist countries, primarily anglophone, mostly North American; 44 were from males; 25 were from union activists or employees and 25 from academics (the last two being often overlapping categories); 12 were from pro-labour NGOs; 16 appeared more oriented toward collective bargaining; 26 were concerned with international labour issues. About age and ethnic origin we can only guess.  As of mid-October 1999, the number of contributions had risen to over 250. Although the intention was for participants to respond to the two opening statements (by now translated into Spanish and/or French), these had given rise to no serious overall response. Indeed, the only on-going debate was that about social clauses. Important as this issue is, the failure of more general discussion to develop is both surprising and disappointing.

It would be easy to dismiss such a participation, as limited precisely to the usual suspects. I prefer to take note of it as qualifying the open and international nature of the event, whilst stressing its radical potential. This lies in the number of academically-qualified/employed and union-oriented/allied participants concerned with the future of labour under conditions of globalisation. Moreover, the marginal presence of women, people from the capitalist periphery, non-anglophones, is not the end of the story. This is not, after all, an election, it is a discussion and even, possibly, a dialogue. Whilst we could end up with a lot of white, northern, anglophone, pro-labour academic guys talking to each other (about the implications of globalisation for anglo-saxon-type labour relations, and their European or international projection), the weight readers accord a particular contribution is not going to be determined by its representativity but its perceived pertinence. Let me select a few messages, from just one day's mail, that I perceive as pertinent for a dialogue on labour in the age of globalisation:

Date   : Thu, 19 Aug 1999 10:09:46 +0200Subject: hello from san franciscoMessage: #1

My name is Medea Benjamin and I am the director of corporate accountability for the human rights group Global Exchange. I have been focusing on US transnationals and their labor practices overseas. Global Exchange was one of the groups spearheading the campaign against Nike for labor abuses in Asia, and we are presently undertaking a campaign against the garment company the GAP,pressuring them to pay their factory workers a living wage and allow

independent monitoring of their factories. We also recently launched a campaign around US businesses and workers' rights in China. I am very interested in being in touch with people who are involved in labor rights in the garment/shoe or toy industries so that we can collaborate!

Date   : Thu, 19 Aug 1999 10:31:57 +0200Subject: IntroductionMessage: #5

Hello and greetings from Vancouver. My name is Ritu Mahil. I became a union organizer at age 5 when my parents first organized the Canadian Farmworker's Union. One of my earliest memories is picking berries on a farm, pretending to be a farmworker, and signing up members. Anyway, I've stuck with the movement ever since. Last year, as part of the Graduate Students' Society on campus I helped organize our university TAs into CUPE Local 4163. I am currently completing my Law and Master's of Public Administration degrees from the University of Victoria. My main motivation for pursuing both degrees was to further my understanding of labour relations. I am fortunate to presently be working in a firm in Vancouver which exclusively practices trade union side labour law.  I am hoping to complete my MPA degree next year as well and am searching for a thesis/project topic which will combine my legal training and my interests in organized labour.Looking forward to an interesting discussion.

Date   : Thu, 19 Aug 1999 10:58:32 +0200Subject: Re: IntroductionMessage: #13Hello to all participants; This is Kwang Young Shin. I am a professor in sociology at the Chung-Ang University in Seoul, Korea.I am doing research in labor movement and labor politics in the developing countries and the developed countries in a comparative perspective. Now I am working on the shifting labor politics during the political transition and economic globalization in East Asia. I am also interested in gender and labor movement. I teach industrial sociology, political sociology and class analysis. I am very pleased to have an opportunity to engage in the electronic conference on "Organized Labour 21", which will be vital for the next labour's struggle for justice and equality. Let's share our experience and research for the future.

How the IILS understands and uses the contributions is yet to be seen. This forum is, after all, created for the purposes of the IILS itself, the ILO and the ICFTU. But, if the initial participation is seen as potentially more radical than these bodies have demonstrated themselves to be, so are the parameters of an electronic forum more porous than those of an academic or trade union conference or publication.

I have been wondering whether such an open electronic conference, with email distributed by a list, and an accessible online archive of contributions, does not facilitate or provoke the creation of one oriented less to international labour relations and more to the international labour movement. What I am thinking about is the possibility of creating a parallel, or consequent, site/conference, in an electronic equivalent to the famous `sealed train'. As some readers may recall, Lenin returned to Russia from Switzerland during World War I, taking advantage of an offer from the German military-industrial-political elite, which mistakenly thought he would only undermine the Russian war effort. More recently, the same principle was exploited by East German dissidents, using West German audiovisual media to get their message back through East German censorship. Cyberspace is not necessarily more democratic than other media, but it is infinitely more open and flexible.

Certain international labour lists or sites have already signalled the existence of COL21,  praised it or encouraged their visitors to take part in it. But what I am speculating about is the creation of a space oriented toward the international labour movement, which could, for example, download selected contributors/contributions, to encourage a more movement-focussed conference. There is, more modestly perhaps, nothing to prevent one creating, from contributions to COL21, one's own database of interesting email addresses, so as to invite participants to a parallel/later site or conference. And then, more ambitiously, of seeking to involve those presently marginalised or excluded.

The basis for my reflections here is a certain familiarity with the limitations of both the international trade union websites and the autonomous international labour ones. The former are, customarily, trade union bulletins or magazines in electronic form. They do not usually invite discussion. They may have areas locked off from the public. They are intended to broadcast, one to many, like a radio transmitter, not provide feedback like, well, a computer network.  For a devastating critique of UK union sites see Lee 1999. For directories of relevant labour discussion documents and sites, see LabourStart 1999 and Workers on the WWW Unite! 1999. For an exceptional non-anglophone labour site, see Chronique de l'Itin□rant □lectronique 1999.

By the autonomous ones I mean the websites or lists run by pro-labour groups or individuals, and intended precisely to encourage direct solidarity, participation and feedback. Some are highly professional. Some are very lively places. Most are non-party and non-sectarian in both form and content (though self-obsessed and fundamentalist socialists have found the internet a godsend: at last they can practice their solipsism on a world scale). The lists often carry discussions, though these tend to be on immediate and dramatic problems or campaigns. Websites may indicate discussion pages. However, neither the themes discussed nor the range of discussants has, over a period of several years, touched what is already suggested by COL21.

Experience with the New Communication Technologies in Turkey

Onder Ozdemir & Funda Basaran

(Videotek, Turkey)

For some time now, forces that align themselves with the labor and trade unions have been using the new communication technologies such as the Internet, computers and videos. One of the important factors for this has been the eroding influence of traditional publications like the newspapers, bulletins or announcements. Another important factor has been the weakening of the labor trade unions due to the attacks against the workers of the neo liberal policies after 1980's.

The labor movement has been able to organize demonstrations and strikes with massive participation in the 1990's. For example, 100,000 public workers protested a law on collective bargaining and strikes by a sit-in that lasted for a day and night only 500 meters from the parliament. Demonstrations were held where more than ten thousand workers participated. Also, as recently as last July 24, one of the largest demonstrations in Turkey was held where more than 500,000 people took to the streets. The reason for this protest was to resist the governments efforts of dismantling the social security system and raising the retirement age to 60. Although these protests of strikes and demonstrations were massive, the government continued with its attacks and anti-labor policies. Public workers were not able to obtain a status granting them a collective bargaining power with the right to strike. Only a week after the August 17, 1999 earthquake where more than twenty thousand people died, while the country was in a state of shock and mourning, the government swiftly passed the law on retirement and social security against the workers and in line with the "orders" of the IMF.

As a result, although the labor movement in Turkey was able to advance important steps forward, it was unable to sustain this progress and in general was unsuccessful. However, the trade unions and the NGO's are trying to fulfill their new tasks of opposition against the government and the capitalist class.

I want to summarize the efforts of the labor movement in Turkey that uses the new communication technologies.

One of the first examples of these efforts is the establishment of the video group in HALKEVLERI (Peoples House) in 1998 which is one of the oldest organizations in Turkey and where revolutionaries are in power.

The 2nd Seoul international LaborMedia '99

Second example is the fax-newsletter KIGEMFAKS created in KIGEM, the Center for Development of Public Management, which has been one of the most important opposition organizations to privatization in the last 6 years in Turkey.

The last experience I want to mention is the example of how the Internet was used in the strike in the military establishment and a US air force base in 1998.

1-Independent VIDEOTEK. Peoples House-Center for Video Documentation.

We decided to establish the Center in August 1998 to create the part of the communication network in Turkey for the forces on the side of labor; to give a voice to those who are not represented in today's media; to contribute to break the hold of the monopolized media on the people; to bring forth the problems of the people being ignored in the society and to create a discussion base to resolve these problems; and for the purpose of allowing the opposition to gain knowledge about each other and to establish support channels internationally.

Members of the Center for Video Documentation are teachers of the Communication Faculty of Ankara University TV department, experts already working in the video, TV or film sector as scenarist or director and executives of the Peoples House.

After a few months, the work group was able to establish a technical infrastructure of a video player and a video projector that would allow functioning at a minimal level. At the same time, the group contacted similar groups in different parts of the world and had access to the products of some of these groups. To name some of these groups, Labor News production from Korea, Labor Video Project from SF, Labor Beat from Chicago and Working TV from Canada. Peoples House VIDEOTEK group is extending its activities in three basic paths.

First path is to establish an archive of the documentaries on the side of the labor from Turkey and around the world. Second is organizing video shows from its archives to members of the Peoples House, who are organized in 50 districts of Turkey as chapters, or to the members of other NGO's and trade unions.   Third is to produce documentaries about the labor movement in Turkey. The list of shows organized by the Independent VIDEOTEK Group in the past are below with respective dates and attendance numbers:

1. Activities around the 67th anniversary of the establishment of the Peoples House. - Ankara. "We are not alone" was shown. Date: 1998. Attendance: 150. February 19, 1999

2. Meeting of the Public Workers' Union. - Ankara. "We are not alone" was shown. Attendance: 150. Date: November 1998.

3. Educational meeting of Telecom Workers Union. - Ankara. "We are not alone" was shown. Trade union representatives from around the country. Attendance: 130. Date May 22, 1999

4. Forum held at Ankara Cayirhan chapter of Peoples House. - Ankara. "We are not alone" was shown. Representatives from 50 Peoples House chapters. Attendance: 160. Date: 7 8 A 1999

5. Mersin. "We are not alone" was shown. Attendance: 300. Date:May 1999

6. Adana. "We are not alone" was shown. Attendance: 250. Date July 1999

7. Izmit. "We are not alone" was shown. Attendance: 200. Date July 1999

8. Battalgazi Chapter of Peoples House meeting. - Ankara. "We are not alone" was shown. Attendance: 70. Date July 1999

9. Bergama. - Izmir. Movies of Yilmaz Guney were shown. First shows attendance: 400, Second shows attendance: 300. Date September 29 and 30, 1999.

Video productions of Peoples House Independent VIDEOTEK group are listed below:

1. With the help of Labor Video Project SF, "We are not alone", a 40 minute video on the resistance against the privatization efforts around the world.

2. Video documentary of the August 17 1999 Earthquake in Turkey and the relief efforts of the Peoples House was prepared by the members of the Independent VIDEOTEK group.

3. 3 part, 40 minute long production is in the works about the history of the Peoples House and opposition in Turkey. The documentary will bring a different analysis from the official history on the history of democracy in Turkey.

2- FAX NEWSLETTER- KIGEMFAKS

KIGEM is an organization formed by support from the trade unions and other democratic organizations to stop the privatizations by legal means in 1994. It has brought many privatization efforts to trial and because of these legal challenges, the state was not able to complete many of its planned privatizations. For example, Turk Telecom Company (State Owned) is still not privatized due to KIGEM's efforts.

The members of KIGEM are the heads of member Trade Unions, professors of economics and constitutional law and researchers.

KIGEM has published many books, newsletters and reports that have discredited or proved the thesis of the privatizers were lies. However, mostly due to economic reasons, KIGEM was not able to produce a periodical publication.

The need for such a periodical on the one hand and the lack of funds to support preparation, printing and distribution costs in KIGEM on the other, required a search for alternate methods of publication. As a result of this search, and starting from the experiences of Nah, Eunkyung presented in an article, "Fax Newspaper-The Trade Union News" in Labormedia '97 conference, work started on a fax newsletter. We proposed using the fax machine to publish a newsletter to KIGEM, which we were activists in. KIGEM executive committee resolved to establish a monthly periodical called Kigemfax.

Kigemfax is published monthly via fax as a total of four pages, which devotes two pages to privatization news from Turkey and two pages to privatization news from around the world. The world privatization news in Kigemfax is prepared from labor sites such as Labornet@igc, labornet-UK or labourstart. There are more than 400 fax numbers of individuals and organizations that receive the fax newsletter each month. Labor Unions, or trade associations also redistribute the Kigemfax to their chapters using fax. Some daily newspapers in Turkey are using the information from Kigemfax in publishing labor news and are giving credit to the newsletter. Kigemfax published its first issue on August 1 1998 and came out with its 12th issue last August on its first anniversary. It is continuing its publication to this day.

3 - The usage of Internet in Trade Unions in Turkey. - Harb-Is Experience.

The trade unions in Turkey are not able to utilize the Internet as much as they should. One of the reasons for this is that generally the Internet is still not used very broadly. Today, there are only between 500,000 or 800,000 Internet users in the population of 65 million in Turkey. But, only those researchers or managers in trade unions or NGO's who can speak English can use the Internet for their research or international relations.

Only Islamic Hak-Is labor union confederation and Harb-Is (Union of workers working in Military sector) which opposes privatization within the Turk-Is labor confederation have their own domain names or web sites. Other trade unions mostly use the Internet as users. A discussion forum called "Trade Union Educational List" has been created for the managers in trade unions.

The experience of Harb-Is strike and the Internet.

Harb-Is is a trade union under Turk-Is labor confederation organized in military installations and in the American bases in Turkey. In a strike that started on July 23 1998 and lasted for 69 days, the bosses in the US airforce base used the Internet heavily on their local network for disinformation. The "unfairness" of the strike was published to the workers in the Incirlik Air Force base and to the US public by using the Internet. Reacting to this, the Harb-Is trade union managers created a web page explaining why they had gone on strike to the Americans working on the base, US public and to the people of Turkey.

In a short while the web page created in both Turkish and English language appeared on www.harb-is.org.tr Under the headings of "Why Strike?", "Our Demands", "Employers' Intentions" and "Strike News" information about the strike was published daily as well as all the announcements of the union management.

The web pages relating to the strike on the US base had links in labornet@igc.org, labornet-UK, laborstart pages. The address of the page was published in one of the most highly circulated daily newspaper Milliyet under the heading of "Digital War". The page soon took thousands of hits. The access to the page was analyzed and given to the union management. It was observed that a great number of visitors to the page was from the US base in Incirlik. The success enjoyed by the workers of Incirlik US air force base after 69 days of strike was due to the belief of the workers that they had the right to strike against unfair practices of the US air force base bosses and their persistence and continuation in struggle. Internet, on the other hand, became a moral support and caused the strike to be publicized internationally.

Japan's Labor Movement and Labor Video

AKIRA Matsubara

(Video Press)

1.  The situation of Japan's labor movement

Only 22 % of Japanese workers are unionized and the unionization ratio has been decreasing for these 17 consecutive years.  In big companies with a thousand workers or more, the ratio is 57 %, but it is only 1.5 % in smaller businesses hiring less than a hundred.  Half of the Japanese workers are working in such small companies, so the majority of them virtually have no rights.

The reason of the decreasing number of union members is full time workforce cut and more part time workers hired.

$B!!(BThe Japanese economy has been under the worst situation since the end of World War II.  The "Industry Recovery Law" came into force on October 1 to encourage 'restructuring' by the monopolistic capital.

$B!!(BThe most symbolic event was the annoucement by Nissan to close down five factories and to slash its workforce by 21,000.  Other examples are NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone) cutting 20,000, Sumitomo and Sakura Banks cutting 9,500, and Mitsubishi Motors cutting 10,000. Thus, big businesses are competing to lay off workers. $B!!(BRengo, Japan's national center of trade unions, never tries to fightback.  Sohyo, which used to represent Japan's unions and the voices ofunion members, was disbanded in 1989 and replaced by Rengo.  Since then, Japan's labor movement has completely been weakened. $B!!(BHowever, there has been stronger criticism towards Rengo due to the very negative situation surrounding workers in Japan.  New moves have emerged to confront this difficulty.  One of such examples is Zenrokyo, which is a small national center with a membership of 300,000 but has been trying hard for alternative ways.  It includes Kokuro, having fought against the mass firing of the members for 12 years, and smaller unions like the "Unemployed' Union" which was newly born last month.

Japan's labor movement has managed to deviate from its conventionalism and is going to revive.

2.  About the independent media.

Japan's independent media movement has been more and more active. The "People's Media Network" is one of the centerpieces of the movement and consists of 350 people.  A project group called the "Video Act !" derived from the network as a trial to distribute only independent videos.

43 Independent video production groups and individuals have joined the VIDEO ACT !.  We made 20,000 copies of the video catalog introducing 118 works.  There are a wide range of topics in them, such as anti-war and peace, human rights, and the environment.  However, only a few groups have picked up the labor issue so far.

The independent video activities have remarkably improved since the start of the VIDEO ACT !.  In the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival of last month, we had a special event for 2 days with the title "Video Activism in Japan and Korea", joined by many Korean activists.  Our activities have been centered in Tokyo so far, but a new network of the independent media will begin also in Osaka at the end of this month.

Thus, the existence of independent videos and the media has gradually been recognized.

3.  About labor videos

The media exists wherever a struggle continues.  The opposite is also true.  This is because the independent media production is not very active in the field of the labor issue.  Japan's labor movement is hindered by the bureaucracy in trade unions.  To be worse, it is shouldered by the middle-aged and the elderly who are not good at using the new media.

However, there have been some changes.

$B!!(BOne of them can be seen in the Tokyo Tobu Roso (Tokyo Eastern Union), which is a regional union of 700 individual members.  It has 30 locals. It started consultation about the labor issue by the Internet for the first time in Japan in 1996.  The number of access to its web page  reached 17,000 and that of direct consultations was 1,400 last year. Thanks to the Internet, unions were formed in many places and the membership has dramatically increased.

There, the union members have been using videos to take their own struggles, but they have only been able to use their works within the unions.

$B!!(BA video titled "How to Create a Labor Union - Our Reply to Dismissal", produced by the Video Press, is based on video tapes taken by Tokyo Tobu Roso members.  This is a very precious example of the cooperation between union members and an independent video group.  The Zenrokyo funded the production of this video for the first time.

$B!!(BIn Japan, videos have been and will be shown by the use of projectors in meetings and among study groups.

The only labor videos in Japan have been about "karoshi", or death of overwork, and the firing of Kokuro workers.  But more and more works will be produced about the labor issue in conjunction with the improvement of the labor movement in alternative ways, and we would like to contribute ourselves to encouraging such moves.

$B!!(BFortunately, more Zenrokyo members are motivated to utilize videos. We would like to get more people involved in the video shooting and production in Japan's workplaces.  In this respect, we have many things to learn from overseas groups, such as the Labor News Production in Korea.

Class Struggle Heightens Use

Of US Labor Video

Steve Zeltzer

Producer, Labor Video Project, Labornet Steering Committee

Recording Secretary UPPNET

The growing confrontations between the US working class and corporate America is bringing increasing calls for more labor video and radio productions. From the UPS national teamster strike, to the GM strikes, many battles are raging although there is very little about many these struggles in the corporate controlled media.

These battles including the fight against privatization is one of the reasons for the growing use of labor video on a local level. Carl Bryant, is a member of the steering committee of UPPNET and the founder of the monthly National Association Of Letter Carriers (NALC) Local 214 TV show called TV214. Today, as a result of his work there are two other Letter Carrier shows in Conneticut and Colorado and more are on the way. Many of his shows have focused on the struggles against privatization & contracting out of the postal service.

The use of the internet, to stream video and audio means that an increasing number of labor TV shows will be available regionally and internationally on the web. LaborBeat in Chicago is putting their shows on the web and the Labor Video Project in San Francisco recently put up a speakout on Labor, Pacifica and the Media on the web at (http://brighpathvideo.com/html/default_KPFA_protests.htm).

One of the most significant labor historical contributions this year to labor video and education is "Golden Lands, WorkingHands" by California Federation Of Teachers communication director Fred Glass on the history of the California working class. This series of video segments which took 7 years to put together is also tied to a labor education sylabus for school teachers in California.

Despite the local and regional growth and use of labor video, the national AFL-CIO and most internationals refuse to step up funding to local labor video training and support for productions. At the recent AFL-CIO convention in Los Angeles, resolutions by the Oregon State AFL-CIO, the Madison, Wisconsin Labor Council and others to support labor video were refereed to the Executive Committee and not acted upon at the convention. These UPPNET initiated resolutions also called on the AFL-CIO

to challenge the licenses of all commercial TV and radio stations as well as PBS/NPR until more labor programming is provided.

The need of labor videographers/programmers and radio programmers to do regular labor media education is also vital. The political need to rally the labor movement against censorship not only of labor but of environmentalists, women and minorities is crucial to build broad support. The media monopolization exposes the growing monopolization and attack on democratic communication and working people must be educated about the dangers of these developments.

The media blockade of regular labor programming both on television and radio has not stopped the growth indedepent labor video programming on a local level. New labor tv shows are being established in Portland, Boston and other cities around the country.

The battle against the corporatization of the Pacifica Radio network has also led within the trade unions to a growing discussion about the need for independent labor media. Pacifica has the only regular labor radio shows in Berekely, Los Angeles and New York.

The potential destruction of this network which reaches 20% of the population was seen as a real threat to the right of labor to get it's voice out. In many instances, Pacifica Radio network is the only regular radio voice for labor struggles. It was as a result of this danger that UPPNET focused a good deal of time and labor on getting the message out about the Pacifica struggle.

The bay area labor movement was united therefore, when the station was shuttered and the workers were locked out. Over 10,000 people rallied in protest and the bay area labor councils with CWA9415 which represented the workers had support rallies. This was one of the first mass struggles to protect independent media in the United States and it opened up a new discussion within many in the unions about the importance of using labor video, radio and other new technology.

One of the best videos to come out of this struggle was by John Farula and trademan and video/web producer of Brightpath Video. His site at www.brightpathvideo.com had an exciting multi-media approach to the struggle with video, audio and links to other web pages. His video "Free Speech Radio Under Attack" not only captured the role of the police in shutting down the radio station but a rally of trade unionists demanding that the station be reopened.

The multi-media use of video/audio web streaming will play a growing role in the development of labor video in the United States and internationlly. The use of micro-radio was also a valuable asset in voicing opposition ot the attempted corporate take-over of KPFA and the Pacifica Network.

The Union Producers and Programmers Network (UPPNET) is also working on developing joint productions in the struggle against the WTO as well as helping to facilitate the exchange of tapes from community access centers around the country.

The key to the growth in the development of training programs for the hundreds and thousands of workers who need to know how to use and develop labor video. At many labor demonstrations and strikes around the country, workers shoot video but most of this never sees the light of day.

It is the responsiblity of the growing number of labor videograpers to reach out and train these worker videograpers on how to edit and get their productions on television. It is also important that Labor Media Centers be established where workers and unionists can get training on editing, putting up web pages and developing labor communication skills.

At the same time, in depth programs on privatization, deregulation, WTO, Housing, Healthcare, Labor Law or the lack thereof need to be produced. These types of labor video documentaris are not being produced at PBS/NPR or the commerical networks. It will require independent labor video/radio producers to put these documentaries out.

Videos can also play an important role in exposing the problems within the US labor movement. When thousands of bay area carpenters struck over a concession contract, the Labor Video Project produced "Putting Down The Tools" about their strike and the need for union democracy. This was shown to carpenters around the country and the documentary included TV new coverage of this unusal event. The last such wildcat strike was in 1974.

Labor videographers in the US are also looking to build strong links with labor videographers around the world. In part through the efforts of labor videographers in the US, Turkey is now developing a labor video network.

In fact the development of labor video is an international task. The global battle against the muti-nationals of the world requires a high degree of collaboration of labor video/communicators worldwide.

The need to integrate and incorporate labor video/radio with labor culture and the arts is also a critical task. The Labor Video Project is now working with LaborFest, an annual labor cultural arts festival in San Francisco starting July 5 to get labor culture and arts on the web. Plans are being organized to use their site (www.laborfest.net) to stream labor poetry, music and songs on the site as well as a moving labor mural. The integration of the arts with labor video and radio can play an important role in building not only viewship but raising the level of concsciousness of working people.

Despite the many difficulties, labor videographers and labor communciators are taking on these struggles.

The situation of the Korean Labor Video Activism and a Proposal about International Networking

Myoung Joon Kim

(Labor News Production)

1. Historical background

The Korean Labor Video Activism started in the late 80's. The ability of professional video activists combined with an explosive organizational development of the labor movement since 1987 and the formation of video industry provided the labor video activism with a proper environment to start working in earnest. Now, in about 10 years after that, it is the activity of Labor News Production(below LNP) which is epitomizing the present level of labor video activism. LNP, a labor videomaking group organized in 1989 has been doing 7 key component activities of production, shooting & archive, training, organizing, solidarity, research and distribution, & festival.

The number of independent video groups increased gradually during the last decade and the activities of workers' video-making groups in labor unions came to be visible clearly since the late 90's. That is, the Korean labor video activism have been on the way from its fledgling state to the upper one in terms of not only professional production of video but also public access to production on the basis of its historic experiences.

2. the Situation and Issues of Labor Video Activism

(1)  Key players in labor video activism

1) Professional Production Groups

Although as shown in the activities of LNP, their ability to product and organize got away from the budding phase, professional production groups are rather far from being a subject which generates policy issues.

2) Workers' Video-Making Groups

Although the workers' video activism has developed dramatically for the last several years, there are still not many groups which are able to do consistent activities during not only the time of struggle but also the routine period.

3) the Extent to Which the Video Activism is Perceived in the Labor Movement.

As in other countries, labor union or labor movement does not have an obvious political direction concerning the whole communication system including labor videos and take appropriate steps to support professional groups or workers' groups. There are some unions which have members in charge of video activism but the recognition that the video activism and cultual struggle are critical in labor movement does not get proper attention despite successful cases. That is a major reason that labor video activists suffer from poor budgets.

(2) Policy issues

1) the Problem of Distribution

Labor video activists were able to establish a relatively more secure distribution system than other independent vid대 groups through the experience of using the network of trade unions for distribution since the late 80's, but its present condition leaves very much to be desired.

The construction of KCTU did not lead to a quantitative expansion of distribution system and the products of labor video activists are not reaching latent consumers in various levels. Before new TV distribution and theater release system come into the agenda of video activism, the construction of distribution network between unions, schools and civic groups should have priority.

2) the Engagement to Democratic Media Movement including Public Access

Korea is viewed as one of countries which have much chance to introduce public access. Furthermore, as you can see through the process of the project for people's TV, despite the absolute lack of progressive producers, the fact that the public has a smoldering desire for new channels has been already proven several times. However, the labor movement which has fallen victim of mainstream media does not have its own progressive perspectives for democratization of the media structure. In particular, the reality is that we do not even know about not only how to make alternative media structure but also what to do to utilize externally given structures such as public access. The labor and political movements have to inquire into and reflect on why this happened.

3. the Issues for International Networking

International solidarity activities of labor video activists have been developing in various levels for the 90's. In particular, a variety of interactions using internet, direct discussions through conferences(Labormedia in Korea, Labortech in America) and reciprocal distributions are our important experiences preparing new millennium. Still, despite the drastic development, the whole picture of international networking has not been drawn yet.

LPN has accumulated its experiences of international networking through international film festival, overseas distribution of its products and participation in Videazimut. On the grounds of these experiences, LNP is trying to make following proposals.

(1) Routine Exchange of Information

As you can see during this labor film festival, the international interaction of labor activists became routine to the extent that it can not be compared with the one of 2 years ago. However, the interaction has not been systematized yet and there is no organic network which makes it possible to penetrate the global trend of labor video and film movements. To overcome this situation, we need to make a consensus on listing of web sites and mailing. Let's make this conference a starting point and improve routine exchanges of information constructing labor video activism mailing list. It would be possible to run newsletter on the basis of 1 posting per month. We could also consider the proposal that groups which can afford to should take lead in making labor film databases.

(2) Labor Film & Video Database

Some labor video activists have been serving streaming videos on their own website already. Such services are not only a very vital channel through which the condition of local labor movement is able to be known internationally and locally but also a major medium for public sharing of the reality concealed by mainstream media.

To make this database more organizational, it is needed to make links between each groups' streaming video and help digitalize databases of countries which can't afford to. That is, it would be possible to run projects 'monthly international labor news' - for instance - on the internet. We could consider to do such a web work together with Jinbo Network, Freespeech TV, etc.

(3) Organization of International Film Festival

There are some film festivals featuring labor around the world as in America, France( needs to be confirmed), Korea, South Africa, etc. The projects to activate inter-festival information exchange and organize such an festivals in other countries are needed.

We could concentrate databases of the works screened on the festivals utilizing certain fruits from the establishing database activities or we could do it as a method of constructing such a database. And further, we could consider that programers in each countries cooperate to search and cast works for festivals.

(4) Co-Production Project - Working TV, WTO's cases

There are some co-production experiences already in some areas. For example, the Canadian Working TV showed a good model in a last-year work which it co-produced together with Korea, Israel activists using internet, video and cellular phones. And independent media activists are planing to construct an independent media center in Seattle and start satellite-broadcasting against the coming Millennium Round.

Solidarity activities should start from the elementary step such as program exchanges and develope to run a project, 'quarterly world labor video news' - for instance. In such a project, international confederations of trade unions' active support is very needed but, if it is not available, we should push ahead with our own project based on activists' consensus.

(5) Solidarity with Democratic Media Movements

Some labor video activists are deployed in the international organizations of democratic media movement represented by AMARC, Videazimut, APC, etc. However, a considerable number of labor video activists do not get in touch with such organizations. So, they are detached from democratic media movements' frontline against the mainstream media. Although we do not know which level the democratic media groups will be together with progressive labor movement in, we should pay attention to their activities to become labor video activism representing whole society while doing active internal works partly. For example, we could consider organizational participation in Videazimut, a leading coalition in the democratic video movement.

(6) Exchange of Ideas on Policy Issues, Practice Methods, etc

Labor video activists from different countries are sharing policy issues in their own level. As shown in this conference, the levels are various. From activity method of group, to prospect of independent channel, struggle for the freedom of expression, role of labor video activism, structure of public access and to labor video, each country is sharing similar issues. The activation of specific discussions on these levels will lead to specific contents which accelerate organization of labor video network far beyond the contents of works. In particular, the network should generate the strategic contents about progressive labor picture & communication movement.

How will the labor movement draw the picture of the future visual media & communication system?

4. Labor Video as a Medium for Grassroots International Solidarity and Education

Korean and international labor video activism has overcome numerous difficulties to the present from nearly nothing. The on-going crisis of world capitalism system is making clear the responsibility of progressive labor movement, and especially it is ventilating the role of video activists as a crucial medium for international solidarity and education. We, now, propose the construction of global labor video network after inquire into the agendas submitted on the above and making a consensus on plan for the practice. Although there are still a number of obstacles ahead, we have already accumulated a number of experiences for the last 5 years and prepared to a certain degree for the leap to a new phase. Let's imagine the day when the 'Labor Video International' will play a pivotal role in the international labor movement someday on the basis of today's small practices.

The Utilization of Electronic Communication

and Women Workers Movement

Lai Ngan Yin

(Committee for Asian Women)

First of all, I would like to apologize for not able to present my sharing in Korean. Secondly, I would like to thank the organizer for inviting CAW to participate in this meaningful workshop and to learn from your valuable experiences.

The 2nd Seoul international LaborMedia '99

Lets spend few minutes to think about your life journey. Recall your memories or experiences of being a FEMALE at home, school, workplace and society. How do you feel as a female? What are your experiences of being female? Basically, the role of women is predetermined as subordinate to men. As a daughter, you enjoy very less privileges as a son does. As a woman, you are expected to marry a man who can support your living. As a woman worker, you are told that you shouldnt expect the same wage as men because you have husband to rely on. You are asked to leave the opportunities of training and promotion to the young men.

So, what is woman in our society?

Lets think about Electronic Communication and your daily life. When was your first time to operate a computer? How did you feel? What do you think of Internet, email, BBS, mailinglist etc. to you? How often do you use electronic communication? What is information to you? What is the relation between information technology and you?

In this male-dominant society, men control and enjoy much more resources than women. Women as subordinates to men are pointless to educate, train and develop her abilities. Womens role / work is being limited in non-technological areas. In school, boys are encouraged to learn science, engineering and technology. On the other hand, girls are asked to learn arts and home science. The education system and values have discouraged woman from exposing herself to science and technology. For women who come from poor families, they were forced to sacrifice studies for working in order to support their brothers studies.   At workplace, women are recruited for clerical, service, production line etc. they are not expected to work at the managerial level. Training or learning opportunities always given to male workers. Once you married, you have double responsibilities as a worker and as a housewife. You can hardly have time and resources for self-improvement. In short, women are less exposed to (information) technology due to the values/roles imposed by the social systems and various social institutions.

Majorities recognize the importance of information in their daily activities. However, electronic communication as a tool to access to information is not common to women, especially women workers. As discussed, the educational background, personal experiences and profession have discouraged women from utilizing the technology. Electronic communication is more popular among the woman worker organizers, activists, NGOs staff, students, and those who used to it. To women workers, meeting with people and sharing have greater impact than searching in the Internet for information. They dont have the knowledge and skills to operate computer, easily get frustrated with the language and the flooded information in the Internet. Therefore, it is not very practical and effective to promote electronic communication among women workers.

The environment of utilizing electronic communication varies with countries. Therefore, the approaches and strategies shall be different. With limited resources, it is essential to ensure that the idea is implemented with maximum output. We shall identify the needs/objectives and target groups, as well as the forms of electronic communication that serve the needs. Step-by-step training need to be conducted, supplement with sufficient practice in work. Continuously exposure to the development of technology would be helpful to further develop the knowledge and skills.

In some occasions, the network groups of CAW raised the importance of information sharing and the utilization of electronic communication in their struggles. We realize that electronic communication, as a tool to collect and disseminate information is the most efficient way with least cost. Also, we found that it is relatively easy to start with network groups in East Asia. Mainly because the facilities are well built and the organizers are better equipped with knowledge and skills. We plan to set up networking on information to share the experiences in struggles, the situations of women workers, the current development that affect women workers, and to strengthen the linkage among the network groups. Other technical aspects that need to take into consideration are language, and mechanism of supplying and filtering information.

The 2nd Seoul international LaborMedia '99

By training women worker organizers as a starting point in promoting electronic communication, we are hoping that they would train the women workers in their organizations. This would be a long process and the expectations of training women workers would different from training organizers. The expectations depend on their needs, cultural and educational backgrounds.

The establishment of organizations that specialised in utilizing information technology in social movements, such as Jinbonet, would very much improve the environment for promoting electronic communication. They can play a leading role in introducing information technology to local organizations, provide technical support and training to them.

In conclusion, initiatives shall be taken to overcome the existing constraints and limits. We may take this opportunity of gathering together to draw concrete plans to improve women participation in electronic communication.

Two lies in 'digital age' prophecies

- How we can overcome barriers between

women(workers) and cyberspace?

Sita

(Currently in masters program in sociology, Yonsei University)

I. Introduction:

Many things hidden in prophecies of 'digital age' Nowadays everybody is talking about "the digital age." But in the much-hyped talks about the digital age, many things are omitted or hidden. Discussions about the digital age are full of hyperbolic prophecies: In the coming age computers will be all-important to all of us and cyperspace will be another lifespace, where we will spend most of our time.

I would like to raise two questions on such prophecies on the digital age. First, do these prophecies assume that everyone can access to cyberspace? However in reality there are many women who have never heard of cyberspace itself. Second, what do they mean when they say "computers will be all-important to all of us." As the hyperbolic prophecies point out, we really need computers? Or can cyberspace provide us what we really want?

Seeking to find answers to these questions are crucial to us, women. If we don't raise questions on these hidden assumptions behind prophecies on the digital age, there's no doubts that inequality in real life is to be extended to inequality in cyberspace.

II. Few 'women' in cyberspace:

Walls women run against in cyberspace and 'can do lies'

It is well known fact that of all Internet navigators and electronic mail users, women account only 30 percent. Internet domain registration as of July 1999 in Korea shows a serious gender-gap, with women registers only 7.9 percent and men registers 92.1 percent. What caused the deep gender-gap? It is not simple question to answer. Financial difficulties not allowing women to buy personal computer and fees for using e-mail networks. Discrimination against women in the process of education on how to operate computers and how to log on to cyberspace is also cited as a major reason for women less familiar with cyberspace than men. Most importantly sometimes hostile, abusive and male-dominated culture in cyberspace keeps women out of cyberspace.

1. Economic and social inequality: ' I don't have a PC'

It may sound surprising to many but the prime reason for women not to be able to access to cyberspace is that they have no PC. This means that much-touted government's campaign to provide less expensive PCs to the lower class people failed to reach have-nots, especially women workers. "Pauperization of women" is taking place across the nation. A recent survey on gender-gap in annual income revealed that average income of women is only 57 percent that of men. Under such economic inequality, to most of women, computers remain as luxuries rather than necessities.

Unlike the slogan that "The information-technology industry is place for women," most women workers' jobs in the office are limited to simple job of pressing keys on computer keyboards, no more or less. (Thinking about women tellers in banks) In many cases, women workers are prohibited from using computers for personal use in the office. In a nutshell, most women workers are "computer-illiterates who know how to operate it."

2. Systematic keep-out: "I am afraid of computers"

Is a computer machine only for male? The answer to that is 'yes.' While boys are playing with miniature robot and cars, footballs and game machines, girls are playing with dolls and picture books. Across all ages, men feel much friendly and comfortable with computers than women. That means that cyberspace is men's space and belongs to men's world. Such perception is called as "sex stereotype." Most women tend to think that computer is for men-only and regardless of their age, women are saying, "I am afraid of computers." Two things can explain the sex stereotype regarding computers. First, "systematic keeping out in the process of gender-role socialization." For example, the gender prejudice that "girls are not good at math or science" could lead to another biased view that "women are not good at computers," simply because computers are in some way related with math and science.

Secondly cyberculture that is dominantly male-oriented makes women feel isolated from cyberspace.

3. Running against another wall: Male-oriented cyberculture

When women finally enter into cyberspace, they usually end up running against another wall, called male-oriented cyberculture. Online pornography, a typical male-dominated online culture, emerged recently as one of the serious social problems. When logging on to online chatting room with a "feminine" ID, it is highly probable that in less than 30 seconds you become a target of sexual-harassment. In fact various types of online sexual-harassment cases are reported; posting message derogating women or sexually harassing women; sending sex-related message, lewd message or pornography via email; posting private information of women; hacking into sites related with women's movements. Even a woman with courage and nerve, as long as she remains as an isolated "individual," she is just "a stranger" and "an uninvited guest" in cyberspace. Her life, language and culture never can stay in women-hostile cyberspace.

To sum up, first, women (workers) with access to PCs are not allowed to use computers freely. Or they can't afford PCs simply because of their financial hardship. Secondly, with lack of education on computers, many women are computer-illiterate. (It is quite easy at computer classes to find women who don't know whether the computer in their home is equipped with modem or not) Thirdly, as a result of the powerful ideology that computers belong to men's world, women usually have hard time in front of computers that look never familiar and comfortable to them. Fourthly, due to male-dominated cyberculture, women remain as minorities and become more and more reluctant to log on to cyberspace. Thus we must remain skeptical to the much-touted slogan forecasting "the digital age" as long as it fails to explain about barriers preventing women getting closer to cyberspace.

And without serious efforts to break down the walls between women and cyberspace, the much-trumpeted slogans on the digital age is meaningless.

III. Much-touted lies that computers are all-important

'Do I need to learn about Internet/E-communication even when I haven't got time for that'

Now let's think about other point saying knowledge on the Internet and electronic communication are "all-important." Learning computers is really crucial for women? In fact many women regardless whether they are working in factories or in the office, and housewives say, "I really haven't got time for computers. I have to work all day long for making a living." Despite such doubts on learning on computers among women, usually many women feel compelled to learn how to use computers. How can we explain the women's ambivalent mind-set toward computers?

IV. For alternative cyberculture

We need to clearly raise issues on barriers keeping women out of cyberspace. Each women group, such as college students, women working in the office, women working in factories and housewives, tend to face sometimes similar and sometimes different problems in entering into cyberspace. Therefore we should call for making and implementing policies on this matter based on each women groups specific needs.

Especially we need to put more thoughts and efforts in developing education programs for women. We also need to seek alternative education programs for women on computers and information-technology, helping them overcome barriers between them and cyberspace.

Don't' forget that women who already entered into cyberspace also want some change in cyberspace. Collective efforts by women to change language, logic, culture in cyberspace are needed. If various barriers against women in cyberspace make them 'guests' rather than 'hosts,' don't try to succumb to predominant logic in cyberspace --- that is, male-dominated culture in cyberspace --- by hiding our gender. Rather let's make "a community of guests" in cyberspace. Solidarity among women in cyberspace is crucial in building the cybercommunity by women.

More flexibility and thoughts must be given in choosing information posted in cyberspace. We must oppose to any attempt to limit women's needs to narrow range under such categories as childcare, make-up, fashion, diet, shopping, and entertainment. In fight against any attempt to make women just as consumers of information, we need to show to the world that we can build cybercommunity, where production-distribution-consumption of information are all performed by women.

Women's strategy in cyberspace

: More political imagination

Chang Yoekyong,

(Executive Director of Jinbonet in Korea)

I. Introduction

"They(cyberfeminists) must begin by clearly formulating cyberfeminisms' political goals and positions ... Strategic and politically savvy uses of these technologies can facilitate the work of a transnational movement that aims to infiltrate and assault the networks of power and communication ... To be effective in creating a politicized feminist environment on the Net that challenges its present gender, race, age and class structures ... Cyberfeminism must criticize utopian and mythic constructions of the Net, and strive to work with other resistant netgroups in activist coalitions. Cyberfeminists need to declare solidarity with transnational feminist and  postcolonial initiatives, and  work to use  their access to communications technologies and electronic networks to support such initiative." (Excerpts from Faith Wilding's 'Where is Feminism in Cyberfeminism?')

To  enter into  cyberspace, women  have to  overcome seemingly  endless barriers. Socio-economic inequality,  lack of  knowledge in  computing technology  caused by gender-discriminating education, very masculine design of the technology. These are some of the barriers women usually face when they attempt to go into cyberspace. Even after they succeed in logging on to cyberspace, women navigators usually end up running into another barrier. Predominantly masculine messages, implicit  or explicit censorship on women's voice and frequent sexual violence in the Net are enough to frustrate women Net surfers.

Contrary to the existing position that computer-mediated communication tends to be gender-neutral, Susan Herring pointed out there are remarkable differences between styles of messages posted by female and male. Women and men also have different ethical codes in their communication.

"My basic claim has two parts: first, that women and men have recognizably different styles in posting to the Internet, contrary to the claim that CMC neutralizes distinctions of gender; and second, that women and men have different communicative ethics --- that is, they value different kinds of online interactions as appropriate and desirable." (Excerpts from Susan C. Herring's 'Gender and Democracy in Computer-Mediated Communication')

With the number of male navigators of the Net far exceeding that of female navigators, it is not surprising to  find male  participants usually dominating  online discussions. In  online discussions, predominantly male participants tend to control everything including topics and styles of expression. If female navigators attempt to unsettle such male domination by increasing the frequency of their participation in discussions, male  navigators react with collective resistance to such attempts by women surfers.

As the word "hacker" usually conjures up an male image, we tend to associate the word "online" with something related with men rather than women. This indicates that cyberspace remains as predominantly male arena not only in its quantity but also in its quality. Herring calls these various barriers, faced by women in cyberspace, as indirect censorship imposed on women.

Direct censorship by governments or Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the form of deleting messages posted by women or canceling of women users' ID also causes negative influences on women navigators. For fear of losing freedom of expression in cyberspace, many feminists oppose to any online censorship by governments. Women activists have long been divided on the necessity of censorship to block pornography in cyberspace. Nevertheless most women activists share the view that political power, such as governments, should not be involved in the process of censorship. Recently we have seen many cases reported, in which women's voice, such as feminism politics or sex politics, were seriously weakened when  governments stepped in the  process of online censorship.  This clearly indicates that political powers should not be involved in the process of online censorship. Seth Finkelstein's study showed Internet blocking software, spreading out rapidly, has also contributed to oppressing information on feminism and homosexuality by blocking the related sites. The government of Korea recently announced a plan of setting up "cyberborder" to cut off all foreign online pornography sites at the sources. We are concerned about its potential negative impacts on cyberfeminism in Korea. In 1998, when an  online sexual harassment case reported to a leading Internet Service Provider in Korea, the IPS quickly responded by suspending the female victim's e-mail ID, with saying that, "Her ID is not decent."

The incident clearly showed any patriarchal institutions are destined to fail in solving online sexual harassment  problems, one  of the  major barriers  against women  entering into cyberspace.

Still Anchoring Our Hope in Cyberspace as Efficient Tool

Do we still need to enter into cyberspace after all these barriers? The answer to this question is yes. Internet is a amazingly effective and efficient tool of communication. More and more women are logging on to the Internet, hoping that it will open new horizon to them. In Korea, women activists groups'  interests and participation in  cyberspace are simply impressive. Internet homepages of these women activists groups are playing an important role of outreaching and empowerment. The homepages fulfill various functions such as introducing organizations, encouraging public's  participation, and raising  public's consciousness  on women's issues. These homepages are effective and efficient tools allowing  local women activists groups to reach more people with much lower costs.

Internet Mailing Lists

An Internet mailing list is a list of a group of E-mail users, who share E-mail with one another and discuss specific topics among themselves via E-mail. More and more E-mail users are  joining in  Internet mailing  lists to   exchange their views  in  cyberspace. "Dalnaraddalsepo(Outreaching daughters of the Moon)," a feminism Webzine in Korea, offers an Internet mailing list (dalara@list.jinbo.net), in which over 240 members regularly exchange their voices on various women-related issues. In building transnational solidarity among women activists, Internet mailing lists play an important role, particularly in Asia, where their information-technology is less developed compared with their counterparts in the West.

Cyberspace as Arena of Alternative Politics: 'Dreaming Rebellion in Cyberspace'

If we accept the fact that we can't totally ignore gender gap in cyberspace, we reach to the conclusion that we need a new strategy for cyberfeminism. A leading strategy for cyberfeminism is to deconstruct the patriarchal conditions that currently produce the codes, languages, images and  structures of  the Net.  And then  start to  build our  own cybercommunities. Taking into account the fact that IT can never be gender-neutral, it is not so surprising to find that most homepages has different styles of expression depending on whether they are male-oriented or female-oriented, as shown in a study by Jill Arnold and Hugh Miller. (Jill Arnold & Hugh Miller, 'Gender and Web Homepages') The findings of the study give us an important clue regarding the future of cyberfeminism: The future of cyberfeminism starts from declaration of women's independence and empowerment. And then we can begin to build our own cybercommunities, where we communicate with our own codes, languages and images.

When surfing  the Net, we can  find various homepages declaring  cybergrrl-ism. These homepages,   such   as   <GeekGirl>   (http://www.geekgirl.com.au/)   <guerrillagirls> (http://www.guerrillagirls.com/)<riotgirls> (http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~annaleen/riot.grrls.html), lash  out their  anger sometimes with humor and sometimes with aggressive languages. These cybergrrl-ism sites  declare independence and empowerment of women in totally different ways  from those of the established women activists groups, which usually focus on 'campaigns.' Though it is not easy  to find any consistent  political consciousness going through in cybergirl-ism, cybergirl-ists express themselves in their own codes, languages and images. They prefer cyberperformances, such as cyberpunk literature, arts and music rather than 'campaigns'. Through these  various cyberperfomrances,  cybergrrl-ists declare splitting themselves from anything that is related with the  Establishment. Such strategy, radically breaking away from the preoccupation with  "enlightenment" or  "explanation," shows us  that separated, women-only sites in cyberspace can be a successful alternative in cyberfeminism.

Many feminism mailing lists  and women chatting  sites are women-only.  The first and foremost raison d'etre of women-only sites in cyberspace comes from the need to protect women's communication from being invaded by males. Without such measure of protection, women's communication even on women-related issues  is frequently interrupted by male invaders. To most women Internet users, visiting women-only sties, where women can speak freely with their own languages, is an amazing experience. Once settled in their own place, women, relieved from self-censorship, can spit out what they have kept in their hearts. Anita Borg, the founder of  the women-only  online forum,  SYSTERS, said making women-only sites truly women-only, which are free from any verbal attack on women, is practice  of   political  activism.   (Anita   Borg,  'Why   SYSTERS?' 1993. http://cec.wustl.edu/~cs142/articles/GENDER_ISSUES/Why_systers-borg)

As many successful women's web sites illustrate, there is a great possibility that cyberspace will become a powerful alternative media and political arena, through which we can infuse new radical voice into feminism. Especially anonymity, a unique feature of online communication, is expected to spur open and honest discussions among women participants. Such open and honest communication is the starting point for building strong solidarity among women. To encourage free and honest communication, some women-only sites are offering bulletin boards, in which women can join without revealing their identification. In such bulletin boards, women users easily open their hearts to each other and build solidarity. This can be the first step toward forming women's cybercommunities.

More Politics to Cyberspace

While fully acknowledging merits of various experiments on "cyberseparatism," I still have to point out whether these experiments will bring forth any fruits in changing the Establishment. As long as we have great expectations in cyberseparatism, seeking answer to the question is important. Since online  sexual harassment reflects gender  discriminating society, which created cyberspace, the ultimate goal of fighting in cyberspace should be focused in changing such discriminating society.

One of problems we can find in cybergrrl-ism is that it is related with techno-utopianism, which says implicitly "anything you wanna be and do in cyberspace is cool" and possible. However the techno-utopianism is just another political ideology, alienating technology from society to make it apolitical. We have to fight against any attempt to make cyberspace apolitical. Let's not forget that any possibility in cyberspace can not be separated from the society itself. Only then, in male-oriented cyberspace, our action can have its meaning. Thus the strategy of just following "their technology" "just for application," is apolitical and undesirable. Rather our strategy should be focused on overcoming barriers to cyberspace and making it a powerful tool for our solidarity.

This means that political activities in cyberspace should not be limited to "publishing" of messages. Rather online political activities  should be  extended to  include interactive communication, which is the starting point in building our communities in cyberspace. Let me introduce you several successful attempts in overcoming barriers faced by women when entering into cyberspace. These cases show us how to build transnational women's solidarity and communities via communication in cyberspace. <SISTAHSPACE> (http://www.sistahspace.com), a web site exclusively for black women's rights movements, did magnificent jobs in encouraging interests and participation in black women's issues. It offers cultural events, information, a mailing list, a web ring, which links related web sites for navigators to log on to each web site without further navigating the Internet. Such strategy is powerful way of building a net community and inducing political actions from navigators. <WHOA> (http://whoa.femail.com/), the homepage of the Women Halting Online Abuse, a web site concentrating on online sexual harassment, connects women via a powerful mailing list. The mailing list performs the role of an online community. When sexual harassment occurs, members of the community collectively act for investigation and subsequent necessary steps to stop such violence repeated.

In Korea, many online communities are emerging. A leading online community is <Niagga> (http://niagga.com.ne.kr/), an online homosexual community. However we need more such online communities in Korea. For the  past 10  years, the Internet has emerged as  a powerful  communication tool. Nevertheless women still have not enough political arena in the Net. I think it is primarily due to our improper IT strategy. Though we have  long stressed as our main goal in cyberspace effectiveness and efficiency, we even failed to achieve the goal. Our hastiness caused by the fear of being behind in competition seem to a major reason for our failure. I think our priority in cyberspace should be placed in building solidarity. To make cyberspace to our own, we have to think differently.

Don't just follow competition in cyberspace.

Instead let's pay our attention to building solidarity in cyberspace. When neoliberalism causes deep pain across the world, let's discard the logic of efficiency and start our cyberjourney to meet our women-friends from other provinces, countries, and continents. When meeting with our women-friends in cyberspace, let's open our hearts but never forget to keep our ears wide open and be ready to listen of their stories.

Internet Video Streaming Workshop

Brian Drolet (Free Speech TV)

There is some thought that the internet is such a radically different and inherently democratic technology that government and corporate power will not be able to control it, or restrict broadcasting and publishing access to it. This is a false view. The internet, like any other tool of mass communication, will be employed by the hands that are powerful enough to seize it. The ultimate decision on use of the internet will not be settled "on the net" but "in the streets." It will be a protracted struggle, only a part of the larger battle to determine who rules the entire society.

This does not mean that those who do not weild society-wide power will be completely excluded. We all have the ability to publish a leaflet, or a pamphlet, or even a newspaper. But the reach of those publications is severely restricted. Nevertheless, the ability to use the 300 year old technology of the printing press has been of crucial, sometimes decisive imporance for those seeking to challenge the established order, or to overthrow it.

Likewise for the internet. With the added fact that we are at the beginning of the technology's development. There is more ferment, more experimentation, more room, more access. And we should seize the window of opportunity that the times offer.

Free Speech Internet TV began about five years ago. The first conception was simply to use the internet as a delivery mechanism for progressive videos. In the first few years, very few people visitied the site. In part this was due to the primitive stage of the technology. Compression technology was still very poor and access to fast modems was very limited. Hardly anyone had access to a T-1 line. Watching video was not a very pleasurable experience. For most it still isn't. We knew that the technology would advance, but we also knew that that development was not in our hands. What we could do was try to publicize what   we were doing and build traffic to the site. So we began free and premium web hosting, particularly trying to attract people who wanted to use media files on their websites. In the last two years we have gone from about 1100 viewers a day on our home page to about 5,000. Overall, freespeech.org received about 60,0000 visitors a day to our entire site, overwhelmingly to our over 6000 hosted websites. On average we receive 48,000 requests per week for over 3000 separate media files. We currently have the largest archive of progressive video on the internet: over 500 films and videos, full length and clips that have been selected by our staff.

The 2nd Seoul international LaborMedia' 99

This week, for example, you can watch ah our long documentary made by high school students in New York, exposing the corruption and criminal conspiracy between politiicans and gangsters who control the toxic waste dumps in the Hudson Valley. Or you can watch Paper Tiger TVs video on protests at the G8 meeting in Germany last year. Perhaps one of the most moving and informative videos we have webcast is "Bitter Paradise", first aired by Working TV in Canada, a beautify and sad story of the struggle of the people of East Timor against Western backed Indonesian occupation.

We digitize and encode and post a new video every couple of days.

In addtion to webcasting the best work we can find, we see our primary responsibility to publicize and promote this work, so that it can become known to the largest audience possible.

The technical side of the project is actually quite simple. The original material can be in Beta, 3/4 inch or VHS format. We have used a variety of softwares to digitize the original video to avi files: Adobe Premiere, Avid Cinema, and most video cards now come with their own digitizing software. Recently we have simply used Real Network's Real Producer G2 to directly digitize and encode the video. At the moment we are not encoding for the Windows Media Player or Apple's new Quicktime streaming video software. The technology will continue rapid development. I would imagine there will be MP3 video available soon.

The bigger technology and political question, of course is broadband delivery and who will control it. This is a game for the big players only and the public will have little influence on the major decisions. This is not the place to sort out all of the issues. There are an number of excellent list serves for the US/English speaking audience. I'm not familiar with terrain in other countries. Bottom line is who gets the ability to upload. As my friend Bob Stein, the founder of the Voyager Company once put it: when the internet provides access to everybody's eyes and minds, everybody will have access to the internet....just like tv.

Of course, we are just talking about Internet I. Internet II is already up and running and provides the ability for near full motion, full screen video. Artists and engineers from Univiersities in New York are already plannning expeeriements with two way Internet II programs.

So if you stream video over the internet now, who watches? This is first of all an access question. The constituencies of labor movements are not in the vanguard of computer or internet users. So who are the streaming video's for? And what social impact do we expect them to have?

And what happens to "solidarity for ever" the "rising of the masses" and "collective power? The computer and the internet are very individualized experiences. It's your head in that box. Watching a video on a small computer screen is a very different experience than watching a movie in a crowded room with a group of comrades, or strangers.

Both these last two questions raise the question, for which I do not have a ready answer, what the role video on the internet can and should be as a tool for activists and organizers.

WEBCASTING - ONE PRODUCERS

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

Julius Fisher

(Working TV)

I get excited about streaming video. Seriously. Every time I put a video on the internet I feel like I have won a small victory for the good guys over the forces of reaction and darkness, or like I have given global capital a good swift kick in the ass.  But given the extremely poor quality of streaming video most of us see on the internet; the tiny jerky, blurry images, the muffled or distorted sound; I know this is quite ridiculous.  Let me explain.

I produce working TV, a weekly half-hour long labour / left television show in Vancouver, in the province of British Columbia, on Canada's west coast. For myself, as with every other alternative media producer I have known - whether working in print, radio, video or broadcast television -  DISTRIBUTION is a constant concern and preoccupation. It is very frustrating to work hard on a video or television program, to make it as powerful, concise and engaging as possible, and then find that only a very small audience can see it.  Streaming video offers a solution. It gives producers the power to simply bypass or to go around television network program managers whose job it is to keep alternative viewpoints from a mass audience.

Unfortunately, from my experience at least, this power is somewhat illusory. Streaming video has the potential to provide an alternative to broadcast television. It has not yet delivered on this potential. I might feel better subjectively, by putting a video with a progressive message on the web, but objectively I am not sure I am really making any difference in the world. . . at least not yet.

NECESSITY, THE MOTHER OF INVENTION

I began streaming video motivated by sheer frustration in early 1998. In January of that year, I taped a packed public lecture and produced programs about the MAI, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. For those who haven't heard of it, the MAI is a kind of Charter of Rights for corporations, the kind of thing the IMF and the World Bank and the World Trade Organization love. It gives sweeping powers to corporations and takes away powers from National governments. Most people have heard about so called free trade agreements. Critics called the MAI free trade on steroids. It was a kind of super-free trade agreement that was negotiated in secret by several G7 national governments, including Canada's government.

I was outraged as much by the content of the MAI as by the blackout or censorship of any news about it in the mainstream media.  And I was frustrated that my community access television show  -  the only window on television that was dealing with the MAI out of the 59 channels available in my city - was available to only about 1 million cable subscribers.  So out of necessity, I found a solution. I had heard about video on the internet so I asked friends to help figure out how to get our MAI programs on the web. We began with still pictures, a kind of slide show with sound, but quickly learned how to digitize video and produce a crude, tiny but effective webcast (http://www.workingtv.com/real/realmai.html - 28k version).

The results were very gratifying. working TV got e-mail from around the world thanking us for making this important information available. My first webcasts were basically radio on televison, two half hour programs of people talking at a public meeting, but it was a webcast.

Since then I have webcast practically every one of my weekly programs and several one hour special programs.  It just makes sense, given the amount of time and energy I put into these programs, to make them available to a wider audience.

As for the MAI, it was de-railed, temporarily at least, which was a huge victory for the popular movement that had been building in several countries against it. Nearly 1000 websites, including my working TV site, were dedicated to spreading the world about this anti-democratic trade deal. This victory, however temporary, also served to wake up many activists to the power of the internet generally.

LESSONS LEARNED

In the nearly two years I have been webcasting I have learned a lot. The first lesson is that very few people, with the exception of media activist types, share my enthusiasm, or even seem to give a damn. The audience is very small, at least here in Canada. It has taken quite literally till just now, till just this past month, for anybody in the Canadian labour movement to officially notice.  This morning, Tuesday November 9 1999, I learned that the Canadian Labour Congress was going to contribute $2000.00 to my webcasting efforts. This is a tiny amount compared to what they spend on print and on other forms of media, but its is important in a symbolic way. It marks a kind of seal of approval from the top body in the Canadian labour movement. Earlier this month a local teachers' union paid me to webcast a video I had produced for them in several languages as part of their campaign to elect a better school board in the local Vancouver civic election. ( www.freespeech.org/workingtv/VSBBluesEnglish.ram ; ../VSBBluesSpanish.ram; .. VSBBluesMandarin.ram;  . . /VSBBluesCantonese.ram;  and ../VSBBluesPunjabi.ram ) This was the first time I have ever been paid to webcast, yet I have spent thousands of dollars on hardware and software and hundreds, maybe thousands of hours of my time doing it.

Probably this lack of interest has as much to do with new media fatigue as much as anything else. We hear about so many new technological breakthroughs that it becomes difficult,  particularly in the labour movement, to get the bureaucrats who hold the purse strings enthused. This is compounded by the tendency in Canadian labour to want to do things the way they used to be done.  The labour movement used to communicate with print, not with the internet, and certainly not streaming video on the internet. Therefore, the logic goes, print should damn well be good enough today.  Fortunately, since last May, we have new leadership at the CLC so this is changing.

But I am sure that the lack of interest in my working TV webcasts is mostly because of the content. If I webcast live sex or sports or entertainment it would be much more popular.  I produce left wing, sometimes quite radical videos and television programs. I also webcast many videos produced by others which have the same world view and often the same relatively dry, pedantic approach.  Rather than bouncing breasts or high speed car chases, I webcast images of struggle and lots of talking heads.  As important as this kind of programming is, there is a relatively small audience for it.  Its a niche market. So its fortunate that webcasts, by definition, can be viewed around the world, so that those few viewers in each country can together comprise a large enough audience to make the webcast worthwhile.

The second major lesson I've learned from my webcasting experience is that it takes money. Yes it can be done cheaply, for next to nothing, using a cheap video capture card and free software, but the end result looks, well, cheap.  Most of what I webcast for the first year or more fits this category.  It was a novelty to get video on the web, but it was very hard to watch for any but the most dedicated viewers.

Its takes relatively expensive hardware and software to produce the best possible, or at least better quality streaming video. Without going into too much technical detail,  I have spent quite a bit of money so that I can now export digital video directly from my Media 100 edit suite ( on a Power Mac 9600 ) to a fabulous program called Media Cleaner ( 4.0 ) which create files which van be viewed on a variety of web based formats (RealVideo, Quicktime, Windows Media etc.). But a server with a fast high bandwidth connection (T1) is just as important. Most are outrageously expensive. Fortunately, FreeSpeech TV in Boulder Colorado provides an affordable and democratic, if somewhat imperfect alternative,  for which I am very thankful.

(At this point I suggest you watch the short video I have produced about the webcasting process itself, which accompanies this document.)

The third and probably most difficult lesson I am just now beginning to learn, is that the distribution mechanism has a big impact on the content and the aesthetics of the video. In other words, I need to learn to produce video differently for webcast than for television broadcast. This is partly because of the current technical limitations of webcasting, which are improving rapidly, but are still quite primitive. This is also partly because people view webcast video with a different attitude and in a different context: it is something they search out quite actively sitting at their computer, unlike television which many people passively allow to wash over them as a kind of mind-numbing electronic drug while sprawled on their couch.

The difference between video production for television and video production for webcast starts, ideally at least, at the earliest stage. Given the current technical limitations of webcasting, it is better to shoot still images with little motion. Backgrounds need to be simpler. In editing, graphics need to be larger to be readable on a tiny webcast image. Straight cuts work better than fancy digital transitions or even dissolves - transitions tend to make the webcast freeze up during playback, while the audio continues.  And programs need to be shorter, much, much shorter.  It seems the optimum length for a typical viewer to watch a tiny, jerky, blurry image with bad sound is about 1 minute. ( http://www.freespeech.org/workingtv/vvtv3.ram ) Obviously the better the quality of the webcast, the longer a viewer might stay.

IN CONCLUSION

Webcasting is no magic bullet. It won't resolve the marginalization and censorship of labour from mainstream television. But it does make producers like me feel better knowing that those viewers who don't mind the inferior image and sound will get to see my programs because they are webcast. And its encouraging to know that the technology is improving very rapidly. Better software and hardware is helping create better video on the web, and greater bandwidth is becoming more readily available at lower prices. But webcasting is no substitute for full screen television broadcasting as we know it today. I am not sure it ever will be.

Regardless, I think the most important issue with webcasting, and with all other new media is that labour get in on the ground floor.  In a working TV interview, Joey Manley, formerly of FreeSpeech TV, said that we (the left) shouldn't get left behind with internet television, the way we did with cable tv and I couldn't agree more. It is shameful the way the left and the labour movement in North America ignored the potential offered by community access (cable) tv.  This happened, in my opinion, largely because labour media activists deferred to the leadership of the labour movement to initiate and fund community access television activity. When it comes to new media, I believe, if we wait for the leadership to lead, we will never get anywhere.

The beauty of webcasting, and of the internet generally, is that individual activists like myself can initiate projects without needing the endorsement or support of the labour bureaucracy.  If they want to get on board once the ball is rolling, as they are doing now with working TV's webcasting, that's great. If not, our activism need not stop.

Finally, I want to stress that webcasting is but one of many forms or one of many mediums. I think the single most important lesson for labour media activists to keep in mind is to be media neutral: to value and support all media forms, from print, to radio, to video, to the internet. Each form has its own audience, and each form is converging with others. Just as we are stronger when we work together, so will our media products be strengthened if they are shared across many forms of media.

Possibility and Limit of Internet

Broadcasting as an Alternative Media

-- Based on Jinbo Network Center's Experience and Plan

Seok-man, Hong

(Internet Broadcasting Team leader, JInbo Network Center)

1. Introduction

Internet, which was first developed by U.S. Secretary of Defense at the end of 1960's for military purpose, has now grown into Information Telecommunications Network linking everyone in the world. Internet's multimedia function called World Wide Web spurred the growth of Internet and played a role in expanding the scope of Internet. If Internet was just about replacing letter through E-mail and text-version bulletin board in its incipient stage, now its about Internet-phone, Tele-conferencing and Internet broadcasting.

As the use of Internet as a media was facilitated there were more cases of social movement using Internet for its purpose. This is also the case in Korea, there were telecommunications support group that assisted general strikes led by KCTU (Korean Confederation of Trade Unions) between 1996 to 1997 and this group's activities realized international alliance for labor strike. In Nov. of 1997, 1st Seoul International Labor Media was held with 20 countries participating and Internet audio about social movement was broadcast live for the first time in Korea. In addition, during when workers were preparing for the general strike in July of 1998, it planned for relay-broadcasting with the help of English simultaneous interpretation and Internet live broadcasting. Likewise, various activities making Internet and IT into media has been carried out.

The multimedia function of Internet has many distinct characteristics and one of them is the fact that it is blurring the line between traditional broadcasting and media. Traditional media, namely newspaper, broadcasting and radio no longer has distinctive line that separates one from the other and rather going into the direction of mutual integration. Under this circumstance, limited possibility of targeting niches in the broadcasting and media is strongly raised and also proactive activity can be witnessed in the new-media sector.

Now there is a new way of operating a broadcasting station which not only incorporates printing media such as newspaper and magazine but also radio (audio) broadcast and visual image with only low cost and effort thanks to Internet technology. This possibility, however, was presented only as technical possibility. Rather, the issue of public access to Internet has not been solved. In addition, Internet is becoming commercialized everyday as capital is encroaching upon Internet. More and more commercial broadcasting is making inroads into Internet and there is not enough thoughts given to how we can better compete in a space called Internet that is quite similar to existing market.

2. The Background and Significance of Internet Broadcasting

2-1 Development of Internet and the integration of media

The premise of Internet broadcasting is the development of Internet and IT technology. Even though the potential possibilities of these technologies are talked about, it is somewhat over exaggerated and not based on reality. Thus, there is a need for detail thinking related to this issue.

The outstanding characteristic of Internet as media is that it can be in charge of many integrated functions. First of all, Internet's function as multimedia along with old media (newspaper, broadcasting, radio and etc.) can complement and strengthen the old media and secondly, it can replace these two all together and realize the integration of media. The paradoxical fact that Internet can complement and strengthen the old media and in the end replace it, is possible because Internet standardizes each different attributes (electric wave, magnetic tape, paper) into digital.

Internet strengthens the function of newspaper, which in the past provided information promptly and thereby increases the speed and volume of information. Moreover, it also provides search function that newspaper media was unable to provide. Internet transforms and sends image and voice into digital, thus delivery time is becoming shorter and expands the scope into global dimension.  This is all possible within Internet and there is mutual integration among different formats and types of media such as newspaper, broadcast image and radio.         Internet is also eroding the distribution barrier. In old media, in the case of electric wave, information was distributed through wire or non-wire and in the case of newspaper, it was distributed through papers, thus there were distinctive barrier.

Figuer . Integration of media by the internet

radio

newspaper              radio             digital          news-

ＡＡＡＡＢ       paper      internet

network                    streaming

broadcasting

broadcasting

As Internet transforms information into file and sends it through globalized Internet network, barriers are completely disappearing. With the development of Internet, various media is on the process of integration and Internet broadcasting is at the centerpiece of this process.

2-2 The expansion of international alliances countering the neo-liberalism of democracy

The spread of information in the neo-liberalism era not only brought about globalization of democratic movement but also strengthened the international alliances for progressive social movements. As capital becomes globalized, there is a need for social movement that takes place in global dimension. Under this circumstance, the necessity of international communications is emphasized more than ever. This is because the examples of other country can be seen in one's own country and because social contradiction incurred through democratic movement that know no boundary is no longer limited to one specific country.

Now Internet is an important communications tool in international alliance for social movement.  As this is the case, various areas are forming international network based on Internet and also exerting effort to send and receive in-depth mutual messages. Internet does not stop here, it is also being used as counter-media and Zapatista is a good example. Furthermore, Internet is also used to counter new trade round advocated by WTO.

As Internet serves as a means of communications used by international alliances to counter the globalizing capitals and as counter-media, there is high expectation for its role.

2-3 Strengthened alliance in media movement

The integration of various media through Internet also integrates media movement that was carried out according to each different media. Characteristics of different area still exists but reason why there is more interest paid to Internet broadcasting as integrated medium is because interoperability among media is realized through Internet.

Due to other important effects Internet, this trend is getting stronger. Reason why independent media movement is focused on Internet is because there is no limit in the number of channel in Internet.

In the area of alternative media and independent media, distribution is the key. Even though one can socially materialize produced art, if commercial distribution is almost impossible, the space we can use to show this art to the public will be very much limited.

Visual and radio movement will show greater attention to this characteristic because excluding only small number of countries, efforts to secure channel has failed. Cable channel, which has public characteristics, is provided on a level of region as a form of public access channel but still other countries' and regions' access to it is still banned.

With the integration of media and Internet's merits, more and more independent media movement is converging through Internet and expectation and attention on Internet broadcasting is getting greater.

2-4 Possibility of alternative media

Of course political situation and condition played a role in the alternative media but most of all the fact that alternative media was impossible to grow big as mass media namely TV, radio and cable played a bigger role. There was no free access to terrestrial wave and as public share broadcasting establishment movement shows, exponentially high fund was needed to run one. But there is no limit in the number of channel provided by Internet and only few computers and Internet circuit is needed to operate and distribute information. Thus it is simple, compared to airwave broadcasting.

Moreover, the regulation on Internet broadcasting is relatively weak compared to existing broadcasting area. It is true that country-specific regulation and capital intervention is growing at the moment but it is still weak compared to regulation on broadcasting and freedom of speech. Viewing it from this circumstance, there is indeed enough room and space in Internet to serve as alternative media.

2-5 Significance

Internet broadcasting as an alternative media has following significance.

First, a new beginning for depressed media movement.

Actually, discussions on domestic media movement were completely inactive. Regardless of media ownership issue and media reform led by the viewers, scope and content of independent media movement was given not enough attention. Fortunately, however, discussions on public access, which is seeing successful result in the US, Canada and South Africa, was possible in terms of operational procedure and policy of Internet broadcasting. In addition, whether it is terrestrial wave or air-wave, the electric wave itself has been literally dominated by country and capital, in this reality, we can consider Internet broadcasting as the starting point of independent radio movement and also operation of regional private broadcasting and regional FM broadcasting can be realized.

Second, it is meaningful in that it can cope with progressive front's media strategy in a changing media environment.

From the perspective of social movement, the challenge of seizing and expanding mass media has been continuously presented but there were not many successful cases. As a result, social movement fronts media strategy or journalism strategy targeting the public has almost bottomed out. In the past, when the freedom of expression and speech was suppressed illegitimate form  of journalism activity was represented by political newspaper and underground broadcasting. After when these illegitimate activities faded, the progressive social movement front had no outstanding media strategy of its own.

From a different perspective, even if popularization of media was a success, due to commercial or political reason it would have been degenerated and gone under the process of losing it criticism function. Popular journalism media such as Hangurae Newspaper, Language and Road, which championed progressive journalism, came into being and this progressive media alleviated discontent related to social inequality and suppression on freedom of speech. As a result, its commercial competitive edge was enhanced while characteristics of it were watered down because its democratic voice was hidden.

The media strategy wielded by progressive front should transcend the aspect of just grasping the media but consider how it can better adept itself in a changing media environment. In other words, there should be more thoughts given to the occurrence of new media, development of IT technology and integration of old media (newspaper and broadcasting) and also to the production structure of media and the ownership structure which is needed for  maintaining the media. Internet broadcasting is providing us with opportunity to seek popular media strategy in a changing environment.

Third, it can soften the power of institutional journalism.

As we have discussed before, excluding printing media (newspaper and magazine), we did not have any sort of plan for independent broadcasting. As environment for media is changing, according to the degree of efforts from social movement front, we can make Internet broadcasting a counter-media against institutional journalism.

Fourth, as media movement's international alliance activity is getting stronger, we should also need to consider the establishment of network through Internet.

This is because the success of old media relies on Internet and integrated development of media movement on international level can work easily through Internet.

3. Characteristics and Limit of Internet Broadcasting

3-1 What is Internet Broadcasting?

Figuer 2. The flow of Internet broadcasting and public broadcasting

Existing broadcasting consists of sender, receiver, message and channel. As for TV, through the broadcasting station's transmission tower, image message is converted into electric signal , rides on the electric wave, then reaches the antenna in viewers livings room and manifest itself through TV. Compared to this, Internet broadcasting replaces broadcasting station  and TV with computer and channel with Internet. The characteristics of Internet broadcasting, compared to other media, can be summarized as below table.

Table . Internet broadcasting and comparison with other media

type	format	number of channel	send	receive	storage capacity
Internet broadcasting	computer file	multi-channel	Internet (wire/wireless)	computer	Yes(file storage)
public broadcasting	electric signal	1broadcast 1 channel	wireless electric wave	TV receiver	No (filmed broadcasting)
Cable TV	electric signal	1broadcast 1 channel	wire	TV receiver	VOD method
Radio broadcasting	electric signal	1broadcast 1 channel	wireless electric wave	radio transmitter	No (filmed broadcasting)

As of now, there is various Internet broadcasting and it is runned with its focuses on some characteristics. If Internet broadcasting is categorized according to formats, it is as follows: audio broadcasting which is in symmetric with radio broadcasting and moving image broadcasting which is in symmetric with TV and cable broadcasting. According to storage and access method of media, downloading (downloading stored file) and streaming (real time relay) can also be considered. Moreover, composition, which is about changing the existing image into digital signal and producing, which is about directly producing the image can be considered.

3-2 Characteristics of Internet broadcasting

① Multimedia : printing + voice + visual media

Internet broadcast can provide text and image together and is also capable of sending not only image but also radio with only voice message due to high interoperability. In addition, by introducing the concept of web publishing, Internet can enrich itself by also having text data and image together with moving picture. Currently, Internet can provide multimedia function similar to this and it is a place where all formats are possible, whether its newspaper, radio, public broadcast or cable.

② Real time broadcasting and maintaining the constancy

Few years ago, it took few minutes and sometime few hours just to see moving picture via Internet. With the development of video compressing technology, now it is possible to enjoy, on a real time basis, just like TV. The content of Internet broadcast is stored as a file thus unlike TV, anyone can watch or listen anytime.

If there is enough storage capacity in the server and if certain circuit speed is maintained, Internet broadcast will know no time.

③ Multi-channel Broadcasting

Broadcasting through electric wave can only have one program and one channel while Internet can provide various channels at the same time. Users can just select the program one wishes to watch in the Internet broadcasting web site.

In addition, as for broadcasting with electric wave such as terrestrial wave and airwave, number of channel is limited and impossible to get access to the operational side due to stringent control from the government. Internet, however, has stark difference with old media in terms of providing infinite number of channels.

④ Dissemination through network

Existing broadcasting station shoot off electric wave through transmission tower or was able to provide service to places only where cables were laid. This is not only costly but also looking it from global perspective, it certainly has regional limits. Indeed, the issue of transmission will be solved when there is global broadcasting network with the development of satellite, but until then it will have many problems.

Internet broadcasting, however, uses web like network as its channel, which stretches itself throughout the world. Thus, as long as it is linked to Internet, any country can receive Internet broadcasting. Likewise, Korea's Internet broadcasting can be seen in places like New York, Paris, South Africa and Tokyo on a real time basis. In addition, as low-orbit satellite telecommunications develops the transmission scope will grow larger.

Table 2, Current development status of low-orbit mobile satellite telecommunications

System name	Invested company	Number of satellite	Investment Amount	Service Date	Others
Iridium	Motorola	66	$ 3.4 billion	1998	SK telecom, participating
Globalstar	Qualcomm, Lorla	48	$ 1.6 billion	Mid 1998	Hyundai, participating
Odyssey	TRW	12	$ 2.5 billion	fourth quarter of 1998
Teledesic	McCow, Microsoft	840	$ 9.0 billion	year 2000
Project21	Inmarset	12	$ 2.6 billion	1999	Korea Telecom, participating

As you can see from above table, more than 1000 low-orbit satellite telecommunications will be launched till year 2000. From the perspective of public access, this is not impossible.

With the development of wireless data telecommunications, not only the public access groups in the US and Canada but also international radio campaign groups are making attempts and at the same time preparing for Internet broadcasting.

⑤ Small-scale operational expense

It can differ according to the size but small-scale operation is possible in setting up and running a Internet broadcasting station. If it applies method such as downloading image file and recorded voice other than real-time broadcasting it can indeed be operated with low expense. This is why we have a term 'individual broadcasting station' and in fact there are some people who base their broadcast on everyday life of oneself recorded through video camera.

3-3 Internet Broadcasting Constraints

① Low accessibility

The biggest stumbling block in promoting Internet broadcasting is the small number of actual Internet users. The Internet is not such an easy-to-access medium as TV or radio. Furthermore, viewers need to acquire certain technological know-how before they can really watch Internet broadcast.

Another problem is it does not cost much to "air" Internet broadcast programs, but users have to burden high up-front investment. They must buy a computer and mount the applications, where as for airwave broadcasting, they only need to buy a TV.

In short, Internet broadcasting is not as accessible as TV or video because of low computer penetration and high cost. These are the barriers to promoting Internet broadcasting coming from the users. Technology development may resolve these issues, but we need to look into a type of Internet broadcasting that can reach as many people as possible.

② Technological barriers

Compared to TV and other types of airwave broadcasting, Internet broadcasting has many technological hurdles to overcome. We do not have wide enough bandwidth to have high definition nor high enough speed to show a natural flow of motion; we see pictures cut up into staccato.

Not only is the picture fuzzy, but also the size of the frame (1/5 to 1/10 of video monitor) is small due to narrow bandwidth. The number of cuts (frames) per second is also 1/10 that of video. The limited bandwidth affects not only the receiver, but also the server providing the Internet broadcasting. In other words, server bandwidth must be wide enough to accommodate as many users as possible.

These may be just technological issues. Technology development may address these issues soon enough, but we must seek the most suitable type of Internet broadcasting least affected by the current technological barriers.

③ Lack of contents

Airwave broadcasting is also operating an Internet broadcasting station, and there is a considerable number of commercial Internet broadcasting stations being born. They provide entertainment and news programs, not much different from existing programs. These types of programs have established a firm base in the mass media environment, but that is not to say non-commercial program is any less competitive. At the end of the day, it's the contents that matter. We must consider programming, planning, and production, and how the programs are related to social movement in different sectors.

④ Weak distribution structure

We need to look into distribution alternatives, different from commercial Internet broadcasting. On-line distribution structure may be created through Internet broadcasting, but a well-formulated website alone cannot handle or sustain distribution. In addition, when we take into account low accessibility, the benefit that is derived may be very small compared to the effort that goes into the whole process.

In order to have a distribution structure through Internet broadcasting, infrastructure need to be in place, and the person who is provided the materials must be equipped with the machines to actually view them. We are not building a shopping mall where we can select what programs to distribute on-line; instead, a network needs to be built encompassing different groups and regions through which programs can be distributed systematically.

4. Composition of Internet Broadcasting

There are many issues to be resolved before Internet broadcasting can act as genuine alternative media. What technology will we use for easy access? How will we capture what is not shown on the commercial broadcasting? How will we actively market our program, not just wait passively for viewers to see it? How will we establish the network of program producers?The above issues can be categorized into 1) medium selection according to accessibility 2)-programming & production 3) contents 4)-production system 5) distribution.

The following is a diagram depicting the flow of broadcasting.

Figure 3. Internet Broadcasting Diagram

Audio/Video  □□□               □□ Primary access □□□□□□ Internet broadcasting website

□□  contents  □□□                     □□ College/trade union internal broadcasting

Programming & □□      ↑       □□ Secondary access □□□□ Local private/FM broadcasting

Production    Social movement network                □□ Low-orbit mobile communication satellite

4-1 Audio & Video

Determining whether to focus on video or audio is the most important factor in technology selection. In other words, it is agreeing on a type of technology that allows as much public access with least friction against current technology. Internet broadcasting may rely primarily on audio and on video and text as back up. As technology improves, we will have to prepare for a shift toward moving image.

4-2 Programming & Production

We need to determine whether we are going to focus on programming (digitalize the produced materials and air them) or production. In general, broadcasting does both, but may have different priorities according to internal capability and conditions.

Production reflects the nature of the group and its activities on the programs. As for programming, if there is cooperation between the stakeholders, we have access to other programs created by other groups and can share contents.

4-3 Contents

In order for Internet to establish its position as an alternative media and to compete against commercial broadcasting we must select quality contents. Most important criteria for quality contents would be "live broadcast in the workplace".    To tell the truth hidden and distorted behind the institutionalized press and to point out issues not covered is the responsibility of an alternative media. Secondly, Internet broadcasting must be a cultural leader. By exploiting the merits of the Internet, we must search and disseminate leading or new cultures. Third, we need to have a global perspective. We can make the most of the worldwide web and inform the world what is happening in Korea, and vice versa.

4-4 Production network

We need a producers' network in programming, planning, and production. This is a critical issue that has to be taken into account from the very beginning, considering that Internet broadcasting is enabled by concentration of capabilities in independent media movement. The alliance among the parties determines the role and contents of the Internet broadcasting. The parties may be either directly involved in broadcasting or they establish a comprehensive network for various social movements to guarantee quality broadcasting and contents.

4-5 Website: primary access

Plans for Internet broadcasting require plans for a website. Web broadcasting is the primary access for Internet broadcasting. It introduces programs that have been produced and scheduled, and we must consider distribution and publication through the web. In short, we need a strategy to highlight the multimedia functions of the Internet.

4-6 Distribution: secondary access

Distribution through the web is the primary access for Internet broadcasting.     Secondary access is to disseminate Internet broadcasting through various channels to different parts of the society. One option would be to use the traditional method, which is distribution through organizations. Colleges and trade unions are one example. We may also cooperate with local private/FM broadcasting.

What is meaningful about this approach is we can take this opportunity to revitalize alternative media movement and take it to a higher level with each medium. All these individual relationships must be captured in one network, and we must look into the Internet functioning as a dissemination tool. The Internet is blurring the border between fixed line and wireless communication. In this vein, we have to give positive feedback to the low-orbit mobile communication satellite-related policies. We must exploit different media to make Internet broadcasting as good a wireless communication network as airwave broadcasting.

5. Prospects and Plans for Jinbo Network Center's Internet broadcasting

5-1 Jinbo Network Center's Roles and Plan

The social activists are not much interested in Internet broadcasting because they began to make appearances on the Internet and cyberspace only recently and it will take time for them to realize the importance of Internet broadcasting.    Therefore, video movement groups or people interested in Internet broadcasting may not get high enough return on their efforts, however small they may be compared to airwave.

Jinbo Network Center must take the current situation into consideration. As a leader in the independent network movement, it must establish policies and plans for promoting Internet broadcasting in the social movement.

① Share broadcasting resources

The social activist groups suffer from lack of contents and financial resources (for operating server and real-time server). They have to carefully consider what impact they want to have in the Internet broadcasting field. The progressive broadcasting sites must cooperate to expand the base for contents and co-purchase/operate real-time servers. Looking at it from a long-term perspective, individuals alone cannot exercise influence in the cyber media, so cooperation is all the more needed.

Jinbo Network Center is operating network resources and it must find ways to share them with groups planning to engage in alternative broadcasting.

② Cultivate open-mindedness through "Open Channel"

We must open up channels and encourage participation to cultivate open mind. Through the open channels, we start digitalizing the materials created by video movement groups. We must then support the distribution and play of these programs in the cyberspace. Not only groups, but also individuals and their work must be respected and have access to open channels.

③ Cooperative Production & Programming

Music broadcasting sites featuring people's songs are making appearances. Many progressive Web-zines are integrating audio, moving image, and other streaming technology on top of traditional text.

The important question to ask here is 'how to sustain Internet broadcasting in the social movement?' We must not think of just Jinbo Network Center's or individuals' Internet broadcasting, but cooperative system of production & programming. Currently, it is very difficult to secure professional producers, and that is why groups and individuals must work together to complement each other.

Each and every group's activities are important in the Internet broadcasting. Likewise, enhancing solidarity, resource sharing, and cooperative planning will enable long-term success of Internet broadcasting.

④ Reinforce role as alternative media

As has been mentioned before, in order to maintain the Internet broadcasting as one form of alternative media, we need special plans that can surpass institutionalized broadcasting. Internet broadcasting needs to show the real life and real voice of people that institutionalized broadcasting cannot show. News and broadcast programs are very important in that sense. The importance of on-the-spot media cannot be overestimated. Jinbo Network Center has been gaining a lot of experiences in broadcast programs since 1998 and has the technological capability to do real-time broadcast of moving image. Through these activities, it plans to reinforce 'liveness' and relay workers' and people's life stories.

5-2 Challenges ahead

In conclusion, Internet broadcasting strategy in the social movement is to create an Internet broadcasting station that has consistent planning, production, and programming. The reason is even though the activists may be engaged in different broadcasting activities, they have to share resources and exploit the Internet medium to compete against commercial broadcasting in the cyberspace.     In order to become a powerful alternative media, we need professional broadcasting players.

With this strategy in mind, Jinbo Network Center must provide resources for production and transmission and promote Internet broadcasting.

A lot of preparation work is needed to establish an Internet broadcasting station. Simply airing Internet broadcasts won't be making full use of the Internet as a broadcasting medium. Therefore, we need to cooperate with different agents to actually distribute and achieve secondary access. College and trade unions' broadcast programs may provide an opportunity to promote Internet broadcasting. Corporate CATV and lunch-hour broadcasts provide one-way communication to the unionists, but there is not enough training provided to the workers by the trade union on a regular basis. Therefore, if we have Internet broadcasting in full swing, we may take part in one of the CATV programs or run a separate show during the lunch hour. The trade union will begin to buy in to the idea.

We also need to seek alliance with existing media movement. Movement to establish a broadcasting station with public contribution and local private/FM broadcast may become our partners. We share results, contents, and work toward becoming a more accessible media. Lastly, we must establish global broadcasting network in line with the globalization of social movement.

Surveillance and the interception

of communications

Chris Bailey (LabourNet UK)

States all over the world have always carried out surveillance. They see it as an essential part of their existence. Many businesses also see surveillance as indispensable, both to find out what their rivals are doing and to keep watch on their employees as part of maintaining control over them.

Both business and state surveillance is often aimed at the organised labour movement. A large proportion of employers spying on workers is directed towards undermining union activity. Governments also regularly direct surveillance at the labour movement, particularly when they perceive the state to be threatened. There is evidence of state interception of telephone and email communications during the Korean general strike in 1996-97. Governments in Europe and North America claim to be much more democratic and try to deny they carry out similar activity against the labour movement. However, even the official British government figures on phone tapping reveal otherwise. We are told that phone tapping is only aimed at serious crime. But, the figures show a very big peak in 1984-85. Why? Was there a big increase in drug smuggling or murder in this period? Of course not; it is obvious that the increased phone tapping was directed against the British miners strike. The miners serious crime was to fight for their jobs and livelihoods.

Interception of communications, known as comint, is a major aspect of surveillance. As communication systems have become more sophisticated the methods of interception have also become more advanced. Governments around the world spend huge sums of money on developing and using interception techniques. Globally, it is estimated that about 15-20 billion dollars is spent annually in this way.

) Duncan Campbell. Interception Capabilities 2000. Report to the European Parliament. Summary Page. Available at http://www.gn.apc.org/duncan/stoa_cover.htm

It is vital that labour movement bodies, particularly those involved in communications, try to maintain up-to-date knowledge of comint methods if they are to guard against having sensitive material read. Sometimes such knowledge can provide easy remedies for some threats to information security. To take just a simple example: Most people are aware that an unscreened computer monitor will interfere with a radio placed near it. What they probably dont know though is that equipment exists that can detect such interference and use it to reconstruct the contents of a computer screen from up to 100 metres away. It is widely available to intelligence agencies. Just one small sheet of aluminium baking foil can shield the offending monitor and stop this particular security leak.

Whilst it is important not to become paranoid about security, it should be taken very seriously. We need to develop our own labour movement specialists to advise on these questions, drawing upon the knowledge of experts around the world who are worried about the use of surveillance by governments and business. Some of the key people involved in developing new communications technology see their work as having a tremendous potential for democratising society. They are concerned that those acting against civil liberties are undermining this. For instance, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, told a British Internet magazine:

□Personally, I feel that the arguments for a fundamental human right for two people to have a private conversation even at a distance outweigh the very serious fears of it being used by criminals and terrorists. When constitutions were drawn up, the right to have private conversations wasnt included because it was so darn obvious that you could just go in a cornfield and have one. Its a much better basis for society than having to have a third party listen in.□

) Internet Magazine. June 1998.

Labour needs to take its place within the wide movement of opposition to surveillance that already exists. It is vital that we ally with other social movements over this issue.

To learn how surveillance through comint takes place we need to examine the information that has been gathered about existing systems. In particular we need to look at what is by far the largest comint system in the world. It is called ECHELON. It was first developed jointly by the American and British governments. After collaboration in intercepting German wartime communications, the UK and USA made a secret agreement in 1947, known simply as UKUSA, to build global comint facilities. Three other countries Canada, Australia and New Zealand later joined UKUSA. The last two were particularly needed for monitoring Pacific Region communications.

A large number of other governments around the world have invested heavily in developing their comint abilities. Russia has a substantial system. So does China. Many Middle Eastern and Asian countries have developed significant systems. However, none of these compare with the enormous resources of ECHELON. By examining what is known about this system we can get some idea of techniques used by the others, which are considerably less advanced.

The core of ECHELON is a global chain of listening posts. These monitor and process data and voice communications from all over the world. Modern communications uses several different means for transmission. ECHELON intercepts almost all of them. Let us consider each in turn.

In the early days of ECHELON probably most communication was via cable. Governments involved in ECHELON built tapping facilities into the cable systems. In Britain, until recently, these were mainly owned by the state. In the US, the National Security Agency (NSA) entered into a series of secret agreements with private cable companies for tapping facilities. This activity was initiated in 1945 and was codenamed operation SHAMROCK. It remained unknown for 30 years until it was exposed through enquiries made because of the Watergate scandal.

The US uses submarines operating deep down in the worlds oceans to tap undersea cables belonging to countries not in ECHELON. The first submarine designed for this purpose was the USS Halibut, which started work in 1971 against the Russians. In 1979 it was joined in its activities by USS Parche. This submarine has carried on with its cable tapping operations until the present day. Its continuing value to the Clinton government can be estimated by the fact that its crew was highly commended every year from 1994 to 1997.

) Interception Capabilities 2000. Page 9.

A high percentage of modern communication uses microwave transmission, either via communication satellites or using intermediate land based relays. Either way, by accident or design, an enormous amount of the signals go into space, because microwaves dont bounce off the ionosphere. ECHELON monitors all signals passing through the worlds communications satellites and at the same time uses over 120 satellites of its own to capture microwave spillage signals transmitted into space. Some of these satellites consist of giant parabolic antennae that unfold in space. They target all forms of microwave communications including the latest mobile phone and pager signals.

As though this is not enough, an ECHELON monitoring station has recently been exposed in Britain that used a different technique. A specially constructed building, looking quite ordinary on the outside, had been placed in the path of a major microwave link. It was designed so the signals passed through it with hardly any interference, but could be monitored by equipment in the building. The building monitored all communication traffic to and from Ireland. This is in clear breech of international and European Union agreements between Britain and Ireland and the Irish government is preparing to take action over this.

ECHELON also monitors Internet traffic. Much of this work is carried out by US military intelligence. The vast bulk of it is done by simply collecting openly accessible material. Usenet traffic is monitored and computer robots using the same techniques as search engines such as Alta Vista regularly visit web-sites. In this case, however, the robots are compiling material of interest to ECHELON. Most labour movement web-sites have probably discovered that they get regular visits by these military robots. They may also have noticed that these visits happen more often when anything of interest to the US security or military establishment is occurring on the site. LabourNet had a dramatic increase when it was reporting the Harb-Is strike of workers at US military bases in Turkey.

Private email cannot be read in this way. It also cannot be monitored in the same way other communications traffic is. This is because it consists of scattered packets that have to be put back together to make a coherent message. However, because it still forms the main backbone of the Internet, an enormous amount of email traffic passes through the US. A former NSA employee has revealed that specialised software has been installed to collect traffic at nine major Internet exchange points (IXPs) in the US. There is evidence to show that GCHQ, the British establishment that operates within ECHELON, has been attempting to gain access to the main IXP in Britain and may have already done so. There seems little doubt that ECHELON is able to reassemble Internet email packets to monitor private email correspondence.

) Ibid. Page 10.

ECHELONs monitoring produces a vast amount of material that has to be scanned and filtered to obtain a relatively tiny amount of communications of interest to the governments involved. In the case of data transmissions this is done by searching for key words. Dictionaries of these key words are updated on a regular basis. Voice communication is monitored in a different way. Speech recognition software is not good enough to recognise key words. Voice recognition is used instead to pinpoint the voice fingerprints of targeted individuals.

What are the main purposes of this vast surveillance operation? The initial justification for it was undoubtedly the Cold War. The central target for ECHELON was originally the Soviet Union and its allies. However, it has always had other uses as well. It gives considerable economic advantages to the countries operating it. They are able to obtain information about the economic plans of governments and businesses in other countries. This use of ECHELON has intensified considerably since the end of the Cold War.

At the same time, ECHELON plays a major role in US foreign policy and its attempts to police the world. It means that the US is often much better informed about movements of social unrest in other countries than their own governments are. This information can be used to support governments that are favourable to the US and to oppose those that are not.

One very interesting document that relates to this question should be studied by everyone involved in social justice campaigning work using the Internet. It was produced for US military intelligence and is called The Zapatista Social Netwar in Mexico. It shows how activists from a wide range of social movements, operating particularly through the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), were able to affect the course of events in Mexico and stop the Mexican army from defeating and destroying the Zapatista guerrilla army. The document calls for the development of new methods by the US military to counter the work of what it calls netwarriors, who use the Internet for social campaigning purposes. It believes the military needs to do this so it can come to the assistance of governments friendly to the US and its free market policies that become threatened by Netwar. A central point in the document concerns the need to closely monitor the activity of social movement campaigners using the Internet. This points to a very real use of ECHELON against movements working for social justice. It is doubtful if the study itself could have been produced without information already gained through US state spying on Internet activity. It shows much more knowledge than the Mexican government itself had of what was behind the international movement that developed in support of the Zapatista army.

) http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR994/MR994.pdf

ECHELON activity is carried out by military and state intelligence services. Law enforcement bodies, such as the police, are not involved and do not have access to the information obtained. The main reason for this concerns US law. Technically, it is only legal for US military and intelligence services to direct their spying activities on foreign countries and not against US citizens. Although the NSA has had to admit that messages to and from American citizens have been picked up in the course of gathering foreign intelligence. Page 5., it does have to maintain at least some pretence of obeying the law. Because of this, the FBI is not allowed access to ECHELON comint so it can not be used for police activity against US citizens. Similar situations exist in other countries involved in ECHELON. Because of this, police comint operations have been developed separately from those of the military and intelligence services. This may not be the case in some other countries operating comint systems.

) Interception Capabilities 2000

In Europe this has had the effect of bringing police comint operations, unlike those of the intelligence services, under the rule of law, at least in theory. In Britain, attempts by the police to use evidence obtained from phone tapping resulted in a successful legal action against them in the European Court of Human Rights in 1984. This action was brought under a section of the European Convention on Human Rights stating that interference in an individuals privacy could only take place in accordance with law. Because of this, the British government was forced to introduce the Interception of Communications Act (IOCA) in 1985. This Act defined the circumstances under which the police could intercept communications. In theory, it could only be used to combat serious crime. However, it specifically introduced a definition of serious crime that included an offence involving a large number of persons in pursuit of a common purpose. Such activities as civil disobedience, illegal strikes, demonstrations not approved by the police, and a whole range of other actions planned by groups campaigning for social justice, can all come under this definition.

In 1993, the FBI held an International Law Enforcement Seminar (ILETS) at its training school in Quantico, Virginia, for police representatives from a number of countries considered allies of the US. There it proposed long term plans to bring new forms of communication such as the Internet within police comint operations. It called for agreements to be made that future communications developments would include built in facilities to allow police interception.

Since this meeting the ILETS group has steered government and communications industry policy across the world. It has operated in secret and behind the back of elected parliaments. In Europe, ILETS policy has been implemented by closed meetings of the Council of Justice and Home Affairs (CJHA). In 1998 the European Ombudsman upheld a complaint by the civil rights organisation, Statewatch, that it had been wrongfully denied access to information concerning these meetings.

In 1996, the CJHA started pressing the European Commission to introduce European wide regulation of the Internet. The reason given for this intervention was alleged use of the Internet by a Belgian child pornography ring that had outraged public opinion in Europe. Subsequently the European Commission and the European Parliament introduced an Action Plan for Safer Use of the Internet calling for close co-operation between Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and the police to deal with illegal and harmful content. The debate on this plan took place without most of the Commission or Parliament knowing of the existence of the FBI plans or of the ILETS group. Leaked Enfopol documents have shown that the police throughout Europe are working to these plans. Elected parliaments and the ISPs themselves have been deceived about the real reasons police want ISP co-operation.

Individual governments in Europe are now introducing legislation to implement the ILETS plans. The first to do this was the Dutch government, but others are following closely behind them. In Britain, the government is proposing legislation giving the police powers to read private email via ISPs. They will be legally forced to allow the police access and could face jail sentences of up to five years for tipping-off anyone whose email is being read.

Both intelligence and police comint can be defeated by secure encryption. They are well aware of this and worldwide activity has taken place, led by the US government, to prevent effective encryption from being available. The most deceitful aspect of this has concerned secret agreements between the NSA and companies supposedly offering secure encryption. Facilities have been built into encryption systems to enable the NSA to bypass them. The major Swiss encryption company, Crypto AG, trusted because it was supposedly independent from US influence, was proved to have made such a secret deal with the NSA. Other companies shown to have co-operated with the NSA in a similar manner include Microsoft, Netscape and Lotus. In 1991, AT&T withdrew a telephone system containing secure encryption in favour of one using special clipper chips produced in co-operation with the NSA.

Although governments are being forced into a retreat on encryption, because of heavy pressure from business interests demanding secure systems, they are still determined to stop this from interfering with comint operations. In Britain, the government is now attempting to introduce jail sentences of up to two years for people believed to be withholding an encryption key from the police. This proposed legislation would break the basic principle of human rights that a person is innocent until proven guilty, since they would have to prove they didnt have a key to avoid a conviction.

The Internet has grown up as an area of relative free debate and discussion not under the control of governments and big business. Voices can be heard that are suppressed in other media. Many movements campaigning for social justice have taken advantage of this. Labour is only gradually realising the potential and has been much slower to do so than many other social movements. The danger for us now is that government regulation and policing of the Internet may close the tremendous possibilities before we have even begun to use them.

Movements already using the Internet for social campaigning work are becoming aware of the increasing threat to their activities from state surveillance and regulation. They are beginning to prepare ways of fighting back. It is essential that labour Internet activists work with them and assist them on this. Considerable debate is taking place within the APC on defending Internet rights and those of us operating within APC should involve ourselves in this discussion. GreenNet, the APC affiliate in Britain, is planning to lobby and campaign against the proposed legislation giving police access to email. They will be starting an online discussion on this which will include debate on the international implications of government and police surveillance of the Internet.

I hope this document can make labour media activists more aware of state surveillance and comint activity and alert them to the dangers over its extension to the Internet. We need to plan a labour response.

For the immediate action against watch and control

) The text is about watch and outflow of private informations only in the cyber space

Kim, young sik (Cyberright Team)

Since 1990, informationized technologies has been surged into the society by the necessity of multinational corporations to dominate the world economy and for making labor market flexible in Korea. This technologies attempted to control the labor and is rapidly developed to control society. Especially since the crisis of Capitalistic economy in 1998, people felt the crisis of unemployment and that productivity is the most important thing. According to these consciousness, information-communication technology only underlines its 'so-convenient.' Therefore, a fact that technologies are determined by the class strife in a real space was covered. Equipment for watch, control on the labor and society are imported without any trouble.

Post-modernism caused excessive concealment of deconcentration of information- communication technology for 10 years. Also futurists like Alvin Toffler think that this technology accomplishes democracy. The most serious problem is present situation. The ideology of futurists succeed in segregating people from the debate on 'technology and human rights' or 'class distinction of technology' in work place and cyber space.

In this text, we can see some data and experiences about privacy in cyber space.

Computer Communication at Work Place

The inconsistency of cyber space is uncovered at work place which extremely shows the conflicted relations among the classes. In the beginning of 1970s, The deconcentrated team system has imported for the responsible self-control and for the escape from structural crisis of 'decrease of productivity and earning rate' caused by the technically- frozen labor process, subdivided labor composition and unemployment in the labor market. 'Integration of centralization and deconcentration' made this change possible not by the change of bureaucracy and centralized control system but by the electronic watch system.

Information-communication technology is basically automatized one. Therefore, 24 hours watch is possible and informations are automatically chosen, stored and edited. It also possibly chase and supervise every actions beyond time and space. However, because of its invisibility, it is easy to control labor. Laborer and people may not feel and understand its hidden intention for watch because it superficially pretend to admit the self-control of labor.

According to the special issue of <Mcworld> on privacy, investigations and examples on the industries like a communication and insurance bank say that approximately 80 percent laborers are under the inspection by the phone or computer and about 20 millions of Americans may be exposed by the electronic monitoring on their jobs. Also ILO report says that 20% employers has searched for laborers' computer files, voice mail boxes, e-mails and other network systems, etc. Almost has searched for left files about works, and more than 40% for e-mails, 28% for networking messages, 15% for voice mail.

Korea is not excepted. [(Research for watch at work place)] say that, in 108 corporations, 63% has the networking system. And in this system, 82.3% are operated to collect, store and keep on record the working situation and results of private laborers. Actually, Hankuk Tire used these records to oppress the laborers who had prepared for the construction of trade union. Also small and medium sized enterprises are developing many kinds of supervising programs.

Recently, to see the advertisements on the newspapers, we can see that programs for the mail inspection are often sold. These programs for watching laborers make easy to do that job without professional knowledges on the special system.

) There model programs such as Net Access Manager, WabTrack and Internet WatchDog.

Generally, in the case of criminal investigation, to set surveillance on a suspect the investigation section has to follow legal procedures and it is possible only when there is legal permission from the court, but a legal system to protect the capitalist from surveillance in the name of protection of the right of property in the case between the capitalist and the laborer is nonexistent, what is worse it is taken for granted  within the laborers so in actuality they are not even admitted as much privacy as the criminal.

A place for computer communications outside of the workplace - I

Examples of infringement of privacy is not limited to the working place. As the information society enlarges in a broad sense because the producer of intelligence merchandise is the user of the cyber space, that is to say the capitalist naturally starts to record and administer the consumers'(users) information. The space of computer communication is made up of informationalized technique, so without the concern of the persons who use the communication space the capital can collect and concentrate information such as behavior, hobbies, personal mail etc., and this is already in operation.

) Main examples are "cookie". cookies is a very small(under 4 kb) digital file.

In the case of the Intel company as in the circumstances of the development of the Pentium Ⅲ chip, there were characterized numbers put into each chip so when using the internet a technique to transmit the characterized numbers of the chips containing the computer users' information to the outside was chosen, and the transmission of the personal information is one-sidedly transmitted. Also, Microsoft(MS) in 1995 used Microsoft Network(MSN) included in a new operating system, the program designed to automatically transmit personal information to Microsoft when using computer communications, making confutation, then recently in the case of Windows 98 which MS developed the fact that they made it so the user wouldn't know that personal information can flow into MS also reflects this case. Not only a worldwide company like MS, but it is also naturally managed in Hitel and Chollian, and the fact that collected personal information flows out is already a known fact, companies like Goldbank that openly give money and buy personal information are appearing.

) Of course there is an option of stopping the function of outside transmission. But to most people who do not use computers professionally this option is useless. In this way it is 'one-sided'.

) To be able to discern individuals(ID) by the papers composed through word processing and Excel of MS they made 32 digit characterized numbers that contains users' computer information and when a number goes through registration of Windows 98 it is sent to MS. (look up electric-newspaper March 11, 1998 for details)

A place for computer communications outside of the workplace - II

The national organization is another subject that rules the computer communications area. Especially in underdeveloped countries that induced information- communication technology by state leadership from the start like Korea, it is hard to expect democratic elements.

In 1998 based upon data from the parliamentary inspection of the administration it has been acknowledged that they already have introduced a surveillance equipment called 'data modem intercept' that even transmission/reception of  information in private through either industrial or personal computer communications is possible to be secretly monitored by the procuratorial authorities. And in the first half of 1999 according to the data of the parliamentary inspection of the administration, in Korea's representative PC communication companies like Nownuri, Chollian, Hitel and Unitel it has been known that last year there were 906 cases of personal information that was offered to inspection organizations like police, national intelligence etc. and following that there were 562 cases of personal information that was offered to the national intelligence, what is more there were 86 cases in the first half of this year of the user's ID and code number being safely transferred to the inspection section through ID surveillance that made it possible to snatch all of a specific person's information. Along with this, if information flow-out in Netsgo, Channel i and other communications companies is added it is presumed to be much more. It has been stated that PC communication companies went so far as receiving request from the inspection section to offer development of new technology to get information, and after being requested by the inspection section to be able to see the members' E-mail, they mobilized a technical team to make it possible to refer to the contents of the E-mail without the code number and they also have employees wholly responsible for managing the requests of the inspection section to offer information.

) In data from the parliamentary inspection of the administration made known by Kim, Chae-chun, a member of the National assembly the Prosecutor-General's Office has purchased 1 data modem intercept, 4 surveillance fax machines, 3 phonetic tapping systems, 2 multichannel surveillance systems etc. (Nov. 3, 1998, the Hangyorae Newspaper)

) Donga ilbo Sept. 11, 1999

The possibility of a national organization to violate privacy through computer communications technology does not exist within one country. Recently Window NT/95/98/2000 of MS, [NSAkey] was discovered so that not only personal but information subordination between nations is being worried.

) 14) There were 2 Keys found in window95/98/NT/2000, in one Key the word NSA was said to be found. "http://www.computerworld.com/home/news.nsf/all/9909035winkey"

What should we do?

It is needed that privacy is defined, in a positive meaning, the right to manage and control the information about oneself. It means that not only each own privacy must not be infringed, but also one can check and correct his/her information in order to prevent misunderstanding previously which may happen in case that individual information is not correct.

With the base of this principle, privacy can be permitted as a labor right by trade union through introducing "new-technology agreement" in a collective agreement. We can example the agreement that public union confederation in Newzealand made. According to the agreement, no technical chase can't be allowed. Computer system is not used in monitoring workers' private activity and position, and also the information monitoring work group's activity can be easily accessed to people who are influenced by the information. It is required that workers and public union confederation know whole process in gathering private information, and they can discuss or change the matter.

Considering that workers in Korea spend most time in their workplace, we have to focus on privacy protection campaign in workplace. However, in order that the right of privacy will be accepted as a legal right, the objection campaign against watching camera in workplace has its limitation.

In a recent example that police tapped wives' of trade union managers, it is revealed that capital and state owning information-communication technology watch and control people in or out workplace. Particularly, public servants' frigidity about individual privacy protection forces us to manage the problem hurriedly. Some methods that workers cope with the problem outside workplace are as below.

First, as a part of actual reaction, there is a campaign of revising or abolishing concerned law. So far, there have existed two legal items - the 54th article 3rd clause in the electric communication business law and the 199th article in the criminal procedure law - related with the outflow of private information in computer network. These two laws enable the investigating authorities to outflow private information without a judicial judgement, along with an ambiguous standard of the necessity in investigation. As a result, under the investigating authorities' one-sidely judgement, they can chase and watch every individual activity legally.

Also E-mail is tapped by the 199th article in the criminal procedure law and the communication secret protection law. According to the latter, E-mail stored in a hard disk can't be protected, but only E-mail during the transmission can be kept secret.

However, only the reaction against those laws can't have a big weight in Korea. Even though those laws are applied legally, the campaign for the revision and abolishment of concerned law in the parliament has its limitation, seeing the fact that law authorities issue the tapping warrant almost by 100%. Therefore, it is needed that we gather examples for those laws to be misused and inform people of them. Furthermore, this mood should be widespread in a whole laborer-people campaign through public hearing and open forum. Also, trade union should make efforts to teach privacy protection in a course of their computer education and to let this campaign be connected with observation against the state's power. For this reason, electronic fingerprint stamp opposition movement is protesting against data correspondence technologies like electronic fingerprint stamp system the government is promoting although these are not cyber space. The opposition movement is an organization of public laborers who are confronting this system of watch and control over the whole nation. Decisive measurements are needed to expand the understanding of privacy rights of the people and for them to take speak up and defence themselves.

Second, active use of independent networks like progress network. since the system operator has authority within the cyber space, protection of privacy are depended on administration agreements and the conscience of the operator. It is true that the commercial PC communication corporations in Korea is subordinated to the capital and the government, as previously mentioned in the parliamentary inspection of the administration data. But networks independent from capital and the government has the advantage of protecting laborers from violation of privacy and preventing inhuman inspections. Especially training on privacy protection and plans for supplying programs included in the progress network in Korea are very important on protecting privacy rights of public laborer.

The third method is to send the coded E-mail, although it might be unfamiliar. Hackers, state organs and system operators are 'god' like beings in cyber space, able to do any they wish. Protecting oneself is the safest way to protect one's personal life. A movement to use codes routinely in cyber space is the best way to generalize this method. PGP(Pretty Good Privacy) program is a world-wide recognized E-mail encoding program that does not have the keys which can unlock everything and since its is a source release program it can be downloaded for free from cyber space. By activating this program in cyber space training at progress network, working place or social organizations, the program can be generalized. Social labor organizations that uses E-mail must receive training and then the program will spread through members of the organizations.

Conclusion Substitute

Maybe information technology, representative of cyber space is falling over as a watch and controlled increasing space rather than a liberal mutual space? Cognition that only selected one's can have access on information technology human rights in cyber space means that information technology like cyber space is not a technology where human rights can be strengthened but a place where human rights can get deteriorated.

But technology is related with society and new technology reform is specified and selected by each capital and power relation between capital and laborer. This means that the capability of public laborers control is simple just as the control of capital information technology referred early. But in reality, the true image of public laborers.

Being adapted very fast and desperate to a new change, capital is beyond the perception and countermeasure of laborers and people. This means that the quick countermeasure of laborers and people is required in cyber space as well as on the new technologies.

[appendix 1] Police paper to requesting E-mail Wiretapping

this paper included the following contents

"Police request ISP to give ID, personal data and email of the following email user by the article 199 of criminal case lawsuit act.

a. email transmission records

-98. 6. X. XX:XX:XX PDT, 210.XX.X.XX-> www.hotmail.com

-98. 6. X. XX:XX:XX PDT, 210.XX.X.XX-> www.hotmail.com

b. name deduced : XXXXXX"

* This paper indicate email is not protected by telecommunication security law in Korea`

[Appendix 2] How to protect your privacy at your workplace

) This article is cited and a little is modified from "special report: privacy in the digital age" written by Susan Stellin at CNET

1. Delete mail as you read it

It's not a foolproof solution, but deleting messages after you've read or sent them at least make them harder to access. Be sure to check the perferences in your email program and choose any option that allows you to change the setting that allows you to delete mail from a central server

2. Use a separate account for personal mail

If you need to send personal or confidential messages, don't use an account provided by your employer--set up a separate one with ISP on your home computer. If you install software for a personal account on your workplace computer, your employer may still be able to access any email left on your hard drive.

3. Ask your employer about privacy issues

Currently there's no law that requires companies to notify employees about electronic monitoring, but you should ask. when there is no law, it is subject to the power relation between employee and employer. Check with your MIS manager or human resources department about whether or not your company monitors email or Net use, and what circumstances.

4. Use an anonymous remailer

An anonymous remaileris a free service that allows you to send email or post a message to a newsgroup without revealing your name or email address. Community ConnXion provides an easy interface for sending anonymous mail. You can also get a list of free remailers at Raph Levin's home page. I think Jinbonet can educate anonymous remailer to labor

5. Ecrypt confidential message

The most secure way to keep email private is to encrypt confidential messages. Essentially, encryption allows you to translate a message or file into code that recipient then decodes. The most popular encryption program freely available on the internet is called Pretty Good Privacy(PGP), created by Philip Zimmermann.

[Appendix 3] Workplace privacy Guideline

1. Employer should negotiate with Trade union when he will adopt new technology into the workplace

2. If the new technology is genuine labor surveillance technology. It should not be adopted into the workplace

3. If It is unable to avoid adopting surveillance technology because of workplace security etc. employer should obey the below guideline

) This guideline is modified from OCED privacy guideline

① The purposes for which personal data are collected should be specified not later than at the time of data collection and the subsequent use limited to the fulfillment of those purposes or such others as are not incompatible with those purposes and as are specified on each occasion of change of purpose. the purpose should be set by negotiation between trade union and employer (Purpose Specification Principle)

② There should be limits to the collection of employee data and any such data should be obtained by lawful and fair means and, where appropriate, with the knowledge or consent of the data subject. (Collection Limitation Principle)

③ Employee data should be relevant to the purposes for which they are to be used, and, to the extent necessary for those purposes, should be accurate, complete and kept up-to-date.(Data Quality Principle)

④ Employee data should not be disclosed, made available or otherwise used for purposes other than those specified in accordance with [the Purpose Specification Principle] except: (a) with the consent of the data subject; or (b) by the authority of law. (Use Limitation Principle)

⑤ Employee data should be protected by reasonable security safeguards against such risks as loss or unauthorised access, destruction, use, modification or disclosure of data.(Security Safeguards Principle)

⑥ There should be a general policy of openness about developments, practices and policies with respect to employee data. Means should be readily available of establishing the existence and nature of employee data, and the main purposes of their use, as well as the identity and usual residence of the data controller.(Openness Principle)

⑦ Employee or Trade Union Participation Principle: An employee should have the right:

a) to obtain from a data controller, or otherwise, confirmation of whether or not the data controller has data relating to him;

b) to have communicated to him, data relating to him within a reasonable time; at a charge, if any, that is not excessive; in a reasonable manner; and in a form that is readily intelligible to him;

c) to be given reasons if a request made under subparagraphs (a) and (b) is denied, and to be able to challenge such denial; and

d) to challenge data relating to him and, if the challenge is successful to have the data erased, rectified, completed or amended.

⑧ A data controller should be accountable for complying with measures which give effect to the principles stated above. (Accountability Principle)

4. Employer should set regulation which is set by negotiating with Trade union for securing employee data. the regulation should be included the following clauses

* formal policies about the use of email and the internet

* article about stopping email interception and wiretapping or hard disk scanning etc

* penalties for regulation in fraction

5. Employer should inform their employee about electronic monitoring.

A report of the struggle for people's privacy against Japanese Government

yasuda yukihiro (JCA-NET)

I'm glad to have a chance to give a short report about a struggle concerning privacy issues by people in Japan.

At first, I'd like to explain in a brief. July, 1999, power party LDP(jimin-to) and LP(jiyuu-to), conservativeparty, and middle-going Komeito expressed their political cooperation, and started so called 'JIJIKO' coalition government. They were overwhelming majority in Japanese Diet. They forced to pass nationalistic laws such as "Hinomaru-Kimigayo (national flag and national anthem)" law, wiretapping law and revision of resident's inventory law (including national resident number article). Now they are proposing "Aum new law", which is said to aim to control "Aum shinri kyo". However, in fact, people say this law is aiming to control not only Aum but anti-government parties.

And more, JIJIKO is watching for a chance to revise the Constitution of Japan, which we are proud of as "peace constitution", not have been revised for over 50 years no matter how strong movement to revise from right-wing parties. We regard those nationalistic, anti-democratic and anti-constitutional laws are the first step to revise the Constitution of Japan. In other words, they are aiming at opening the way to the war for Japan, which we are strongly against of.

A fear of Japan's nationalism or militarism is not only a problem of Japan. Korean people may know of this very well. Don't rewind clock. We, Japanese people, strongly hope to you for solidarity against Japanese militarism.

Well let's discuss privacy issues.

In Japan, the Constitution of Japan prohibits to break secret of communication as well as censorship. This article had been added because Japanese police and information agency cracked down ruthlessly on anti-government movement through their censorship and wiretapping, and it led Japan to cruel and reckless war at last. Because of this article, police has been prohibited to wiretapping officially. In 1986, the fact that police had been wiretapping on the telephone line of an executive of JCP (Japanese Communists Party) had revealed. They got strong criticism but they kept denying the fact of the wiretapping until now. However, from a testimony of witness, who made wiretapping device for police, people said that this case was merely a tip of an iceberg.

However, since several years ago, police wanted to officialize wiretapping, and they made every lobbying. Since 1997, they proposed a set of laws called "structurized crime law" including wiretapping law at last.

This law aims to crack down the "Mafia". Despite of many legislation to control Japanese violent crime groups, or Mafia, those are not so successfull for the crime such as mass murdering by Aum shinri kyo.

In 1997, at the time that the wiretapping law had proposed, JCA and Japanese networker began to organize a movement for anti-wiretapping. We made a group named "Stop wiretapping, networker's liaison party" Of course, other NGOs, lawyers, journalists, labor unions made their opinion against the law successively. The bill seemed to be difficult to pass the Diet. Because Japanese Diet has the two-chamber system, even if the bill had passed the Lower House, it was difficult to legislate if the Upper House denied the bill. At that time, the majority of the Upper House was a nongovernment party, so there was low possibility for the bill to pass the Upper House. "Stop wiretapping, networker's liaison party" began to have many symposium, workshop continuously from July. We did also a campaign using email and WWW.

However, real movement began 1998, when the governmental party decided to legislate the bill in 1999. We organized a group named "Network anti surveillance project" and started real movement with various groups.

In this stage, the members of assembly of nongovernmental party as well as ordinary people seemed not to realize the danger of the bill.

Japanese people's sence of privacy is not different to Korean's. Ordinary people showed a tendency that "I'm not related because I don't have any relation to crime", that was the result of the propaganda from government side that wiretapping bill was needed to investigate vicious crimes. At the year of 1998, about 80% of people approved the bill.

Adding to this, Social Democratic Party and Communists Party were against the bill from the beginning, but Democratic Party and Komeito did not determine their stance for the bill. We started our struggle from to appeal to people and to make turn. Democratic Party and Komeito's attitude to opposite side.

In order to this, we made many documents to point our the problem of the bill, and started to lobbying to members of assembly. In 1999, Democratic Party determine their position toward opposite to the bill at last, but Komeito was not determined yet, so the target of our struggle was concentrated on them.

During this, we had a symposium to which we invited Mr. Barry Steinhard, who was a former president of EFF and now a chairman of Cyber Liberties Task Force of ACLU, and made Internet campaign. JinboNet had joined this campaign from Korea and supported us. With those acts, the movement to oppose to wiretapping law was gradually bigger and bigger. The bill's problem was, not only normal phone line but also every communication including Internet and other digital communication had includen in the bill as wiretapping target. At the beginning, however, the members of assembly and, even staff of the Ministry of Justice which made the bill, had not so sufficient knowledge about wiretapping

the Internet. Because of this, we began to point out the contradiction or technical difficulty of the bill. We also had lectures about the problem of wiretapping the net for the members of assembly and journalists.

Unfortunately, in spite of our effort, Komeito joined to governmental party, and the bill had passed the Lower House in June. From the time, our struggle against the bill was concentrated into next vote at the Upper House. JCA-NET utilize the Internet fully, and did everything we were able to do. Our effort made 60% of people's attitude turn to opposite to the bill (note that about 80% of people approved the bill at first!) However, in August, 1999, the majority of the Upper House took a vote by force and the bill was approved.

The problem of Japanese wiretapping bill and our struggle hereafter

In Korea, Japanese wiretapping law seems to be regarded as more "progressive" then Korean Communication Secret Law. In Korea, wiretapping without warrant is approved is awful indeed, but I think Japanese wiretapping law is not better than Korean because it violate privacy. In fact, Japanese police has been doing illegal wiretapping to get information about anti-government groups. The wiretapping law this time aims to give permission for such wiretapping and we regard this law as an excuse to get official money for wiretapping, research and development of wiretapping technologies.

Here I'd like to show the problem of the wiretapping law.

First, the secret of communication or the right to privacy is very important right involved in basic human right. We never approve any wiretapping because it injures this basic and sublime right.

Second, Japanese wiretapping law is said to have strong restriction compared to Korean law, but we are really doubtful whether those restrictions works. For example, Japanese wiretapping law permits only wiretapping concerning "drag", "gun", "group stowing", "organizational murder". However, the law permits wiretapping to prevent possible crime in future and wiretapping on a separate suspicion. Those shows us that the law is not restrict to only those four crimes.  Third, the law requests to have the presence of observer from third party. However, the observer watches only installation of wiretapping devices and formalities of the procedure. The observer is not able to check whether the contents of ongoing wiretapping is legal or not.

Fourth, the fact of wiretapping is given to the target person, but the information is not given to the person who was speaking with the target person. It means, there is no way to know whether I was wiretapped or not if I'm not the target.

Fifth, Japanese court, just like as Korean court, issues a warrant when it is requested almost freely. One serving judge claimed that more than 99.9% of the request for warrant are approved.

Sixth, there are no examination on the tapping of the Internet. It means, even completely irrelevant communication could tapped by police.

Seventh, there are room to alter the tapping record by police.

Eighth, there are fear that the activity of NGO or journalists could restricted.

Not only above, there are many problems on the law. However, the wiretapping is, so long as the wiretapping is secret in its nature, very much unclear and non democratic technic of investigation. Even in some serving police and prosecutor say that the crime that is not captured will not captured even if they taps. Add to this, criminals are using cipher technology recently, so it's no use to tapping if police want to capture criminals of really huge criminal group.  From those reason, some NGO say that the wiretapping bill is not to capture criminals but, in fact, to watch over people by police.

However, fortunately, we can use cipher technology in Japan while not in Korea. There are cipher software such as PGP in US to prevent from tapping. We promote to use PGP and other cipher software in order to deprive power from wiretapping. We can get security software as open source, so JCA-NET offers our users to use SSH, PGP and other various security/cipher technology to assure user's safetiness of communication. We also have workshop how to use those security software.

Our final goal is, however, not to use cipher software, but to discard the wiretapping bill. NGOs that have been opposed to the wiretapping law begin to move toward the discarding the law with the members of assembly, journalists and lawyers.

For this, "the sence of privacy" is the most important thing, we think. Japanese people's sence of privacy is not so good. "I don't talk anything illegal", "I will accept because it's needed for police" ... we hear often something like this. Progress of digital technology drives our privacy into dangerous place. I believe that only the awareness of privacy by ordinary people can discard such an awful wiretapping law. We hope to prevail our campaign on the privacy issue.

Also, Japanese police is old fasioned organization. After WWII Japanese old police structure was dissoluted, but there are many police officer who have still old sence. We have to watch and check what the police is doing.

Moreover, we must take care of not only wiretapping by police, but tapping by private sector. Especially, censorship and surveillance in office and factory is done widely also in Japan, we are strongly against those invasion of worker's privacy.

Korean people continues tough campaign against anti electronic ID card, and successful at last. We will continue our struggle until last like Korean activists.

Informatization of Science and Technology Labor Union through Using Homepage

-Understanding of informatization should be preceded Informatization movement

Ik-Sung Lim

(National Science and Technology Trade Union)

1. Introduction

STLU(SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY LABOR UNION) consists of 30 branches(government contribution research institution of Science and Technology section), 3500 union members. The scale is small but in 1994 April it dismissed company union and constructed new union according to each product from the bottom. Despite the self-confidence of setting up as single union firstly, there was still remained gap, conflict and misunderstanding among branches. So one of strategic methods to reduce those kinds of problem was Homepage.

Namely as opening the epistemic structure in cyber space to the members of 30 branches locally dispersed, it intended to combine each branch by letting them have feeling of the consciousness of we are the same. This is the first reason why construct Homepage and solving the problem of miscommunication between local branch and center is second reason.

□ Mutual communication structure between mass union members and the leaders beyond one side command

□ Open structure that make possible to meet all members without limitation of time or space

Indeed these two factors are very epochal and symbolic implication. Moreover, they show that the reason why movement camp should hasten informatization, which will be elaborated later. Here I will find out what task they fulfill through homepage, and further infer what kind of job they will support in managing organization unions usual activity which is possible through Internet.

2.The condition of using and managing STLU(SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY LABOR UNION) Homepage

1998 First of March. It has opened on the anniversary day of Sam-il Independency movement as meaning of Independent from each and all related to information and communication. It wanted perfect independence from all commercial computerization system as well as each organs. So induced Renux managing system and made all CGI program and bulletin program by itself during six months preparatory period. Why we set down web as basis of managing method is that we felt PC communication is not only relatively close and limited but also restricted to unlimited extension of information and communication technology. What series of task STLU(SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY LABOR UNION) homepage want to support is that various tasks to maintain organization , secondly education and propagation activity, and thirdly tools for solidarity, which is close to significance categorization not time procedure.

2.1 The situation of homepage utilization, now 1999 October

*the number of inquiry :112,000 times (a year and half since opening)

*affiliated members with joining yard: 1059 members (recently August-20, October-22 join)

non-union members:249

*bulletin board using degree: central bulletin board 14, branch board 90, not-open board 4

(in the early management company work charger has rather interest and often contact than the chief executives of unions)

2.2 What is in process now

At present bulletin board and data room is managed centrally and schedule management and simple public survey function are there too. There is complicated part of making HTML document by one in managing homepage, so as to reduce this burdensome, programitizing all passable things into bulletin board form which result in reducing hands. CGI program which is major constituent of homepage is made up of C language using gdbm library to strengthen search hereafter.

If log in homepage, firstly STLU(SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY LABOR UNION), alliance, and etc will appear sequentially in small window over main frame. It doesnt need to do HTML work on daily schedule separately, server confirm the date and distribute applicable data. The process of inputting schedule is made by CGI program too, so reduce hands to the utmost, and make possible to show past schedule by year or month. Including scribbling usual contents and the minutes of central committee, central executive committee and representatives conference is open to the public through bulletin board and central committee determination or direction is delivered. Result of branchs perform and each branchs issue(or struggle situation) is also informed by branch bulletin board so immediately able to share the struggle atmosphere between central and other branches. Besides put common knowledge related to science and technology as data construct, and press news related to science and technology sector contribution institution.

One of the biggest problem which raised in managing bulletin board is inspection and restriction. Of course because STLU(SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY LABOR UNION) operates self-system, it is rather free from outside checking except hacking. However uneasiness of self-inspection is still remained in members, suppose that criticize leaders or union itself and then reluctant to give legitimate comment for fear that their position would be exposed. But STLU(SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY LABOR UNION) protect all of comments whether it is anonymity or real name from erasing and even manager cannot trace the origin of anonymous comment. So those movement group which pursue informatization should consider it.

Additionally one of distinction of bulletin board is setting up the approach limits in accordance with user. For example bulletin board and data base that serve to only central committee member, and also some space that provided only producers for producing and editting work paper, or festival planning conference and so on, not-open bulletin board is managed as each issues, which are not perfectly operated not-open, just for draft because of time saving for executives to interchange their ideas. This not-open bulletin board taken example of producing work paper will open as certain time goes informing what was dealt, what was difficulty to produce work paper like edit epilogue. During open to the public union members put the reading impression and desire and then producer group prepare for next work press based on them.

And also through information center, official document, and of course struggle prompt report, statistic data and so on is put on homepage, which is produced by STLU(SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY LABOR UNION). This part is expected to extend to information center on the basis of web, it is explained later. On the other hand take pictures of all sorts of events and struggle situation by digital camera and keep them as file and exhibit and organize reporter room separately so that they can reflect report materials and demand particulars of reporters.

Schedule table, bulletin board, all sorts of information center and arrangement of active film and etc. which was explained above, is made in prediction of over ten years. All information and bulletin board has a each distinctive role and is going down on the history in the homepage server. So homepage manager might be warehouse keeper to protect documents of struggle, and members who put comment or article on the web even small scribbling might record the history of STLU(SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY LABOR UNION) struggle as qualification of master.

2.3 What is planning to do through using homepage

1.	At present the condition is just working on web server, but if necessary e-mail address and even web hosting will be provided to members.

2.	Extend documents data program today further and construct information center by using web. Web information center should go hand in hand with systematization of documents data of office, plan to make it easy to search keeping all sorts of data such as conference data, education information, policy information and including an official document from outside and etc. organized into each category. In other words construct STLU(SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY LABOR UNION) web information center which make possible to search on the web then if log in internet even in South Pole, its possible to work on STLU(SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY LABOR UNION) task.

3.	Its possible to think about CGI program and web lecture which is able to teach and learn on the on-line that permits bilateral communication. It can manage details such as labor movement history, labor laws, or labor precedents(and philosophy and ideology education) and so on as column, Q & A form, or forum beyond limitation of time and space. It could achieved easily by application of bulletin board program today in company with information center.

4.	Extend public survey program so that can play the role of investigation and statistics and also prepare method that make possible to affiliate with union through internet.

5.	Select branch information and communication charger, promote for branch to make branch homepage for publicity and advertisement, and then working together with center homepage. Shortly bulletin board and information center is going to be managed integrated and plan to manage branch pride or condition of branch activity separately depends on branch homepage.

6.	Complete chatting program at present. When program is finished then once try to perform small non-regular discussion in this chatting room and gradually modify and supplement it to make possible regular discussion. If this will be extended then cyber general meeting will be possible, which allow the space 3500 union members to join the space.

7.	Besides strengthen the function of sending notes to make members familiar with homepage, support homepage construct by organizing small group in homepage, manage BBS kind of private bulletin board that will consist of column or usual gossip, or link a variety of information that members need so as to make easy to navigate information sea.

Half of what enumerated above will be constructed by March next year, within a year completed.

3. For informatization of movement camp

3.1 Predictions of change organization management resulted from informatization

As mentioned previously what bilateral communication is possible caused by informatization and overcome the limitation of space and time would bestow motive enough to change determination structure of union. That is, from vertical communication to horizontal. Presuppose what will happen:

1.Vertically the direct connection between center leders and member is possible so intermediary organization system would be unnecessary or shifted to other form. Shortly, each member can get the determination issue from the center individually, vice versa.

2.	Horizontally the gap among branches with sharing data and far-off each branch members communication, and there is some possibility to emerge new type of sub-organization instead of branch. For example small group that made up by those who share same hobby or interest will be turn up in communication space in labor union.

3.	Indeed the fulfillment of this possibility is up to how to draw mass members to communication space. So leaders of movement including activists who are charge in information and communication should heve broad understanding of informatization.

3.2 Right awareness of informatization

As we now come to informatization society, although economical analysis on big flow of capital is important but we shouldnt look over sociological anaylsis on how individual consciousness structure change. Briefly, it is change of individual sense from collectivization to individualisation and process from national centralism to out of nationalism. Some sociologists who worry about information society insist that individualization of society means dehumanization and anti-partnership, however, whether it means negatively or positively, this individualization goes on over all society.

The individualization and decentralization which have been developed slowly with industrial society get speedy with the emergence of information-communication technology, especially internet(including personal computer). Meeting or conversation which has been impossible because of regional (or time) restriction has been made and people prefer meeting other people who has same hobby, interest or ideology to meeting people who share same space(society, state).3 Even though it is virtual space, it makes possible for people to share more various information and it results in broadening of individual confidence.4

This confidence turns individual's negative action to positive action. Industrial society means that individualization is 'alienation', but in the information society, it is new 'societal-subjective concept'. Is it nonsense to suggest that our society is going to society which can give benefit to group through individual value realization, not to society which sacrifice individual benefit for societal benefit? This is real liberation, liberation of human being, liberation of labor, and next society which we should achieve by informatization

By this context, we should utilize informatization as step going to the society of 『society where free development of individual has meaning(1848 German ideology』,『society which regards free development of individual as basic condition of free development of everybody(1848 declaration  of the Commuists)』,『high level society which based on the theory of free individuality(1883 Capitalism vol.1)』. These are our historical duty and the right understanding of informatization should be proceeded.

This world will be changed by how movement group accept informatization. It can go to real liberation of individual and liberation of human being or fall into the hell of capital.

4. Conclusion

There are many opinion about informatization society, for example, it is just ruling ideology of post-capitalism, it will make chance to bring participation democracy with overcoming limitation of parliamentary democracy, it helps to come into being of new community or it will destroy traditional society. Surely, it has two faces and each face has various expressions. From this view point, we should analyze without having unripe hope or groundless fear. Based on this understanding, we should think about how to information-communication technology use it for movement group.

So, we have to consider not only technological aspect but also societal aspect. All this should be based on the real necessity.

The state of labour media

in South Africa in 1999

Anna Weekes

(Media Officer, South African Municipal Workers Union)

1999 has been a year of many contrasts for the labour movement. On the one hand, organised labour under the banner of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) helped sweep the African National Congress (ANC) towards an overwhelming victory in the country's second democratic elections on June 2nd.

On the other hand, the government's Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) macro-economic policy has attacked workers through public sector budget cuts, an imminent review of labour legislation to make it more investor friendly, and the undermining of collective bargaining rights in the drawn out public sector wage dispute.

The lowering of tariffs to far below even GATT levels caused 22 thousand job losses in the textile industry. Horrific stories abound about textile workers arriving at their workplaces only to find the factories closed down and their jobs and pension funds stolen out from under them; and women textile workers being forced into lives of prostitution in order to support themselves.

It has been a key feature of labour media coverage in 1999 that globalisation has not featured as a major issue affecting workers. The SA Clothing and Textile Workers Union's call for the immediate freezing of tariffs at their current levels has not been publicised. The National Union of Mineworkers protest against the European and International Monetary Fund gold sales and accompanying job losses only received major press coverage when a mining boss stepped in and added his voice to the same protest.

The Food and Allied Workers Union's food boycott of Italian multinational Parmalat following a six week strike by workers, was carried by the press as being violent and a move that would discourage investors and ruin the economy. FAWU's complaint that multinationals buy up South African companies and then ignore the labour legislation of the country, was not reflected as valid in the press. The World Bank's foray into direct municipal governance, donating about 5 million US dollars to the City of Johannesburg to implement an unpopular privatisation plan, was hailed by several national newspapers.

A major issue featuring South African workers in 1999 has been the attack by bosses on collective bargaining rights and agreements. This began at the end of July when Public Services Minister Geraldine Fraser Moleketi implemented a pay increase for about two million teachers, nurses, police and other public sector workers that was still under dispute. Bosses in the private sector happily took their cue from the Minister. SAMWU faced a situation where a 30 year water privatisation contract under dispute in Nelspruit, was implemented nevertheless.

The country's biggest union, the National Union of Mineworkers is dealing now with a situation where Canadian Placer Dome plans to retrench 2500 workers in contravention of the Labour Relations Act.

Global union events held in the country have attracted little or no publicity. Recently, the Southern Initiative on Globalisation and Trade Union Rights (SIGTUR) was held in Johannesburg. This was an important initiative, aimed at uniting workers in the South against globalisation, but was not covered by the mainstream press.

While I was preparing for LaborMedia, a comrade who is an educator in a rural area near the border of Zimbabwe phoned me. I asked him what was new and he said "Nothing, except capitalism picking up speed with the help of its elder brother globalisation." Comrade Ithumeleng went on to say that "the more a lie is spoken, the more it becomes the truth."

What Ithumeleng was talking about was the perception relayed by South Africa's mainstream press that organised workers are a labour aristocracy, carrying only the selfish aspirations of a labour elite. This perception has been boosted throughout 1999 by both business and government, and taken up actively by not only the mainstream press, but also the public broadcaster. This public broadcaster, the SABC, recently held an inquiry into its own news coverage. It invited submissions from the public on the quality and bias of it's news. Although unions submitted that there were many problems with  news coverage, the SABC announced recently that the results of the inquiry was that everything was fine. Some of the problems unions had with SABC news was that labour issues were only covered if there was a strike, and then it was in the context of workers making unreasonable demands and damaging the economy. During current affairs programs, only private consultants from the business world are called upon to give expert opinions, whereas there are qualified economists working within COSATU and it's research wings.

Comrade Ithumeleng went on to suggest that COSATU should take the SABC to the Human Rights Commission for violating the rights of the working class to hear news about their own struggles, and for denying the working class access to media.

The hidden agenda behind the portrayal of workers as an aristocracy is of course to build the groundwork for a downward variation on our hard won labour laws. The constant press coverage given to right wing business commentators and proponents of a free market system like the Democratic Party, meant it was no surprise when Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana announced that workers employed by small businesses would no longer enjoy all the rights afforded by the basic conditions of Employment Act.

The press in South Africa also reflects many worker struggles as ideological manipulations by union leaders. SAMWU's own fight against privatisation has been reflected in this light. The media, urged on by bosses in business and government, refuses to portray workers as part of communities who are affected by job losses, privatisation of municipal services, and GEAR and World Bank inspired budget cuts. Recently SAMWU held a mass march of almost 20 thousand Johannesburg workers protesting the privatisation of many of Johannesburg's services. The union was joined by COSATU, the SA Communist Party, a councillor who had been disciplined for speaking against the privatisation, the Civics umbrella body SANCO, and a representative of street traders who had been removed. Yet the next day, press reports reflected a march of two thousand violent and misguided workers, who didn't even know what they were marching for.

Sometimes the press can hardly be blamed for getting labour media so mixed up. Many of the labour journalists are either news reporters with little interest in labour being moved from beat to beat, or genuine committed labour analysts under pressure from their editors to put a worker unfriendly spin on stories. It must surely also be difficult for journalists to keep up with the doublespeak churned out by government and business. "Ideologically driven privatisation" is just one of the phrases that has been introduced to the media lately to detract from the damaging consequences of privatisation on workers and communities. It was one lone journalist that stated that there is no such thing as ideologically driven privatisation. "Privatisation is privatisation," he wrote.

The freedom of expression guaranteed by South Africa's new constitution cannot be celebrated by workers in any meaningful way while the majority of the press continues to be owned by, and reflect the interests of, a tiny sector of the population.

The Way Forward for Labour Media

South Africa has a growing number of community radio stations across the country, some carrying  regular labour slots. Most take up issues affecting workers and the community. Some union members have been active in setting up these radio stations and now host their own radio programmes. This is a major achievement in our country, where six years ago this could not have been imagined. The Centre for Democratic Communications - a projected started by COSATU, has now set up a satellite to feed labour news to all 80 community stations across the country. CDC has also embarked upon a project where workers are drawn in to produce short programmes which are also sent out across the country.

Community radio seems set to grow from strength to strength.

Union produced media is also a lifeline for workers to progressive news. Union campaigns are obviously a focal point for workers to produce and receive propaganda. South African unions are slowly beginning to produce more video documentaries although the very high cost of equipment and digital editing and post production equipment is still a challenge at this stage.

In a country where libraries are few, where many schools don't have electricity, where the majority  have no access to telephones or offices let alone computers with modems, for most workers, access to the internet is a faraway dream. However, union branch offices are boosting their information technology capacity slowly but surely.

COSATU and SAMWU have also started a daily news service where media officers spend a few hours every day clipping labour news from all major papers and sending this via e-mail to about 400 subscribers across the country and in the international labour movement. Some union offices are faxing this out to locals where there is no information technology. COSATU is planning to hire a full time writer for this news service as soon as funding is available. The vision for this writer is that he or she would grow the service to include worker friendly analysis of mainstream news, gather the stories from unions that don't make the news, and relay international labour news in a way that is relevant and inspiring to the struggles facing South African workers.

The growth of union websites in the country and access to labour news from unions in the rest of the world via the internet has also been very important in building solidarity. SAMWU's own campaign against privatisation has been aided beyond belief through the efforts of comrades in other parts of the world. These trade union internet activists have sent letters of protest to Ministers, written articles and e-mailed them to South African newspapers for publication, and who have untiringly supplied case studies and research via e-mail to us.

Last year there was a situation where a British water multinational, Biwater, attempted to sue a local internet provider for carrying what they alleged was a defamatory SAMWU press statement. Within a day or two, labournet providers, led by the UK's LabourNet and international public sector federation PSI had set up mirror sites in eight countries, presuming that Biwater would not be able to launch global lawsuits against all of us. They were right. The defamatory statement remains online to this day!

Two trade union libraries in Johannesburg and Cape Town have set up internet centres in the past few months. For a small fee of about 5 US dollars per year, workers can go before or after work to the centre to access the internet with the help of a full-time internet trainer and librarian. Several NGO's are also offering short weekend courses on the internet and research possibilities to trade union members. These kind of initiatives need to be expanded by South African trade unions.

A problem faced by South African workers is a lack of time. Between long hours of work, family commitments, overtime, and very long journeys to and from work on public transport, workers do not have time to "surf the net" at leisure.

It would assist if workers could instantly access a place on the internet where unionists would share the stories of their struggles. There are various sites of this nature - LabourStart in the UK which carries mostly mainstream news, various federation websites which carry valuable research material such as the Public Services International, IMF and ICEM websites, and LabourNet in the UK which carries news written by unionists and by LabourNet staffers. There are listserves performing a valuable function in distributing news. But for the walk-in user with no access to a personal computer good quality and relevant global news to inspire and assist in fighting local workplace struggles, list serves are not much help.

SAMWU sanitation workers suffering from acetaldehyde poisoning were featured in the union's publication. This story was sent online to the union website. A few months later, comrades from Kentucky in America e-mailed to say that it seemed that they were facing the same problem. In the months that followed, SAMWU and the Comrades from NAGE exchanged via e-mail doctors reports on the South African workers, details on how to do air tests, and information on the hazards associated with various chemicals.

It would have helped comrades much more if there was one global site where case studies and solutions to health and safety problems, for example, could have been posted. This site could combine the efforts of unionists and labour media comrades around the world to form a vital nerve centre of information and knowledge, that would help workers fight capitalism in their day to day local union struggles. This conference should investigate the possibility of one website for the workers of the world.

Organized Labor's Best Bet?: CyberUnions!*

Arthur B. Shostak, Ph.D, Professor of Sociology

Drexel University, Dept. of Psychology and Sociology

As the Millennium draws to a close we get Lists, endless lists of the Best, the Worse, the Most, the Least, and so on. Sometimes sage, more often silly, they have the virtue of concentrating our attention and highlighting matters we do or should care about.

Special attention is owed a revealing List of the Top Ten Labor Stories of the Century. Issued in 1999 by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSME), it was based on the rankings of professors from Harvard University, MIT's Sloan School of Management, Cornell University, Yale University and the Economic Policy Institute.

As might have been expected, the List saluted the creation of key legislation shaping the modern labor movement (the Wagner Act, the Social Security Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964). It noted the development of the CIO, Labor's Achievements during WW11, and Public Sector Organizing (1962-1980). Finally, the List included the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike and the GM Sit-down Strikes of 1936-37. Conspicuous by its absence from the orthodox, if somewhat pusillanimous List was the IWW role in Free Speech fights, a proud and distinct contribution. And Labor's role in the Cold War, a controversial and consequential matter. And the purge by the CIO of Communist-dominated unions, arguably a serious loss to Labor's soul. And the on-going effort to rid unions of worker-be-damned racketeers, a malignant cancer. And the 1955 merger of the AFL and the CIO, without which there would be no chance for Labor at all! And the slow, but persistent rise inside Labor officialdom of women and people of color, an overdue and indispensable achievement.

The Missing Link? Especially disappointing and troubling was the neglect by the List-making academics of Labor's post-1965 struggle to find in computerization acritical new lease on life. Labor's high-stakes exploration of what computers make possible warrants far more attention than it has earned to date. Coverage of Labor, for example, in recent issues of Challenge, Dissent, Dollars and Sense, Social Policy, The Nation, The Progressive, Working USA, Z, and other publications on the democratic left reach nearly every topic in the academic's Top Ten List above. But they have nary a word about Labor's life-and-death experiments with computerization.

Typical is the 1998 Labor Day feature in The Nation, a collection of eight essays by long-time Labor friends and advisers eager to highlight "unmet challenges." Only once in eight pages was computerization even as much as mentioned, and then only to urge a use already well underway.

Volumes by academics are no more helpful. The Proceedings of the 50th Annual Meeting (January, 1998) of the Industrial Relations Research Association, to cite one typical academic publication, has no mention anywhere in its 382 pages of how computerization has, is, and may continue to alter major aspects of unionism here and abroad. This blackout is made all the odder by the remarkably early start intellectuals actually had in offering Labor advice here. In 1972, the year the world first learned of the Internet's existence, Charles Levinson, an overseas labor staffer, wrote a major article urging use of the new technology of computer communications.

Unfortunately, this call went long unheeded, by Labor and its intellectual friends alike. (Lee; 45) Unions in the Information Age. I have spent the last three years observing computer uses by unions in the field, asking questions of unionists over the Internet, monitoring labor union listserves, speaking as an invited outsider at union conventions and workshops, and reading everything various Internet search engines could locale for me on the topic. (Shostak; 1995) I have now gathered my findings in the only book available on the subject, where I discuss at length three models of Labor's uses of computers. (Shostak; 1999) The picture, much as with every thing dealing with contemporary Labor, is a mixed one.

On the bright side, much to its credit, the AFL-CIO's LaborNet service has pioneered in bringing both official information and informal chat rooms to union activists. Scores of International Union homepages, and others belonging to especially forward-looking locals, hold their own on the Internet, along with specialized listserves, such as PubLabor, that enable unionists to engage in free-wheeling focused discussions (as, for example, a remarkable 1999 no-holds-barred dialogue about the pros and cons of union democracy).

Equally impressive are such innovations as the use the Hotel and Restaurant Union continues to make of a site on the Net to warn unionists away from hotels it is picketing. In the late 1990s the Flight Attendants Union created a Net site for collecting complaints from members about airplane equipment problems the union then addressed. Insurgents in the American Airline Pilots Union used faxes and email to rally their troops. And cyberprotesters around the world rallied to bombard Bridgestone-Firestone executives with email protesting the company's treatment of its American work force.

Unions have learned they cannot hold their own in arbitrations unless their representatives are using laptops. They cannot match the other side of the bargaining table unless their representative has Internet access. They cannot bring back useful material from a discussion or confer-ence unless swiftly word-processed. All of these forms of empowerment and more are operational today.

Labor's Mistakes. In sharp contrast with the bright picture above is another set of Labor realities - as the Movement's effort here continues to fall far short of the potential.

1) Cyber Naught Unions: Head in the Sand. What I call Cyber Naught unions and locals seek to preserve and persist, rather than update or innovate. Where computers are concerned, they employ them only or primarily to satisfy traditional business needs, as in accounting and bookkeeping (dues and benefit records; payroll data; etc.). They use computers to get through the day, and do so in as flat and uninspired a way as is possible. Officials settle for inertia and quietism Much of the problem here is rooted in conceptual inertia: Out-dated habits of mind have far too many of these labor leaders preferring form to function, protocol to results, and rhetoric to risk-taking. This is not only about failings of intellect; it is also about failings of the spirit. For if, as Orwell warned, poverty annihilates the future, so also in its own way does poverty of vision.

Cyber Naught power-holders want the future to be like the past, only more so. They treat unionism as if it can only be a passive institution, and they act as a deadening hand on change. In consequence, their unions and locals sleep-walk when they might stride, and they remain vulnerable in ways they hardly realize.

2) Cyber Drift Unionism: Galloping off in All Directions. A second major type, Cyber Drift unions or locals move aimlessly, like a cork bobbing on a turbulent sea, though with far less likelihood than a cork of staying afloat. Bewildered leaders look on as if in a daze, union officers to whom things happen rather than people who make new beginnings. Caught in this hapless course, Labor's effort to use computers falls far short of its potential.

Computerization is persistently prolific, as it moves from stand-alone PCs to networks, and from computer-oriented humans to human-oriented computing. Its record affirms we are in the midst of a revolution, not an evolution.

But you would never know this from the inchoate and directionless plight of a Cyber Drift union. These unions and their locals are seldom the adequate and inspiring organizations they want to be thought of, much to the rue of all who really know them and understand how much more is possible.

3) Cyber Gain Unionism: Labor's Best Hope - for the Moment. In contrast with Cyber Naught types, Cyber Gain unions and locals make much of computer possibilities. The good news is their number appears larger with every passing year; the bad news is their ranks remain far too small for Labor's good. Worse yet, they are often thought the end-all, when in fact - for labor's sake - they must prove way stations on the way to becoming something else, something very distant that I call a CyberUnion.

Cyber Gain unions and locals employ computers to support people, plans, and progress, as well as to keep track of things (traditional business operations). They pour new wine into new bottles. Their use of computers can be creative (though as I shall argue later, it still does not go far enough). Officers, staffers, and activists alike appreciate how much can be done, and they enjoy adapting gains made elsewhere in and outside of Labor.

Much success here can be traced to conceptual advances. A progressive organizational culture has Cyber Gain labor leaders, staffers, and rank-and-file activists preferring function to form, results to protocol, and risk-taking to rhetoric. In consequence, their unions and locals are dynamic operations, supple and original in ways in which they take justifiable pride.

Reality Check. Before too glowing an impression is given, note that Cyber Gain unions and locals have many telling weaknesses. To begin with, most have little or no knowledge of the existence of one another. In keeping with the costly isolation of unions from other unions, they are busy re-inventing the wheel instead of trading good ideas back and forth. Despite conferences the AFL-CIO has run to encourage cross-fertilization, workshops held regularly at the AFL-CIO George Meany Center, and the efforts computers specialists of 12 or so major unions are making to stay in touch, it is as if these labor organizations were ships passing at night.

Second, Cyber Gain unions and locals often try to do it on the cheap. Many are reluctant to pay the annual maintenance costs required to keep a complex, multi-machine system up and going, better yet constantly upgrade it. In consequence, they often flounder trying to best computer problems they should not have had in the first place.

Finally, and most telling of all, the Cyber Gain unions I studied had too little in the way of an overarching vision. Many seemed to have lost sight of why they had started using computers to begin with. That is, they were not asking deep-reaching questions about the desirability of this or that use with reference to the organization's well-being, with reference to what the rank--and--file might get from it (or lose to it). Instead, they were weighing computer uses in small--minded ways, rather than in grand ways, and they were missing precious transformational opportunities ... or so I counseled when asked as an applied sociologist.

More specifically, where computer applications are concerned, Cyber Gain unions and locals often remain frozen in the first generation of Internet use. They are preoccupied with meeting straight-forward informational needs. Their Web site typically offers their logo and basic facts, a static display critics dismiss as "brochure ware" or "billboards." They fail to understand, or decline to value the fact that second generation applications are quite different: Known as transactional, they emphasize the dynamic participation of the parties, rather than accept passivity, as at present in far too many Cyber Gain organizations.

While the Cyber Gain model is clearly superior to the Cyber Naught and Cyber Drift options, it will not suffice. It rebuilds, but it does not adequately renew. By failing to take the full potential of future as they streamline the past. Only a far more ambitious use of computers will do the job. I think it will be adequate for only a few more years. The early 21st century requires far more.

Try the CyberUnion Model. What I have taken to urging is an ambitious and creative alternative to the Labor-computer status quo, one that dares to incorporates futuristics, innovations, services, and labor traditions (F-I-S-T) - all of which go better when they build on creative employ of computer potentialities. (Shostak; 1999)

Marked by enthusiasm for, ready than fear of the Age of Informa-tion, the CyberUnion makes the most of what other frustrated unions find daunting in the extreme. It is intent on matching the employer's formidable progress with computer applications, showing the membership the union proudly "computes," and bolstering chances of making a desirable difference in American life early in the Information Age century.

Getting to a F-I-S-T Model. The first such aid, futuristics, empowers as only foreknowledge and related action-taking can. The second, innovations, energizes as only creativity can. The third, services, engages as only rewards can. And the fourth, traditions, bonds as only emotional ties can.

Employing futuristics, a CyberUnion can replace the narrow "putting-out-fires" orientation of most unions with a longer perspective, one that encompasses the here-and-now, but extends 5 and 10 years beyond it. Employing computer-aided innovations it can replace a narrow tolerance for shopworn communication tools (newsletters, mailings, etc.) with a high-tech perspective, one that upgrades familiar tools (as in adding color to the newsletter) even as it moves to the innovative cutting-edge (email for all; listserves for many; etc.).

Employing a fresh approach to services, it can use its homepage to link members to pro-consumer dollar-saving services, experiment with electronic voting referendums, and mentor the membership in closing the gap between Info-Haves and Have-Nots, arguably the greatest threat posed now to the democracy With these and 101 other computer-based services a CyberUnion should be hailed for giving more than ever for the dues dollar.

Finally, a CyberUnion can replace hollow observances of union traditions with whole-hearted celebration, the better to ensure that labor's high tech gains are always accompanied by comparable high touch advances, e.g., a local's history and traditions could be "captured" in a memorable CD-ROM provided to all.

These F.I.S.T. attributes should help put labor unions on a par with the CyberCorps rapidly coming their way. They should send the message that Labor is finally and actually "with it!," a message of import for the union's membership, the media, the public, and the business community alike. And they should empower the rank-and-file as never before. (Shostak; 1991)

Unions uniquely blend humanistic, ethical, and materialistic concerns. They should be able to produce a distinctive set of computer-use rewards, one that will have the citizenry sit up, notice, and applaud. They should be able to get Americans to think of unions, and not just of corporations, when they think about successful cutting-edge organiza-tions.

Doubts and Misgivings. Skeptics will dismiss futuristics as only for the secure; computer-based innovations and services, as only for an effete elite; and celebration of traditions, as only for those less busy than many unionists are with barely surviving, better yet celebrating anything. They will insist the vast majority of union members are outside the computer use loop, and that this CyberUnion prescription is therefore irrelevant at best, and a dangerous distraction at worse. In rebuttal, proponents can point out more and more unionized workers co-exist with computers, at work. Even if the average unionist's living room does not presently contain a PC, the work station probably does. As well, advances in inexpensive devices to access the Internet without a PC (webservers, etc.) promise to soon vastly expand the reach of the Net (to say nothing of speculation that a voice-activated/voice-responsive Palmtop, or very small computer worn on the wrist, may be commonplace by 2005AD).

The point, in short, is really not that of hardware or access to it. Rather, the point is to rapidly and thoroughly link Labor with all that a smart organization can draw out of computer uses, and to "bookend" such adaptation with the ballast of tradition and the headiness of futuristics.

Contrary to the misgivings of detractors, adoption of a CyberUnion model is not an implausible or impractical proposal. It builds on initiatives the AFL-CIO and key unions have already begun to take. (The fact that the Sweeney team renamed the AFL-CIO News, their bland and unexceptional house organ, Americ@Work, and transformed it into a bright, brassy, and "hip" publication, is much to the point). This model could invigorate adapters, inspire the membership, favorably impress prospective members, intimidate labor's opponents, intrigue vote-seekers, and in other valuable ways, significantly bolster labor's chances.

The Labor Digerati to the Rescue! Fortunately, a new generation of Web-faring union activists are eager to get on with transforming prosaic (and dying) unions into CyberUnions. (Shostak; 1995) Labor's "digerati" types have lives steeped in Information Age technologies, and are living ever more effectively in a net-worked world of union boosters.

Forward-thinking and visionary, these techno-savvy men and women have a hefty dose of indefatigable optimism. Unlike many of their peers, their expectations concerning the renewing of Organized Labor are almost without limits. When such activists envision the years ahead, they expect computers to soon secure unprecedented access of everyone in Labor to everyone else ... officers to members, members to officers. unionists to non-unionists, and vice versa. Rapid polling of the membership. Galvanizing of rallies or e-mail protests. Spotlighting of models worth emulating, and wrongs for the righting. Libraries put at a unionist's beck and call, along with valuable arbitration, grievance, and mediation material. Open chatrooms and bulletin boards for unfettered telling and listening, for the creation of a High Tech electronic (virtual) "community" to bolster High Touch solidarity among real folk.

As if this was not enough, the vision of Labor's digerati includes a quantum increase soon in the collective intelligence and consciousness of "global village" unionists in a global International. Unprecedented cooperation across national borders. The first effective counter to transnational corporate behemoths. And, going out a year or two further, possibly even Intelligent Agent software housed in computer "wearables," empowering unionists as never before. Guided by this growing cadre, Labor can soon move more unions and locals into computer use status. And thereby invigorate the membership. Draw in new members. Intimidate opponents. Intrigue vote-seekers. Meet the aspirations that union "netizens" have for the Labor Movement. And in other valuable ways, significantly bolster Labor's chances of moving especially advanced unions and locals up to CyberUnion status early in the 21st century.

Reality Check. Labor's sharp-edged possibility - either CyberUnion-style computer mastery or ignoble fade out - is not the same thing as saying computerization can or will save Labor. As one of the most extensive pioneering users of computers, a federation of 403 union in 113 countries, maintains - "The computers are one possible medium, not the message." (ICEM; 56)  Computerization is no "silver bullet." It is a complex, demanding, and often exasperating tool, only as reliable and effective as the humans in charge. As well, it is no solo star. It works best when part of a mix that includes militancy, labor law reform, political action, and so on. It works best when aiding such "high touch" efforts as "one-on-one" organizing, "shoe leather" vote-getting, "button hole" lobbying for labor law reform, and so on. It works best when kept as an accessory and an aid, rather than allowed to become a confining and superordinating system.

It would be a costly mistake of unionists to confuse computerization with a magic remedy, almost as costly as present-day under-utilization by Labor of its remarkable potential. Which is to say, that while it cannot "rescue" Labor, unless Organized Labor soon makes the most creative possible use of it, as with the F-I-S-T model, Labor probably cannot be rescued.

Summary: Labor Union Prospects? Although underway since the 1970s, Labor's use of computers has far to go. A few unions and locals pretend it's not a big deal, which it is. Others agree there is something here, but they'll be damned if they know what - and until they stop drifting, they will ... be damned, that is. Happily, a growing number gain on the rest. They no longer settle only for computer data management, as by the Cyber Drift or Cyber gain organization, but "push the envelope" instead. If and when they also adopt the F-I-S-T formula, they will command far more respect, power, and allegiance than ever before. Organized labor, for the first time in 35 years, is moving again, showing its "smarts," and feeling cautiously hopeful. If it is keep up momentum, the AFL-CIO and its major affiliates must speed up their development of a 21st century CyberUnion model. Supporters are encouraged by evidence the Sweeney team and its union allies intend to make the most of futuristics, innovations, services, and tradition (F-I-S-T). If they have their way, America's new CyberUnions will show the world that unionism does "compute" in our Age of Information.

Unions five years from now are likely to be very different from the present: Either their hallmark will be their irrelevance, or they will draw handsomely on CyberUnion attributes (F-I-S-T). Either they may be ossified relics, or they will command respect as mature information-intensive power houses, fully the equal (and possibly the better!) of anything the business world boasts.

Unless and until Labor makes more creative use of computer and cyberspace possibilities, it's long slide into irrelevance may be slowed, but it will not be reversed.

Murray Kempton, one of the most insightful of recent writers about unionism, wistfully notes of seemingly appealing reforms -- "One sees at once that here is the way to get at the thing, and wonders why, with the sign painted this plain, the road has been so seldom followed." (Kazin)

It is time to heed signs pointing toward the CyberUnion, and move to give this Information Age labor organization a full-scale, imaginative, and whole-hearted trial.

Postscript. The October,1999, BiAnnual Meeting of the AFL-CIO brought official word of the long-awaited full-scale entry of the

Labor Federation into the Internet Age.

Early in December over 13,000,000 members of the Federation's 68 affiliated unions will be able for the first time to enter cyberspace through a unique Labor portal featuring the homepage of their own particular International Union. It will also be rich in news of labor matters here and abroad, alongwith lists of Labor-friendly and also anti-Labor companies. It will offer invitations to share ideas with other unionists via e-mail systems, and feature other high-powered aids to building an extraordinary Electronic Community of union brothers and sisters.

Still be learned is how truly inter-active the AFL-CIO's system will prove, as in how much genuine two-way access will it offer to top leadership? Similarly, will brassy ads for goods and services be curbed, even at a loss of revenue? And will chatrooms remain uncensored, despite the risks this poses to potential targets of rank-and-file barbs? These reservations notwithstanding, Labor is owed cheers for getting together an exciting far-reaching venture, one that can only hasten the day when more Internationals and locals will achieve Cyber Gain status, and push beyond after CyberUnion distinction.  With the AFL-CIO's big time entry into Cyberspace in December, both the Labor Movement and the Information Age will never be the same again, and that is all to the better!

References.

ICEM (International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions). Power and Counterpoint: The Union Response to Global Capital.

Chicago, Ill.: Pluto Press, 1996

Kazin, Alfred. "Missing Murray Kempton." New York Times Book Review, Nov.30, 1997. p.35.

Lee, Eric. The Labour Movement and the Internet: The New Internationalism. Chicago, Ill.: Pluto Press, 1997.

Shostak, Arthur B. Robust Unionism: Innovations in the Labor Movement. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 1991.

Shostak, Arthur B. For Labor's Sake: Gains and Pains as Told by 28 Creative Inside Reformers. Lanham, MD.: University Press of America, 1995.

Shostak, Arthur B. CyberUnion: Empowering Labor through Computer Technology. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1999.

* Based on CyberUnion: Empowering Labor through Computer Technology, by Arthur B. Shostak, Available for $25 in paperback from M.E. Sharpe, in Armonk, NY, 10504. (1-800-541-6563); (mesinfo@usa.net)

Arthur B. Shostak, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Department of Psych/Soc/Anthro, Drexel University, Phila., PA, 19104; 215-895-2466; fax 610-668-2727. email: SHOSTAKA@drexel.edu http://www.futureshaping.com/shostak/

No to WTO, No to New Round, Turn Around!

Lee Changgeun

<Korean People's Action Against Investment Treaties and the WTO New Round>

A>The government must retract its position supporting the 'market principles,' 'logic of competition,' and 'logic of economics' and accept as its central focus the democracy of Korean society and the furthering of the Korean people's basic rights in the course of preparing for the New Round.

We must remember the government's promise after giving away the agricultural products market at the Uruguay Round.  Promises that the industry would improve and that the benefits would be returned to the citizens of Korea, and that this would benefit the entire nation in the long run turned out to be false as time proved that the only ones to benefit from the negotiations were the chae-bol. The livelihood of countless farmers were destroyed and the redistribution of benefits have not occurred.  The current government, much like before, is promising that the country is on the right path toward recovery from the IMF crisis, and that we must continue to push forward with IMF's reform program.  The government's position on the New Round is along the same lines.  However, the government must face up to the reality of the results that the IMF's reform program has brought to the people of Korea.  It has brought on the boom of speculative investment in the stock market, countless workers have been put out to the streets, and public services have been reduced in the name of privatization.  The government must admit that the quality of life for the people of Korea have gone down.  The government has forced market principles in the sectors of public health and education, announcing that it would do away with small schools in the rural areas and that public health centers would be subject to structural adjustment programs.  This is a violation of the right to health and the right to an education which is guaranteed in the Korean Constitution.  If the government continues to uphold its 'principles of the market' in preparing for the New Round, it can only bring the serious violation of the principles of democracy and the destruction of the people's basic rights that we have fought for so long.

B> The government must withdraw from its position of supporting 'more liberalization' in the form of negotiations of the New Round, with new fields such as investment, competition, and government procurement transparency, within the WTO system.

The government currently supports the comprehensive free trade negotiations form of the New Round.  It has even stepped up as the missionary for the start of the comprehensive free trade negotiations, already having turned in it's opinions on the new fields scheduled to be negotiated within the WTO negotiations.  "It is time to free ourselves from the stereo-type of trade negotiations equalling the opening up of our markets.  It is important to support our corporations entrance into foreign markets by actively eliminating trade blocks and standardizing multi-lateral investment agreements, thereby increasing stability and market predictability."(Lee Si-Hyoung, Ministry of Foreign Affairs)  However, what the governments is hiding is the fact that this position only serves the economic interests of international corporations, without any consideration for the livelihood and the quality of life of the people, or social development.  As we have stated earlier, many developing countries have stated concerns about the fact that the Uruguay Rounds have not brought them the benefits they were promised.  They are opposed to the new fields being brought into the WTO negotiations at the New Round, and have pushed for talks in which existing treaties are reviewed and reformed.  We believe that these problems of 'unequal treaties and unequal redistribution of wealth' are not just the problems of developing countries.  The liberalization of Korean markets in previous treaties have only contributed to the accumulation of capital for the chae-bol, and have led to the steady decrease in the conditions of the lives of workers and farmers, the environment, social benefits, and basic democratic rights.  The fact that special laws designed to save farmers, the biggest casualties of the Uruguay Round, have yet to take effect is symbolic of this fact.

C>  We demand the delay of the inauguration of the New Round, and we also demand a total reevaluation and reexamination of the existing WTO treaties with the full participation of 'citizens, social movement organizations and trade unions', especially its effects on democracy, the environment, public health care, human rights, labor rights, women's rights, and the development of developing countries.

We remember the inauguration of the WTO 5 years back, with its fancy slogans of 'international redistribution of wealth' and 'international expansion of the opportunity for employment.'  After 5 years, however, the results have been the exact opposite.  Wealth was concentrated to the TNCs, and poverty expanded.  Jobs became harder to find also.  The TNCs have remarkably increased production by 26% while decreasing the number of employees by 4% abroad during the years 93-96.  Korea hasn't been an exception.  Among many examples, Mando Machinery layed off 1000 of it's workers after being sold to foreign companies.  We confirm that the 'free trade and investment system' of the WTO and it's promise of increased employment is not being kept.

The fact that many of the developing countries have already expressed the inequalities in previous WTO treaties, and countless national and international social movement organizations have demanded the indefinite delay of the New Round in itself is proof of the many problems of the WTO system. Therefore, we are against any action that increases the jurisdiction and authority of the WTO, and demand the delay of any negotiation which seeks to do so.  Instead, we demand the total reevaluation and reexamination of the latent effects of inequality in the system with the full participation of citizens, social movement organizations, and trade unions.

D> We point out that the government's position on the issue of liberalization of foreign investment and the protection of foreign investments (in other words the 'multi-lateral agreement on investment) solely stands for the interests of national and international corporations and has no consideration for the livelihood and rights of the majority of the people of Korea.  It stands on the wrong premise that 'the introduction of foreign capital is the only to economic growth.'

According to the government's proposal on the 'trade and investment issue' the government's position is as follows; *This negotiation's purpose must be to conclude the multilateral agreement on investment within the WTO system, * With the exception of short-term capital investment, the negotiations must focus on foreign direct investment * Solution of conflicts must be in accordance with the WTO's process.  We realize that this proposal suggests in its content a much lower degree of liberalization than the MAI talks at the OECD negotiations.  However, in reality, not only is it very difficult to discern between foreign direct investment and short-term speculative capital, but we must question wether 'investment' by foreign investors is truly beneficial to us.  After the IMF crisis, foreign investors now make up more than 20% of the national stock market, and it is tough to believe that they are in it for the long run.  The fact that analysis by the stock exchange shows a decrease in the average holding period for foreign investors (from 22.3 months in 96 to 9.3 months in 99) supports this statement.  The stock exchange analysis also states that in August transactions occurred at 3,4 day intervals.  Foreign investors have sold over 2 billion dollars worth of stocks this year.  This analysis shows that the Korean stock market is currently a 'casino' to foreign investors.  Secondly, Korea is in the process of talks with the U.S. for a bilateral investment treaty, and because of this, even though the degree of liberalization within the WTO negotiations may be lower, Korea must protect foreign investors as the bilateral U.S.-Korea investment treaty standards.  Currently, the U.S.-Korea BIT states that investment includes short-term speculative capital, and that investors have the right to sue countries.  Therefore, it is our belief that the WTO negotiations and the BITs would both result in the furthering of the rights of foreign investors, and thereby seriously infringe upon the basic democratic rights of the people of Korea.  We demand a stop to the preparations for the New Round.

Independent Media in the Digital Age

Brian Drolet and Eric Galatas

(Free Speech TV)

In theory, the public airways belong to the public. It doesn't quite work that way. In the United States, as in most "free democracies", the public airwaves, as well as the public streets are sold off to the private sector for a pittance. In this happy utopia of Adam Smith, the greatest good of corporate capital will create the greatest good possible for the society as a whole.

The argument is persuasive:

The government administers the airwaves for the people. The government invites private capitalists to risk their capital to develop the technical and broadcast infrastructure. The government, ever guardians of the public interest, regulates corporate use of the airwaves, insuring that in their profit making compensation for risk, they don't forget to serve the people-and provide for a diversity of viewpoints that mirrors the diversity of democracy.

So in the world of broadcast television in the U.S. we have the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) which provide national programming and a network of local "public" broadcasting stations. We also have National Public Radio, Public Radio Internatioonal, national public interest programming networks, and a large number of listner supported community radio stations that also receive support from the corporation for public broadcasting.

In the world of cable television, where the medium is wire laid beneath the public streets, the government has forced provisions of similar "public access" on the cable providers and programmers.

But in fact, public broadcast and pulic access cable stations are inevitably corporatized or maginalized. They either bend under the baton of "corporate sponsorship" or freeze from the fig leaf of public support.

But what if we are digitized?  Will the digital revolution finally make real the dream of many independent media activists and supporters? Hope, it seems, springs eternal.  In the coming 500 channel digital future, what will change, and what will remain the same, is a matter of much speculation.  Looking back at the past promises of cable television, the invention of radio, and even the early colonial press, it's easy to be less than optimistic about where all this digital conversion is taking us.

The argument that a "free press" is essential to a "free society" was constructed in the energetic days of pre-monopoly capitalism. Hence Thomas Jefferson's quote that "Information is the currency of democracy."  Only strong and independent media organizations,  he reasoned, can tell us how those with power are using it.  And only if we are informed can we protect ourselves from abuses of power.  But what happens when media is owned by the powerful? Which of course it almost always is.

When Ben Bagdikian, an editor for the Washington Post during the Watergate years, wrote his groundbreaking work, The Media Monopoly, 50 multi-national conglomerates dominated all print, broadcast and entertainment media.  Bagdikian's most recent edition was published just over a year ago.  The count has now dropped to 9 owning corporations.

But media and democracy advocates again see a sliver lining in the march of technology and the government's role as guardian of the public interest.

In 1992 the United States Congress passed the Federal Cable Act. In a little publicized provision, Congress said that since Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) operators were using the public뭩 airwaves, they had to do more than just make money hand over fist. Specifically, DBS operators were informed that they would have to meet public interest obligations, to provide viewers access to programming that is independent, socially conscious, and culturally diverse.  Congress then left it to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to decide just how this should all take place. This is the same process that has guided public access in broadcast television and cable.

After six years, and sustained activist efforts, the FCC finally presented its solution.  According to new FCC rules, released in November of 1998, DBS operators are now required to set aside 4% of their channel capacity for non-commercial educational, and informational programmers.  And they have until December of 1999 to get these new channels on the air.

The 2nd Seoul international LaborMedia' 99

DBS channels are the sort that are available through those small, pizza-size dishes, A lot of people have them, and a lot of people are getting them.  Some DBS services boast over 300 channels, so 4% is not a bad haul for public interest advocates.  EchoStar's Dish Network, for example, will likely have to give away 12 channels to qualified applicants.  Direct TV, with the largest subscriber base of 6 million households, has over 210 channels, set aside 9 channels in the first round.

So does this mean that the public will finally have access to truly independent perspectives in film and video?

One hotly contested aspect of the FCC ruling gives DBS operators themselves the final say in who will get a channel and who will not. Free Speech TV (formerly the 90's Channel), which regularly champions experimental films and other independent works taking on tough subjects like corporate crime, the environment, gay and lesbian issues, and human rights, lost out in the bidding for a Direct TV satellite channel to conservative and religious programmers. Of the nine channels awarded, three went groups that already have ample outlet on cable or broadcast tv (PBS, NASA and CSPAN) and three religious organizations.

But many players in the race for new DBS channels are relative newcomers to digital television.  Eligibility requirements for a channel are fairly broad.  All nonprofits with an "educational mission," and even for-profit institutions of higher learning, such as some universities, could apply for and receive a channel.  The FCC decided not to regulate most of the specific terms and conditions, but the FCC did set out principles on pricing that are designed to keep costs low for the programmers.

However, cost is still a significant barrier to accessing DBS spectrum.  What is low price and what is high price, in market terms, may surprise some independents interested in applying for their own channel.  Free Speech TV is estimating that it will have to spend at least $180,000 in initial capital expenses in order to simply deliver FSTV programming to the "head end" of any given DBS operator.  The head end is where the digital signal is converted and sent up to orbiting satellites.  For Dish Network, that means Cheyenne Wyoming. For Direct TV, you have to get your signal to Castle Rock, Colorado, south of Denver.

Desite the challenges, independent media organizations like Free Speech TV are working hard to create space for films and videos that typically don't make it onto commercial networks. Judging from past lost opportunities in cable, radio and elsewhere, it is prudent to be skeptical about the chances of gaining real access to tools of mass communications for independent voices. But we intend to fight. And continue to fight for channels. But more importantly, it is essential to act.  To twist the tired jargon of the techno-hypist: you can either wait to read about the role that independent media activists and supporters will play in the future of media technologies, or you can help create that future.

For more information, the FCC's press release about the DBS decision can be found on-line at:http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/International/News_Releases/1998/nrin8038.html

t we intend to fight. And continue to fight for channels. But more importantly, it is essential to act.  To twist the tired jargon of the techno-hypist: you can either wait to read about the role that independent media activists and supporters will play in the future of media technologies, or you can help create that future.

For more information, the FCC's press release about the DBS decision can be found on-line at: http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/International/News_Releases/1998/nrinDear MJ,

NATIONAL LABOR CHANNEL

The 2nd Seoul international LaborMedia '99

Efforts in the United States

Wes Brain & Suzi Aufderheide

(UPPNET & NorthWest Alliance for Community Media)

INTRODUCTION:

Suzi Aufderheide is a videographer with Story Images and has 15 years of video and Community Access experience. As a long-time member of the Alliance For Community Media she currently sits on their Northwest Region's Board. While a member of the ACM Board Suzi has served as Treasurer and Co-chair of the Grassroots and Equal Opportunity Committee. Suzi edits for OPEU District Four Productions which produces the regular labor/media show: "Unions, Power For People Who Work." She is also the newly elected Treasurer of The Multi-Cultural Association of Southern Oregon.

Wes Brain is a board member of SEIU#503, the Oregon Public Employees Union, and he is producer of "Unions, Power For People Who Work." Wes is on the board of UPPNET, Union Producers and Programmers Network . He serves on the city of Ashland Fiber Network's Citizen Programming Committee (for cable television), and is the President of the Rogue Valley Organizing Committee of The Labor Party.

Labor needs a media voice in the United States. Television has become the number one image and information medium, but labor's voice is negligible at best. To the masses it is faintly heard, if even heard at all. Although there are many fine independent producers in the U.S. most find their programs delivered via Community Access Television to a relatively small percentages of people. The resulting presence of a nation-wide voice for working people is sorely lacking. It is time to consolidate the many localized efforts and establish a National Labor Channel.

Given television's present corporate structure and the failure of calls for fairness and open access in the new telecommunications environments, prospects for an increase in labor's presence on American television currently looks bleak with the current power structure. It is time to rewrite the script, take the initiative, and try something bold. That is the plan submitted to the recent national convention of the AFL-CIO in Los Angeles where resolutions

were heard for a National Labor Channel.

UPPNET'S VISION:

Reaching citizens with unbiased and positive news about labor issues and the concerns of working people is crucial to building the labor movement into the political and social force it should be in the United States. There is a consistent anti-union and anti-progressive bias in mainstream television. The labor movement needs a National Cable Channel available to homes across the country. Our cable systems carry fundamentalist Christian channels, a conservative political channel, shopping channels, food channels, and exercise channels.

Why not a labor channel?

"UPPNET has consistently championed the idea of a national labor cable television network", are the words of Howard Kling, President of UPPNET. As visioned, a National Labor Channel would consistently feature workers, working families, unions and union issues. Topics would reflect hot issues of the day such as social security, education, organizing, international trade agreements like the upcoming WTO meeting, prevailing wage, plus national and international solidarity actions. Sometimes there would be programs about labor history or about a working class heroine or hero.

Labor television programs would be uplinked via satellite and employ a combination of public, educational, and leased access channels to downlink and deliver the programming to communities. This model is based on Deep Dish TV's distribution network which has successfully delivered progressive video programming to communities throughout the United States since the 80's. The project would be guided by a Board of Directors of participant unions. Funding would come from unions and grants from foundations.

UPPNET believes the timing is right for a National Labor Channel, and the need has never been more critical. Their are plenty of fine television media productions in the United States and the opportunity to broadcast them throughout the country is an exciting prospect.

UNITED STATES' MEDIA PRODUCTIONS:

There are currently over 30 communities nation-wide that enjoy the benefits of consistent labor television programming through the efforts of local producers. There are also several statewide distribution systems. And, "labor cable television works," says Simin Farkhondeh, UPPNET board member and producer/director of Labor X in New York City. "The programs created locally in city after city, like ours here in New York, have had a proven impact on the labor movement and on the community at large. Consistency is key to building an audience and maintaining that impact."

To better understand labor media in the United States let us look now at one part of the country, the Midwest, as we hear a recent report from Larry Duncan who is an UPPNET board member and co-producer of Labor Beat, Chicago, Illinois.

In the fall of 1998 a Midwest Labor Media Conference took place in Madison, Wisconsin, hosted by the School for Workers, which is connected with the Univ. of Wisconsin. UPPNET, a co-sponsor of the meeting, sent a number of representatives. Involved in this conference were three labor TV groups (Univ. of Minnesota, Labor Beat/Chicago, Solidarity/Kalamazoo, MI) and three Labor radio producers (Illinois Labor Forum/Champaign, IL; Labor Express/Chicago; Madison Labor; Madison, WI). Other labor media producers, although prevented from attending for various reasons, also endorsed the conference, including

LaborVision in St. Louis and a labor radio show in Iowa. The conference set up an e-mail listserve covering Midwest labor stories. Another result of the conference is that recently Rockford United Labor (the labor council in Rockford, IL, the second largest city in Illinois) has voted to sponsor the Labor Beat show on the local cable-tv system. Radio reporters from the Madison labor radio show and the Champaign-Urbana (where University of Illinois is) labor radio show plan to be in Seattle to send reports back to the Midwest on the protests against the WTO. Labor Beat (Chicago) recently produced a 5-hour long all-labor programming special on Chicago cable channel 21. This presented a preview of what a labor channel could be like. (I would like to note that I do not claim to have information on all labor tv/radio developments in the Midwest, and apologize for any information omitted.)

-Larry Duncan

Community Access Television is the current delivery system used for most of Labor Television in the United States. A National Labor Channel will need to increase the use of this already successful system, and strengthen both parties; Labor and Community Access Television.

Alliance For Community Media (A.C.M.):

International Chair Alliance for Community Media Erik Mollberg Bunnie Reidell, Executive Director Access Fort Wayne 666 11th Street, NW, Suite 806 900 Webster Street Washington, DC 20001-4542 USA

Fort Wayne, Indiana 46802 USA	Voice: (202) 393- 2650

Voice: (219) 421-1248	Fax: (202) 393- 2653

Fax: (219) 422- 9688	e-mail: acm@alliancecm.org

e-mail: erikm66345@aol.com

www.alliancecm.org

For more than twenty-five years, the Alliance for Community Media has worked to recognize and support access by each citizen to electronic media; particularly cable television. In order for democracy to flourish people must be active participants in their government, educated to think critically and free to express themselves. The mission of the ACM is to advance democratic ideals by insuring that people have access to electronic media and by promoting effective communications through community uses of media.

Our members are Public Educational and Government (PEG) access center professionals and volunteers, educators, librarians, civil libertarians, non-profit organizations, free speech advocates, computer/internet communications professionals, senior citizen groups, government officials, community activists, interested individuals, and students, etc..

The more than 2000 Community Access Television centers in the United States are managed and staffed in a number of different ways. They can be non-profit organizations, cable companies, educational institutions, local governments, libraries and others. Some examples of "others" are: high schools, cities, municipalities, local origination or leased access and private production companies. The most popular and successful model, by consensus, is the non-profit organization. Typically this is because the essential non-profit Board of Directors tends to be democratic as well as advocates for the channels as well as for the continued availability of healthy and vigorous free speech forums. Non-profit organizations also have no other agendas as a cable company, government organization or an educational facility might.

Community media center budgets can be as small as $10,000, with a subscriber base of 5000 persons, as at Crossroads Community Video in Corinth, Mississippi* (their entire budget comes from sources other than the cable company). Extremely small communities, with less than 1000 citizens do not have to pay subscriber fees. Large cities with large subscriber bases have considerably larger budgets, facilities and constituencies. Manhattan Neighborhood Network in New York City, for example, has a $5-and-1/2-million-dollar-per-year budget with a cable franchise population area of 1,487,536 citizens and 475,000 cable subscribers.* In 1994, 95% of this budget is from the cable company and 5% is other. (These figures have obviously shifted some since 1994. Also, the Cable Act of 1996 had a huge impact releasing cable companies from some of the "burden" of providing media to citizens.)* "Community Media Resource Directory", pgs.164 and 186.

Foundational to the beginnings of PEG access television was legislation requiring cable companies set aside a percentage of gross subscriber fees, generally 5%, and cablespace for PEG Access Television. These monies, often called franchise fees, were collected by the city, county. or other municipality, from the cable company for use of public rights of way. (Satellite has recently been mandated to set aside 4% of band width based on these same principles. Arguments about satellite delivery and public rights of way are interesting, because, in a sense we are agreeing that each citizen <property owner> has some ownership of airwaves.)! Stars, next?

".....governments can play a constructive role in making markets work better, thereby lessening the need for government involvement in the future, and, in particular, obviating intrusive, content- based regulation....it can do so by making more competitive markets that are currently dominated by entrenched monopolies."** Certainly, the weakest model of community access centers has been the one which has relied on mostly extreme left-wing-type politics, for public access centers. Or, government access which sees itself, formal government bodies, as the only voice of politics in democracy. Or educational access which insists that education happens only within a very narrow base. Balance and diversity are paramount to the success of community access television.

For the National Labor Channel to continue to grow and expand and considering that the AFL-CIO wants to employ the television media to produce commercials there is an excellent opportunity to work together on a campaign. The campaign could use a single logo for a commercial and a for a National Labor Magazine pilot. Next, air the commercial on network television at the same time that the pilot National Labor Magazine program is cablecast on as many as 2000 Community Access Television centers in the United States. There are three benefits that come from a campaign of this sort. They are: 1. Inertia dispelled; many new activists engaged. Community access television normally takes a local sponsor to cablecast a program. 2. Image changed in as many media as possible at once (consider simultaneous print, radio and internet also). 3. Launching of the next phase of a very important project. Many newly motivated activists who are now also highly involved in seeing to it that this National Labor Channel is a success. And who knows, many of these activists, with a little training, will become producers of labor television themselves. We are another step closer to the final goal of a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week, television channel, the National Labor Channel. "...communications structures in many ways map our social connections, and our communications practices express our cultural habits and understandings."**

**{Aufderheide, Patricia "Communications Policy and the Public Interest"pg. 261).

AFL-CIO RESOLUTIONS

On October 12, 1999 at the AFL-CIO 23rd biennial Convention in Los Angeles, two labor media resolutions were considered: #30, The Development of a Labor Cable Television Channel, and #31, Labor Cable Program/FSTV.

Resolution #30, The Development of a Labor Cable Television Channel calls for:

1) AFL-CIO to investigate the establishment of a 24-hour labor cable channel broadcast by satellite and will, if feasible, seek support from all affiliates for the programming of this channel on every cable system in the United States.

2) AFL-CIO to fund a study of the role of media monopolization and privatization of public television and the censorship of labor programming as a result of these policies.

3) AFL-CIO to ask for the inclusion of a labor representative on all telecommunication commissions and bodies, including the FCC, CPB, PBS and NPR.

4) AFL-CIO to support the call for a congressional hearing on the issue of monopolization of the media and the threat that this means to freedom of speech as well as the exclusion of labor programming, not only on all commercial networks but on the PBS/NPR system as well.

Resolution #31, Labor Cable Program/FSTV calls for:

AFL-CIO to support the UPPNET/FSTV initiative to establish a weekly labor TV show on satellite television that has the potential of reaching 6 million homes as well as 7 million which FSTV presently reaches on cable.

Both resolutions were heard on the AFL-CIO convention floor. Leo Canty, UPPNET board member& labor tv producer spoke in support of the "Development of a Labor Cable Television Channel."  At the convention both resolutions were referred to AFL-CIO's Public Policy Committee which will meet after the first of the year.

SIGN ON LETTER OF ENDORSEMENT:

A sign on letter of endorsement for the resolutions currently before the AFL-CIO's Public Policy Committee will be available.

The Valuation and Outlook of

'Citizen Stockholder Broadcast' Foundation Movement

Choi young mook

(Korea Broadcasting Institute)

1. The progress of 'Citizen Stockholder Broadcast' Foundation Movement

1) The Foundation of committee for preparing a meeting of promoters

2) The vanishing of a meeting of promoters and the changing initiatives of foundtion

2. The point of 'citizen stockholder broadcast' foundation movement

1) Initiatives to carry out projects

2) The reality of insure financial resources

(1) The size and guarantee of the early financial resources

(2) The guarantee of continuous financial aids

(3) The organization of stockholders and the raising procedure

3) Several points in carrying out projects

(1) The notion of 'citizen stockholder'

(2) The relationship with the public broadcast

(3) Selecting a proper media

(4) The frequency of household expenditures

(5) The permission of broadcasting company

(6) Selecting a proper model

(7) Strategies to carry out projects

4) The foundtion and management of the company, structure of foundation

(1) Stockholder of foundation

(2) Management Structure

(3) Domain of production

5) Countermeasures toward technical developments

3. The valuation and Outlook of □citizen stockholder broadcast' foundation movement

It is not generally easy for the newly formed citizen stockholder to be successful in the market place that is made up of only exsting large scaled broadcasts.  Most of the TV viewers are accustomed to watching especially trifling and low qualified commercial broadcast, so it is very understandable that some people worry that who will watch the citizen stockholder broadcast programs which might be definitely educated or stiff. However, this kind of idea derived from the consideration about popularity rating which makes the whole broadcast like a 'dark battlefield'.  Let's take the newspaper as an example.  From the popularity rating, <Newspaper Hankyore> takes a low portion of the whole newspaper market ; however, it cannot be said that <Newspaper Hankyore> is meaningless or non-competitive.

Citizen stockholder broadcast is not fundamentally for raising huge audience rate as existing public broadcast or low qualified commercial broadcast has been so.

People can take part in the program, the rights to know come true, it will also help the society democratic.  Moreover, if it is built and keep going participation-oriented broadcast, some competitions with low qualified programs or reckless imports from foreign countries will decrease.

The financial resources are also very important.  However great ideology it is, we cannot keep up the work and the doctrine would easily fade away.  Therefore, we have to study thorough marketing strategies in managing with a long term prospect.

A lot of problems should be solve before it is built.  Those facing problems are leading group, plan to get financial support, common bonds with citizens' group, decide the media and direction of the projects, developing strategies to acquire permission for broadcast, policy support and legalization, structure of management, and the formation of the programs.

Even if these problems are all solved and all the permissions needed have gathered, there are still delicate matters to consider such as the realization of ideology, the independence that the ownership is separated from the management.

First of all, we have to embody a group of 5-7 people who are interested in the democracy of broadcasting, who can devote in carrying out works hereafter.  The group has to be made up of experts ; policy team, PR team, finance team, law team, and support team, they have to be organically related.

Especially, policy team will be mainly composed of people in the press, law team of lawers or law-majored people.  Relatively in PR team, finance team and support team, it is possible to make up of non-experts group.  Also, there need some support to carry out their own works smoothly by insuring early financial resources.

The secondly essential work is the composition of experts who can insure financial resources and get permissions for broadcasting.  This group is supposed to be made up of people who can inform decided plans externally and make contacts with citizen group or influential leading people and make the policy come true.  In this state, we have to organize and strengthen by combining those various kinds of groups in the press.  Especially, we have to gather and embody viewers who will take the leading role of citizen stockholder broadcasting.

Long term work which is need is to gather experts and non-experts tpo make organize groups who will practice, exercise, educate for broadcasting.  The main job is to insure channels legalization, embodiment for citizen stockholder broadcast installation.

We can also consider political contacts to assure channels and to get special law to support for broadcast.  Moreover, more specific and realistic ways to establish and manage the company.

△ Independence which is free from capital or power

△ Viewer-oriented, public broadcast

△ Fairness that gives the whole citizen's benefit

△ Variety that guarantees freedom of ideology and opinion

△ It should be done which doesn't go off the line of foreseeing about the future in spite of creative plan

△ In addition, for the goal and duty of the citizen stockholder broadcast

△ Reflecting audience sovereignity upon public base

△ Public Management Embodiment of Public management to escape from the outside force of political power and capital

△ Liberal opinion formation and Society security  is to be fair in act

Operating method should keep the citizen stockholder broadcast which is supported by France a model

△ Avoid the attention to limited personal possession stock

△ Guarantee the organization which can maintain the ideology and controlling method

△ The division should contain characteristic that our program had talked about since now which is opinion, media and information pass

△ In addition, make every effort to make the capital of citizen stockholder and public advertise to be in process.

Real Information Society and Social Implications of □GNU/LINUX□

Hong, Seong Tae (sociologist)

1. Information Society and Real Information Society

The term of information society is widely recognised that it is a society of post-industrial and post-capitalist. But this kind of usage is manifestly contaminated by □technological determinism□. The usage does not correctly reflect social conflicts around the mode of development and use of technology. For this reason, I would like to the term of □real information society□. By this term, I would like to recognise the effects of the information technology on society, and I would like to argue that information society is in the □reality□ of industrial and capitalist society.

2. Real Information Society and GNU/LINUX

In terms of real information society, informatisation is currently developed on the basis of two opposing modes. Firstly, the path of capitalist privatization. This means the capitalist mode of development and use of the information technology. This is represented by Bill Gates' Microsoft. Secondly, the path of post-capitalist information-sharing. This is based on the recognition of information as publc goods. This is represented by □GNU/LINUX□. Real information society is oscillated by the opposition between these two paths.

3. The Types of Information-Sharing Movement

If the dominant model of information society were □capitalist information society□, the opposite model would be □post-capitalist information society□. The information-sharing movement means a social movement developed especially in the area of software, with post-capitalist perspective. There are three types of the movement. Firstly, the free-software movement. It has two principles of sharing and participation. Copy-left is it's safeguard. Secondly, the open-source movement. This is derived from the free-software movement. It criticises the free-software movement as fundamentalism and presents itself as pragmatism. Thirdly, traditional hacker movement rejects any restriction on the development and use of software.

The 2nd Seoul international LaborMedia'99

4. The Perspective of Information-Sharing Movement

Information-sharing movement is a technological alternative movement. But it is a social alternative movement as manifested in the process of its development and use. It pursues othert values than moeny, and pursues the institutions to embody these values. Therefore □GNU/LINUX□ is not a new operating system to cheaply use, but a technological platform to transform the capitalist information society to post-capitalist one. The fundamental task is that we should develop □GNU/LINUX□ to an alternative technological system, and to an alternative socio-technological system. This task will be accomplished by participation of many volunteers. In relation to this, the association of information-sharing movement and social movement of information is especially important. The association will play a key role to disseminate the social implications of □GNU/LINUX□ to other social movements, and common users.

Usability of Linux in the social

movement including labor movement

- Case study of some groups in domestic and foreign countries

Oh Byung il

( Korean Progressive Network □Jinbonet□, Technical manager)

1. Introduction

Usual understanding about Linux is that "Linux is for the expert and is very difficult to the ordinary people". And the major obstacle of using linux is that it has not much applications compared with that of Microsoft.

Although it's right for us to use linux politically, if linux is too difficult for the people to use easily, we can't assert that we should use linux. So, it's very important to examine how usable is linux now in the social movement

This article deal with following :

As domestic case, I'll introduce how Jinbonet use linux for network service and office job. Jinbonet already uses linux as a sever for network serivce and has plan to adapt linux as OS of PC.

As foreign case, I'll summerize the response to my email which I asked to the several persons (mainly administrators of NGO network) how they use linux. Concrete questions and answers are in the attached document.

2. Case Study 1 : Case of Jinbonet (Korean Progressive Network)

1) Use as a server for network service

Jinbonet provide two kinds of network service, BBS(Bulletin Board System) service and Internet service.

BBS host program, 'Maum system'(Maum means heart in Korean), runs on the solaris operating system of Sun.

Jinbonet uses linux on PC for Internet service like web service, hosting service, e-mail service, ppp service, and mailinglist service, etc.. Most of applications and development languages are open source software. We need not any extra cost for network service except hardware cost and fee for the leased line. (We just pay 10~20 US$ for the RedHat CD) We can modify the source for our own needs. Service is very stable.

Operating System - Korean version of RedHat 5.2 or RedHat 6.0

Web Server - Apache

Mail Server - Sendmail

Mailinglist Service - Petidomo

Database - MySQL

Search Engine - HtDig

etc...

2) Use for an office job

Most of Jinbonet's office computers still run on window 95 or window 98. Only some members of technical team use linux for their job. Following is the result of test how usable Linux is in work.

ⅰ) Connectivity to the BBS

We can connect to the BBS or our server with Hanterm, which is provided in the Korean version RedHat distributions of linux. It's more fast than in the MS products, and better for multi-tasking with serveral windows opened. If you want similar interface with Serome-dataman, which is an popular emulator in Korea, you can use 'gau'.

ⅱ) Word Processing

For simple documentation, you can use vi editor, which is somewhat difficult for a beginner though. You can use Emacs for editing, but you should MS word or HWP(Hangul Word Processor) for compatibility. You can't use word in linux. But, in social movement, they usually use HWP. To use HWP, you can use Hangul XR4 made by Mizi linux coperation. It's very similar to Hangul 96, but commercial program. (The cost of it is 55,000 won)

ⅲ) WWW surfing

Netscape Communicator is provided in the distributions. The main problem of it is that it's too slow in linux. I tested another open source web browser, but netscape showed the best performence. Another is that web sites look ugly because they are fitted for only MS explorer. Of course, if you have an good hardware, there is no problem. For reference, netscape is very slow on pentium 120Mhz and 32M Ram, but has no problem on celeron 400Mhz and 64M Ram.

ⅳ) E-mail

You can use netscape messanger for pop3, but it's very slow too and has a problem to use Hangul. Instead, if you connect to the server and use elm or pine, you can use very easily.

ⅴ) Graphic program

The graphic program running on linux, which is corresponding with photoshop on Windows, is GIMP. It has very similar interface and functions such as layer, filter and pattern, to the photoshop. But, Gimp is more user-friendly in some aspect. Because GIMP provides scripts which make normal user to use high-technical graphic easily, but photoshop is fit for professional publishing. We should do some work in the GIMP code to use hangul input. You can use windows fonts in the GIMP.

ⅵ) Office program

One obstacle to use linux is that we can't use office program in Korea. We have to use office program to exchange the document with other group, although we don't use office program for internal exchange. In jinbonet, we use MS excell for the account, and MS powerpoint for the occasional presentation. We can't help waiting for Korean version Star-offiece being provided.

□) File sharing

When some use linux and others use windows, we can share files each other with Samba. We can access to the files of windows from linux, and vice versa.

□) Graphic User Interface

Desktop environment KDE and Gnome of linux provides similar interface to the MS windows. They provide similar functions to the windows such as file manager, control panel, and clock, etc., and has similar performence.

□) And...

There exist some other functions which is not mentioned above. For example, I couldn't test multimedia function like internet audio with real audio program. And Jinbonet use direct internet line, but environment of other gourps would be different from jinbonet. They should connect to the internet by PPP networking with dial-up line. PPP networking was not tested, but it will run on Linux.

3. Case study of the groups in foreign countries

I couldn't examine the case of the groups in foreign countries sufficiently to mention it. I sent e-mail to ask some questions about their experience and opinion about linux, but four persons replied to me concretely. Three of them provide network service in their countries. C2O in Australia and E-mail Center in Philippine use linux for network service, and JCA-NET in Japan use FreeBSD, which is similar to linux in the point of open source. They have much experience in network, so they also use linux for other jobs as well as network service. They have much confidence on linux. It's noteworthy that they don't use commercial software without searching open source software first. Who are from the Republic of South Africa has no knowledgy and experience on linux. Each country has different situation in aspect of how much linux spreads.

4. Conclusion

In just technical aspect, we can use linux for almost office job in my opinion. At least, we can replace some of the computers in office with linux, and use other computers for applications which run only on MS windows. People say that linux is short of applications, but the software we need for office job is not many. Almost office job is just documentation, PC communication, web surfing, and e-mail communication etc.. User Interface is not so different from windows because desktop environment KDE or Gnome came out. Jinbonet will also replace almost computer with linux except one or two computer as planed earlier.

In technical aspect, linux will become more and more user-friendly in short time. Some vendor will sell computer which take linux as basic OS.

In fact, the bigger obstacle to introduce linux in office is social reason than technical one. First, we are not yet accustomed to linux. The feeling that windows is easy and linux is difficult, may come from the difference between what is accustomed to and what is not.

This problem could be solved by training. Moreover we should try to adapt ourselves to linux by using them continuously although it's not comfortable at the beginning.

Second, There are not many experts around us, so it's not easy to find someone to help us. But, It has only 50% truth. You will recognize that there are many people and resource who can help you when you try to learn it. Some of them are man pages, linux user group of each PC-Van, and many documents in the internet. The course to learn linux is also the course to make relation to senior linuxer.

Fundamentally, we should recognize why we should use linux instead MS windows, which is the purpose of this workshop. The course to learn linux is not only techincal one. But it's also the course to know how should information sociey become and what is the right culture of information society.

<Attached document>

<Questions>

1) What kinds of OS(operating system) and applications do you use for network service or office job in your organization?

2-1) Do you use Linux box as an OS and applications for a network service or office job in your organization? If so, for what kind of job do you use it concretely?

2-2) If using Linux box, what do you choose it for? And what do you think the merits and demerits of Linux box are, while using it.

3-1) Do you use commercial program as an OS and applications? If so, for what kind of job do you use it concretely?

3-2) If you use commercial programs, do you usually buy them or copy illegally?

3-3) Do you have some plan to use linux box in the future? If so, why?

3-4) If you don't have a plan to use linux box, what is the reason? What make you so?

4) How many people use Linux box in your country, especially in the social movement?

5) Do you want much more people to use Linux box in the social movement of your country? If so, do you have any plan for it? Please tell us.

6) Is there any "campaign against the monopoly of Microsoft" in your country?

<Answers>

1. YASUDA YUKIHIRO

Japan, JCA-NET, yukihiro@klact.co.jp

1) FreeBSD and Linux (Japanese version compatible to RedHat 6.x)

2-1) We are using Linux as network server in our office. We use FreeBSD for Internet service, however. I'm using FreeBSD and Linux personally. FreeBSD is Japan's tradition, we have been using BSD for handreds of years (No! Just kidding!)

2-2) Because:

It's cool!

It's cheap!

It's easy to use!

It's high performance!

...and IT NEVER CRASHES!

Adding to this, anyone even those who don't have special knowledge of UNIX can use/operate Linux server. Of course, because it's open source, we can modify the function of the server or application. In other words, we can use every function on the earth on Linux for free! I don't want to use closed source and expensive commercial operating system no more.

I have Windows NT Server, for research and study. However, it has no merit against Linux. There are a lot of demerit, such as; it crashes, it's expensive, it's heavy, it needs restart whenever we make tribial configuration change, it has a lot of security hole, etc...

3-1) User assistance.

I'm happy with Linux, but our customers are still using easy-to-crash, high-cost, low-performance, difficult-to-use OS/apps, and we have to support their questions every day.

Because commercial OS/apps is very much difficult to use, many customers call us and claim "Help! It crashes! It won't work!!"....

We have to use Windows...

Linux have no good Japanese word processing software and desktop publishing software. We make our pamphlets with Microsoft or Apple's machine.

I, personally, use MS Windows when I use Korean-Japanese translator, because the translator works only on MS Windows...

3-2) Buy them, if we need them.

3-3) I'm using already.

3-4) Linux is great.

4) I don't know exact number, but I suppose several handred...

5) Yes, of course.

We promote to install Linux as office server of social groups. This week, I installed one linux server at the office of a fair-trade group.

6) Yes and No.

A lot of "anti Microsoft" people exist in Japan, and they provide every information concerning Anti-Microsoft. The most famous "anti microsoft guy" is Mr. Nakamura Shouzaburo and his page is: http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ki4s-nkmr/

The page is written only in Japanese...

However, there is no social group that concerns anti Microsoft campaign.

Many Japanese activists are using Macintosh for they don't want to use Microsoft's products (Macintosh is commercial product anyway, though). I have Macintosh, too.

2. Roberto Verzola

Philippine, Philippine Greens, rverzola@phil.gn.apc.org

1) For Email Center: Linux (Slackware) for the email/network server services, DOS for the basic applications. We also have a Windows machine for our CD-writer, because its software only runs under Windows.

2-1) Mainly email server and other network functions.

2-2) Because it is complete, reliable and free.

3-1) For my laptop (250Mb HD, 4 Mb mem), I use DOS. For applications, I use mainly shareware.

3-2) I don't buy commercial programs.

3-3) Already using Linux as server now. If I can find a Linux version that will run fast on my laptop, I will use it on my laptop.

3-4) On my laptop, Linux will not fit.

4) On my laptop, Linux will not fit.

5) Yes, I hope to convince the social movement to shift to Linux. I've written the article "Low-cost Strategies for ICT Deployment in Developing Countries" to convince people to shift.

6) The Philippine Greens has taken this position, and had sponsored one rally against Gates when he visited the Philippines. But there is no regular, systematic campaign, because of lack of people at this time. When we have more activists, we can assign some to make the campaign systematic.

3. Kubeshni Govender

The Republic of South Africa, Food and Allied Workers Union, Kubeshni@cge.org.za

1) We use microsoft windows 98 and office packages

2-1) No we don't use the Linux box system

2-2) not applicable

3-1) Mostly we use microsoft word (word processing), Microsoft outlook for email, and microsoft powerpoint for presentations, we use Microsoft explorer as an internet browser.

3-2) All the software we use is licensed.

3-3) No we have no plans to use this system.

3-4) It is not a common package here. We are guided by our service providers and using another system has never come up .

4) Not sure, I don't think many do

5) Don't know enough about the system to tell.

6) Not that I know of.

4. Bruce Morrison

Australia, C2O, firefly@c2o.org

1) c2o uses linux based servers. At home I use both Linux systems and a Win95 box

for the accounting software.

2-1) c2o is running the following software

Apache - Open source web server

Mysql - Open source SQL Database server

INN  - OPen Source NNTP News server

qmail - open source mail system

At home I use Linux to provide network connectivity to my other systems using masqurading. I use Star Office (a package similar to Microsoft Office for word processing and spread sheets). I also use it as a development system for the c2o systems.

2-2) I have a lot of unix experience and most of my work is done using various Unix OS's. In the past I've used Microsoft products as a base OS and then connected to the remote unix systems via terminal programs to do my work. I've been using Linux systems for the last 3-4 years. The main reason is that it is what I am used to using. I also find them stable (no crashes) Linux is not for everybody you do need some unix experience to make the most of the system - though this is changing. Both the Redhat and Mandrake distrubitions of Linux have become very user friendly. Also the desktop enviroments KDE and gnome have added Windows like functionallity (only better) to Linux.

3-1) I do use Windows95 on an old 486 to run accouning software. This is one area where linux is lacking.

3-2) Where the business is concerned I buy commercial software - but only after looking at the Open source alternatives.

3-3) I'm using them now :)

4) The use of linux is increasing. There are a number of reasons for this. Mostly organisations in the social movement have limited funding. Open source solutions are often cheaper in the long run and more realiable than the alternatives.

5) c2o and minihub actively advocat for the use of linux based systems in these situtations.

6) I'm not aware of an organised one, but there is certianly a feeling that "Microsoft is bad"

The labour movement and the Internet

Chris Bailey

(LabourNet UK)

The trend of modern capitalism is towards both globalisation and networking. These features are closely related, but distinct.

Since the late 1970s, an enormous expansion in the export of capital across national boundaries has taken place. Giant transnational corporations have been carrying out a global "rationalisation" of production and distribution, treating nation-states as largely irrelevant. Neo-liberalism has developed as a political movement accelerating this process by deregulating the cross-border flow of capital around the world.

An explosive expansion of computer and telecommunications technology has accompanied these developments. By shrinking distances, this new technology has been a major factor in the globalisation of capitalist production. It has also played an essential role in bringing about the domination of networked forms of organisation. Although networks of various kinds have existed for centuries, modern computer technology has allowed them to take on new features and modes of operation and made them a central aspect of modern capitalism.

The essential nature of a network and the connection with computer communications has been described by Sally Burch, one of the pioneers of social movement networking in Latin America:

"Unlike rigid structures, true networks are essentially flexible. They generate multiple channels of communication in which, as in the functioning of the brain, connections are made as needed and then suspended until a new need arises. In this way, information flows through the channel of least resistance, rapidly making its way to the most dynamic points of the network, on any given issue. Physically, this is very similar to the way the Internet works, and that is precisely one of the reasons why it is so appropriate for any initiative based on networking."

) Sally Burch. ALAI - A Latin American Experience in Social Networking. Page 198. In women@internet - creating new cultures in cyberspace. Zed Books.

Computer technology has created the conditions for a global communications network that is essential to the operation of capitalism today. But capitalism has also shown that networking need not be simply limited to communication and the flow of information, it has become a feature of the capitalist manufacturing process itself. In Flexible Dimensions of a Permanent Crisis: TNCs, Flexibility, and Workers in Asia, Gerard Greenfield describes how transnational corporations work with a mass of sub-contractors to bring about what is essentially a networked production system. Here he explains how "the logic of TNC subcontracting" works for Nike's strategy in Asia:

"From July last year, PT Indomulti Inti Industry stopped producing Nike shoes because Nike's price was too low, and "failed to consider the labour costs and other operational costs." Other subcontractors accepted the lower prices demanded by Nike, and cut labour costs to absorb the loss. On the other hand Nike has cut orders to subcontractors like Samyang, a South Korean-owned factory in Vietnam, in response to the gains workers were making in organising and collective bargaining. At the same time, Nike has increased orders to Yue Yuen, a Taiwanese-owned subcontractor, which is increasing the production capacity of its factories in Indonesia and Vietnam. For Nike, Yue Yuen has emerged as a 'reliable' subcontractor because it can ensure both lower prices and more effective repression of workers."

) Gerard Greenfield. Flexible Dimensions of a Permanent Crisis: TNCs, Flexibility, and Workers in Asia. http://www.labournet.org/documents/GLOBAL/tncasia.html.

An increase in wages or improvement of conditions for workers is thus treated by the Nike production network as "damage". As with any network, the damaged part is bypassed and made redundant. Production flows "through the channel of least resistance".

It is important to note that, unlike purely informational and communications networks such as the Internet, the Nike network contains a definite command structure. This combines what Greenfield calls "hyper-flexibility" with a powerful centre that has strong ultimate authority over the way the network operates.

As Greenfield shows, such "hyper-flexibility" in TNC production methods based on sub-contracting creates "hyper-vulnerability" for Asian workers. There can be no room for complacency for workers in the developed counties either. In manufacturing, they have already been largely bypassed in favour of workers forced to work for much lower wages and under worse conditions in the developing nations. Similar pressures for "hyper-flexibility" are now asserting themselves in the service industries, particularly through privatisation and the subcontracting of jobs in the public sector. The ultimate logic of a globalised networked capitalism would be a world in which workers had no rights and worked for subsistence wages.

How can the international labour movement confront this threat? As Peter Waterman stated in his paper to LaborMedia '97, "A globalised networked capitalism requires a globalised and networked labour response". Waterman believes:

"We are living through a revolution within capitalism, one even more profound than that from a local and craft based-based capitalism to a national and industrial one. Just as that transformation required an equal one from the craft-based guild to the industrial trade union, so does ours from the national and industrial trade union to a globalised and networked model."

) Peter Waterman. Globalisation, information and the labour movement: What is to be done? Paper presented at LaborMedia '97, Seoul, Korea.

The creation of a globalised and networked trade union model is unthinkable without the building of an international labour computer network based on use of the Internet. Yet progress in creating such a network has been extremely slow. Most of the work so far has been done by a handful of individuals devoting their time to this task. In some cases these have received a limited amount of support from various trade union or political organisations, but, in probably the majority of cases, their work has been carried out on a purely voluntary basis.

We need to consider why this situation exists. It contrasts sharply with the position amongst other movements working on social issues, such as those campaigning over women's rights, peace, the environment, etc. These movements have built extensive international computer networks employing teams of professionals. These networks have often been able to act in a powerful way to influence social developments.

One example of this was the successful campaign to defeat the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. A number of Internet based international networks worked together to mobilise large numbers of people around the world to lobby governments and campaign against the MAI. There were key issues involved here for the trade union movement, but international labour played a very minor role in defeating the MAI compared with networked social movement campaigning groups.

Another example of powerful intervention by Internet based networks has been the subject of study by the US military. They concluded that an international computer network, based particularly on the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), had brought about a situation in which the Zapatista National Liberation Army in Mexico "had quickly occupied more space in the media than any other insurgent group in Mexico's if not the worlds history". The study was in no doubt that this large-scale intervention by social movement computer based networks changed the course of events in Mexico. Its advice to the US military ought to be taken to heart by the international trade union movement. It asserted that "Hierarchies have a difficult time fighting networks" and "It takes networks to fight networks".

) David Ronfeldt and John Arquilla. The Zapatista Social Netwar in Mexico. http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR994/MR994.pdf

) Ibid. Page 45.

) Ibid. Page 17.

Why has the labour movement, so far, failed to emulate the networking abilities of these other social movements? One clue lies in the fact that most of these movements were already networks before the growth of computer communications. An information and communication network has always been the main form in which they have existed. Consider the women's movement, for instance:

"Even before the word networking became synonymous with the Internet, women's information-exchange strategies facilitated and, to a large extent, made possible the growth of an international movement working on issues of concern to women. Popular theatre and radio listening groups, wall newspapers and women's wire services, fax trees and newsletters have informed, mobilized and built a global network of women activists. New information tools have joined rather than supplanted this media mix."

) Alice Mastrangelo Gittler. Mapping Women's Global Communications and Networking. In women@internet - creating new cultures in cyberspace. Zed Books.

Initially the women's movement was not very enthusiastic about the use of computer technology. The major turning point came in the preparation for the United Nations Fourth World Conference on the Rights of Women in Beijing in 1995. Particularly through the work of the APC in setting up computer networks, women's NGOs around the world found they could be better informed than national delegates to the Conference. Use of the Internet by women's groups and individual activists expanded rapidly. The number of women's organisations operating on APC networks tripled in a short space of time. The APC web site on the Conference recorded more than 100,000 hits.

After the conference, extensive training programmes were initiated, particularly in the Third World countries, to teach use of the Internet to women's groups. Quite substantial funding for this was obtained from a range of civil society institutions and charities.

Examination of other social movement computer networks reveal very similar histories. Already existing networks adopted the use of computer communications and eventually large numbers of supporters became convinced of its networking capabilities. Funding was then raised for extensive training programmes.

Although there is a lot to be learned from the computer network building experiences of other social movements we cannot simply imitate them. The labour movement is very different from these others. It has never been based primarily on a communications and information network. Although networks of cultural and education activity and political debate have always existed around the labour movement, its main organisational form has always been hierarchical. Even the most democratic trade unions impose the will of a majority on a minority and elect leaders who have definite powers over members.

Is it possible to dispense with such a command structure and base the labour movement purely on a communication and information network as the other social movements are? In these, people make individual choices about what actions they decide to take concerning information they receive.

In fact, governments around the world have often tried to implement legislation doing precisely that. In doing so, they have been aware that if trade union actions were reduced simply to choices taken individually by union members then unions could not operate. By its very nature, the labour movement is fundamentally different from social movements based predominantly on information networks. It has to have some kind of command structure to function. The whole power of organised labour, particularly through its ultimate weapons, the strike and the picket line, is dependent on this. Union members are often required to act against their own individual interests in favour of a general interest. A degree of compulsion, with sanctions against those who refuse to take such actions, is essential.

The present trade union command structures have become highly bureaucratised. Most unions fall well short of democratic values they claim to stand for. In extreme cases, full time officials operate with very little control from rank and file union members. A major obstacle to creating a networked labour movement is resistance from these established union bureaucracies. They correctly see the wide dissemination of information involved in networking as a threat to their dominant position, based, as it is, largely on their control of "channels of information". The building of a networked labour movement means taking on and ultimately eliminating these bureaucratic aspects of trade union organisation.

But this cannot be done by simply building an information and communications network. Such a network remains peripheral to the functioning of the trade union movement and the needs of the mass of its membership unless it also contains an alternative command structure. It has been pointed out earlier in this paper that capitalist transnational corporations are perfectly capable of building networks containing a command structure. Is it possible for labour to do the same? Surely, if we are to confront the power of networked capitalism, it must.

Certainly, those of us involved in labour computer communication work cannot and should not attempt to create such command structures ourselves. Our technological knowledge gives us no more right than any other union members to try to determine general union policies. Our job is to build an information and communications network similar to that of other social movements. No more.

But, unlike in other social movements based predominantly on such information networks, the mass of union members will see no great point in the work we are doing unless it does produce alternative command structures capable of winning battles against the employers. Only through such victories are large numbers of union members likely to become involved in computer communication work. Union members around the world are only too aware that the old bureaucratised union structures are failing them, but, so far, they see no real alternative to them.

How can these alternative forms of organisation come about? Although, our work is essential for creating the conditions for the emergence of new networked command structures in the labour movement, these new organisational forms can ultimately only arise out of workers' attempts to fight back against globalised and networked capitalism. Our work must facilitate, not substitute for, the emergence of these new forms.

These are the conceptions LabourNet worked with when it provided computer communications for the 500 Liverpool dockers sacked in 1995. LabourNet worked only to help build an information and communications network for the dockers. It did not itself attempt to dictate or impose policies on the dockers, though by putting them into contact with others around the world it did have a considerable influence on the direction they took. The dockers themselves were able to use the facilities and contacts LabourNet provided to construct a world-wide network that was much more than an information network. It possessed the authority to call and organise two international days of action that included strikes by dockers around the world.

The dockers' international organisation possessed the features of a networked command structure. Various chains of authority in dockers' organisations world-wide were used as far as they could be, but where they failed to produce action, they were bypassed by the network and replaced with other chains of authority. In the first day of action, the body that supposedly possessed the authority to call international dockers actions, the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), was circumvented in this way and reduced to trailing limply behind the dockers' network. When asked by the press to supply information on the pending action it was forced to send begging emails to LabourNet to try to find out what was actually happening!

The ITF did not participate at all in the second day of action, which was even more strongly supported than the first. Before this day of action the dockers had attempted to construct, at a conference in Montreal, a formal international dockers' organisation based on traditional elected structures. It failed to play any real role in the organisation of the action and, indeed, become something of a hindrance. Its authority was not recognised by many of the organisations involved in taking action. It was the Liverpool dockers themselves, at the centre of a now powerful and flexible global network, that were able to bring about the international day of action. The adaptability of this network was illustrated by the fact that the dockers were even able to keep the employers in the dark about the actual date of the action, only announcing it at the last moment.

The dockers were ultimately forced to surrender by the connivance of the leadership of their union, the Transport & General Workers' Union. If they had won, there is little doubt that this would have given an enormous impetus to the growth of global and networked union structures based around the Internet, particularly among dockers around the world. During the course of their fight, dockers in Montreal in Canada, Santos in Brazil, Los Angeles in the US, Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Stockholm in Sweden all began independently producing World Wide Web sites. The conditions for creating a training programme dedicated to teaching dockers how to use the Internet for organising were clearly beginning to emerge.

The Liverpool dockers showed the way forward for the international labour movement. Other groups of workers will eventually continue where they left off. In the meantime, those of us involved in building an international labour computer network can and must continue to prepare the ground for such a development. Our work is much harder and produces results much more slowly than that of people building computer networks for the other social movements, but ultimately it will help bring about something much more powerful than even the best of their achievements. September 8th 1997, the day US and Canadian longshore workers closed all west coast ports from Alaska to Los Angeles for 24 hours in support of the Liverpool dockers, joining with similar actions from dockers around the world, proved this.

Appendix

Toward A National Satellite Cable Television Channel for Labor

The Vision

A nationally-distributed, self-supporting, mixed-format, lively, diverse, entertaining and popular channel carrying daily news and events, public affairs, perspectives, celebrities and non-celebrities, products, images, stories and messages that promote debate, learning, involvement, and participation from and about American working families.

The Situation

Labor needs a voice on American television. Our presence on the number one image and information medium in America is negligible at best. Given television present corporate structure and the failure of calls for fairness and open access in the new telecommunications environments, prospects for an increase in labor presence on American television look bleak. It's time to rewrite the script, take the initiative and try something bold.

Reaching citizens with unbiased and positive news about labor issues and the concerns of working people is crucial to building the labor movement into the political and social force it should be in America. At times this seems like a hopeless task, with a small labor movement and a strong anti-labor bias in the media. Not surprisingly, as the labor movement gets stronger, the attacks on it get more vicious and it becomes even more crucial that we have access to some means of expressing our own beliefs and positions. But we are seeing a growing concentration of media outlets in fewer and fewer corporate (an hands. the deregulation of telecommunications, and the virtual end of community franchising of video providers as telephone companies, power companies, and others move into local market to provide video services.

Citizens are finding it increase-ingly difficult to have any input into their local news, and for union members this difficulty is compounded by the anti-labor bias or simple ignorance of news reporters and other media gatekeepers. Ten years from now (or less) the major cable companies will be permanently in bed with the telephone companies, and a single wire will carry almost every conceivable type of communication into our homes. We are seeing the promise of interactivity and higher-quality programming reduced to armchair shopping decisions. Labor images on television may soon be even less visible and/or more distorted that they are now. We need to act decisively to lay the groundwork for a new image for labor in the twenty-first century.

The 2nd Seoul international LaborMedia '99

The labor movement needs a national cable channel available to homes across the country. Our cable systems carry fundamentalist Christian channels, a conservative political channel, shopping channels and animal and golf channels why not a labor channel? With the new "500-channel universe" touted by cable conglomerates, why isn't just one of those channels dedicated to labor images and issues? Is it possible to have a mixed channel that includes labor programming along with a lively mix of other programming? Several progressive cable services have been in existence for several years with mixed success at best (Deep Dish, Free Speech TV, The Planet Channel). We would argue that a channel that is seen as marginal or alternative will not make it in today media environment.

We need a thoughtful, inclusive, imaginative approach to creating this new programming system. How can we guarantee its financial viability? How can we get to this admittedly ambitious vision? First, we need a pilot project to illustrate that it can be done; and we need the research conducted about the financial, technical, and creative elements that have to be brought together to launch it. Once we have both those things, we can move forward on implementing a plan for a national cable labor channel.

Understandably, the leadership of the labor movement is concerned about putting its limited resources into projects that offer no guarantee of message discipline. We also need to learn from those earlier, very important experiments in national labor programming in the 1980s with LIPA and the cable project Cableline. We need a proposal that starts on a limited scale, is low-risk, and takes advantage of many of the impressive resources we actually have in place.

The Pilot Project

The project outlined below is a pilot project that will provide the basis for a decision to expand to a national programming system at a later date.  This project would place on local cable access systems around the U.S. a two-hour monthly block of programs consisting of labor news and public affairs, documentary and entertainment coordinated by the AFL-CIO. After two years of this pilot program, a decision would be made to disband, expand, or launch plans for a full channel to be distributed nationally via satellite to local cable systems. Several factors are already in place that make this project feasible.

1. Communities all over the United States have cable systems with local public and educational access channels. Federal law requires that cable systems set aside channels for public use, and in almost all large cities, cable access channels are already in use by local citizens.

2. In over 30 cities around the country, access systems already have labor programs running on a regular basis. Rhode Island, Arkansas, Connecticut, and Minnesota all have programs produced by their state labor movements and sent out over multiple cable systems on statewide or near-statewide basis. Many other states have long-running cable access programs produced by local union members and supporters in major cities, and many producers are sharing pro-grams and resources.

3. Affiliate unions have storehouses of excellent programming that has had very little exposure, and several unions have on-going video production and could assist in producing whatever amount of original programming the project requires.

4. Local central labor bodies in cities who are interested in participating in the project can provide the initial contacts. This project will make available two hours of high-quality programming each month to all central labor bodies chosen for the project.

5. Satellite time is not unreasonable in cost, and is increasingly available to access centers around the country, either through their local cable providers or educational or governmental entities.

We could start very small by choosing 16 cities (four in each region) with active central labor councils and activist, community-run access centers..  Each central labor council will be assisted in setting up agreements with their local cable channels to schedule and promote the programming, either as a two hour block, or scattered throughout the month, with repeats if possible. While the project may eventually send out programming by satellite, until there are a significant number of cities signed on, it will be more efficient to send programming out by UPS.

Why Use Public Access?

Labor programs on cable public access in a community give the local labor unions a face, a voice, and an identity. Pro-grams like "Cavanaugh's Corner" in Maine, Chicago's "Labor Beat", and "St. Louis LaborVision" discuss issues of importance to working people. They publicize labor events, celebrations, concerns, and legislative agendas. They report news from the perspective of working people (Why is "economic news" only "Wall Street Week"?). They promote pro-labor political candidates, and educate members and non-members about the contributions of un-ions, and about labor history. Local access programs aid in organizing drives, and strengthen community support for labor's positions.

In addition, labor access producers report that local mainstream media sit up and take more notice of labor issues (Appendix C) in a commu-nity when labor access programs appear regularly on cable. These programs are rare and invaluable tools for promoting labor's agenda. Several local access programs have succeeded as limited series on PBS such as "We Do the Work" and "ShopTalk," both produced from the West coast. Unfortunately, the PBS systems in many states, under increasing control by corporate money, and with dwindling public funding, have balked at broadcasting these labor offerings.

But does anyone watch public access?  This is always the question when the subject of public access TV comes up. The commercial mass media have done a successful job of portraying access as simply a place for local eccentrics to gain exposure. But research has proven that access programming can be extremely successful in building an audience when programs are regular, and when they are promoted among their targeted audience. If union members know the labor show is coming on the same time every week, they will watch it. If they receive notice in their union newsletters and plant leaflets about upcoming topics, and if their own communities and issues are featured, they will watch. If they feel like they need to hear labor view on an important national issue, they will watch.

Programming

This project will provide a two-hour monthly block of programming which will include:

1. One half-hour original news magazine, to follow a "McNeill/Lehrer format with a mix of short documentary, news briefs and an in-depth discussion of one issue of importance to the labor movement and its supporters. Jim Hightower and Janine Jackson (FAIR) have agreed to host the first of these news magazines, which will be produced by Minnesota At Work executive producer Howard Kling.

2. One half hour of the best labor access program or affiliate-produced program from somewhere in the country covering an issue or event of major importance to working people (e.g. the tape from the Teamsters□ UPS picket lines is one example of the type of program that could be shown here).

3. One hour labor history film (already produced or part of an affiliate押 library (e.g. the history of an affiliate union, the building of the Golden Gate Bridge, Rosie the Riveter, The Uprising of 4, etc.) introduced and put in context by a labor leader from one of the sponsoring unions.

Programming can ini-tially be imported from other labor access programs, such as "Labor at the Cross-roads" out of Hunter College in New York City, "Minnesota At Work," and "St. Louis LaborVision" in Missouri. As more locals and unions are in-volved, programming generated from different sites will be incorporated into the program format. The goal will be to provide at least one professionally produced documentary segment each month on a labor struggle somewhere in each region.

Marketing

Marketing consists of three components: marketing the initial project to unions, labor councils and other potential supporters and participants, marketing the labor programs to local areas to build the viewing audiences, and marketing the concept and series to the national media so that public awareness will be high, which will assist in the other two kinds of marketing.

A sophisticated video presentation will be prepared and used to recruit local central labor bodies to be involved in the pilot. There are already union members who produce or facilitate labor shows on access in several major cities who would be eager to see labor programming coordinated and promoted.  One we have recruited the central labor councils, the project coordinator will visit each local area to help them sign up with their local cable systems to get the channel time, and orient them on how to promote the programming at a regular time. Publicity materials for the programs will be produced centrally that can be customized to each individual area.

For those areas where labor has not been using access, it is usually relatively simple to sign up for channel time if the citizen is persistent and knowledgeable. The project coordinator will investigate the policies of the cable sys-tems governing the local access channel in each of these communi-ties and find out about acquiring channel time. Most channels require a local resident to apply to put a program on the access channel. The project coordinator will work with a designated group of interested union members from each labor council to set up regular channel time, and to make sure the weekly series is provided to the access center for playback. These members would also provide the core of people to generate local labor news ideas, and local programming once they are trained to do so.

The project coordinator will collaborate with the educators and communicators that are already working (newsletter editors, etc.) in unions and locals around the state to publicize the series and develop the audience. This project will help prepare local union members to become media activists, to demystify television and use it to communicate with their own neighbors, representing the interests of their unions and their co-workers.

Training

Public access television was originally conceived as a way for ordinary citizens to produce their own programming. An essential component of this project will be the training of local labor union members to produce their own programs in their own communities.  In the second year of the project, after the initial set-up, video training will be made available as part of the field organizing with central labor councils. Council members can be trained to produce their own labor program about local issues, which will augment local labor programming offerings and provide opportunities for local areas to send in the "best of" shows to be chosen for the national two-hour block. If the labor council is interested, the project coordinator can facilitate setting up local training. Training can either be provided through the local labor movement, if they have the resources, or it can be provided by the access center. Labor at the Crossroads in NYC is training NYC labor union members through a project with the New York Central Labor Council. Access centers all over the country train thousands of people ever week.

Distribution

The monthly program will be planned, coordinated, produced, duplicated, and distributed by individuals accountable to the AFL-CIO and to the affiliate unions who decide to participate in this program. The production will be coordi-nated from a central location, probably Washington, DC. or New York City.

Ideally, this programming would eventually be distributed nationally via satellite and downlinked by local cable systems. Satellite distribution is really the only way to begin thinking about a national cable channel. But satellite would become cost effective only after a critical number of local areas have begun using the programming, and after the program became at least weekly rather than monthly.

According to Dee Dee Halleck, Executive Director of Deep Dish TV, the oldest and most successful non-commercial satellite cable network in the country, one hour of satellite uplink time is available for approximately $3000. This means the total national satellite distribution for two hours a month would cost $72,000 annually, assuming that the central labor councils have arranged the downlink with their own cable systems. As you can see, this would pay for a lot of overnight UPS delivery, and the project would need to be large to justify satellite. Deep Dish Television already sends satellite programming to over 600 public access stations around the country, and already has the infrastructure set up to do this. We would certainly investigate the most cost-effective way of distribution, perhaps using their satellite arrangements, but this is for a later stage in the project when our own logistics are confirmed.

Research

An important component of this project should be researching the feasibility of expanding this "Labor News Network" on a larger scale. We need to study the structure and financing of the other satellite networks, particularly the religious and conservative cable channels. Project staff will conduct a complete feasibility study to be presented at the end of the first two-years of the pilot period.

Compelling the large cable companies to carry the channel would be a major area of research and organizing. The struggles now between Time Warner and Fox, and on a smaller scale between Free Speech TV and TCI over access to local cable channels are instructive. Research into these other issues would help determine the best way to build political support and policy arguments for the existence of a channel like this.

Administration

We propose that a project steering committee be formed with representation from the AFL-CIO, and from each affiliate choosing to support the project on a financial basis. The project coordinator would be hired by this committee, and the coordinator would then develop the project budget and three-year plan in detail.  Monthly meetings to go over programming plans and project direction will be held. We further propose that the committee attempt to establish 501押3) status for the project so that any monies spent or debates about political activity will not be complicated by the laws governing the labor movement, and the project can develop on a semi-autonomous basis. We feel that the success of the project depend on its ability to stay as clear as possible from the jurisdictional or political disputes between affiliates, and that contributors to the project must agree to allow autonomy to the staff to develop the project. The controlling element here would be that after 3 years, if the unions and the AFL-CIO are not satisfied that the project has fulfilled organizational and programmatic objectives, it will be terminated.

Financing

We are seeking financial support for this initial pilot from individual affiliates and from the AFL-CIO. Many affiliates already put significant resources into communication efforts, with little to show for it on television. Others spend a lot on video, but have limited ways to showcase these excellent programs. The AFL-CIO has recently developed an aggressive and commendable new approach to public relations and marketing that can only be boosted by the results of this project. Additional funds will be raised from foundations and individuals interested in labor押 voice. Our vision of the eventual cable channel that will result from this first effort is that it will be self-supporting and partly commercial. But the first steps must be made.

The total cost of the pilot project for the three years is estimated at $465,200. The initial year commitment is $121,000 We propose that we raise the first year budget to gauge the interest in and support for this project. If we can identify twelve international unions willing to invest between $10-12,000 apiece, we can set up the preliminary infrastructure and begin programming. At the end of the first year, we will have the structure in place, six months of programming behind us with more in process, and a good portion of the research completed for the final feasibility study. At that point, the initial funders could agree to continue supporting the project, or additional support could be found.

The labor movement must put more resources into communication. We can win the fight on the picket line, but lose the fight in the public hearts and minds. And increasingly, winning the first depends on winning the second. We have the opportunity now to move into the 21st century of telecommunications. Issues of civil rights, free speech, democracy and civil society hinge on the leadership of the labor movement being willing to take the initiative to get their politics onto the front burner.

Conclusion

We are entering an era when "niche programming" is the norm. There is no "mass" audience any more. In the new 500 channel universe, labor's voice must be one of those many voices heard. Audience size is important, but shouldn't derail efforts to get our message out. Getting commercial cable companies like Time Warner and TCI, who are notoriously anti-labor, to give space to a labor channel will be a fight itself, but one that our national labor movement must win. National Empowerment Television, currently on a growing number of cable systems, is only one of many powerful outlets the anti-labor forces have at their disposal. Reaction-aries took over Congress in 1994 with fax machines and AM talk radio stations. The Republican Party is launching its own cable channel, with corporate cable moguls eager to insert it into every American living room. We can't afford to sit around moaning about audience size. PACT is one way to begin a discussion among labor union members about the importance of television, and how television treats labor. If we have a successful pilot labor presence on access channels, with an involved, vocal audience, it will be harder for video providers to eliminate labor's voice from the coming 500-channel system.

But if the labor movement doesn□t engage in this fight over who speaks on TV, who will? Issues of free speech, democracy, and a voice for labor are increasingly high stakes. Access to a national TV audience can be won, but it is an issue of political will and organizing. We have to demand that a movement as important as labor have access to television. And we have to make it happen.

Korean Progressive Network 'Jinbonet'

Shin-sung 3F, 8-48, Kalwol-dong, Yongsan-gu, Seoul 140-150, South Korea

Telephone : ++82-2-7744-551	Fax : ++82-2-7744-553

E-mail : jinbonet@jinbo.net

Website : http://www.jinbo.net/english

Jinbonet launched officially on November, 1998 as a center for providing computer communication services including internet service and training services for Korean NGOs. And it's an independent organization for action itself.

Jinbonet has assured itself as a credible Internet Service Provider (ISP) and action partner of Korean NGOs. Jinbonet carries out construction of sectoral and regional networks for solidarity and communication among social movements. Now, Jinbonet provides web-hosting and BBS service for 200 organizations' including KCTU.

DREXEL UNIVERSITY EXPERT FILE

ARTHUR B. SHOSTAK, Ph.D.

o Expert on futurism

o Expert on the history and future of the American work force and organized labor

o Professor of sociology

o Director, Drexel University Center for Employment Futures

An applied sociologist since earning his Ph.D. in 1961 at Princeton University, Shostak has taught at Drexel since 1967. Previously he was on the faculty of the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, University of Pennsylvania (1961-67). He has introduced courses at Drexel in futurism, race and ethnic relations, social implications of 20th century technology, and urban sociology.

In keeping with his B.S. degree in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University (1958), Shostak has served since 1975 as an Adjunct Sociologist with the National Labor College degree program at the AFL-CIO George Meany Center for Labor Studies (Silver Spring, Md.). He has assisted the American Federation of Government Employees, the Steelworkers Union, the Postal Workers Union, the IBEW, and many others.

Shostak is the author, co-author or editor of over 140 articles and 19 books, including:

o CyberUnion: Empowering Labor through Computer Technology (1999)

o Private Sociology: Unsparing Reflections, Uncommon Gains (1996)

o Impacts of Changing Employment: If the Good Jobs Go Away (1996)

o For Labor's Sake: Labor Gains and Pains as Told by 28 Creative Inside Reformers (1994)

o Guidelines from Gomberg: No-Nonsense Advice for Labor and Management (1992)

o Robust Unionism: Innovations in the Labor Movement (1991)

o The Air Controllers' Controversy: Lessons from the PATCO Strike (1986)

o Men and Abortion : Lessons, Losses, and Love (1984)

o Blue-Collar Stress (1980)

A longtime member of the World Future Society, and co-organizer of its Philadelphia chapter, Shostak has been a futurist consultant for Johnson & Johnson, Monsanto, Proctor & Gamble, and various levels of Federal, state, and local government. As well, he regularly assists k-12 school systems and colleges and universities. His forecasts have appeared in FAST COMPANY (May, '99), The Futurist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. He is the creator and moderator of the local Cable TV series, "Future Now!."

Awards & Honors:

1997 -- Appointed director, Drexel University Center for Employment Futures (DCEF? . 1995 -- Guest editor, March 1996, The Annals, "Impacts of Changing Employment: If the Good Jobs Go Away." 1994 -- President of the Philadelphia Chapter of Industrial Relations Research Association. 1991 -- Awarded study grant by the Swedish-American Bicentennial Fund. 1990 -- Lester F. Ward Distinguished Sociologist, Sociological Practice Association. 1987 -- Distinguished Scholarship Award, Pennsylvania Sociological Society; Distinguished Practitioner Award, Section on Sociological Practice, American Sociological Association; Outstanding Practitioner Award, Clinical Sociological Society.

Arthur B. Shostak can be reached at 610-668-2727 or at shostaka@drexel.edu. His homepage is at http://futureshaping.com/shostak/

Steve Zeltzer's profiles

Steve Zeltzer is founder of the Labor Video Project in San Francisco as well as a co-founder of LaborNet, LaborTech and the Union Producers & Programmers Network (UPPNET). He produces the longest running labor cable show in the United States in San Francisco called "Labor On The Job" and has also produced labor video documentaries for public broadcasting. He also hosts a weekly 1 hour labor micro radio show on San Francisco Liberation Radio 93.7FM called "LaborLine". He has also helped develop labor video programs for workers around the world in order to build global labor solidarity as well as provide labor education using video and computer networks.

lvpsf@pop.igc.org

A sketch

Soongsil University Campus

Publisher : Jinkyoon Kim

Publishing Office : Organizing Committee

of the 2nd Seoul International Labor Media '99