Global Networked Labour Union | CoopFunding

Together we build a Commons Humanity

Global Networked Labour Union seeks your broadest support for the network of emancipatory projects we have been building in collaboration with others. You can give us an hand in any way that you could. Most preferably by joining your labour, heart and mind with us, so that we would walk together towards a commons humanity in dignity, overcoming all kinds of alienation in and between peoples and societies.

In case you like to support our work financially, the amount you
donate will be used to cover the project related costs. Amount over
due will be shared with and donated to sister communities that are
developing similar projects like ours and working for all of us by
commoning the humanity.

Hackers, makers, workers, farmers, designers, squatters, and all communities GNUnite in stitching One Big Mesh Network for the Emancipation of Labour and the Commons

via Global Networked Labour Union | CoopFunding.

Program: Digital Labor Conference

PROGRAM

Download the full program (PDF) Flip through the program here.

November 13, 2014

06:00 PM Workingman’s Death

November 14, 2014

08:00 AM Speaker Check-in

10:00 AM Opening Plenary

10:45 AM (Not) Getting Paid to Work & Play

10:45 AM Research & Practice on Feminist / Feminized Digital Labor

10:45 AM The Death of Employment; Long Live Worker Rights

10:45 AM Perspectives on Digital Labor & the Video Game Industry

10:45 AM Culture Workers of the World Unite!

02:15 PM Resource Sharing & Digitization in the Arts

02:15 PM Digital Labor, Sex Work, & Maria’s GentleWhispering

02:15 PM CUNY Digital Labor Working Group Roundtable:

The Place, Politics, and Function of Measure

02:15 PM Fairness in Crowd Work

02:15 PM The Labor of Love & the New Soviet Man in Silicon Valley

02:15 PM Value Capture & the Affect Machine: Non-Money Capital in the Digital Age

02:15 PM Search, Data Flows, & Vertical Extraction

05:15 PM SaysUs/GNUnion

05:15 PM Art, Art Workers, and Cloud Platforms

05:15 PM Teamsters, UPS, & the Gig Economy (Student Panel)

05:15 PM Temp Land: Working in the New Economy

05:15 PM Crowd Work: The Future of Design

05:15 PM How Interfaces Demand Obedience

05:15 PM Movement Materials & What We Can Do

07:00 PM Disability & the Digital Divide

via Program: Digital Labor Conference.

Social (Network) Unionism and Social (Networked) Strike by Tiziana Terranova

Social unionism and digital labor in the transnational space of European austerity

Over the past few years, European social movements have struggled to find new ways of cooperating and connecting in order to oppose the verticalization of European governance. Following the crash of 2008, in fact, a regime of austerity, that is severe cuts to public spending, has gone together with a remodulation of modes of welfare and work inspired by the German model. This model has seen the massive introduction of part-time, badly paid jobs (the so called mini-jobs ) which are part of a system of workfare where the state makes sure that everybody is forced to accept whatever job available through a new capillary control of recipients’ lives. While the European Central Bank like the Federal Reserve has deployed quantitative easing, and inundated the financial system with money, none of this has effectively gone into the creation of new jobs, into expanding credit to consumers and business or to essential public services. The process of complete precarization of labor and increasing accumulation of wealth is thus unfolding along the lines of a geographical and ethnic division of labor which sees the European Union divided between centre and periphery, North and South, East and West with war pressing in on its Eastern and Southern borders.

The verticalization of European governance has thus reinforced a whole series of trends: ‘the attack on waged labor, the compression of union rights, the dequalification and privatisation of learning and research, the enclosure of common goods, a new government of labor mobility and the exploitation of migrant labor’ (http://www.autistici.org/strikemeeting/). These considerations are central to the formation of a transnational space of action for social movements aiming to reverse the tide of complete neoliberalization of Europe and opening onto the global level as the only adequate dimension of struggle.

Degrowth and the transition to a Commons Society | P2P Foundation

Degrowth will only be possible by changing the artificial scarcity-based design practices and engineering of the for-profit sector and by removing the incentive to externalize the true production costs in terms of matter and energy. A commons-oriented approach should combine global open design based in communities, local on-demand distributed manufacturing, and the use of renewable distributed energy. Along with changes in governance and ownership, it can contribute to a global phase transition.

Recorded at the 4th International Degrowth Conference 2014 in Leipzig Germany

September 5th

Speaker Michel Bauwens

Source: http://www.extraenvironmentalist.com/2014/09/05/transition-sustainable-commons-society/

You can find more videos from the Extra Environmentalist Livestream from DeGrowth 2014 on their Youtube channel  – https://www.youtube.com/user/xenvironmental/videos

via Degrowth and the transition to a Commons Society | P2P Foundation.

Online Preparatory Meeting for the ‘Organizing Digital Labour and Digital Labour Organizing Workshop’ at Global Solidarity Conference

When: 10:00, 14 May 2014

Where: BigBlueButton

Preparatory and test call for planning the ‘Organizing digital labour & digital labour organizing’ workshop. The actual workshop is being planned to take place in Berlin between 23-25 May 2014, during  Labour Start‘s 5. Global Solidarity Conference.

Original Post

To open up the preparation process for the workshop as wide as possible and to allow those interested online participants to test and practice with the online system we will be using, we will be making several test conference calls in coming days. The first call will take place on Wednesday 14 May, between 10.00 am and 15.00 pm [UK time], so wider global participation will be possible during the day.

The draft description of the workshop, which we be taken as the starting point, can be found at ‘Union Upgrading’ Group Wiki created on Organizing Network -which we will be testing and using to document the workshop and the preperation, and to take the minutes. If you like to participate the preparatory call, and the workshop itself please add your name, affiliation, contact information, and any ideas or suggestion of yours on the wiki and click on ‘Save’. In order to be able to use all the functions of the Organizing Network, for instance the wiki, you will need to register first. Please read the user guide for the ON here.

The test call is open to all unionists, labour organizers, social justice activists, free information and knowledge [h]activists, researchers who are interested in and experienced on the topic. The call is especially set up for those who wish to actively collaborate in the preparation of the content of the workshop, and who needs to practice with the digital tools we will be using.

All the Net workers of the world, mesh network!

This wiki is a meta-strike developing space created by GNUnion. Inviting interested digital and analog workers, labour and union activists to use it for inventing, initiating and networganising collective hactions to target Meta-Data abuses of the Capital. Besides PRISM contractors, there is a need to forge class struggle against digital capitalists of Amazon.com, Huffington Post, and others who undermines human dignity and rights, gained after hundereds of years fighting back!

*Operation PRISM Knock-out!
Objective: To stop PRISM contractors abusing people and data, and promote an escape route to FLOSS alternatives
Targets: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Twitter, Skype, Yahoo
Twitter: GNUnion – One Big Mesh Network
HashTag: #OPprismknockout
Planning: Irc

*Operation Mechanical Jurk
Objective: developing direct hacktion operation targeting Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk mass-exploitative model
Target: Amazon.com
Twitter: @GNUnion
Hashtag: #OPmechanicalJurk
Planning: Irc

Venture Communism and Technological Miscommunication: a Conversation with Dmytri Kleiner

This interview with Dmytri Kleiner, conducted by KMO for his C-Realm Podcast, was transcripted by Guerrilla Translation at KMO’s request. The audio was, unfortunately, unusable for the podcast because of background noise, but the resulting interview was too good to not to share. The following is re-posted from the C-Realm blog.

KMO: You are listening to the C-Realm Podcast, I am your host, KMO, and I’m speaking with Dmytri Kleiner, venture capitalist and miscommunications technologist. Dmytri, welcome to the C-Realm Podcast.

Dmytri: Thank you, but that’s “venture communist.”

Did I say “capitalist?”

It’s an easy mistake.

You know, I’ve read the phrase “venture communist” several times in the past few hours in preparing for this interview, and yeah… it just rolled out “venture capitalist,” didn’t it?

[chuckles]

So, Dmytri Kleiner, “Venture Communist” – what does that mean?

Well, it’s sort of the name of a research project I started awhile ago. My background comes from the social justice movement of the 90s. I was part of some of the kinds of hacker groups that eventually became things like Indymedia, and stuff that we called technology affinity groups. At that time there was something going on called the dotcom boom, that you probably remember. A lot of us who were part of these hacker affinity groups supporting activist projects were working for these dotcoms.

All the fists of the world are GNUniting! First Brainstorm – Online Meeting This Sunday at 13.00 PM GMT

All the fists of the world are GNUniting!
First Brainstorm – Online Meeting This Sunday at 13.00 PM GMT
https://www.facebook.com/GlobalNetworkedLabourUnion

We are the workers whose free labour and privacy has been stolen, and sold
for greed! We have been abused, spied on and betrayed constantly. Before
this massive exploitation and surveillance machine turns into a global
apparatus in the hands of fascism, being operationalized for direct
oppression, we have to unite our fists and strike back!

This May Day is the time… How and what is not decided yet, there are
initial ideas but much is needed to put the global collective intelligence
at work to defend our and our children’s rights and dignity! Join us this
Sunday and bring your most free, creative, powerful and peaceful ideas and
dreams along… We did beat Freon, Caesars, Barons, Kings, Emperors,
Merchants, Industrial Capitalists and Nazis in the past, we can beat the
TNCs, CEOs and 1% as well!

We call all the workers, hackers, makers, farmers, artists, indignant and
outraged to GNUnite all their constructive capacity around the most
spectacular free libre and open sourced swarm to fight back and win!

Hasta la Siempre Victoria!
https://www.facebook.com/events/583310555077672/?ref=3&ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular
https://www.facebook.com/events/252508808246947/?ref=22&source=3&source_newsfeed_story_type=regular

World Revolutionary Forum: Towards WorldWideWave of Actions in 2014 (#www)

Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/593164267417330/

HashTags: #WREF, #www

#www call: http://gnunion.wordpress.com/www/
#WREF: http://gnunion.wordpress.com/worl-revolutionary-forum/
GNUnion: http://gnunion.wordpress.com/

Hosted by GNUnion – One Big Meshwork for All the Working People

Again, 2014 will be full of struggles, actions and mobilisations for a real global change. This Mumble call will be about starting a new series of forums and assemblies that are open to all individuals who will able to make independent efforts from any corporate, state and NGO funded agenda and; who could be exactly themselves when changing the world, when getting together, discussing and collaborating with others; either as a part of a collective, group, network or individually, and by using either online, or face to face means, or both.

GNUnion (Global Networked Labour Union) One Big Meshwork of Workers, Hackers, Farmers, Artists, Makers and Opressed Peoples of the World

Global Networked Labour Union, GNUnion – One Big Mesh Network, is the released 1.0 Beta version of new generation, free to join, borderless worker self-organisation, a work in progress. Its main ispiration is the history, struggle and experiences of Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) on the one hand, and free-libre, and open source software GNU/Linux, on the other.

GNUnion is also inspired by comrades standing against global capitalism in women, Lgbt,  immigrant, environmental and social justice movements, Zapatistas, anti & alter golobalisation movements, social forums, free knowledge- information and culture movements; as part of organisations like WikilLeaks, Caos Computer Club, MayFirst People Link, or of recent wave of digital and real world uprisings Anonymous, 15M, Occupy, Gezi and others.

Networked Labour | Networking and collaboration toolkit that we use

Networked Labour was an outcome of an international seminar held in Amsterdam between 7-9 May 2013. The seminar was initially supported by Networked Politics, transform! europe, Transnational Institute and IGOPNET (Institut de Govern the Polítiques Públiques).

At the end of the seminar several ideas have emerged one of which was to improve this web space and try to transform it into a transnational and distributed network space, through which all of us could build new ties and expand our nets of collaboration.

WHY, HOW AND WHERE YOU CAN JOIN  

THREE DAYS OF GLOBAL NETWORKS, DIGITAL CULTURE AND DISTRIBUTED POLICY IN BARCELONA

On October 25th, once again, the FCForum in Barcelona will analyse the advances of the past twelve months and will consider the future outlook in the struggle for democracy in the digital era, free culture and net neutrality.

Year after year, the FCForum serves as a civil society tool, to move forward, analyse and answer questions and observe practices that actively grapple with them. Continuing the work carried out at the FCForum in 2011 and 2012, which looked at the increasing use of the net as a tool for democratic transformation – this year it will go further into some specific issues, such as the use and misuse of Big Data, electronic voting and electronic money, and how citizens can use them to achieve a society worthy of being called democratic in the twentieth century.

Seminar Report: Networking for the Emancipation of Labour by Örsan Şenalp

Supported by transform! europe, Transnational Institute, Networked Politics and IGOPNet, an international seminar on Networked Labour was held in Amsterdam from 7 to 9 May.

Around 25 activists, practitioners, researchers and theorists from various networks , organisations and backgrounds came together to contribute to the on-going debates on the changing nature of the capitalist modes of production, linking it to emerging new social forces and political actors.

The program of the seminar was constructed in an open sourced way. The ‘code’ draft program was designed and shared online prior to the event. According to it, the focus was the impact of internet and telecommunication on production modes, work organisation, and political protest and organisation.

Live from Amsterdam, Second Day Networked Labour Seminar

The machines of self-management have been switched on! | Vio.me

A great 30-minute documentary shot in the premises of Vio.Me a few weeks before production started. The workers document the shutting down of the company, their decision to self-manage it and the birth of the solidarity movement.
VIO.ME.: If they cannot, we can! Video: Diakoptes English subtitles: Reinform NL

Netwar 2.0: the convergence of streets and networks

by GIORGIO GRIZIOTTI, DARIO LOVAGLIO, and TIZIANA TERRANOVA 23 February 2012

To the extent to which we are not witnessing a clash between two capitalisms but a process of reconfiguration realized through the hegemony of finance, information and circulation, the only way to change the current situation is through the autonomous organization of the multitude’s living labour in the streets and on the net.

About one year ago, the world attention turned to the nascent powers of expression and action of networked multitudes first in the Wikileaks battle and, subsequently, in the Arab revolutions and the social movements 15M and Occupy. After this revelatory year, dense with threats and promises from a completely new global movement, global governance – painfully aware of the great threat that such autonomous horizontal communication poses to its control – is vigorously attacking digital freedoms.

The unmaking of the working class and the rise of the Maker | Re-Public

by Johan Söderberg 

One of the many attractions at the New York Maker Faire in 2011 was the ”Print-village”. It gathered twenty-something stands displaying the famous Rep-rap 3D printer and its many derivatives. Next to the Print-village was a much bigger pavilion. In addition to two companies catering to the home 3D printing market, the pavilion housed several exhibitions of advanced CNC machinery. One booth stood out from the rest. Hanging over it was a large banner in red-white-blue calling out to the passer-by: ”Keep it made in America”. The installation was organised by an alliance of American manufacturers and the metalworkers’ union. Visitors were asked to save jobs in the country by buying American products. In the booth stood a woman handing out badges with the same message. I approached her with a question and was rewarded with an interesting response. Almost blushing, she conceded to me that: ”yes, she did think it was ironic to find herself in this pavilion, of all places”. The machines on display in the booth next to hers were the descendants of a technology which, arguably, has contributed massively to the destruction of factory jobs.

The Making of a Cybertariat: Virtual Work in a Real World

by Ursula Huws

The workplace has been changed in recent decades by the rise of digital technologies. Parts of a single labor process can be moved around the world, with implications not only for individual workplaces or firms, but for the working class as a whole. Computer operators in India process medical transcriptions for doctors in the United States at one-eighth of what U.S. computer operators would earn, and at four times the salary of an Indian schoolteacher.Within advanced capitalist countries, the workplace has been made more “flexible” through cellphones, e-mail, freelancing, and outsourcing. The same process often makes the situation of the worker more precarious, as they are forced to pay for the tools of their trade, made constantly accessible to the demands of the workplace, and isolated from their fellow-workers.

Huws’ Making of a Cybertariat examines this process from a number of perspectives. It focuses especially on women in the workplace and at home. It examines changing categories of employment, and modes of organization. It shows how new divisions of race and gender are created in the process, and sets out an agenda for negotiating them. It explores the ways in which traditional forms of organization are being reshaped, and questions how the emerging cybertariat can become conscious of their common interests and stand together to struggle for them.

The Soul At Work by Franco “Bifo” Berardi

The Soul At Work

From Alienation to Autonomy

By Franco “Bifo” Berardi

Introduction by Jason E. Smith.
Translated by Francesca Cadel and Giuseppina Mecchia.

Overview

We can reach every point in the world but, more importantly, we can be reached from any point in the world. Privacy and its possibilities are abolished. Attention is under siege everywhere. Not silence but uninterrupted noise, not the red desert, but a cognitive space overcharged with nervous incentives to act: this is the alienation of our times….
—from The Soul at Work

Capital has managed to overcome the dualism of body and soul by establishing a workforce in which everything we mean by the Soul—language, creativity, affects—is mobilized for its own benefit. Industrial production put to work bodies, muscles, and arms. Now, in the sphere of digital technology and cyberculture, exploitation involves the mind, language, and emotions in order to generate value—while our bodies disappear in front of our computer screens.

In the ewe of massive general strikes: Can we build bottom up networked collaborative economies to support societies in the PIIGS and beyond

This is the first part of the audio version (see video version here) answering your questions to the P2P Foundation Reddit page: redd.it/11d4m7 based on the Synthetic overview of the collaborative economy report by the P2P Foundation and Orange Labs. James Burke gathered together the questions and recorded a converstion with Michel Bauwens to provide more valuable insight into the themes covered in the report. There is a lively discussion over on facebook about the report and other stuff too! And remember you can download the full report here. Previous posts indluding the serialisation of the report arehere.