Communicate or Die Checks Out LaborWeb
Yesterday I attended a webinar run by AFL-CIO Online Mobilization Manager Chris Kenngot on the national fed's new LaborWeb content management system - now running in open beta and available for all interested AFL union leadership to try for free.
Built over the last couple of years using the American Federation of Teachers' StateWeb as a template, the AFL started the CMS project after doing an inventory of state labor federations and central labor councils and finding that many of them didn't have a website - or if they had one, finding that it was often very pretty with out-of-date content or very old-fashioned with little functionality. They created a system run off of servers controlled by AFL national with 3 tiers of system user accounts. Tier 1 is for national unions and the national federation, Tier 2 is for state federations, and Tier 3 is for CLCs and locals. Each participant labor body gets a free website on the system upon request, and logs into their account at laborweb.aflcio.org to use their site. The tiered design was created both to act as a sort of intranet for information sharing between the 3 tiers, but critically to help many smaller locals (some without staff) keep their site content fresh by being able to avail themselves of content sent downstream by higher level sites. Most commonly, the national fed will feed material from their websites to the entire system. Each state fed, CLC or local can then decide which content to post and which to ignore. The national is also working on a social networking system (sort of like a labor Facebook) to go along with this site interconnectivity for testing in the near future. Contact info for each site is distributed from the national's central database, and users can change their site contact info by clicking a link from their administration page to send an update message to the national. So site construction and use is simple by design. Each site admin - at whatever level - logs into their account. They are taken to their administration page which has several clearly marked choices in a top menu bar and a center column. To set up a new site, admins will choose from 1 of the 14 available templates - which are blocky and basic like the templates of many content management systems - featuring 3-column layouts with a top and bottom banner. They will then choose a logo for their site, or work with the LaborWeb staff to convert an existing logo for use on the system. Then they can choose from an array of large colorful buttons to add to their left-menu bar and bottom banner - which are simple links to campaigns and services of interest that Labor Web makes available. Only 1 of these, a Union Plus button, automatically shows up on every site - since Union Privilege (the company that manages the AFL's Union Plus benefits) has heavily backed the project since its inception. A sign up box appears on the right column of every site, and the site menu bar appears in the left hand column. After the basic look-and-feel is set up, site admins can add articles using what amounts to a fairly standard (if simplified) multimedia blog template. They can also create new pages (or "categories" as they are called) and put other content there - including photo albums. One of the standout features of the article posting interface is its 3 tools for connecting files, external links and related articles to stories found under the upload file asset section of the administration page. Documents of various file types can be posted to an article using the "article assets" tool. External links are handled by a tool of the same name. And the "related articles" tool lets posters link an article to similar articles published to the site. The LaborWeb user system allows site admins to change access levels for each user that signs up for a site, and to delete users who improperly sign up or violate site usage rules. The current levels are admin, editor, contributor, and user (to be followed shortly by a visitor access level). Of note, it will soon be possible for site admins to integrate their user list with the AFL's E-Activist program. Each article posted to the site can be set for viewing by users above a certain access level - allowing for different viewing experiences for each type of user. A visitor might see certain content on a site, a user more, a contributor more still and so on. This will allow users to, for example, make certain internal documents only viewable by union members. Site admins can either use the provided URLs with their LaborWeb site or have their existing URLs forward to their site by talking to the staff at any time. LaborWeb is slated for full launch soon, but for the moment the system is being used and tested by a growing number of labor organizations. Early reviews, if other attendees on the webinar that already have LaborWeb sites are any judge, are positive. Although one could certainly quibble with the national fed about their choice to build a proprietary system rather than using one of a number of robust open source CMS options, the LaborWeb staff is quick to point out that use of the system is voluntary and any AFL labor entity that wishes to keep its own existing site is free to do so. Overall the system does seem to deliver on its promise to provide a reasonably robust labor-oriented content management system that everyone from tech newbies to tech savants will have no trouble setting up and using to create functional, decent-looking websites that are easy to update with a constant stream of easily accessible fresh content. AFL union officials and techies interested in participating in an upcoming LaborWeb training webinar can go to http://www.unionvoice.org/ct/YdzE5X71Mupf/ to sign up. Expect more info on LaborWeb from Communicate or Die in the weeks to come.
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Welcome aboard, Jason!
I checked out a live "Tier 3" site at http://pa.aflcio.org/557/ - one improvement I hope they make soon is to enable other sites to subscribe via rss feeds. Till then, their communication network is going to be largely limited to unions using the LaborWeb platform.
From the looks of the main menu, it looks like they need to set up a tiered menu system as well!
great info on laborweb, keep it coming
A question: what is the copyright status of the content of these sites? Do locals or other groups own the contents of their sites? Are there any content guidelines or policies?
The site Bill refers to has this, apparently boilerplate, line in the footer:
"© AFL-CIO. All rights reserved.
Photographs and illustrations, as well as text, cannot be used without permission from the AFL-CIO."
Asking the LaborWeb staff ...
Greetings, folks,
Great questions; so I've asked LaborWeb staff for answers, and we should be hearing from them soon.
Jason
Hi Jason. Do you know that
Hi Jason. Do you know that Steve Dondley fella? Say hi for me.
Thats about the best description of LaborWeb I've seen yet. If you don't mind, I'll use it in my efforts to educate unions about their options for creating websites. Along with Prometheus, of course.
There are several union orgs in MN using it and some more looking at it. Most are pretty happy with it but have some concerns about things like adding RSS feeds as mentioned here. For ex., they would like to subscribe to Workday Minnesota but have been unable to, for example. Chris K says there are improvements coming and they've been pretty responsive so far albeit a little slow. Prometheus offers the more robust program with Drupal.
Welcome!
I do indeed
Hi. Glad you liked the piece. And sure I know Steve. Because I work for him running this site (and doing other tasks as well) ... ;>
Good to hear that needed improvements are coming to LaborWeb. Great to hear you're a Drupal fan.
Jason
To use or Not to Use...Hmm
[Originally submitted to the old verison of our site by local370voice on Mon, 08/04/2008 - 9:04pm]
"They created a system run off of servers controlled by AFL national."
The key word here and in other spots in your post is control. While it is a commendable start I would hesitate to invest to much time on a site controlled by anyone other than the individual Union who creates it. I would have to wonder what would happen to any site critical or challenging to the AFL-CIO. I would also have to question whose "Copyright" is on the sites content. I would much rather see the Unions spend the money which they indeed piss away on other less important things such as trips to Atlantic City and invest in their own web site totally under the control of the Union involved. This site should be built by Union members or farmed out to a UNION web site building company. It should be built using web site designs created by UNION members. While the templates offered by Labor Web, how do you say, suck. I am sure with a little effort they could find Union people capable of creating quality templates.An effort should also be made to Organize those that would sell sites to Unions. Rather than use a Drupal or Wordpress software to sell to Unions would it be so unrealistic to get UNION members to create a series of Flash and html templates specifically designed for labor and use them bearing the Union Made label to create web sites for Unions. Its funny how we yell "Buy Union" except when it comes to using software like Drupal or others just because a site peddler is proficient with it and prefers it. I can show you thousands of web sites that would more than fit any Unions needs and are beautifully made and functional and guess what? Not a drupal name on them. Would you have us believe we cannot find a Union member to build such templates or custom web sites. While I think Drupal is a great tool would I bypass it for a site whose code was written by a Union member. You bet. Remember. Buy Union.
The biggest problem with this Labor Web option is here:"Union Plus button, automatically shows up on every site - since Union Privilege " Absolutely not. Why you say? Union Privilege offers a wide variety of financial services using HSBC Bank. I am sure the financing you mention involves them as well. Anyone have an HSBC card. I do. Its cut up in pieces and in my junk draw. Ever call customer service for HSBC. Hello good sir my name is Rakhi glorious day to you. Umm. Can you connect me with someone who speaks better English. Oh no my good sir. I cannot not . We all speak like this here in India. You see the greedy rat bastards at HSBC have cut the throat of American men and women by outsourcing all their customer care to Calcutta India. Here is a little HSBC info.HSBC CIO Ken Harvey recently revealed that almost half (42 per cent) of the bank's IT development work is now done in low-cost offshore centres.Even in India they screw the workers"Kidwai said rising wages in some of the established offshore outsourcing cities in India had forced the bank to look at alternative locations such as Kolkata." The average salary at the call centers IS A Huge $2100 A YEAR. So in a move that is pure greed motivated HSBC Bank takes jobs away from Americans and moves them overseas so they can pay slave labor
Whats also amazing is that the AFL-CIO would do business with this rat rabble.While Unions in England such as Unifi,CWU and Amicus are outraged and screaming loudly over the outsourcing of jobs our good old AFL-CIO is saying nothing and wants a Union web site to direct Union men and women to the Union Privilege site to do business with HSBC. I think not. Perhaps it would be a much better Union solidarity move if each site had a label that said "Boycott Union Privilege Until it Stops doing Business with a Bank that screws the working men and women" One wonders if we would then see who owns these sites"Controlled" by the AFL. While HSBC is not the only rat in the wood pile it is the one doing business with Union Privilege and certainly deserves not a single link from any Union site so good Union people can help HSBC post another 7Billion Dollar profit year on the backs of workers paid slave wages
Ignore Drupal? We think not.
[Originally submitted to the old verison of our site by Jason Pramas on Tue, 08/05/2008 - 6:15pm.]
There's no compelling reason for unions to ignore Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, Plone and other popular open source content management systems, as they are all largely built and updated by volunteers (some of whom are allowed to do their CMS work as part of their existing jobs) - a fair number of whom are politically progressive and union friendly.
In terms of scale, Drupal, for example, has at least 2000 high-level developers (a.k.a. programmers/coders) involved with updating its core program and modules at the moment, and 300,000 users registered with the Drupal online community - where anyone can get answers from experts about anything to do with using Drupal.
How could unions compete with that kind of knowledge base and sheer people-power? And that's just 1 CMS. Each of the other CMSs mentioned above has a similar-sized user and developer community.
More importantly, why would unions want to compete with existing CMSs - with the exception of building purposely simple internal systems like LaborWeb? Drupal and the other major CMSs are available for free, no one is having their labor exploited in their creation, and these open source products are far more robust than commercial competitors.
Even more critically, the communities around Drupal and other CMSs are constantly updating them. Keeping tech at the bleeding edge, and allowing the creation of ever more useful and amazing sites. Sites that by their CMS-based nature are very easy for people of all levels of tech experience to use. Which is often not the case in scratch-built proprietary sites.
No matter how pretty thousands of non-CMS-based sites may be (although I'm willing to bet that many of those, in fact, are run on CMSs), who is updating them? How good is their functionality, really? And what is the point of reinventing the wheel? That's the whole purpose of CMSs. Why recode some functionality or other into a site when that code has already been done better somewhere else and is available for free?
As far as organizing website developers, designers and content providers into unions that's a fine idea. But since said web pros are almost always independent contractors or employees of small firms and non-profits, the shape of such an organizing drive will be determined by the contingent nature of most of this particular labor market.
That is to say, web jobs are generally contracted for relatively short periods of time. Web pros make a living by working a string of assignments - each with a different client. So, by default, the web pros can either join a union (if available) or not based on personal preference - the same way they would join a trade association. But unions would be hard-pressed to find a significant group of them working in one place for an extended period of time to unionize in a traditional manner.
Far easier for unions to simply say, as many do, "we will only hire unionized web pros (like all of us at Prometheus) to build our sites" than it is to say "we must first unionize large numbers of these contingent tradespeople in an amorphous group of occupations in a multi-industry environment with no clear bargaining targets."
Once unionized folks are hired, unions will generally leave it up to these pros as to what software they choose to use - or at least weigh their advice heavily. If the pros say Drupal is good and that CMSs are the way to go and can show evidence to that effect, unions will usually say "great, let's get started."
In any case, the cry to "buy union" often misses the point of what buying union is supposed to be about: the whole union label fight at its core is about helping to guarantee workers rights on the job - and more broadly saying that all goods and services should be produced in work environments that meet the highest existing global human rights standards.
So, buying union is about saying no to sweatshop wages and benefits, unsafe conditions, and a lack of democracy on the shop floor. And while such problems do exist in the production of corporate software products, they do not exist in the production of open source CMSs like Drupal.
Therefore, from our corner, unions should certainly go with unionized web pros for their web site creation and maintenance needs when possible, but any CMSs that aren't produced by exploited labor should be fair game for their use. As for other kinds of software, web pros should always encourage the use of the least-objectionable software available for a given task - which is almost always free (as in freedom) or open source software produced in a manner similar to the above CMSs. If there's appropriate and well-built software available from union programmers for said task, so much the better.
Jason Pramas
Site Admin, Communicate or Die
Communications Director, Prometheus Labor Communications
Member, National Writers Union/UAW Local 1981 - Boston Chapter
p.s. - any argument that many people, including Drupal creator Dries Buytaert, make money using or (more commonly) servicing Drupal is a non-starter ... the fact of the matter is that Drupal itself is built by volunteers, free for all to use at no cost, and therefore fair game for labor movement web site developers.
We??
Who is we. Do you have a mouse in your pocket or perhaps an extra personality with you. Maybe a little leprechaun that lives in your shirt collar.? Who is we. Are you allowed to post without Dondley on your lap?? Why is it every time that I express my opinion on wiping you ass with Drupal I have to have one of you Drupalites assume that your are intelligent enough to give me a history lesson in Drupal. I had thought we were talking about Labor Web but instead you post a rather long winded Drupal babble. Like you I am entitled to my opinions yet judging by your need to Drupal educate me you don't seem to think so. Just because a little nickel and dime web building company like Prometheus chooses to use Drupal to peddle web sites to Unions does NOT mean the rest of us want to run out and get matching Drupal tattoos. By the way. When you put the Communicate or Die and Prometheus Labor titles before your name do you hear Roman Trumpets in the background. I am sure because you work for a tiny little web building company that YOU think we are supposed to equate you with say the Dali Lama but that doesn't work for me. Maybe you should put an equally impressive heading like . "Im Jason and have I matching socks." While we are on Drupal and in regards to your P.S.. It is amusing how we ignore facts when they do not satisfy our agenda.. Board Members at Acquia are: * Dries Buytaert (President and Board Member) * Kieran Lal (Board Member) * Robert Douglass (General Assembly Member) Acquia, a venture-backed software company that offers products and services for Drupal. AND NOT FOR FREE. So much for your non starter. Sorry there Jason but while Drupal is a good tool Unions do not need it just because Dondley uses it to peddle web sites to Labor. AND NOT FOR FREE. So what Union card do you think Buytaert, Douglass and Lal carry or as does Dondley do you feel that they should not bear the burden of Unionism. In regards to the "Buy Union". While your definition on sweatshops and exploited labor are certainly relevant they are not the core of "Buy Union" You choose to ignore the more pragmatic relevance that most Unions today share. Buy Union means to buy products made by Union members hands who are paid a Union wage with benefits. It is irrelavant if they are Hats,Tees shirts,web templates or web building services. It is meant to provide Union members jobs creating these products or services. Any company that wants to peddle services to Unions such as Prometheus Labor should not get a dime of Union money until they and their associated businesses were checked for Union cards. We must also insist that the products they use to provide these services be created by card carrying Union members to the best of their ability. Although your boss indicated in an earlier post that this was not feasible it appears the AFL-CIO has proven otherwise. Let us work to expand the trend. I do not care if Drupal is free and I do not care if it serves YOUR purpose. Unions should ignore it in favor of CMS created for and by card carrying Union members. That is what WE think. That is my friend Harvey and I. Have you meet Harvey. He is a pooka. In answer to your insinuation that sites with out Drupal are not as functional or as well done without Drupal is Nonsense. Who maintains them.?? The same Pros that maintain a Drupal web site but without your Drupal drip. You know there is nothing wrong with preferring Drupal because your are proficient in it but to hear Roman Trumpets every time you say its name is a bit ridiculous. Jason. What Communicate or Die does not need is another Dondley clone. That is why it was dying in the first place. Judging by your need to put irrelevant tiles in front of your name and your "We" imaginary friends perhaps the site could be going downhill even faster. To be blunt you new look is not very impressive. Your new posting format wastes to much of the users time. You should have left well enough alone. I also find your "American Labor Unions and The Internet " heading rather presumptuous. .What we don’t need are more self proclaimed labor messiahs. Curious. Which is most important to you? Prometheus making money or supporting the Labor movement? Which comes first to you?? Another question. I had a look at you Boston Media site. Why is it that you people decide to build a site on a personal interest and then beg for donations to support your desire . I could never figure that one out. How does that work . I come up with an idea. Build a site and you give me money. Ok? Heres a better idea. You come up with an idea. You build the site and YOU pay for it. OK? Which did you do first? Build the site or set up a pay pal account?? Now I am sure you will delete this and give big speeches about flaming .When ones presentation or content does not conform to your concepts it gets deleted and you cry. At least I will have the pleasure of knowing you did read it first. I hope you do well with Communicate or Die. First however I think you need to tone down the Roman Trumpets. Maybe turn the valve stem a bit and let out some of the air. Just think of the money saved on smaller hats. Richard Dorrough (and Harvey) Member Carpenters Local 370 Albany NY Member Dashing Gentleman’s Club President of NOBBD VP of R&D for Happy Faced Condoms Communications Director for Can and String CommunicationsWelcome back, Brother Dorrough
It's hard to believe you are sincere in your words and aren't just trolling. Regardless, you have a long history of making rambling comments that are repetive and don't add much to the discussion at hand, such as this one. We've been over this ground before here.
At any rate, we (yes "we," Prometheus Labor Communications, Inc.) welcome individuals and organizations to this online community who wish to help the labor movement communicate more effectively on the web. In our judgment, you are not one of those individuals and you will no longer be able to post on this site.