Members' blog guidelines

The aim of the members' blog is to build participation from the membership and create a knowledge base of experience. You'll find the blog here. Submissions are linked to from the homepage here. Members can also submit documents to our online library here.

 
1) Language
• Our primary audience is union organisers and activists. It is also worth noting that many members speak English as a second language. For this reason please keep your language straightforward and direct. In short, we recommend you stay as close to a conversational style as possible. A friendly, informal tone also attracts the widest audience.
• Sometimes submissions may be edited. If this is not acceptable please say so in advance: our intention is to help the readers, not to mess with your work!
• Academic papers are very welcome as well. With these, you can of course use whatever language you think works best. Such papers will be placed in our online library, and wherever possible a simple plan-English introduction and summary will be added to the blog, along with a download link.
• We are not a megaphone or a marketing tool for those who wish to proselytise, based on their own personal/political revelations. We are trying to build solidarity around 4 key principles (more). If you have a straighter path, or a complementary one, by all means set up a network to promote it!



2) Principles
Further to the comment above, the network has come together around four key principles: workplace democracy, organizing, internationalism and creativity (more).  The work we publish needs to be in keeping with these. If none of the principles seem relevant to what you are wanting to say, we respectfully suggest it should be published elsewhere. Where the priciples are relevant, please make the links clear. Doing this also helps us see the continuity between contributions.




3) Boundaries
It is not fair to expect the network to act as a vehicle for direct criticisms of specific unions, union federations, and/or other sections of the labour movement. The same applies to paens of praise. These may or may not be warranted—most of our members are not in a positon to make that call. Nor are most members interested in the behaviour of a single, specific union. Please find a way to raise your issues generally, so that the network becomes a base for constructive ideas, rather than a host to flame wars and bun fights!



4) International audience
We are an international network, so your discussion needs to be relevant in some way to people from other countries. This means not assuming too much knowledge of local issues. It means seeking a broad perspective. What you perceive as a breach of rights may seem very mild by standards applied elsewhere! Similarly, your hardest won victory may seem rather commonplace to unionists from other countries. One way around this is to write the piece as a discussion of how things are changing in your country (with some simple background), and what other countries might learn from this experience.



5) Facts, not ideology
Sloganeering and table-thumping just won't was. You need to present your ideas based on facts and experience, not just postures and assertions . If there is a particular line you want to push then go for it (given the other guidelines on this page), but please do so transparently. You should declare any vested interests, affiliations, relevant political and/or employment influences so that we know where you are coming from. Where you use numbers or quotations to back up an argument, please provide links to an online source for these.



6) Copyright and right of reply
• This blog only accepts submissions from members. If you wish to promote somebody else's work please write a simple introduction, background and conclusion (subject to the guidelines above). Assuming it meets the guidelines, we will publish this along with a link to the original piece(s). Alternatively, we can just add a link to our newswire.
• We will always acknowledge your authorship. Furthermore, we will remove any item from our servers upon the author's request. That said, we publish your work in the hope that it will reach the widest possible audience, and that others will pick up on it and pass it round further. If this is not acceptable, please say so in advance.
• We allow fair and open criticism of all work we publish by way of a comments facility on the page. Some of this you may not like. If you feel you have been attacked in a personal manner, or that your work has been belittled in an offensive manner, please let us know. If your complaint is reasonable then the comment(s) will be removed.







Younionize global union directory guidelines

Our team of national editors has built the world's largest database of unions. Much of their work is available online here. In building this resource we have developed the following criteria to determine whether unions are included. These are necessary in order to keep the database to a manageable size.
 
A note to national editors:
You are welcome to send in details for any and every union you find, although you may like to apply the 'more than 200 members' rule. Anything you send will be entered in the database. These criteria will then be applied afterwards, so that some unions do not appear in the directory.

1) Single employer unions
We do not include single-employer unions unless they have more than 1,000 paid-up members AND are known to be independent of the employer.


2) National unions
We include all unions which cover workers nationally and have over 200 paid-up members. Smaller unions can be added to the database (this is up to the national editor), but will not normally appear in the online directory.


3) Locals, city-based and state-based unions
We do not include sub-national unions (eg London or Texas) unless they have over 5,000 paid up members. We exclude all locals except where they have a developed identity (naming, website) outside of their national federation AND have more than 5,000 members.


4) Union federations
We include all federations of unions (national, regional and international), irrespective of debates about their independence.


5) Membership numbers
We exclude all unions with less than 200 paid up members, unless national circumstances warrant including them (eg in countries where the movement is yet to gain an established presence). We include any union with over 10,000 paid up members, irrespective of any of the criteria above.


6) Discretion of national editors
Where union membership numbers cannot be found, or where they cannot be verified from an online source, the national editor has full discretion over whether a union is included. Any other criteria above can also be varied by the national editors if particular national circumstances warrant this.


7) Sectoral classification
We have used the United Nations' International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC Rev.4) to group unions sectorally. As we only tag by the ISUC top level, we have extended the naming of some of the categories. For full details and to search for classifications, click here.