  Roy Adams
• Country: Canada
• Work: Researcher, writer, workers' rights activist
After an
academic career as professor of industrial relations with specialities
in international and comparative IR and international labour rights, Roy has work extensively on labour rights
and labour issues. He was a founding
member of the Society for the Promotion of Human Rights in Employment and
continues to serve as SPHRE's Chair. He is also a member of the
International Labour Rights Commission, and is a frequent contributor to
and editorial board member of International Union Rights. He works closely with Canadian and American unions to
promote recognition of labour rights as human rights and
particularly the human rights nature of collective bargaining. His most
recent book is "Labour Left Out: Canada's Failure to Protect and Promote
Collective Bargaining as a Human Right".
 Kevin Aitken
• Country: New Zealand
• Work: Union official
• Union: AUS
Kevin has worked as a union organiser for the last ten years, and was a delegate for five before that. His work has included time with unions in Australia's building, construction and mining industries, followed by national training in the Australian variant of the organising model. He worked for a while with the Engineers Union in New Zealand, before moving to the Association of University Staff, where he is currently doing innovative organizing work around the concept of social capital, and helping develop a "relational organizing" model, prior to moving to the USA to work with the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW).
 Derek Blackadder
• Country: Canada
• Work: Union official
• Union: CUPE
Derek has worked with the Canadian Union of Public Employees and one of its predecessors since 1989. Before that he was active in a number of unions for about 10 years. He has worked as an organizer (recruiting new members), as an executive assistant, and for most of his time with CUPE as a servicing representative. He also works towards greater international solidarity between workers and unions through his work in a labour-friendly NGO and is a senior correspondent with LabourStart.
 Paul Cochrane
• Country: New Zealand
• Work: Union/organisation development
• Union: PSA
Paul began work as a public servant in 1983 and soon became the union delegate. This lead to becoming a union officer for the New Zealand Public Services Association (PSA). He worked with the union for the next twenty years, the last five of which were spent as National Secretary. In the late 1990s, while Paul headed PSA's organisational development, the PSA developed a workplace-centred partnership strategy. Since then membership has continued to grow, with the increase now totalling almost 50%. In 2005 he left to do independent work in organisational development, focusing on participative approaches to strategy-building.
 Clementine Dehwe
• Country: Zimbabwe
• Work: HIV/Aids Project Coordinator
• Union: ITUC
Clementine started working for the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers Union in Zimbabwe in 1985, first as an organiser, and subsequently as national women's coordinator. She then moved to Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions as health and safety training officer, and HIV/Aids project coordinator. She is currently based in South Africa, where she works for the Global Unions network as HIV/Aids project coordinator. more››
 Richard B Freeman
• Country: United States
• Work: Harvard Professor of Economics, co-Chair of Harvard Trade Union programme, and more»
Of the 25 books Richard has written or edited, unionists are probably most familiar with the seminal "What Workers Want", co-written with Joel Rogers and republished in 2006. This book grew out of the most thorough study of US workers' aspirations in thirty years, and "delivers a message about workplace democracy that union leaders would do well to build into their organizing strategies" (Dissent magazine). He is one of the USA's foremost thinkers on the future of labour and unionism, and has written hundreds of articles and reports on this and related subject (see for instance: "A Proposal to American Labour" and: "Open Source Unionism"). more»
 Peter Hall-Jones
• Country: France
• Work: Union communications
• Union: Force Ouvrière
Peter has worked in the union movement for 16 years, primarily in communications and information roles. Most of this work has been with public sector unions, at both national and international level. He currently lives near Geneva, where he is helping develop the new.unionism›› website and working with the other founding members on how to develop the network. more››
 Paul Hardy
• Country: Ireland
• Work: Union organiser
• Union: SIPTU
Paul has been working in SIPTU's Organising Department since 2005. He is particularly interested in the efforts of unions, including his own, to renew themselves as political and industrial structures based on membership commitment and activism. Paul is a member of the Labour Party and a correspondent for LabourStart. He was formerly an activist and member of the National Union of Journalists national executive.
 Charles Heckscher
• Country: United States
• Work: Industrial relations analyst
Prof. Charles Heckscher is Director for the Center for Workplace Transformation, part of the
School of Management and Labor Relations at
Rutgers University. He has written a large number of books and papers on themes such as new unionism, union reform, participatory unionism, developing workplace partnership, the collaborative enterprise, and network theory. Heckscher is far more than an academic, though. He has been directly involved in a large number of industrial transformations, and these have given his work a practical value which unions have come to value highly. A selection of his writings is available here.
 Philip Hunter
• Country: Switzerland
• Independent researcher and consultant
Philip has worked as a consultant to the ILO in Geneva for the past five years. His work has focused on multinationals and the social responsibilities of business. He has worked extensively on research, policy analysis and awareness raising for unions at the global level, concentrating on labour rights and the global economy. Philip's current research interests include the political and international solidarity dimensions of trade union renewal.
 Laura Kansanen
• Country: Finland
• Work: Visual artist
Laura is an artist who has been involved in progressive groups and causes for years. She is an artistic advisor to the project, and helps review the website and publications as she awaits the second coming of Pippi Longstocking; all the rest is merely filler. more››
 John Kirkham
• Country: United Kingdom
• Work: Coach, facilitator, negotiator
John works with The Work Foundation (formerly The Industrial Society), a UK-based organisation of which the TUC and UNISON are partners, dedicated to improving the quality of working lives. He works with in the public, private and voluntary sectors as a coach, facilitator and negotiator. He firmly believes that all people have a valuable contribution to make to the world of work, and that it is the challenge of management to harness this collective experience for the benefit of all stakeholders in an organisation.
 Andrew Little
• Country: New Zealand
• Work: National Secretary
• Union: EPMU
Andrew has been National Secretary of New Zealand's largest private sector union, the Amalgamated Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union, since 2000. EPMU has about 50,000 members in 10 industries, from cleaners to clerical workers to the highest-skilled tradespeople. The union's philosophy is to help workers help themselves. Andrew is a qualified lawyer, and a former national student president. He sits on many boards and organisations. He has led the union through a process of consolidation and modernisation, and has helped to develop a strategic approach in industrial relations.
 Greg McLean
• Country: Australia
• Work: Union official
• Union: ASU
Greg is Assistant National Secretary of the Australian Services Union, and is responsibile for public services, state and
local government, water/energy utilities and public
transport. He has extensive experience in
public sector reform and has campaigned widely against privatisation, both nationally and internationally. He holds post-graduate
qualifications in Industrial Relations and was a rank and file member
before becoming involved in union work.
 Tony Mullen
• Country: Australia
• Union: AEU
Tony has worked for a state branch of the Australian Education Union since 1990: the first fifteen years as an organiser, and now as an educator. He describes his work as a struggle to move the organisation from a servicing to an organising culture, and from rhetoric to reality. He facilitates industrial education for members in schools and vocational education colleges, focussing on rights, representation and organizing, as well as specific modules such as occupational safety and health. He's part of the union's struggle to make teaching a more rewarding career, after years of under-resourcing by successive governments.
 Max Ogden
• Country: Australia
• Work: Union consultant
• Union: AMWU
Max is a fitter and turner who spent 30 years as a union official; for most of that time grappling with issues around workplace and union democracy. He retired in 2004, having established and worked for the Foundation for Sustainable Economic Development at Melbourne University. He is still involved with the Foundation’s research project 'Work & Social Cohesion Under Globalisation', and is working with the ACTU and some New Zealand unions on new strategies involving workplace democracy and high performance work systems.
 Kris Rondeau
• Country: United States
• Work: Union organizer
• Union: HUCTW
The story of the HUCTW, and Kris's "relational organizing" approach, is an inspiring one. The union was developed from the ground up by Harvard employees themselves (Kris was a lab assistant), rather than by a larger outside organization. Leadership comes from members, who also negotiate contracts and work with management to address issues of policy and improve the working environment. Kris and her fellow activists have broken new ground with tactics based on establishing relationships and common values, rather than focusing solely on “issues”. This model has also helped Kris and her team facilitate victories at the Universities of Minnesota and Illinois, and UMASS Medical Center and School, as well as seeding unions in the city of Cambridge and elsewhere.
 John Watson
• Country: France
• Work: Jack of all trades
John is a union communications worker, builder, mechanic, caregiver, plumber, counsellor, website developer, electrician, desktop publisher, architecture buff and scuba diver. He is currently working for the World Health Organisation and has also been doing freelance work for the international union/NGO GAPS campaign and the global unions' HIV-Aids project.
 Kirsten Windelov
• Country: United Kingdom
• Work: Union official
• Union: Prospect
Kirsten is a trade union official, currently working with Prospect in the UK. Prior to this she was a high school rep, a student rep, a teacher's rep, a parliamentary services staff rep, and a public services union rep. Along the way she obtained a law degree, which has been a help at times, and a fine sense of humour. In fact this network probably began with a joke she made.
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 Natasha Andrews
• Country: United Kingdom
• Work: Industrial relations, employment & union research
Natasha has played a variety of roles within Unison, including shop steward, branch chair, young members rep, branch communications officer, and vice chair of the National Young Members Forum, as well as activist roles around the issues of age and minimum wages. She has also been a union negotiator and member of NATFHE and TGWU. She is currently a researcher and seminar leader in industrial relations, people and organisations at the University of Kent. As a seminar leader she is responsible for teaching the various aspects of industrial relations including labour law and current IR theories, and is working on a project concerning women and management across professions in Kent, studying the effects of training, networks and mentoring on the ‘glass ceiling’.
 Christine Armitage
• Country: United Kingdom
• Work: Union partnership consultant
Christine is a Director of the Partnership Institute, originally set up by and still linked to the UK national union body, the TUC. The Institute works to build worker participation and influence at enterprise level, and has done extremely The Institute works to build worker participation and influence at enterprise level, and has done pioneering worked with major organisations in the UK and internationally including HBOS, Dfid, the Cabinet Office, the Home Office and Carlsberg. The case studies section of our Online Library contains examples of this work.
 Dean Chandler-Mills
• Country: New Zealand
• Work: Union organiser
• Union: PSA
After 45 years in the union movement Dean is still smiling. He began as a clerical union delegate in Tubemakers of Australia, and went on to organise workers in local government, theatre, electrical work, and, for the last sixteen years, public services in New Zealand.
 Ken Coey
• Country: United Kingdom
• Work: Team coach and meeting facilitator
Ken has over 25 years experience in coaching individuals and teams to achieve improved cooperation and performance. He has worked in the UK, New Zealand and Sweden. Currently based in the UK, he and his colleagues in VillmanCoey (Sweden) have worked with the union movement (and others) on developing teamwork and shared goals at both national and international level.
 Conor Cradden
• Country: France
• Work: Labour researcher
Dr Conor Cradden is an independent researcher working in labour movement theory, industrial relations, the sociology of work and business ethics. He was formerly head of research at the AUT and branch secretary of TGWU. He now works mainly with global union federations and labour-oriented NGOs, and has recently published a book looking at the relationship between corporate behaviour and workplace democracy. His PhD was awarded by the European University Institute in Italy. more››
 Mark Gregory
• Country: Australia
• Work: Web developer
• Union: CPSU
Mark is a unionist and folklorist. He has been a union activist for about forty years, both paid and unpaid, and during this time has been an avid collector of union songs: "the hidden voice of those determined not to be written out of history by corporate power". In 1997 he launched what is quite possibly the best website of its kind: www.unionsong.com. In one of his many articles on union and workers' music, he quotes Woody Guthrie: 'Maybe you got a new song. You have, if you said what you really had to say about how the old world looks to you, or how it ought to be fixed'. more››
 Russell Greig
• Country: United Kingdom
• Work: Union rep and negotiator
• Union: Unite
Russell has been a union rep and national lead negotiator, barman, manager in a bank, trainee legal exec, chair of a building society trade group, Buddhist, and is currently studying trade unionism at Northern College, Barnsley. He is also involved in the development of various organising tools and resources for Unite's membership in the finance sector.
 Rolv Hanssen
• Country: Norway
• Work: Union communications
Rolv was a bus driver in Norway for 18 years - and a union rep for most of that time. He then worked as a union officer for 11 years. During this time he took part in developing the model municipality experience, which involves harnessing workers' skills and knowledge to improve the quality of public services. He was a leader of the local federation LO in Trondheim, and helped establish broad alliances among unions on a proactive (ie rather than reactive) basis. He has written books and pamplets in Norwegian about privatisation, tendering, private public parnterships and how unions can take the initiative in restructuring.
 Adelia Hallett
• Country: New Zealand
• Work: Communications consultant
• Union: EPMU
Adelia joined the union movement as a working journalist in the 1980s, and went on to work for New Zealand's largest private sector union the EPMU, setting up their communications department and a union newswire service as part of the process. She has a strong feel for strategic innovation, and now does freelance consultancy for several unions and NGOs. Last year she won a national public relations award for her work on a wages campaign that led to real wages growth in New Zealand for the first time in a decade.
 Leonard Hikaumba
• Country: Zambia
• Work: Para-veterinarian
• Union: CSAWUZ
Leonard is a trade unionist currently serving as President of Zambia Congress of Trade Unions, as well as for the Civil Servants and Allied Workers Union of Zambia. He is employed in the Ministry of Agriculture as a senior livestock officer, and is also involved in campaigning against HIV/Aids.
 George Koletsis
• Country: Australia
• Work: Union education officer
• Union: AMWU
Starting out as a metal-worker, George has been a political activist, union organiser and education worker for most of his adult life. He has worked mainly in Australia, Romania, and around Eastern Europe, with stints as a project manager and contract consultant for the ILO and other international organisations. He is a committed socialist and has an outspoken sense of humour and a natural egalitarianism which allows him to cut through bureaucracy like a chainsaw (on methedrine) through butter.
 Linda Kelly
• Country: United Kingdom
• Work: Union partnership consultant
Along with Christine Armitage (above), Linda is Director of the UK Partnership Institute, initially set up by the TUC. Her abilities have been moulded by work as a teacher, a City broker, a policy maker and Personnel and Training Manager of the Labour Party. Linda is a pragmatist and consensus-builder, motivator and problem-solver. She has membership of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, a BEd (Hons) from Leeds and recognition as a Myers Briggs assessor. She is a director of the Training Standards Council, a Management Board Member of the European TUC College, and a Council Member of Employment NTO, in addition to a number of other senior posts. They have produced a toolkit for the Cabinet Office on how to deliver public service reform through work force engagement, and a toolkit for the Police Force in partnership with the Home Office.
 Thobile Maso
• Country: South Africa
• Work: Union education
• Union: SAMWU
Thobile is a trade unionist and has been since before the end of the apartheid era, helping to establish the Post and Telecommunication Workers Association in 1986. Amandla nga wethu yebasebenzi, basebenzi masimanyane. He currently co-ordinates education in the South African Municipal Workers' Union. He is also a well-known workers' poet, and more lately has been setting some of his poems to music.
 Polly Miller
• Country: New Zealand
• Work: Public servant
• Union: PSA
Polly worked for the NZ Public Services Association for two years, having been a delegate for two before this, and then moved to the UK where she worked for three years with UK unions NUT and UNISON, followed by a stint with the UK Partnership Institute.
 Paul Nowak
• Country: United Kingdom
• Work: TUC union official
Paul was appointed the UK Trades Union Congress (TUC) New Unionism Project Director in May 2002. Following this he became the TUC's National Organiser. Before this he had been TUC regional
secretary in the North East and Cumbria.
Paul currently leads on the TUC’s work to support union efforts on organising and
recruitment, which includes the development and delivery of the TUC Organising
Academy, and co-ordinates the TUC’s ‘Leading Change’ training and development
programme for senior union officers, and supports the TUC’s work on inter-union relations.
 Jodie Schluter
• Country: Australia
• Work: Union youth project officer
• Union: ASU
Jodie helps organize young workers for the peak union body in South Australia.She also manages the U-Who? Young People and Unions project. Her key roles are education, advocacy, networking, campaigning, building partnerships and resource development. Prior to this she was as an organiser with the Australian Services Union, and she also worked for a number of years as a youth worker, a community educator and in the youth development field. An experienced advocate, Jodie has also worked for a few years with multicultural communities.
 Pirzada Imtiaz Syed
• Country: Pakistan
• Work: Union leader
• Union: APFUTU
Pirzada Imtiaz Syed is Secretary General of Pakistan's national union federation, the All Pakistan Federation of United Trade Unions (APFUTU). He is also National Secretary of the Pakistan Brick Kiln Labour Union, and has worked for the Electricity Workers and Bone Crushing Industries Workers for 35 years, again including a role as National Secretary. Pirzada combines these executive responsibilities with a strong knowledge of workers' concerns from regular site visits and participation in delegates' meetings and conferences. In September 2005 he was elected to the position of Secretary General of the national alliance “Labour Unity”.
 Zutalors
• Country: Registered in Liberia
• Work: Agent provocateur
• Union: In-house
Zutalors (also known as Ava Tarr and Diogenes) joined New Unionism before our security procedures and initiation rituals were tightened up. As the only non-existent member of the network, he/she/it is currently setting up a caucus to undermine our lack of structure. Please be very very wary of anything this member has to say - Zutalors is clearly playing a devil's advocacy game, aimed at provoking debate. You can contact the secret faction for the non-existent at: zutalors@newunionism.net
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