Category: What we’re reading

Digital Product Strategist John Chadfield rounds up #WorkerTech initiatives to address increasingly precarious employment.

When thinking about the challenges of bringing security to workers in the gig economy, the temptation is to turn first to digital, argues Antonia Bance. But the prevailing ethos in tech is individual and consumer-led, and, without an underpinning analysis of power, technology alone won’t meet the challenge.

Abigail Rumsey, a Prospect delegate at the TUC young workers’ conference, reflects on why the union must embrace technology as part of its organising strategy.

The insecurity brought about by sharing economy jobs can be offset by digital trade unions, says Resolution Trust’s Gavin Kelly in WIRED

As you wrestle with how we improve the workplace, you have to think about power, says Antonia Bance. Otherwise we end up with tech that merely delivers greater convenience to people who don’t need it the most.

The Resolution Trust launches new a WorkerTech partnership with Bethnal Green Ventures to incubate tech based innovations that support the low-wage workforce.

I’ve recently taken on a new role (says Simon Parry of Infobo.com). I’ve been appointed as the first virtual Chief Information Officer at the Trades Union Congress (TUC).

Hugh Robertson thinks the unionreps community and app could be the glue that holds union networking together between the physical meetings that come about through union training.

For over two years now, I’ve been developing UNISON’s digital strategy (says UNISON’s Nick Scott). It is, as all strategies tend to be, a work in progress. However we’re now stepping up a gear with the launch of a two-year work programme.

Antonia Bance writes up a note of a speech she gave to a Unions 21 fringe meeting at TUC Congress 2016.