I have been trying for some months to create such an international labour discussion list so as to make available to others the increasing number of original papers by people concerned with the future of the international labour movement.

I may have approached a number of you to ask whether you might not like to host such an electronic list or site - so far without success.

Now David Hollis, an independent international labour activist and computer professional has agreed in principle to try to set this up. Dave is English, works in Germany for multinational in the computer industry, is a lifelong union member, is on his works council at both local and European level.

Dave has just retired from LabourNet Germany, which he initiated some years ago. He provided space there for international labour dialogue. He has been recently taking a particular interest in off- shoring . He is also interested in the World Social Forum process and relations between labour and other social movements.

The kind of material Dave hosted on LN Germany can be found at the following link and elsewhere on the site

I have promised Dave to provide content - of myself and others. Which is what this email is primarily about.

Before fully committing himself, Dave would like evidence of interest from a number of others. This means

1. declarations of interest,
2. writings you are prepared to let him upload (you can always call these drafts) or upload yourselves

I know a number of you have been heavily engaged in discussing labour internationalism and international labour issues. You have sometimes provided me such materials, sometimes without restrictions on circulation.

Dave will be going into forms of CopyLeft (which can allow items to be marked to mean no further circulation without reference back to the original author). Currently all original material is being placed under a Creative Commons License

However, the main point, of course, is to get some initial content up so that we can gradually increase the number of contributors and the number of readers.

The nature of this project has been little further discussed between us than this email suggests. Its development will be shaped by those participating. And, I guess, further discussion about this will take place on the list itself.

I think it is a major advantage to have this site set up outside any labour institution and outside the academy (also known as the f*****g academy).

This is certainly intended to be a place for those critically concerned with the future of the union and general labour movement, whether within the academy, organisers, or activists within the labour and new social movements more generally. And where all these people will feel at home.

It is also something of a breakthrough to create an international labour site in Germany, rather than the USA or UK. (OK, Uruguay or Togo would have been even more adventurous, but they didn't want it). This means we could start with two languages, though we hope to make these mutually accessible, and also to work in Spanish and French.

Dave has created an initial page, hosted within a more general labour site.Feel free to take a look at it and to ask him questions about it. Click things (I am assured by Dave that it may produce nothing interesting but that it never bites back).

Here is the incoming material

The site is being run under the software Plone - see http://www.plone.org, a software that allows the building of communities, i.e. user participation.

Dave can be reached at:

david.hollis at labournet punkt info

Please send him an email indicating interest!

Better still, send him one or more recent (or older) papers that you would like to make more widely available!

Best,

Peter Waterman