Conferences

December 10, 11th & 12th
University of San Francisco
2130 Fulton St., San Francisco, CA 94118-1080

Link for full schedule

The December 2010 LaborTech conference was held at the University of San
Francisco on December 10, 11 & 12th and demonstrated  how
trade unions and the labor movement can use new communication
technology to break the information blockade.
Some of the highlights of the conference were on how unions,
locally, regionally and internationally can develop
live streaming channels to program their rallies, education meetings
and solidarity events.

As part of the conference, there was an international day of
action for Coke bottling workers of SINALTRAINAL
with live actions in Turkey, Belgium and other countries on December
11, 2010 and a live report from Colombia trade unionists.
Similar national and international days of actions can be streamed
worldwide on many other labor battles taking place.
There were workshops on how to use cell phones to stream your
videos and texting to get your messages out.

Mobile Organizing Education/IDEPSCA Mobile Voices from Los Angeles are
training immigrant and migrant workers to get their stories out on cell phones
and this can be replicated for union issues and struggles. Cell phone organizing
is an important new tool that offers potential for reaching workers in
an company, industry both nationally and internationally.
Some speakers from the US include ILCA chair Steve Stallone, Frank
Emspak, founder of www.laborradio.org, Steve Dondley,
Promethius Labor Productions, Alice Sunshine, CFA Communications
Director, Peter B. Collins from AFTRA and James Dalessandro
of WGA-West. There will also be a short screening of labor film maker
Joan Sekler’s “Locked Out” about the ILWU Rio Tinto Lockout
in Boron, California.

There were  trade union communicators from Turkey, Australia and
Trinidad and this conference was also streamed live at
www.labortech.net. Finally there was a discussion about how US labor
can develop a labor channel bringing together all labor
video and media to confront the issues labor faces.