Re: [autonomo.us] FSF is hiring: outreach and communication coordinator

[MJ Ray]

Charlie wrote:
> Re unions/cooperatives: Being union is not incompatible with being a
> collective/cooperative businesses.  As an example, the small staff
> collective that works at http://nasco.coop is a collective which is also
> unionized.  The staff collective negotiates their contract with the
> non-profit board of directors as a union, but organizes their work
> internally as a democratic collective.  This type of arrangement could
> potentially be very compatible with an org like FSF.

Sure, unions have some function within co-ops, but if it's a worker-run
collective, they shouldn't have much function in negotiations.  The
mention of contracts (rather than membership agreements) makes me think
NASCO is probably running a dual structure with both membership and
employment systems.  A lot of co-ops do that and there's a lot of
pressure from governments to conform, but employment isn't necessary.

I feel it's still important to support and interact with unions, as I
suspect that when workers are freer, they're more likely to press for
freer software and not just accept whatever spyware-ridden locked-down
software that central IT are trying to lock them into.  I'd love data
on that, rather than my handful of anecdotes from LUGs, though ;-)

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op.
http://koha-community.org supporter, web and library systems developer.
In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Available for hire (including development) at http://www.software.coop/