#spartacusreport campaigner Sue Marsh speaks at Netroots UK, with Sunny Hundal of blog Liberal Conspiracy and Netroots Nation Director Raven Brooks.

Last Saturday the TUC’s conference centre played host to Netroots UK 2012, a gathering of online activists from across the progressive movement. Hundreds of campaigners spent a whole day networking, training and debating strategy – a unique chance for trades unionists, political activists, local anti-cuts campaigns, environmentalists, direct action groups, equality organisations and many more to come together and collaborate.

It was the third British Netroots event (the second at TUC towers) and this time I was glad to see unions seemed to be playing a more central role than they have previously. This latest conference saw a number of union speakers, bringing the labour movement’s experience into sessions on austerity and women’s employment (Diana Holland of Unite), campaigning on the NHS (Sian Rabi-Laleh of UNISON), and defending abortion rights (Scarlet Harris of the TUC).

I was reflecting on this, when I came across a Daily Kos blog post by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, on the changes he’s seen in seven years of Netroots Nation events.

The US grassroots mega-conference from which Netroots UK draws a lot of inspiration and assistance started as a gathering of bloggers, but now encompasses activists from all kinds of US progressive groupings. The biggest change Markos drew from his experience was the increased integration of the US digital grassroots with the US union movement.

“A handful of labor unions sponsored that initial event, and they chaffed at the poor attendance at their panels. Us netrootsy types looked at them and waved them off dismissively—’They’re part of the dinosaur establishment that has led to so many Democratic defeats!’ They looked at us and sneered, ‘What are these dorks with their computers going to do, bonk George Bush over the head with their laptops?’ In other words, neither of us saw the value in what the other brought to the table.”

Seven years on, Markos sees unions making vastly better use of digital technologies for campaigning and organising, and many digital grassroots groups themselves becoming more stable and finding a clearer place for themselves in the progressive movement, where they can better understand how to relate to other groups like unions.

Here’s hoping it doesn’t take us 7 years in the UK. Saturday wasn’t entirely a labour movement love-in (UK Uncut’s Dani Paffard sparked a mini Twitterspat by challenging unions to prove themselves relevant to young non-members like herself) but with many speakers mentioning the central role of the union movement, and more union activists and staffers in attendance, there seems to be a keenness to engage with both new technologies and new types of activism.

Netroots UK workshop on using digital to raise awareness of austerity’s impact on women’s employment, with blogger Cath Elliot, Rowan Davies (Mumsnet), Donna Govan (UNISON) and Diana Holland (Unite).

The trends are certainly happening here. UK unions are increasingly taking advantage of digital technology to support their campaign work and their organising. They’re also finding out better where the strengths of the union movement in stability, experience and research capability, can fit in with other groups. Union staffers are becoming regular guests on many of our bigger left and centre-left group blogs. Recent years have also seen examples of unions playing a supporting role in the campaign work of more agile new groups like False Economy, 38 Degrees or UK Uncut.

Hopefully Netroots UK has a role to play in continuing these trends – letting us all learn from what each other do well, and setting up contacts that will lead to interesting new partnerships – a rising tide that will help lift the boats of organised labour and NGOs as well as of newer grassroots groups and activists.

Here’s a short film from Unite, setting out the backdrop to their members’ decision to ballot for industrial action over the erosion of safety and work conditions in the oil tanker industry.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I pass a petrol tanker on the road, I’m always extremely conscious of it. Ensuring such a dangerous cargo is transported safely and handled correctly is a vitally important job, and never one you’d want to cut corners with.

However it seems that as the petrol market has fragmented, that’s just what’s happened. Many haulage companies have seen the opportunity to make a quick buck by cutting back on workers’ conditions, pay and training, by increasing casualisation, and by piling on the working hours. Drivers affected by cuts to one major contract took strike action earlier this year, and the union’s sector is now seeking a mandate to broaden the action to a number of other contracts now in dispute over cuts.

With such high stakes for the safety of road users, and risk to the environment, it’s little wonder Unite’s tanker drivers have christened their campaign “Enough is Enough“.

We’ve made this infographic to explain why workplace safety is still a huge issue in the UK, and why we still need the focus of Workers’ Memorial Day. Please help share it with your contacts online and spread the word. Click on the graphic below to view the full chart.

An opportune time to give this UNISON campaign video another airing. It may be tongue in cheek, but points to a deadly serious problem.

It’s particularly topical as the House of Lords are set to be discussing raising the Private Patient Income Cap next week – the part of the government’s controversial Health and Social Care Bill that will let hospitals make up to 49% of their income from private patients (typically it’s currently around 2%). This could see NHS patients pushed to the back of the queue for treatment in NHS facilities, and waiting lists growing and growing as more people take up private care in order to be seen more quickly. It’s an ideological blow aimed at some of the founding principles of our NHS.

The Lords are debating three amendments to the Bill that would address this threat – 218A, 220A and 220C. They’ve come close to defeating the government before on this Bill, and this could be a deciding moment if enough crossbenchers and Liberal Democrats are willing to back these three amendments.

Please take a moment to use our “Adopt a Peer” tool to send an email or letter to a member of the House of Lords, urging them to vote against raising the Private Patient Income Cap.

Take action: Write to a Peer now

Here’s a quick video from Bernadette Ségol, General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) outlining why unions across Europe are coming together today (29 Feb) for an EU-wide Day of Action, ahead of negotiations on a new treaty that could hardwire austerity into Europe.

In the UK, we’re a bit hampered in the form of action we can take in that our government are one of only two to have thrown their toys out of the pram and been rewarded by being cut out of having any say over a treaty that will affect us, whether we like it or not.

However as individual UK citizens, we can still support our colleagues taking action across Europe today by writing to those countries’ Ambassadors to the UK. We’ve a special e-action up at GoingToWork.org.uk – Please take a moment to send your own protests out to the representatives of those countries still round the table, backing up what their own workers will be telling them today close to home.

Today’s Day of Action on public service pensions is the biggest strike in a generation, so it’s going to set a lot of firsts, but one I’ve noticed is how connected the day is going to be online. Many unions are going to be maintaining liveblogs to keep their members in the loop, and many more will be taking to Twitter to highlight what’s happening. Here’s a roundup of some good places to look for the latest news from unions:

Pensions Justice LIVE blog: TUC Tumblr blog, drawing together photos, links, videos and Tweets about the day.

PCS November 30 Live: PCS are publishing updates on the day across their live blog, twitter and flickr.

Prospect Frontline reports: Prospect are circulating updates from branches and workplaces as they get them.

UCU LIVE Action 2011: UCU are using live event technology Cover It Live to provide a running commentary, highlighting messages from their members.

UNISON Live Blog: Updates on the progress of the strike around the country, and messages of support.

Unite N30 Live: Unite are linking people through text messaging. They’ve given over their site’s home page to text messages from members and supporters. Send them a text to 86888 (free after your normal network costs) to have them pass it on.

FDA 30 November page: FDA are on strike for the first time in their 92 year history, and marking the day with a page of photos from pickets and actions.

NASUWT Day of Action: NASUWT are keeping a live blog of activity throughout the day.

Twitter: And many of the unions taking action or offering support to the Day of Action are on Twitter: @athrawoncymru, @atlunion, @brdieteticassoc, @eisunion, @fbunational, @gmbpressoffice, @midwivesrcm, @nasuwtunion, @nipsa, @nutonline, @pcs_union, @pensionsjustice, @prospectunion, @rmtunion, @scp_podiatryuk, @siptuireland, @sorpensions, @ssta_union, @thebma, @thecsp, @thercn, @tssaunion, @ucu, @unisontweets, @unitetheunion

We’ve made a Twitter list of all these accounts if you’d like to follow them all in one go!

It’s a really useful resource in explaining what tomorrow is all about. Please help share it with your contacts online and spread the word.

The idea is to help inject a bit of solidarity with the UK’s hard pressed public service workers into the charts and the media, ahead of the day of action on pensions justice planned for 30 November.

The song was the brainchild of Jeff Chegwin, a music promoter whose many credits stretch from discovering Billy Bragg through to getting Simon Cowell his first hit boy band. From idea to iTunes in only 2 weeks, this has been a bit of a roller-coaster for the group, who have coped amazingly with their first experiences of using a professional recording studio, appearing in a video, and talking to the media.

The song is only one small part of a day which will see actions and events taking place right across the country (find your nearest here), by members of 23 unions taking industrial action and others offering support. Hopefully though, the awareness and morale raised by having a high profile song will benefit all of the action happening that day.

Public service workers are under a lot of strain – Job losses are happening at an even higher rate than in the private sector, and the cuts mean more people need to fall back on our public services – putting more strain on fewer staff. Workers are demoralised from seeing the needs of the people they care for threatened by the unrelenting attacks on the services they try to provide.

But to cap this, the government are also attacking public sector staff themselves – aiming to drastically cut their pensions, and make people work much longer and pay much more into the bargain. This will mean many low paid staff unable to afford to contribute to any pensions provision at all – a race to the bottom that will do nothing to help pensions under attack in the private sector too.

So please take a moment to help The Workers set the mood music in the run up to 30 November. You can download the song for around 99p (raising money for Age UK into the bargain), but once you’ve done that, please help to spread the word to all your friends and colleagues (some useful tools here). Or as The Workers might say:

“Come on people, get on the ball and work together…”

Great news this morning from Ohio, which along with Wisconsin is one of the slew of US states where Republicans (in this case Governor John Kasich) have been trying to remove collective bargaining rights and key working conditions from public sector workers in the name of austerity.

A publicly demanded referendum has dramatically overturned the law Gov Kasich rammed through in the face of protests last March. That they did so in the face of well funded campaigns by right wing outrider organisations, and attempts to restrict access to voting makes the 2/3 majority result all the more impressive.

Owen has more on Kasich’s plans and the union-backed campaign against them over at Touchstone.

The AFL-CIO have this nice 2 minute video documenting the campaign. It’s inspiring viewing and an important illustration of the principle that we need to be doing more in documenting our campaigns as they take place, not just once we’ve (hopefully) won them.

Sharing what went well and how the campaign came together is more valuable for building future campaigns than any amount of victory speeches, and given the scale of the problem activists currently face in the US, there are going to be a lot more of those future campaigns to come.

It’s only running for another few weeks, but the producers have just announced a special “union night” on Monday 21 March, to offer discounted tickets to trades unionists from the TUC’s Southern and Eastern region. For that one performance, tickets will be reduced to £12 if you give the code “SERTUC”, either by ringing the box office on 0203 174 0960, or when booking online at www.woodysez.co.uk

And if you can’t make that, they’re offering another discount offer on the evening of the March for the Alternative, 26 March, when tickets are reduced to £20.

I was lucky enough to see it myself back in January, and have heard from a number of other trades unionists who’ve seen the show since – All agree with me that it’s a great performance and a great inspiration – Catch it if you can!