Civil liberties - in brief (7)
01 May 2005
UK: UK Watch launched. A new resource for left activists and academics in the UK was launched in June. The UK Watch website (http://www.ukwatch.net) is modelled on the US ZNET site and aims to cover a similar range of issues, with comments, analysis and opinion pieces, as well as creating "a forum for developing broad cross-issue appreciation of the challenges facing the radical activist left in the UK." UK Watch is run on a non-profit basis and has a ten person advisory board consisting of: Michael Albert (ZNET), Alex Callinicos (SWP), David Cromwell (MediaLens), Mark Curtis (author of
Web of Deceit (2003) and
Unpeople (2004)), David Edwards (MediaLens), Eric Herring (author of
Iraq in Fragments (2005)), Olivier Hoedman (Corporate Europe Observatory), David Miller (Spinwatch), John Pilger (author and film-maker) and Milan Rai (Voices in the Wilderness). The collective are working with limited resources and are looking for support to provide links to the best articles on the web and for original research.
UK: GMB demands an end to tagging in "battery farm" workplaces. The GMB trade union has called for an to the end to the "dehumanizing of work" through the electronic tagging of workers using new computer and satellite technology. The union made its call at its annual congress in Newcastle at the beginning of June saying that the growing use tagging, which is intended to improve the distribution and re-stocking of goods by monitoring staff, would lead to the workforce revolting. It is thought that about 10,000 low-paid workers in the UK have already been subjected to this degrading experience, but many others had refused to cooperate. The devices "consist of computers worn on the arm and finger computers linked to local area networks and to GPS systems" reducing the role of the worker to doing what the computer order requires. "These devices calculate how long it takes to go from one part of the warehouse to the other and what breaks the workers need and how long they need to go to the toilet. Any deviation from these times is not tolerated." The GMB's Acting General secretary, Paul Kenny, said: "...we will not stand by and see our members reduced to automatons."
GMB press release 6.6.05; see also the GMB report, http://statewatch.org/news/2005/jun/gmb-tagging-at-work.pdf