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Editor of Faglig vev: Espen Løken |
The editor of this web site is former senior shop steward in the oil company Saga Petroleum for many years fram until Saga ceased to exist 1st of January 2000 after having been bought and merged with Norsk Hydro. As a full time shop steward I experienced both outsourcing processes, take over trials og merger.
After a short interlude as temporary employed in Norwegian Oil and Petrochemical Workers Union, amongst others responsible for the organizational debate about a propsed merger with the Chemical Workers Union which was going on until the congress in October 2000, I have been employed as researcher at Fafo Institute for Applied Social Science since 1st of November 2000. My field of research is "strategic organisational development in trade union movement", which includes everything from reviewing questions related to the organisation of trade union movement to looking into use of IT by trade unions.
I have for a long time been occupied with how the trade union movement can make use of information and communication technology to create networks. This is especially necessary because of globalisation and the growing power of big multinational companies. As a concrete action I made and ran the first web site owned by a local union in the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) in January 1996 - Nopef i Saga Petroleum (see article in Norwegian in LO-aktuelt 3/96 "LO klar for Internett"). The web site still exist, but has of natural reasons not been updated since 31.12.1999. "Faglig vev" is also a contribution in this building of networks.
1st of February 2001 I started the Norwegian edition of LabourStart, Norsk LabourStart, where I am the editor. LabourStart is an international project with news about and for the global trade union movement. From being a web site based in London, the ambitions grew from 2001 to make editions in many countries and languages as well as running solidarity campaigns. The Norwegian LabourStart is run by Fafo Institute for Applied Social Science, and has ambitions to offer more services than just news. "Faglig vev" and Norsk Labourstart is loosely integrated as I run them both - Faglig vev has the collection of links to useful trade union resources while Norsk Labourstart is the news service and runs campaigns.
In the autumn 2002 I published the book "Så samles vi på nettet - om fagbevegelsen og Internett" ("Let's rally on the net - about trade union movement and the Internet") at Tiden norsk forlag. This book may be bought trough your book store or from Tiden.
You may contact me by sending e-mail to my job.
From my other writings which is available on the Internet:
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