The Amazon-verdi blog, the Obi-verdi blog, Siemens Dialog, Schaeffler-Nachrichten, …, German company works councils are increasingly turning to the different social media (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even WhatsApp) to communicate both internally and externally on company work conditions and other work-related issues. Modern communications tools deliver employee representatives a broader range of opportunities to quickly and easily inform staff, reach new worker groups, campaign for public awareness, shape public opinion. Social media also carries a number of risks because works councils have to comply with confidentiality requirements. Ute Demuth, who for twenty years has been advising and training works councils on social media use, sat down with Planet Labor to discuss the positive opportunities and the risks social media hold for works councils.
Amazon’s digital battle. Since 2011 Amazon employees and members of the Verdi union have been keeping and updating a blogsite (www.amazon-verdi.de) as a way of making the public aware and updated on progress as regards their longstanding struggle to secure better working conditions and a collective agreement. The blog has met with some success as every 15 seconds someone’s face displays on the top right hand corner of the blog page in support of the employees’ cause (Verdi members as well as pr
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