Trade Union – Terence Eden’s Blog

OpenBenches is a recipient of a Microgrant!

@edent — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 08:20:43 +0000

We're delighted to announce that our OpenBenches.org project has been awarded a $250 microgrant from Icculus!

Huge thanks to Ryan, and everyone else who chipped in.

Because I'm part of GitHub Sponsors, the donation will be matched by GitHub.

So, that's US$500 - about £375. Nice!

If you'd like to sponsor us, you can do so on GitHub or via PayPal directly. Or, we have an Amazon wishlist if you'd like to get us a physical present.

What will we spend the grant on?

This is what we said we'd use the money for:

No one is auditing us, so we could spend it all on a luxury holiday to Bognor Regis. But we won't!

Although... There are a lot of unmapped benches in Bognor...

The web is cheap!

Don't tell anyone who wants to give us money, but it's quite cheap to run a niche site on the web!

We're lucky to be in the free tier of our 3rd party providers:

OpenCage provides the reverse geocoding, and is free for 2,500 calls per day.
CloudImage is free for small projects.
Auth0 does social login - and offers more features free for Open Source projects.
MapBox renders beautiful OpenStreetMap tiles for free, up to 50,000 per month.
Google Cloud Vision we're just about within their 1,000 free scans per month limit.

We've occasionally gone over those free limits, so will keep a couple of quid in reserve in case of a surge in our popularity.

Our major cost is hosting. We paid £300 for 3 years of shared hosting with Krystal.uk - use code EDENT at checkout and we both get a fiver.

That hosting deal runs out in August this year, so the bulk of the grant will go to upgrading our package to something a bit bigger. Notably, we're capped at 2GB of RAM which we seem to regularly max out.

Because we have over 130GB of photos, we'll probably stay with Krystal - unless anyone knows of a UK based hosting provider with impeccable green credentials?

In the spirit of the grant, we'll look at moving away from Google's Cloud Vision. Current contenders are

Amazon Rekognition
- Although they're just as ethically dubious
Microsoft's Computer Vision
- Ditto!
The Open Source Tesseract OCR
- Which is sponsored by Google...

Suggestions very welcome!

Unions

Regular readers will know that I'm a proud member of Prospect - the union for ambition. As a professional knowledge-worker, I rely on my union to provide me with legal services and support me in pay negotiations. If you're in the UK and want to be part of a union for professionals - join Prospect today.

If you join Prospect, and mention my name, I'll make a £10 donation to charity.

Connect Merger with Prospect

@edent — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 07:25:27 +0000

A stunning majority - 88% - voted in favour of Connect merging with Prospect. It's not known how many ballots the CWU delayed due to strikes.

Adrian Askew, Connect's General Secretary, said:

I am delighted that our members have strongly backed plans to merge with Prospect. This promises an exciting future and we look forward to working closely with colleagues in Prospect, sharing our expertise and our innovative approaches to trade unionism to represent and protect our members.

While it would have been nice to remain independent, Prospect offers us many more benefits than the moribund CWU.

Connect South have further details.

Connect Merger With Prospect

@edent — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:50:04 +0000

At the Connect Biennial Conference, I proudly stated the case for Connect's merger with the Prospect Union. Our other choice was the CWU.

Unions - in the UK at least - are democratic structures. What gets proposed at conference has to be approved by a majority vote of members - not just those who could take a few days off to go to Blackpool.

Casting My Ballot

The irony is that the strikers at the CWU will be delaying our votes from reaching their destination. I'm sure the bad press and ill-sentiment that the CWU are generating has influenced more than a few votes to fall from their hands into Prospect's.

I cannot conceive of a union, workforce, or employer allowing industrial relations to deteriorate to such a point as the CWU and Royal Mail now have. That is one of the many reasons why I hope Connect members will vote for a merger with Prospect.

Connect Merger With Prospect

@edent — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:37:21 +0000

At the Connect Conference in Blackpool we voted to merge our union with Prospect.

The other potential merger was with CWU.

There's a plethora of articles about the CWU ruining businesses. Is this really the union people want representing them?

Let's face facts, the postal service is dying. I literally can't remember I posted a letter. Email does for me. To tie our fortunes to a sector which is rapidly vanishing is madness.

Some talk of the synergies between CWU and BT. Well, that may have been true - once. If it's still true, it's an irrellavance. Connect is more than BT. Much much more. Members now come from T-Mobile, Vodafone, Orange, Yell, Seimens etc. We have nothing in common with the CWU.

There may be some managerial members of the CWU - but over 70% of members are posties.

Imagine your boss asks you about your union - do you want her thinking you're a striking postal worker or a professional worker?

When the Connect ballot paper comes, I'll be voting for a merger with Prospect.

Speech to TUC

@edent — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 13:53:40 +0000

Terry Eden (Connect) speaking in support of Composite Motion 10.

I want to focus on public procurement and the role it can play in driving forward social and environmental goals and, in particular, raising labour standards. The money public authorities spend on buying goods and services amounts to £108 billion every year from major capital projects to buying office stationery. Our public money supports private business. It is right that our public money should be used to encourage the private sector to support social goals. It is in the public interest that companies invest in high labour standards and measure which protect the environment. It is in the public interest that companies are good employers, and it is in the public interest that public authorities should go beyond laying down simple technical specifications for goods and services. Contracts should oblige companies to meet social and environmental goals. For example, in the interest of equal opportunity and social cohesion, publicly funded contracts should require companies to be actively committed to race equality. I have chosen this example because, in a Cabinet report, the Government themselves have recommended this course of action.

As we heard yesterday from Ken Livingstone, the LDA is already working hard to ensure that the Olympic contracts set new standards in social justice.

A new European law, which must be implemented by January, enables and encourages the inclusion of social goals in the tendering process. There is support from some sections of the business community; those good employers who invest in high labour standards but have to compete with those who do not.

The Government, however, appear very reluctant to make any practical steps in this direction. All around we hear the sound of dragging feet. Commitment to real progress from the heart of the Government is lukewarm at best. Value for money is defined too narrowly. Complaints about burdens on business are accepted too readily and social goals are abandoned too easily. That is why we must keep up the pressure. Writing social goals into public procurement contracts is not difficult. It is not in conflict with EU policy and it can be done, and unions, both in the public and private sectors, can work together to make sure that good intentions become real commitments. Please support.

Transcription from 2005 Congress verbatim report