.gif){kind=small}
BACK TO HOME
PAGE BACK TO HOME
PAGE EUROPEAN REVIEW
ANOTHER CONGLOMERATION of initials which seem to hide rather than explain their purpose name the organisations who provide the web sites for this month's review. They stand respectively for the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the International Federation of Commercial, Clerical, Professional and Technical Employees. Their sites (URLs below) are more interesting than the acronyms might suggest. The FIET home page features a starry sky with the Earth superimposed with an annoying, flashing logo proclaiming 'news flash'. Links include 'News', 'Commerce', 'Finance', 'Property' and 'Youth' as well as several news flash subjects, the 'Sydney World Congress' and 'Afro-FIET pages'. Another click of the mouse on 'Links' will take you to a long list of countries with details of unions in each country. There are however no links to their web pages. The list can also be sorted by name of, or type of, organisation. Clicking on 'News' lists their news and information articles for the last three years, some of which are very interesting, with a worldwide remit, but there does not appear to be access to their reports, such as 'Teleworking and trade union strategy' on which was based the article on page 2 of this publication.
The ICFTU web site is headed 'Trade Union World' and proclaims that the organisation 'represents 125 million trade union members organised in 206 national trade union centres in 141 countries and territories'. As well as the usual links to other pages such as 'New', 'Contents', 'Calendar' and 'Contact' you can click on the regional organisations in Africa, Asia and America and international trade secretariats, affiliates, branch offices and project officers. If you take your mouse to 'New', the screen is split into three columns: 'Latest News' including trade union reports from all over the world, 'Campaigns and Action' and 'Latest Reports' which details reviews of the economies of various countries as well as a statement on climate change. Clicking on 'Other Useful Links' will bring you to the pages of such organisations as the European Trade Union Confederation, the International Labour Organisation, the International Monetary Fund and the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Links here are classified by subject such as 'Child Labour', 'Finance and Trade' and 'Press Links'.
To sum up, these two organisations provide extensive and wide ranging information in the fields of trade unionism, economics, international relations and labour research. Whilst the layout of their web pages is fairly staid (particularly ICFTU) they are a must for any Internet user who is seriously interested in these subjects.
THE WEB SITES listed include the home pages of the two organisations reviewed above, which are at: http://fiethq.fiet.org/ and http://www.icftu.org/
Links to some of the other pages mentioned in the article lead to the following URLs:
|
International Labour Organisation | |
|
International Monetary Fund | |
|
European Trade Union Confederation | |
|
Trade Union Advisory Committee to the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) |
This general site for the BBC leads to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive/. Clicking on 'listen now' leads to a console. Click on this and you can download the live output of Radio 5. You will need a programme called 'RealAudio' or 'RealPlayer' but these can be downloaded free from http://www.real.com/ or http://www.real.co.uk/
A similar service is available for some World Service programmes. Live radio can also be downloaded from a station called C-Span in the USA at http://www.cspan.org/. Clicking on 'live tv/radio' will lead you to 'vidoe and audio' (click 'C-Span') for live coverage of the US Congress when in session.
|
Back to |
Forward to |
Up to |
