IT Social Enterprise (for profit) start up founded in March 2017. Uses the strapline - better work is possible. Aims to provide a platform to help people who support each other at work. This is a creative way to compensate in some way for the weakening of trade unions and the fragmentation of the workplace which makes it harder for people to band together.
How it shows
Uses technology and getting organised: to enable people to organise who might find it difficult because of the nature of their work, enforced "self-employment" or employer hostility to Trade Unions
Provides an IT platform for them to use
Help ad resources: Is extending what it does to makes help and resources available via the platform offering Virtual and in-person training, a resource library of e-mail templates and how-to guides , peer-to-peer support networks, legal advice and guidance, and online chat function connecting
Characteristics
Wide engagement; claims to be 500,000 strong, encourages members to join an appropriate TU and works with TUs
Caveats
This is not an example of what good looks like for a future holistic political economy but may be a good way of organising in an environment when Trade Unions have been so weakened. Organise makes no secret of that fact that it is a for profit company, has Fiancial backing and as such issues employee share options. It's value proposition is anchored in the inequality of the market and depends on the existence of what Guy Standing would call The Precariat. Connecting and providing an IT platform for these workers is fulfilling a desperate need and I am not advocating the wearing of a hair shirt, but it is, to put it mildly, an interesting concept: the developer salary at the the going market rate at £40-50,000 pa. is massive by comparison to those of the workers it is helping, whose low wages are a product of the very same market.