[Ecommerce] Three international labor organizaitons propose .union

[James Love]

Today the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions 
(http://www.icftu.org), the OECD Trade Union Advisory Committee 
(http://www.TUAC.org) and the Union Network Internetional 
(union-network.org) distributed a proposal for a .union top level
domain.   Jamie

-------------------------
Subject: [Nc-tlds] Some thoughts on a chartered GTLD for trade unions
   Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 19:13:42 +0200
  From: "Pruett, Duncan" <duncan.pruett@icftu.org>
    To: "'ncdnhc-discuss@lyris.isoc.org'" <ncdnhc-discuss@lyris.isoc.org>, 
      "'nc-tlds@lists.essential.org'" <nc-tlds@venice.essential.org>


Greetings.

A number of international trade union organisations have been following the
deliberations of the NCDNHC with interest. As some of you may know, early
consultations have begun within the trade union movement about the
possibility of an application being made to ICANN to run a chartered GTLD
for trade unions.

As we continue to assess the issue, we would like to share with you a
preliminary discussion paper recently prepared by the ICFTU on behalf of 3
international trade union organisations (ICFTU, UNI, and TUAC*). Any
comments from members of the NCDNHC would be welcome. Please feel free to
forward them to us at this address:

duncan.pruett@icftu.org (ICFTU Brussels)
(with copies to schneider@tuac.org (TUAC, Paris) and
neil.anderson@union-network.org (UNI, Geneva))

...and we will integrate them in ongoing internal discussions on the matter.

Duncan Pruett
Information / IT Coordinator
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
Tel: +32 (2) 224 0219
GSM: +32 (477) 861 903
___________________________


DOT UNION - AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE:

Having only recently become aware of the ongoing discussions, regarding
the creation of a new non-commercial top-level Internet domain, along the
lines of ".union", the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC -
http://www.tuac.org),
Union Network International (UNI - http://www.union-network.org), and the
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU -
http://www.icftu.org)
would like to offer a few shared perspectives on the discussion. This is
based on verbal and written reports on the March 31 briefing to US-based
trade unions, organised by Manon Ress in Washington DC, as well as
supplementary information picked up from the "nc-tlds" and "NCDNHC" mailing
lists, and
other related sources. We would also like to thank Manon Ress for making the
effort to involve those of us based in Europe who have not, till now, been
very involved in these internationally-relevant discussions.

This note is not intended to constitute a position paper, but rather a
contribution to the ongoing discussion, and a registration of interest in
the discussion on the part of the international trade union organisations.
_______________

1. Consensus proposal

According to Jamie Love's written report, persons from the US Dept of
Commerce (DoC) present at the March 31 meeting indicated that "if the unions
wanted .union, they could probably do it, but ... would have to provide a
consensus proposal (consensus among stakeholders, in this case the labor
movement)". We think that it would be quite possible for the union movement
to come up with such a proposal, and we would be quite prepared to
participate in
its preparation.

2. Validity of this initiative

Although we are persuaded of some of the potential merits of the idea, (such
as its possible role in the expansion of Internet-based organising), we feel
that the introduction of such a top-level domain would provide plenty of
opportunities for misuse, were it not properly managed. The most predictable
misuse of such a system would be likely to come from "company unions" or
other organisations which are not seen by the labour movement as bona fide
trade unions. We therefore feel this initiative would only be worth pursuing
if the labour movement were able to exclude certain applicants from using
the ".union" domain. In other words, only a "chartered" domain would be
feasible.

3. International aspect

The DoC participants in the Washington DC meeting also said that for such a
proposal on ".union" to succeed, it "would have to address the international
aspect of ICANN". Given not only the global nature of trade unionism, but
also the existence of well-developed international democratic trade union
structures, a formula could and should be backed by the international trade
union bodies. TUAC, UNI and the ICFTU will, as a next step, inform other
international trade union bodies about this discussion.

4. Registrant Approval Mechanism

Given the close partnership that exists between the international trade
union organisations, it is quite feasible that some kind of registrant
approval mechanism could be evolved and managed at the international level.
It should be noted that all of the trade union organisations we know to have
participated in the DC meeting are represented in one or more of the
international trade union bodies being referred to here (ie. ICFTU, UNI and
TUAC). Of course, we would need to consider the cost implications of an
undertaking to manage
registration for a top level domain. We would also need to consider whether
certain elements of the process could be outsourced.

5. Language question

One of the issues dominating the debate seems to be the concern that
".union" is not universally understood to mean "trade union". In the
international trade union bodies, we have over 50 years of experience in
dealing with these issues (albeit that for most of this period we have
mainly been dealing with paper and not internet domains). The ICFTU, which
represents over 200 national trade union centres from around the world
(including the AFL-CIO) has 4 official languages. English, French, Spanish
and German are accepted and used by its affiliates as a "lowest common
denominator". If the international union movement can agree internally on
the language issue, there should be no need for outsiders in the "nc-tlds"
discussion, or in the ICANN working groups, to lose time telling us what is
and what is not acceptable. Based on the above, one possible solution may be
to establish 3 or 4 synonyms which all point to the same "root". In other
words, we are wondering whether it is technically feasible to have a limited
number
of top level domains (TLD) all be interchangeable. For example:

.union (english)
.syndicat (french)
.sindicato (spanish)
.gewerkschaft (german)

This proposed solution might even serve as a model for some other proposed
top level domains (eg. ".ngo/.ong/.ong/.nro" or ".ltd/.sa/.sa/.gmbh").

We don't think this approach would face that much opposition from those
currently using the commercially available TLDs - for instance, these three
addresses all point to pretty much the same IP address/name server:

www.yahoo.com
www.yahoo.org
www.yahoo.net

Is there really any difference between this practice and the solution
proposed above?

___________

* ICFTU has 216 affiliated organisations in 145 countries and territories,
and represents 123 million workers, 39 million of whom are women; TUAC has
55 affiliated organisations in the 29 OECD member countries, and represents
70 million workers; UNI has 900 affiliated organisations in 140 countries
and represents 15.5 million workers