Go ahead, vent against your boss

A trade union website allows bloggers to badmouth their employers unlike social networking sites that don't want to lose ad revenue in the process

Trade unions have come out with their own ad-free site called Union Book where bloggers can say what they want about their employers.

Blogs powered by social networking sites often toe the line if the employers in question are advertises.u00a0

"Whenever we blogged against any company on a social networking site, there would be no guarantee that the blog would remain. If the company was an advertiser on the site, the blog would be blocked. So trade unions came up with this site which does not have ads and hence ensures freedom," said Kartik Shekar, secretary, Union for IT and ITES employees (Unites). Union Book is a project for Labour Start, the campaigning website of the international trade union movement. The technology for the site is provided by the Bangalore-based Unites.

"There are around 200 to 250 members across India and we want to bring the site in focus on May 1, which is Labour Day," he said. There are a total of about 2,800 members worldwide.

On the site, the founders say Union Book is better than Facebook or My Space which tells users that their accounts will be blocked if they indulge in union activities.