ICANN's June 13, 2000 background document on the additional
of new TLDs twice mentioned the creation of a .union TLD to be managed by the union
movement. According to its advocates, a .union domain name would establish
"a union label for cyberspace" and would be dedicated to strengthening union organizing
efforts and facilitating worker-union communications. LPA, an association of
senior human resource executives of leading companies in the U.S., opposes the creation
of a .union TLD because it would likely only confuse employees, particularly those
who are not represented by a union.LPA believes that a .union TLD, such as nike.union,
is significantly different in character than .museum or .edu, which are primarily
benign TLDs dedicated to providing information. By contrast, a .union TLD would
be inherently adversarial and advocacy related because of the nature of union-employer
relations. Such a TLD could confuse employees into thinking that they were
already represented by a union when they were not because the second-level domain
names (nike.union) carry the company's name as an imprimatur.
In addition,
a chartered .union TLD would require that several policy choices be made up front
by ICANN, such as whether more than one union would have access to a company.union
site; how content would be determined; how disputes would be resolved among rival
unions; and whether a decertified union at a company would continue to have posting
rights under the company.union domain name.
This does not even begin to
address the issue of what the chartering entity would be. Already, it appears
that disputes have arisen between the AFL-CIO in the United States, and the international
trade union movement regarding control and management of such a site.
For the above
reasons, LPA believes that a .union TLD is unworkable. LPA's complete comments
to ICANN may be viewed on LPA's web site.