Yesterday Brendan Gold, a member of the Australian Federal Parliament (and former HTUP participant), spoke in a session looking at the relationship between the Labour Party and unions in Australia. Last year Labour lost its fourth straight election, and Brendan's session came the day after the resignation of the Labour Party's leader, Mark Latham.

As well as further work with David Weil today, we also had a session with Chris Mackin, of Ownership Associates. Chris is a big advocate of employee share ownership and other forms of worker/employee ownership; something which has its routes in the co-op movement in the UK, and goes back to the Knights of Labour and National Labor Union in the US.

One big concern I have about ESOP's is that they are often floated as a way of digging companies out of trouble when all else fails - and little attention is given to how unions and their members can really use them to democratise the workplace. More widely, community and public forms of ownership have again often been used to bail companies or industries out of short term problems, only for these concerns to be returned to private hands when profits return.

As part of the Chris's programme next week, we'll be having a session with Steve Arbrecht of the SEIU on capital stewardship - covering how unions can use their pension and investment power to strengthen their ability to represent members, which should be really interesting.