Promotion and Patience

All week people have written in requesting hardhat stickers from Union Review; this is an awesome feeling and a great experience to enjoy as the site continues to grow.

The promotion of the site is a full-time job as much as keeping up with the news that should get posted. The biggest obstacle is getting workers to write in or comment on the articles that are up already. Today, for instance, I was at an online forum where a worker chimed in with the question, “Why is no one talking about this…?” The “this” he was referring to was the Teamster strike in LA against Waste Management. The reality is that Union Review and the International have been blogging about this issue for a while already; or at least since the strike was announced. My question is how come that worker doesn’t know where we are at?

This will take time – getting folks to Union Review and other sites that are discussing the issues facing working people. While we are definitely making a little dent there is still so much work to do. Sure, if I had a bundle of dollars I would do all kinds of things to get the word out on the street, but right now … it is good ol’ fashioned netroots.

I am working on doing less and less WriteThrough stuff and more on Union Review because it just doesn’t make sense to get torn into too many directions. In addition to that, the WriteThrough business is all leading back to Union Review anyway, which is a good thing, but what is the point of keeping the WriteThrough site up and running? It doesn’t get a tremendous amount of traffic, I say to myself.

I suppose the answer is the same answer that I have for the worker wondering why no one is talking about a current labor dispute – that is, it will take time to get pro-labor businesses and the unions on board with what WriteThrough can offer them – and, yea … with a bundle of dollars … blab la bla.

As they say, “more will be revealed.”

Why unions in the United States need to consider WriteThrough Communications?

 

I have long thought about writing this post for the public to see. I might have even written a few versions of it over the years and never let it be seen; however, now more than ever, it is time to just let it rip.

 

The deal is this: Unions in the US are clearly 10 years behind the rest of the world when it comes to the Internet. Many of the unions are on sites that look and feel like they were built in crayon by a retired worker’s 4 year-old granddaughter. Some of the union locals don’t have a site at all. A large number of unions that have sites, some that are actually well-done, have content dating back to 1999, which is … well, old.

 

In other articles that I have written and in letters or in discussions I shared that it is imperative that a worker who comes home at the end of a day, who checks his or her emails and goes on MYSPACE or wherever, needs to have their union with them. And what does that mean? That means the unions need to communicate with this worker and lead the worker back to their site to get caught up on current events, no matter what those current events are. Workers want to be kept informed and I believe it is the union’s responsibility to keep the workers informed … especially online where so many folks go before they leave for work and soon after they return home.

 

All the excuses from the unions regarding why they are reluctant to go forward online are exactly that … excuses. There should be none … period. Even if the union sends out one story a week that it either has written for their publication or something they found in the NY Times or wants to give their counter-punch, the union and the worker needs to be communicated via online content, it is just a matter of fact, Jack.

 

Write Through is, for the most part, just me … until it is too busy and I need to hire another unionized freelance worker. That said the unions can use us to help with the content, get fresh material on the site, conceptualize and help re-build their current site if it needs a face lift, and just know that it is like having a staff member with them because I (and anyone I have to hire) cares about the union movement.

Online organizing and Mobilizing

How do we go about getting more people online involved with the union movement (or any other) and then guide them toward what we need to do to increase numbers online?

The reality is that it is part anyone’s guess and part common sense – that is at least my take. When it comes to spreading information about a union’s campaign, an election, or even a new business launch; we have to consider the tools at our fingertips. If we cannot afford the higher-end PR engines, than we have to take advantage of all the free sources available – and there are many.

We need to get into the news stream, up in the search engines, and use words carefully enough to entice the reader to click over to the site(s). Once they are there, however, it is up to you to keep them there with a well-delivered good looking message or call-to-action.

Then there is the social networking platforms, like MYSPACE, that are pivotal to our combined plight. With both Union Review and Write Through I realized that I had to go to where the people were. I was on MYSPACE for sometime with my creative work and one night started to do a random search for various union locals. What came from that is a community of nearly 500 workers- and growing, & many of these folks have converted over to Union Review. (Converted over means that they are “friends” on MYSPACE and have since signed up for a user name and password at Union Review as well). This is paramount for online organizing and get the word out there.

When it comes to call-to-action campaigns, like those that many unions, the AFL-CIO and Change-to-Win, not to mention Labourstart.org handle, it is very important to ask people to pass those Take Action notices along to folks in their address book. Asking people to be active is the first step (and while that is painfully obvious, I see many Take Action emails on any given day and rarely see the request to pass the message around). Yea, it is important they fill out the online form to get counted, but it needs to be as important, if not more important to have folks exercise one more step of activism by simply cutting and pasting a link into an email to friends and family — if you don’t ask them to, don’t expect it will just happen.

In July of 2007 I wrote and published an article on Union Review called “Online organizing tools are available and should be used by every union.” In that piece I wrote:

For the past few months I have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about online organizing in the union movement. There was one well-done article at mydd.com that I enjoyed a great deal and commented on – and one article on the subject by someone who thinks the idea of organizing online workers is absurd.

 

In speaking with a lot of people, mainly through email, there are two things that seem prevalent to me:

 

1. There is a need to further the use of online organizing with unions of every trade.

2. There is a need to gain greater union membership among the very writers and Bloggers endlessly posting material on the web.

 

In this article I go into the idea that while we need to take advantage of all the tools available to us, we also have to take into consideration that not everyone is cut out to be sitting in front of a computer for 12-14 hours a day, give or take a pee break . Why is that important? It is important because we have to make sure that our expectations of workers are appropriately leveraged. We cannot expect more than what they can give, especially after a full day or night on a trailer; on a line – or wherever. What we do need to expect though is that when these workers get home and sign on to the Internet, their union should be with them.

The only way that our unions can be there when we get get home from work is to have a site that is updated, functional, and one that is reaching out to its members with a message of importance or a question they’d be foolish not to reply to.

So, we have come full circle. In order to to reach out to folks and get them involved we need to have the tools in place to have them do what we need. We need to make it easy for folks that are not typing 75 words-per-minute or have the skill to navigate as easy as others sitting in front of their computers day and night.

In all of my research, there is no company better than Prometheus Labor Communications to handle the building, designing and hosting of a union-made website — and being it is of paramount importance for WriteThrough to use only union workers on any jobs, I have teamed up with this group in a way that makes it easy for me to trouble shoot and deliver a well-done site.

In the final analysis, the time to think about online organizing and mobilizing is at the set up or re-design of a site. The technology needs to be put in place, taught to the union officers, and explained in a way so that they can handle a simple knowledge-transfer to the workers. Once we have that … success will be based on how many fingers are typing out the messages that need to spread out in this web.

If anyone wants to discuss this stuff with me, feel free to write me at Richard@writehtrough.com

Hate Crimes

 The case of the Jena 6 echoed around the United States and sparked what could possibly be the largest Civil Rights protest in many many years. The incident also had everyone talking, finally, about hate crimes. Whether all that talk will solve anything is yet to be seen; I have my doubts.

I remember reporting about James Byrd more than a few years back. He was the African-American guy who was dragged to his death after being roped up to the back of a pick-up truck in Texas. I remember writing about Matthew Sheppard, the 21 year-old kid in Wyoming who came out about being gay. In that case he was pistol whipped, tied to a fence, and more or less left to die. The stories are endless, some are more brutal than others, but at what point does this kind of hatred stop? Will it ever stop?

I think about the fact that we have lost nearly 4,000 soldiers in a war in Iraq, about the fanaticism that is being played out in the name of someone’s god, and I just shake my head and wonder … what the hell is wrong with everyone?

I am a dreamer who dreams of Utopian landscapes where the color of one’s skin, the god to whom they pray, and the lovers that they choose, etc., that none of it is reason to brutalize the other. Are we really a planet that insecure with ourselves that we need to beat on one another because we disagree with fundamental characteristics of our beings?

I am all pissed off because of a story that I posted to Union Review about a black worker in Philadelphia who has become the latest victim in a string of noose-related hate crimes. A fellow worker, from what I understand, swung the noose in the nose of this man and said that he wanted to hang someone that day … what the hell is that about?

Hate is an illness. The first step toward being cured is admitting your illness. I wish a lot of folks would wake up, get cured, and spread their accomplishment of healing to others who are still suffering. Is that so much to ask for in this day and age?

The Union Review Experience

I began working on Union Review in my spare time in 2005. I wanted to provide information to a few friends in NYC who were calling me with concerns about the news they were reading in the morning papers. The site has grown a lot since then and has practically become a full-time job for me. It is a labor of love.

In the couple years since launching the site and doing any kind of mobilization, organizing, or information transfer, I have only come across two individuals who were truly not with the program. One guy, a carpenter out of Albany named Richard Durrough and another guy who pretended he was from a PATCO local — both shown themselves as being a big waste of my time. The guy from PATCO disappeared when his union abandoned its workers on the eve of an election and Durrough spends his time building websites about people he hates -some folks sent me links to blog posts about me (I am honored).
The thing about this guy Durrough is that he seemed fairly intelligent. He has a sizable and valid beef with his local union, but the guy never once offered up any solutions to his problems, all he did was endlessly bitch and moan. Eventually he started coming out at me because he thinks I am a propaganda machine or whatever he said, and words were exchanged. When some of those words became threats I thought it was time to block him from Union Review. I had no more head for this guy … it seemed like he was only around to tell me and others what was wrong with our opinions and then brought it all back to his issue with the Carpenters – and specifically his Local 370 in Albany. Oh well, good luck to Durrough and his sites bashing me and others.

Aside from Durrough, however, I have been fortunate to see the site grow day after day. I have seen us go from 200 hits in a month to 20,000 in a day … we are boasting a membership of well over 750 between the site and the MYSPACE counterpart, and I believe we are doing a great job starting and then maintaining an online community of working people.

When I was in the news business it was impossible to side with one party over the other … and I must say that with Union Review I try to be somewhat objective, though I am always coming from a pro-union point-of-view. It is a touchy time when there is news that is positive coming from a union that is in tremendous need of reform itself, but I have chosen to try and stay away from a lot of that personally. I would rather point people to other reforming sites so that they can discuss their issues and find solutions, or publish material from the AUD, TDU, Future of the Union, etc.

The only time, that I remember, watching two unions really battle it out at the site was with PATCO/FPD and PATCO, Inc. It was not long after I interviewed both presidents that I clearly sided with PATCO, Inc. in that little tug-of-war. I felt that though PATCO/FPD was the incumbent union and had the backing of AFSCME and the AFL-CIO, they were not doing their job as a union; at least to the four or five rank-and-filers who contacted me about the situation. I am not at all for a raiding union, but I didn’t see that PATCO, Inc was raiding; they were presenting an alternative and the workers, shop after shop, continue to choose to go with them. In the end, the incumbent union abandoned their workers all together in a strategy that I can’t fully understand — and I am not sure if that was for all of the elections or some of them, but I gave up trying to figure them out.

It is intense, at best, for me to report about various Teamster issues that go on. I think of my own childhood a lot with this stuff. I remember going out on Steve’s truck when I was 10 years old and how he was so proud of what he did and with whom. Eventually he moved on to Yellow before passing on. I think about my time with UPS loading in Maspeth and the endless driving jobs around the City, and there is a certain pride writing about the bus drivers, the freight division or any other …with the mindset that I know who I am speaking with directly.

There is so much to write about when it comes to the Union Review experience for me personally. Whether it was the night the miners were trapped in Utah, the day the TDU wrote about and informed everyone that the Indianapolis drivers were not to get the NMFA, the weeks with PATCO stuff unfolding, or labor disputes in my own backyard in South Florida: The Fisher Island issue and the Nova Southeastern University stuff. Every campaign is important, all the news should be told, and there is not enough hours in the day to get it all out there, at least for one person.

That is why when Charles Lezette and Joe W. began volunteering so much time to the site it became a great deal easier – still, there is a lot of important work to do and I think it is just the beginning.

Long before I started this WordPress blog I would write little journal entries surrounding the days when the site was starting to show its first spike in tremendous growth. I think it would be cool to go look those over and if they are worthy, publish them up on this site. I want people to know the experience that I have with Union Review … and I am not sure why other than that I hope it moves them to get active with the site or a site of their own.