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.”
