I spent a few hours wandering the Internet looking at countless blogs. I would read a few lines here and browse there but there was one thing I found kind of interesting: the sites that I visited boasting the most amount of traffic and carrying the largest number of ads don’t allow for just anyone to write on them — other than DailyKos. I am sure there are that many other blogs that do allow everyday people to speak their minds, but they weren’t coming up for me tonight.
I thought that if I were to get to write at a blog regarding race relations, perhaps I would babble on a little about Dr. King’s birthday and how New Era Cap compmany violates its workers Civil Rights and this country’s labor laws at the same time. I would bring up the worker story I heard about the pregnant woman who was told that if she goes into labor while on the job, the boss would bring her a towel and a bucket … Yea, it is 2008, and as I alluded to the other day, we have a woman and an African-American running for president. Perhaps one of the two should visit Mobile this weekend — or do their votes count?
Maybe if I could find a blog about busing school kids I would have written a little about the outstanding organizing campaign taking place with the Teamsters. In a little more than a year and a half they have organized more than 5,000 workers! While it is a great campaign, the primary company involved, FirstStudent, does some strange things — no … perhaps stupid is a better word. The other day I reported about the company hiring a monitor to monitor the unionizing effort of his employees. That might sound good, but … what the hell is he monitoring? Policies? If so … where are they? In its infinite wisdom, the company chose to NOT consult with the Teamsters in setting up this monitor office, a very bad move. While we can talk about the stupidity of the company making this move, I am more concerned with getting the word to school bus workers that there is a message waiting for them from the union on this new monitor BS. Here … read this.
What’s with all the Teamster news? I spend a bunch of hours with the IBT these days and get it all first-hand … but there are other things taking place at other unions and in labor in general that I would have got on other sites tonight … if I could.
For example, the Tentative Agreement between the Directors and Hollywood studios, as was well-reported by our friend and UR contributor Joe638NYC here on his own blog.
Over at Union Review, you know, anyone could write to the site … I have only ever censored one person — but that is old news by now. Once I had to change a headline because it was innacurate and I didn’t want to have any troubles … we didn’t.
Anyway, this little ramble is coming to an end. I just found it very interesting that with all of the sites (aside from Joe’s) I could not post my own stuff. I got frustrated and decided to go back to my net-roots and just post to MYSPACE and then cross-post this to Union Review and now here at my private little diary: Writethrough’s Weblog (which no one seems to come and visit — or if they do, they don’t say much when they get here). Hell, maybe people will realize that if they want to be heard …they have to find a way to take matters in their own hands. I am.
With that, if anyone tries to get on Union Review and has a problem with the technology or whatever, by all means let me know. My email address is Richard@unionreview.com.
