Labour and New Media (edited)

Just to follow up on yesterday's article... here's what the edited version looks like...

Labour and New Media - Made for each other

You’ve probably heard or read news stories about Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and blogging, but did you know these can be powerful tools for Unions, too? Face-to-face meetings, newsletters and notice boards will always have their place in union communications, but there is a growing demand in the labour movement to embrace the new media.

New media, also called Web 2.0 or user-contributed media, is immediate and can reach many people at once. CUPE 391 (Vancouver Public Library workers) recently got a lot of mileage out of their bargaining blog (http://www.cupe391.ca/blog2/). While they built the blog for their members after their employer shut down their internal e-mail system, it soon became clear that reporters were checking it for breaking information. Other locals are posting campaign videos on YouTube, reaching out to new members on social networking giant Facebook, and collecting photos of rallies, strikes, and community action on Flickr.

In response to member needs, CUPE has reworked the Advanced Communications course, “Making it Sing,” to include new media and to help guide CUPE activists in the best ways to integrate new media into their own campaigns and communications strategies.

Parksville Day One

After a bit of a challenge finding the hotel, we made it here. We were surprised to find one of the best outfitted fitness centres we've seen in a hotel -- it even has equipment comparable to what I have been using at the physiotherapy gym (hooray!). The room itself is average (at least it's clean) and happily Hubby accompanied me, even though it means Kiddo is with her Nana for a whole week! To make that easier, though, Hubby has just set up Skype Credit so we can call Kiddo without spending a week's salary on hotel phone charges or cell minutes.

There's four other members of my local here (all women, oddly) out of what looks like close to eighty or so CUPE members each taking or leading one of five courses offered this week. Being at the Parksville school will mean I have been to all the major education schools available to our local at one point or another in the past 15 years -- Harrison, Naramata, Parksville and other local courses. In the past I have also attended seminars, conferences, conventions (CUPE BC and CUPE National) and even a think-tank at the request of and for the benefit of the local. Over the years I have been a steward, a health and safety representative, and member of several committees. Currently, I am on three committees: Libraries Technical and Organizational Change, Agreement Study (assessment of the contract in preparation for negotiations) and Communications (as chair). I find the union work interesting and am lucky to work in a department which is very flexible in allowing me to do much of the work inside my schedule, as time and workload allows.

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