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News :: Miscellaneous |
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AFL-CIO Hosts World’s Greatest Online Labor Day Festival |
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by AFL-CIO
(No verified email address) |
30 Aug 2001
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e-Activism, Online Union Karaoke and Labor Day greeting e-cards Share Stage with New Report on Workers’ Rights and More |
WASHINGTON - August 29 - The AFL-CIO opened its second annual Online Labor Day Festival today, billed as the "biggest hometown Labor Day festival in the USA," at www.aflcio.org/laborday. It will run through Sept. 21, 2001.
The Festival makes clear that this isn’t "your father’s labor movement," or his Labor Day celebration either. Visitors are more likely to hear Boston-based punk band the Dropkick Murphys’ version of "Which Side Are You On" than they are to hear the original folkie version. That’s not to say there isn’t something for everyone – the array of games, music, art, and e-cards is guaranteed to appeal to every member of the family.
"Cyberspace offers immense new possibilities for working people to make their voices heard and build ‘community’ in an entirely new way," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. "This festival brings together the best of our culture and history in a powerful way that’s building for the future."
Highlights include:
Rights@Work Action Center, where visitors can support Delta and Verizon workers and learn their own rights on the job; Games like Shatter the Glass Ceiling and Smash Corporate Greed; A "Jacob Lawrence Remembered" exhibit, photos of workers at work and more; Performance Stage with Dropkick Murphys exclusive video and union karaoke; E-cards for Labor Day, birthdays, and more, plus screensavers; Labor in the Pulpits information and faith teachings on worker justice.
The AFL-CIO’s second annual Online Labor Day Festival is part of a broader trend of cyber unionism, as unions find new ways to bring together working people on issues that are important to them. Today’s unions are using technology to help new members organize, mobilizing members and activists, and celebrating union culture.
Many workers who are forming unions are using an online presence to keep in contact with each other, and to update supporters. National INS agents, Delta flight attendants, SBC and Verizon workers, part-time community college teachers in California, and SecurityLink workers isolated in trucks all day have all used the Internet and e-mail successfully to come together in unions.
Mobilization has reached new potential online – activists e-mailed their Congressional representatives to oppose Fast Track trade legislation, commercial actors utilized email and the Internet to win their strike, and worker activists have used Palm Pilots for political campaigns and member mobilization.
Some 60 percent of union members have computers, according to a poll by Peter D. Hart Research, Inc., conducted in January 2000. The survey also found that 74 percent of union members with computers have Internet access.
The AFL-CIO is the umbrella organization for America’s unions representing 13 million working men and women. |
See also:
http://www.aflcio.org/laborday
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