LabourStart and the U.S. Union Movement: Making Connections
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This week, at the first LabourStart conference ever held in the United States, one of the most important topics of conversation centered around strategies for connecting the United States and global union movements and the active, energetic community that LabourStart represents.
It’s an important question, participants agreed, because of how workers across the world are increasingly tied together by globalization. Workers in different countries, but working for the same company, could have much more in common than they realize, and workers across the world are facing many of the same issues that workers in the United States face, as is obvious from a look at LabourStart’s headlines.
LabourStart: What Do Unions Need to Do Online?
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At this week’s LabourStart conference—much like at last week’s Netroots Nation conference—union communicators, activists and bloggers are taking a close look at how the union movement is approaching new media. Where are we doing the right thing, and where are we lagging behind?
LabourStart attendees agreed we as labor communicators need new studies of what the union movement—in the United States and around the world—is doing online. Today’s morning session highlighted the healthy debate about how to go forward—do we need a scholarly study or a practical handbook to use on the ground? Do we need to focus on broad, large-scale campaigns that attract a lot of attention, or do we concentrate on small, focused local campaigns where we can have more of an impact? And how do we utilize new media tools to get people engaged and get leverage in campaigns?
