Truth Comes Out: Online News Workers Join Union
In today’s global society, people in different cities and continents meet, talk and take actions on the Internet. Now, the employees of Truthout.org have shown how you can join a union all online without ever seeing each other or coming face to face with an organizer.
Late last month, the Truthout workers became the first online-only news service to join a union. The new members of The Newspaper Guild-CWA (TNG-CWA) joined using the country’s first “virtual card check.” Union cards were verified with faxed PDFs of each employee’s signature.
With tools like Skype and Google Documents, organizers spent long hours on conference calls, “meeting” at night, each in their own living rooms, kitchens or backyards.
Virtual majority verification (also called “card check”) holds great promise for helping workers join unions in far-flung, online operations in which workers are not located in one central location.
