Public Employee Press

Local 768's Next Wave
Educating, agitating, organizing - electronically

Next Wavers of Local 768 - the new generation of union activists - believe nothing beats face-to-face contact when it comes to organizing.

But in an age of a decentralized workplace and an explosion of social media tools, they rely primarily on texting and email for union business.

"Many of us spend most of our time in the field and are not in an office," said Ivonne Gomez, a Public Health Sanitarian. "So, emailing and texting is the most useful way of communicating with people."

The drawback of phoning, of course, is that it is time consuming, Gomez said. It is more efficient, she said, to spend a couple of minutes typing out a message and sending it out to everyone at once rather than making individual calls.

The Local 768 Next Wave Committee meets periodically for members to trade workplace war stories, discuss vital issues confronting the labor movement and deepen personal relationships.

Otherwise, the young activists primarily keep in touch through their smartphones and Facebook, said Nate Franco, a Social Worker Level 1 at Harlem Hospital. "We send out a lot of invites through Facebook," Franco said.

The committee members use email and text to groups of 20 to 50 people to alert union activists about political rallies, such as the Labor Day Parade and May Day demonstrations. Their goal is to educate and agitate members within the local and build greater solidarity. These blasts encouraged activists to participate in a recent voter registration event organized by Social Service Employees Local 371.

Earlier this year, they reached out to urge members to show up at a weekend rally in support of Occupy Wall Street called by DC 37's parent union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. When union buses turned around and headed back to the city after a power outage caused the cancelation of a union lobby day in Albany in the spring, the Next Wavers texted activists, suggesting they attend an OWS demonstration when they returned to the city.

The smart phone is much more than a simple means of communications for the Next Wavers. They also share PDF (portable document format) documents through the smartphone. The information ranges from news articles, such as one about the recent strike by NFL referees, to the DC 37 citywide contract and the social services and health services unit contract that cover Local 768 members at the Dept. of Health and the Health and Hospitals Corp. They have also distributed chapters of "A Troublemakers Handbook 2" by the progressive Detroit-based Labor Notes group.

Gomez said she may propose that Local 768 establish a phone app for members. It would be a very useful way to let members know about union services and contracts, she said.

"I don't want to fetishize social media," Franco said. "It's really only as good as your personal relationships. You can send people texts, but it's still up to you to build on that relationship."