Public Employee Press

Blog review
Union blogs: Post your own views on labor issues

Blogs are interactive Web sites that let readers dialog by posting their own comments. The AFL-CIO has a blog at http://blog.aflcio.org and Change to Win’s is at www.changetowin.org/connect.

Both provide national overviews of key labor news with special emphasis on issues in the upcoming national elections. These are a good way to keep informed on labor’s political and organizing work, which is largely ignored by the mass media, and to post your views to a labor audience. DC 37’s parent union, AFSCME, has started a blog at http://www.afscmeblog.org, which does not yet provide for readers to post their own comments.

Union Review is a popular independent labor blog focused on organizing and politics. It is published by Teamsters staffer Richard Negri at www.unionreview.com and is one of the few sites where you can not only respond to posts but post your own articles.

“Joe’s Union Review” at www.anti-union.blogspot.com is more New York City-oriented. Published by Joe Welch, an enthusiastic rank-and-file construction worker, it often critiques mass media treatment of workers and unions.

Richard and Joe have sparked union members to create their own blogs across the country. The day after I met him, Joe called me up and told me he had created a blog for my WBAI radio show, “Building Bridges,” at www.buildingbridgesradio.blogspot.com. It’s really that simple to create blogs. One easy free way is to go to www.blogger.com.

Some progressive blogs are www.DailyKos.com, www.tompaine.com, www.nyc.indymedia.org and www.Huffingtonpost.com, where AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee often posts. A site that is strong on economics and free trade issues is http://www.workinglife.org, published by Jonathan Tasini, executive director of the Labor Research Association.

Whether you just read, post comments or create your own blog, blogging is a great way to participate in the kinds of discussions necessary to reinvigorate the labor movement. Blog on!

DC 37 members can access these blogs using the computers at the DC 37 Education Fund Library, Room 211 at union headquarters.

— Ken Nash