October 23, 2005
Hospital strikers blog and use SMS on the picket lines
Eight hundred health-care workers from Service Employees International Union's local United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) are striking at hospitals in San Francisco, demanding that their employers provide them with better training and a way to resolve disputes through third parties, reports SF Indymedia.
"Members of SEIU-UHW are mostly lower-paid hospital workers, such as nurses' assistants, janitors and, as union rep Thea Lavin puts it, "the people who keep you and your room clean while you're in the hospital." Their grievances are all too familiar, but their method of organizing is not.
"Strikers are using text messaging to communicate on the picket lines," Lavin says, "and picket-line leaders are coming home at night and describing what it was like that day."
...The blog at sutterstrikers.blogs.com is a glimpse inside the often tiring and confusing experience of going on strike.
Traditionally, labor organizers have communicated with their membership on the picket lines via newsletters or at meetings. The idea of starting a strikers' blog is a break with this tradition because it gives rank-and-file strikers the chance to talk to the world °and each other° without going through their higher-ups.
... If strike blogs catch on, it will also be a chance for the public to get a very personal look at why people go on strike and why unions are still crucial for protecting workers' rights."
Picture above left: Jesse Jackson visiting the picket line last week.
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