You can once again "Shop Union Made" this holiday

After being shut down for a long period due to a lack of funding, the ShopUnionMade.org website is open for business. Finally, consumers sensitive about the working conitions of those who manufacture the products they buy can again educate themselves about which products have earned the union label.

Some of you may recall the old site, maintained by the Union Trades Department at the AFL-CIO, was not in a very usable state a couple of years ago. It was plagued by bugs and the completeness and accuracy of its listings left something to be desired. Well, the site has been resurrected by private enterprise company called Ethix Ventures, a union-friendly company hand selected by the previous administrators of the site at the Union Trades Department to pick up where they were forced to leave off. The site was shuttered when funding to maintain the site dried up after the Change to Win unions bolted from the AFL-CIO last year.

The new site is in its infancy but has big plans to help build the most accurate and complete listing of union-made products. At its foundation is Web 2.0 technology to build a social network of workers who will help research and report on all the union made products in existence. So rather than a centralized operation trying to keep track of union made products out of one office, the new site will leverage the power of the Internet to develop decentralized intelligence networks to collect and submit data on union-made products. To ensure accuracy of the database, each product is ultimately certified as a union made by the unions that represent the workers who manufacture or sell it.

If you look at the bottom of the page, you'll see that my company, Prometheus Labor Communications, got some credit for playing a role in development of the site by supplying a simple graphic theme and offering general consulting services on the product. I'm very excited and proud to have participated and look forward to working more on this innovative and important project. I'll keep readers here posted on any new developments.