U of M AFSCME using video in our contract campaign / strike prep
Four AFSCME locals at the University of Minnesota (Locals 3800, 3801, 3937 and 3260 - clerical, technical and health care workers) are engaged in a tough contract fight and are organizing to possibly go on strike on September 4th, the first day of classes at the University.
In this year's contract campaign, the unions are using video for the first time to help spread our message to members and supporters.
Click here to see samples of the videos we have made.
Our strike vote is tomorrow (Thursday, Aug 23) so a member has put together some 'testimonial' videos, where individual members tell their story and why they are planning to vote to reject the University's contract offer and strike.
As the University administration has started to send confusing emails to our members in order to try to discredit the union and our message, we responded with our own statements refuting the administration, but also created a video response to the administration's biggest propaganda piece.
Earlier in the campaign, we were organizing lunch hour informational meetings for union members around the University. But since the campus is so large and spread out, and members are all over the state, not everyone is able to come to a noon informational meeting. So we made a very condensed video version of the presentation we were giving and put it online.
Also, a Community and Labor strike support committee has been formed, which has its own website set up at uworkers.org.
Both the Local 3800 website and the Uworkers.org website use drupal content management system.
I just thought folks might be interested in how unions at the University of Minnesota are using the web and video in this year's contract campaign and possible strike. Any thoughts or input are appreciated...and if we end up striking, support is appreciated too!
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HR anti union actions
Brad,
We were discussing the anti union activities of HR, like HR misusing statements from the contract to restrict union activities. They take a phrase and try to apply it to a action it does not apply to. They assume we do not understand the language of our own contract.
They have tried to restrict "unpaid union time off" using phrases that clearly apply only to PAID time off, to give the impression that members do not have the right to take more than 8 hours per month for union activities or that all such time must be "APPROVED" by supervisors.
I realized that this is the next video segment to do. I think it would be good to have shop stewards doing a round table discussion of several instances of this kind of underhanded manipulation by HR. It would have to be a longer segment than what we've been doing so far.