IBM Employees Go on Strike Online. You Can Join Them

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/09/10/ibm-employees-go-on-strike-online-you-can-join-them/

by James Parks, Sep 10, 2007

The real world and the cyberworld are coming together to help IBM workers gain a decent contract.

Here’s the deal: During talks to renew IBM’s contract with its Italian workers, the employees who have to feed families and pay house notes asked for a small raise. IBM responded by canceling their “productive results benefit”—a productivity bonus—in effect cutting every worker’s pay by 1,000 euros or about $1,377 a year.


An IBM employee in the company’s Business Center inside the virtual world of Second Life.


Saying it’s time for IBM, a company with one of the highest profits in the industry, to share some of the fruits with its workforce, RSU, the union representing IBM’s Italian workers, decided to strike—online. With the help of the Union Network International (UNI), RSU is organizing the first-ever virtual strike. The 9,000 workers are asking the nearly 9 million residents of Second Life to join their strike online.

Second Life, for the uninitiated, is a virtual, three-dimensional online digital world imagined and created by its residents. Users in Second Life operate via in-world characters called avatars that are virtual representations of themselves.

The IBM workers will go on strike in Second Life this month. UNI and the Communications Workers of America, through its Alliance@IBM, are asking all union supporters to join the Italian workers online by joining Second Life and downloading a strike kit. You can do both by clicking here.

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