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In an age when workers in all sectors are making ever more frequent use of mobile communications and computing technology, it is critical for the labor movement to devote a significant amount of time to thinking about exploring new organizing techniques that can take advantage of this development.

What does your union do when it's involved in a media-worthy event? Does it use its own public relations staff to get the union's perspective in the media's eye - and though them, the public eye? Does it hire a labor-friendly public relations company to do press work? And what about taking advantage of new social media technologies of the type we've engaged in an extended examination of here at Communicate or Die? Does your union make use of online social networks to get word out directly to large numbers of people in target markets? Does it have staff dedicated to this new and growing aspect of public relations work?

I got back yesterday from a great LaborTech conference in San Francisco. There was a lot of buzz and excitement in air there. I told Steve Zeltzer, the organizer of the conference along with his wife, Kazmi Torii, that I think I know how it must have felt in 1966 or 1967 when the world was on the cusp of a cultural revolution. It seems that the rise of all the powerful new communication tools at our disposal and the looming collapse of capitalism as we know it is creating opportunities for workers to have real influence and control over their own destiny.

What's missing in all of this, I think, is a concerted effort to make sure workers and their leaders know about these tools and how to best take advantage of them.

Oftentimes what's good for people as consumers is also good for people as union members - and vice versa. Case in point, consumers' expectations that quality goods won't, say, explode when they're not supposed to coincides nicely with the elan that union workers demonstrate as regards their ability to produce quality goods. Labor's explanation for this pride in a job well done is that union workers have decent benefits and make fair wages, and because of that are in decent health and spirits. Which all translates to being able to do their best on the job, and results in their production of quality goods.

Want content that educates, provokes, entertains?

Ellen Dillinger's great cartoons, on http://www.dillingertoons.net , tell the complicated story of the struggle over union democracy and centralization going on in the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) with humor and insight. Dillinger is a talented cartoonist and former shop steward in United Health Workers West. She knows whereof she doodles!  This is just the kind of content that a democratic union website could draw on, and it's already being made by members.