SolidarityMail, on the web at www.solidaritymail.com, is a free new webmail service for unionists, progressives, and radicals. It is a fully functional email system, with an initial 50 megabytes of storage. Creating an email account is quick and easy, and takes effect immediately. Users can then access their email accounts from any computer connected to the internet, via the login on the main page of the site.

In a recent article for Union Democracy Review, Herman Benson and I reported on the struggle by Operating Engineers union members to maintain open access to their independent websites. (Operating Engineers defend their internet rights). -- Richard Dorrough posted about this case before.

Hello,

Thought you may be interested in this since it's about the Union Plus Credit Card designed for union members.

Please check out the Credit Bloggers blog post about the Union Plus Credit Card, "A CoBranded Card That Makes The Grade". It’s up on Credit Bloggers at:

http://www.creditbloggers.com/2007/04/a_cobranded_cre.html

The post is by Gerri Detweiler, a highly respected consumer educator and advocate, who calls our program a "good guy" example that "should be the standard, not the exception" for affinity credit cards.

Feel free to reference this on your blog or other channels – and let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks.

Eleanor Trice
etrice@unionprivilege.org
Union Plus Benefits
Brought to you by Union Privilege
www.unionplus.org

The graduate employees union GESO at Yale university has put together a great video on one of their key issues. Check this out and think about how your union could use video.

YouTube: GESO Casualization Video

I got an email about a Coalition of Immokalee Workers event in Chicago and clicked on the link to their website. I knew about their work, and have met CIW members and organizers, but hadn't seen their site before; it's great, a real model of an action-oriented website.

Using YouTube's free channel feature, a union can set up their own MySpace-like page full of videos, giving any organization the power to cheaply distribute their collection of videos. The IAM has capitalized on this feature and has set up the Machinists News Network.

Once again the unofficial, rank-and-file side of the labor internet is leading the way. In the current election in the UFT (Local 2 of the AFT), two opposition groups -- Independent Community of Educators and Teachers for a Just Contract (ICE-TJC) -- have formed a joint slate to take on the ruling Unity Caucus and its partner, New Action.