Note to reader: Natasha Winegar, Jonathan’s assistant, wrote this post. While Jonathan is away on vacation for the next week, I will be posting in his place.

There has been quite a buzz on DailyKos the past few weeks about a new campaign to organize school bus workers. Progressive bloggers have often written about labor issues, but this particular campaign is creating a real stir because it employs a somewhat new tactic – unions and bloggers organizing together.

The campaign, School Bus Workers United, is an initiative by the Teamsters to organize thousands of school bus drivers who work for a company called First Student.  First Student is a subsidiary of a U.K.-based, global company called First Group. According to the Teamsters campaign website:

•    In 2005, FirstGroup, which employs 67,367 employees, reported sales of $5.06 billion and operating profits of $397.6 million.

•    The company is led by Chief Executive Officer Moir Lockhead, whose salary, bonuses, benefits and stock options package totaled more than $2.6 million in 2005.  

So while First Student and its executives rake in the cash, its school bus workers are paid low wages, work long hours and don’t always have adequate health insurance. This is a pretty huge fish to fry and the workers and the Teamsters need all the help they can get.

This is where the netroots comes in….

A few days after the Teamsters BBQ at the YearlyKos convention (see video on WorkingLife TV), a blogger named Shockwave posted a Call to Action to Kos bloggers asking them to get involved in helping the Teamsters organize school bus workers. The result has been an ongoing conversation on DailyKos about the different ways that the netroots can work with the Teamsters on this campaign. Click here for the most recent discussion on DailyKos.

Here’s what Shockwave says about the power of the blogsphere and unions together:

In the next few years about 2000 consultants and lawyers with $billions from 10,000 corporations who are doing everything they can to prevent 100,000,000 American workers from exercising their right to form a union will have to deal with 10,000 union organizers, 300,000 progressive political bloggers and 15,000,000 union members.  I bet on us.

We have complementary strengths.  Unions have boots on the ground, bloggers have keyboards on the Web (the most powerful and democratic form of communication and organization.)  Unions have deep knowledge of union-busting and union organizing tactics, bloggers can help craft Internet based strategies that are effective and cannot be duplicated by the union busting forces.

Disseminating information, winning the war of ideas, digesting mountains of data, facilitating communications between all pro-worker stakeholders, educating union rank and file and workers on how to use the Internet to organize under the radar of union busters.  We can do all this.

The past few decades have seen labor laws weakened, an increase in union-busting tactics, and the proliferation of vast multi-national corporations, and now many unions are looking for new, creative ways to organize. A partnership between unions and the netroots is a very powerful organizing tool that can help unions deal with these challenges.

While unions have used the Internet for years, maintaining websites with info about their campaigns – some even have blogs, the use of the netroots community brings the possibility of a whole new Internet strategy and much more.

Shockwave mentions that bloggers have keyboards and unions have boots. So, bloggers can help create new Internet strategies –researching, getting info out there, etc. – to help win campaigns. But they can also pull out their boots (they must have them somewhere!). When the time comes, bloggers have the ability to pound the pavement. Not only can they help spread the word on the net, but when necessary, I think they can take to the streets. The school bus workers campaign is starting to do just this – sending bloggers out into the community to talk to their PTA and send messages to their school boards about the importance of school bus workers organizing.

The (enormous) netroots community is another community that unions can look to get solidarity from – the same way unions have always sought solidarity from clergy and local community groups.  This community is filled with people who may not have gotten involved in union campaigns before.

So, WorkingLife bloggers – Let’s spread the word. Get involved in the conversation here and post information about this campaign on other blogs. And get ready to strap on your boots….

You can volunteer to work on the campaign by emailing schoolbusworkers@yahoo.com. Shockwave is right – we can do this.