Union belts it out to boss on YouTube Anger over contract impasse set to music on Internet forum

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=566145

Union belts it out to boss on YouTube
Anger over contract impasse set to music on Internet forum
By RICK ROMELL
[e-mail]
Posted: Feb. 14, 2007

Miller Brewing Co. office workers fighting the firm over a new contract have joined a small but growing number of labor unions using YouTube to help make their case.


YouTube is the Internet phenomenon on which anyone can post home-made videos - from clever origami animation to 30 seconds of a baby trying to suck his thumb.

Some 65,000 videos are posted daily, according to YouTube, and among the more recent is one that members of Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 35 have dubbed "Norman."

Set - sort of - to a 1961 pop tune of that title, the video features eight office workers serenading SABMiller Plc. executive Norman Adami.

("Norman, don't freeze our pension now / Norman, where is your heart now?")

Posted Monday, the video had been viewed 438 times as of Wednesday afternoon.

That places it in the obscure wing of YouTube. The most popular videos posted Monday have been viewed more than 75,000 times and, in the case of an interview with Anna Nicole Smith's lawyer/boyfriend, 566,000 times.

But Local 35 business manager Judy Burnick said what counts isn't how many people see "Norman," but who they are.

"They're playing it all over at the company," she said of Miller employees. "They're turning their speakers up so people can hear it."

Steve Dondley, a former AFL-CIO employee who is a Massachusetts consultant to unions on using the Internet, agreed. The video doesn't have to make Leno or Letterman, he said.

"It matters that the members see it. It matters that the executives at Miller see it," said Dondley, who later added his spin to the issue by posting a comment at the "Norman" video that uses vulgar language to condemn "these millionaires who get only richer. . ."

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