March 6th 2008 has been declared a global day of action in support of Iranian workers by two leading international trade union bodies. The International Trade Union Confederation, which unites national trade union centres such as the TUC, and the International Transport Workers Federation, a global union whose UK affiliates include Unite, the RMT, Unison and Aslef, are behind the call.
A glance at how those unions are using the Internet in support of the day of action reveals just how far we have come in a few short years.

The ITF set up a special website some time ago — www.freeosanloo.org — in support of the Iranian trade unionists, focussing attention on the case of Mansour Osanloo, leader of the Tehran bus workers. Those workers walked off their jobs a couple of years ago, virtually shutting down the Iranian capital city — and triggering a wave of repression that has not yet ended. The website is available in both English and Farsi.
In addition to the website, the ITF has also launched a Facebook group in support of the day of action. It has produced a short film which is viewable online, both on their website and on YouTube. There are numerous campaign materials available for download, including posters. There’s a mailing list you can sign up to get updates.
The ITF and ITUC have brought in allies, too. Amnesty International is fully involved in the campaign and aims to mobilize its hundreds of thousands of members in support of jailed Iranian unionists. LabourStart has launched an online campaign to send protest messages to the regime in Tehran, at www.labourstart.org/iran.
The ITF and ITUC seem to have made a checklist of basically everything you can do online, all the tools that are available. And they’ve crossed them off their list one by one — mailing list, social networking site, online protest messages, YouTube videos, and so on.
It seems such an obvious thing to do — to utilize every tool available — and yet many unions stop far short of this, and seem happy to use only one or two of the tools used in this campaign. This might make sense if any of this was costly, but it’s not. The problem is almost certainly not cost, but a lack of awareness.
The effective use of the new tools by the ITF and ITUC should serve as a model for unions anywhere that want to campaign effectively online.