Where trade unionists start their day on the net.
Frankly, I've never seen anything like this before.
As I mentioned in last week's mailing, it does happen sometimes that corporations respond to our online campaigns by writing to those who've protested. Usually these are form letters that lay out the company's side of the story -- and sometimes these are deliberate disinformation campaigns aimed to undermine confidence in the union.
But what the Chief Executive Officer of Air New Zealand is doing is almost without precedent. Not only is he responding to emails you are sending in, he is responding to your responses -- individually.
I had the experience last weekend of a virtual real-time email chat with him -- and realized that it was the middle of the night in New Zealand.
Clearly we are touching a nerve.
In the last week you have sent out over 4,200 messages. Hundreds of you have written to me to send on Air New Zealand's emails to you (no need for any more of those, thanks). Many of you shared with me your rebuttals -- and some of you made excellent, forceful cases for the union.
But many of you asked what the union has to say in response. We're very pleased to offer up this letter to LabourStart subscribers from Jill Ovens, Northern Regional Secretary of the SFWU:
http://www.labourstart.org/docs/en/000402.html
The union has also issued a press release entitled "International email campaign raises Air NZ's hackles" which is well worth reading:
http://www.sfwu.org.nz/news.asp?pageID=2145822798&RefID=2141733695
But we were also touched by this story of Eric Gamble, an 84-year-old ex-RAF airman who was one of the 4,200 to write to Air New Zealand:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0702/S00124.htm
In short, online campaigns work. Corporations are forced to listen, and sometimes we are able to get them to change course. Obviously we have touched a sensitive nerve here with Air New Zealand -- which should be an incentive to all of us to mobilize our unions, and send thousands more messages this week. If every person reading this email were to send a message to Air New Zealand, there'd be more than 50,000 messages in the CEO's inbox.
Remember that our campaign is available in English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Spanish and Swedish versions:
http://www.labourstart.org/airnz
Thanks very much. And have a great weekend.
Eric Lee
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