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http://www.thedailyreel.com/news-opinion/news/steelworkers-storm-youtube-in-labor-fight?gnewsid=1164205588.77

Written by Anthony Kaufman November 22, 2006

The United Steelworkers, the largest industrial labor union in North America with a reported 1.2 million members, is enlisting YouTube in its six-week-old strike against Goodyear Tires. If political campaigns, citizen journalists and budding auteurs can use YouTube to their own advantage, disgruntled laborers are a natural next step.

The video, called "Are Goodyear Tired Safe?" claims that the replacement of workers with non-union employees -- otherwise known as scabs -- by another company (Bridgestone in the late 1990s) lead to Ford Explorer roll-over accidents that killed 271 people. "Now Goodyear is using replacement workers to build its tires," the spot ominously intones, as we see a shot of car flying off a cliff. "What tires do you plan to buy?"

According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, the union has also launched a website focused on investors, "where it seeks to undermine shareholder confidence by contradicting Goodyear's relatively upbeat pronouncements about its ability to function during the strike," reports the Journal.

Uploaded yesterday and currently ranked the #1 video in YouTube's Autos & Vehicles category, the 30-second spot has already been seen by nearly 12,000 people. "There's many different ways to communicate with many different audiences," Wayne Ranick, a spokesman for the Steelworkers, told the Journal. "So this is a way to communicate with a whole new audience."