Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health

MassCOSH and May First/People Link have a lot in common!

Both of us are membership based, political organizations that are pulling together progressive members of very different sectors of the left: labor unions, community-based organizations, progressive individuals, and others.

MassCOSH has a particular history and political commitment that has placed them in this organizing role. Thirty years of fighting for workers rights has created natural alliances between MassCOSH and the labor movement, which is still a critical component of the organization. However, as immigration and other demographic shifts continue to change the landscape of the workforce, MassCOSH has evolved as well to serve communities not traditionally represented by organized labor.

For example, located in the heart of a Vietnamese community, the offices of MassCOSH are within the Vietnamese American Community Center. Safety Net, the MassCOSH newsletter, comes out in both English and Spanish. And, the youth organizing project (Teens Lead @ Work) brings in youth, another group of people often ignored in labor issues.

By following their politics, MassCOSH has entered into a number of unique partnerships, such as:

• Joining together with the Toxics Uses Reduction Institute at UMass Lowell, the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow, and state legislators, MassCOSH helped promote a study on using safer chemicals in industry. MassCOSH also helped organized a two day meeting convening labor, environemnt, and health groups to promote environmentally safe policies that preserve and create jobs in Massachusetts.
• Joining dozens of labor and community organizations, MassCOSH supported workers fired by New England’s Largest Chinese restaurant for speaking up against unfair working conditions.
• In partnership with the Mass. AFL-CIO and most central labor councils, MassCOSH is working to pass legislation that would require contractors hiring manual labor temp workers to provide complete information about the work and safety equipment being used.

MassCosh Office: In the Vietnamese American Community Center

How is the Internet part of the organizing work at MassCOSH? Whitney Soenksen, the Membership and Communications Coordinator at MassCOSH says organizing on the Internet has been a valuable way to keep members engaged, particularly given that offering multiple and diverse opportunities for members to connect with the organization is critical to their growth. Email lists, web-based sign-ups, managing and communicating with volunteers and donors are some of the ways the Internet has become integrated into the work of MassCOSH. Inconsistent access to the Interet by young people and immigrant workers has been a barrier. However, Whitney pointed to projects like the Democracy Center, which was started during the Harvard labor struggle of the late nineties, that provides access to workers and others in the community.

Another obstacle is the lack of a solid, easy to use donor and volunteer management package that is free. CiviCRM is making a lot of exciting headway on this front, but still has a ways to go. Meanwhile, corporate, non-free alternatives like Salesforce, using free to 501(c)3 promotions, are convincing droves of nonprofits to put their data on their corporate data servers.

Although technology is not her specialty, Whitney is committed to learning and developing her skills (and even promised to do some blogging on tech related issues - stay tuned for the Whitney blog!!).

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