Unions Protest In World's First Virtual Strike In Second Life

In what is beleived to be the World's first virtual strike took place in “Second Life” against IBM by the RSU union representing 9,000 workers in Italy on 27th September.

With many major multinational companies having an on-line presence in the biggest virtual world, many, union officials see the avatar pickets as setting a trend for the future.

More than 1’850 - real- people protested behind their computers in over 30 countries to show solidarity with IBM Italy workers.

The protest took place at 7 IBM locations, and in particular at IBM Italia and the IBM Business Centre in Second Life. Many Italian IBM workers joined the event after work, from 7pm to 10pm Rome, Italy time.

It was reported that Second Life was having some technical difficulties, which is why we believe we could have reached an even higher number of participants.

IBM did not officially react to our protest so far.

However, they did shut down parts of their Business Centre to visitors (or really, protesters).

A number of participants managed to crash an IBM staff meeting during the afternoon - where they were immediately asked to leave and to "protest outside". Instead, they demanded to speak to Management. But the staff meeting, which seemed to be about the new IBM website functionalities, was called to an end.

The media coverage for this event was impressive.

The news about the protest was covered by blogs, radio and TV stations, newspapers and podcasts in numerous countries. Italy's national TV station highlighted the event in the evening news during 5 minutes, showing screenshots from Second Life and its almost 2’000 protesters.

Source: UNI press release

Editor's Note: In trying to take part in this unique on-line protest, technical difficulties suddenly appeared with Second Life during most of the day. This limited the numbers able to access the IBM Second Life sites and most obvious was the fact that all was ok until trying to obtain the protest t-shirts and plackards.

Original press release including pics from Second Life

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