As MSU’s Graduate Employees Union hits the bargaining table, its members are hitting the keyboard.

In past weeks, members of the union have been revamping the organization’s Web site features while they work to obtain a contract with the university. They hope the labor contract will be in place by the end of the year.

Lauriano Aguirre, a telecommunication graduate student and one of the site’s designers, said the new layout, which will be unveiled in a few weeks, will help union members stay informed about the union’s daily activity.

“We do want to have more input from users, like a guest-book type of option so they can put comments,” Aguirre said. “We can have online polling. We can get three different dates and have people vote online. That way we don’t have to have meetings about it.”

Some members, including union information officer Jennifer Nichols, said the Web site will strengthen the union.

“Members can keep up-to-date with more ease than previously,” the English graduate student said. “The more informed our members are about how our negotiations are going and union issues in general, the stronger our union will be.”

Nichols said the union has two designers working on the site. Union officials have been planning to alter the site since October. The updates will not cost the union money because members are doing all the work.

The site will be used to organize members in upcoming events, said union President Jessica Goodkind. The union is planning an informational picket for next week and the site allows members to sign up for shifts. Goodkind said she thinks the picket will let people know the status of contract negotiations.

“It’s going more slowly than we hoped,” Goodkind said. “We feel that it’s really important we get a contract this semester.”

Despite the pace of the talks, Goodkind said the union has maintained contact with several government officials and MSU’s Board of Trustees.The Web site will have weekly updates about the union’s negotiations.

“We want it to be a method of communication where people can go and find out useful information,” she said. “For example, if people are asking, ‘If I want to get involved, what do I do?’

“I still think that the strongest unions’ main form of communication is face-to-face. Having a group of people together - everyone gets to talk to somebody.”

Cedric DeLeon, president of the University of Michigan’s Graduate Employees Organization, said a Web site can be used effectively for students, but has limits. U-M’s organization has been using a Web site for more than four years.

“It has a limited organizing potential,” DeLeon said. “You can call me old school, but the most important thing about a union is that everybody understands that everybody’s in this together.

“The only way you’re going to get someone to stick by you during a fight is to look at them in the eye and say, ‘Stick with me.’ That’s not going to happen on a Web site.”

DeLeon said unions post points they are negotiating for in contract on the their sites.

“At least when I’m using it with organizing large groups of (graduate student instructors), I’m not going to spend individual time with every single one of them in 10 minutes,” he said. “I want to be able to give them an informational source to look up on their own. Our goal is to talk to everybody using individual face-to-face conversations with people, because that’s how you form a successful union.”

For more information, see www.msu.edu/~geu.