By STEVEN GREENHOUSE, New York Times

The nation's labor movement, long a laggard on high-technology matters, is taking a leap into cyberspace with a new A.F.L.-C.I.O. program that will offer heavily discounted computers and online service to 13 million union members.

The plan, announced over the weekend, aims not only to make online service more affordable for millions of union members, but also to tie unions more closely to their members and to make it easier to mobilize the rank and file in labor's struggles.

Union leaders say this new online plan could create huge political waves because it will enable union presidents, with the click of a button, to send e-mail messages to hundreds of thousands of their members, urging them in turn to e-mail members of Congress, asking that they initiate, pass or defeat legislation, among other things.

Morton Bahr, president of the Communications Workers of America , said, "Can you imagine being able to instantly ask millions of union members to refuse to buy a product or to bombard elected officials with e-mail in protest?"

Under the new program, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. is working with iBelong , a start-up based in Waltham, Mass., to offer union members computers for less than $700 and monthly online service for less than $14.95. Labor federation officials say they hope that at least a million members will subscribe to the online service, which will cost roughly 30 percent less than what many online services now charge.

John J. Sweeney, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. 's president, said the new program aims in part to bridge a digital division with wealth as its demarcation. According to a recent Commerce Department report, families with annual incomes of more than $75,000 are 20 times more likely to have Internet access than the lowest-income families. "We're helping bridge the gap between the technological haves and have-nots," Sweeney said. "We're also giving working families new ways to connect with one another and to make their voices heard."

Shikhar Ghosh, chief executive and a founder of iBelong, which specializes in customized Web entryways, said his company had a different focus from most other online services, which create virtual communities made up of strangers. Instead, he said, iBelong was designing the new online service, called Workingfamilies.com , to tie people closer together who already form a community by sharing occupations or belonging to the same union.

"The Web is creating pseudo-communities where you meet people you don't know," he said. "We're looking to build communities where people already have very strong ties and affinities. We have a chance to create a network that really becomes a center of your membership life."

The A.F.L.-C.I.O. has 13 million members and represents more than 80 percent of the nation's unionized workers. It includes 68 unions ranging from giants like the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the American Federation of Teachers, each with more than a million members, to the United Farm Workers, with fewer than 50,000.

The new Internet service, scheduled to begin in December, will be unusual in that members of each of the federation's 68 unions will enter Web portals specific to their union when they go online.

When these subscribers log on, they might find e-mail messages from union officials, news about their workplace and contract bargaining and news with an effect on their occupations. Ghosh said the service will also provide chat rooms, the opportunity to have buddies who subscribe to other online services and full access to the Internet, including electronic commerce.

The A.F.L.-C.I.O. has solicited bids from Dell, Gateway and other computer makers for discounted deals, to provide what they expect will be hundreds of thousands of PC's to union members.

Ghosh said he expected that this process would result in the sale of computers that meet most families' needs for $600 to $800 each, excluding monitors. He said that for that amount, the computers would include Pentium 450-megahertz chips, would have 32 megabytes of random access memory, a 4-gigabyte hard drive and one year of technical support.

"We haven't gone out to get the really cheapest computer we can get," Ghosh said. "We're trying to get computers that will include all the things an average family needs."

He added that the labor federation's program would offer members a range of computers at a range of prices with "a couple of price points that are extraordinary."

Ghosh declined to disclose with which companies he was negotiating to help provide the online service. He already has deals to set up online services for the American Legion and the alumni associations of Purdue University and the College of William and Mary.

A.F.L.-C.I.O. officials and Ghosh said the online service would not cost the labor federation any money. Rather, Ghosh said, iBelong is putting up tens of millions of dollars to set up the customized portals and to create a filtering service that will send different types of information to members of different unions. His company hopes to profit from the venture by selling advertising on the service and by obtaining a percentage of sales made by e-commerce companies that are given priority placements on the service.

The labor federation would share that revenue, with the initial profits being plowed back into selling the service to union members, Ghosh and federation officials said.

"If you can get a large number of people to come on board, you make a large amount of money," said Ghosh. He added that the A.F.L.-C.I.O. stood to earn a few million dollars a year from the deal, while iBelong hoped to make "tens of millions of dollars" a year in profit.

Ghosh said the new service would have strict privacy protections for subscribers, adding: "The customers' privacy will be absolute. Nobody will have a claim to sell any of the information to anyone."

Union officials said the online service would enable shoppers to select union-made and American-made products and would help identify products manufactured under sweatshop or anti-union conditions.

Unlike most businesses the A.F.L.-C.I.O. deals with, iBelong is not unionized. But Ghosh promised not to fight against unionization if there ever is an organizing drive at his company.

Many unions now have their own Web sites, but Bahr, the communications workers' president, said the new system would be vastly preferable. "We're not tied into our members' homes," he said. "We're looking for a system that ties into 13 million homes. Technology gives us the ability to do that."