Alex White » union

Retaining members in public sector unions

Alex — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 03:18:30 +0000

University of Warrick academic Jeremy Waddington and UNISON national officer Allan Kerr authored a fascinating article for the Industrial Relations Journal, Membership retention in the public sector.

The article examines membership retention in one of the United Kingdom’s largest public sector unions, UNISON, with over 1.3 million members. Waddington and Kerr surveyed 5000 members to test several propositions:

Whether the union’s package of financial services (including discount mortgages and shopping facilities) kept people as members
Which services were most appropriate to keep members
Whether service quality influenced membership retention
Whether satisfaction with services influences member retention

They also looked at several arguments that are floating around in the movement and in the literature, that unions should adopt similar relationships with their members to clients and automobile associations, that “new individualism” will lead to the collapse of unions, and that financial services should supplement traditional union activities.

The background for UNISON is interesting, because it reflects a challenge facing many unions that I’m aware of: significant membership “churn”.

UNISON’s National Recruitment Plan, for example, assumes that the union will grow by 234,000 members between 1995/1996 and 1999/2000 to meet a target of 1.5 million (UNISON, 1995). As UNISON’s membership turnover is 12.5 per cent per year, a total of 907,875 members will have to be recruited to meet this target, 673,875 of which are required merely to meet the losses arising from membership turnover. However, if retention were to be improved by 30 per cent, the target would be met by the recruitment of 705,713 new members or 78 per cent of the existing requirement. The key question is thus, what factors influence membership retention?

What are the take aways from this article?

The supposed ‘new individualism’ does not thus appear to have influenced public sector trade unionists. As only 6.6 per cent of UNISON members report being ‘very secure’ at work, it seems more likely that uncertainty about their future is a more important factor in retention than a new individualism.

The importance attached to mutual support as the prime reason underpinning retention certainly duplicates results on recruitment and confirms the centrality of local union organisation in retention and recruitment, as it is the local shop steward to whom the member turns for support in the first instance.

Membership benefits are rated more than ten percentage points higher than financial services among the individual benefits. We thus reject the proposition that the financial services currently offered by UNISON are central to the retention of members. In combination with other work on recruitment, this result indicates that the expectations of the SRB on the efficacy of financial services are without foundation. Even when financial services are ‘tailored’ to the specific needs of the membership, they remain peripheral to membership retention.

Very few differences emerge between men and women in their reasons for retention. Men assign a greater importance to belief than women, whereas women are more influenced by their peer group. These differences in emphasis produce the only variation between men and women in the rank order of the responses.

The importance of membership retention is further illustrated by the appearance of peer group at the second position in the ranking. This result indicates that the presence of large numbers of trade unionists encourages retention. In other words, once a union presence is established, there is a degree to which it is self-sustaining. This result also suggests that if membership falls beneath a specific threshold, the impact of peer group may decline, thereby leading to further membership decline. A belief in trade unions also has a major impact on retention, almost 37 per cent of members cite it as one of their two principal reasons for remaining in UNISON.

While UNISON’s membership is principally white-collar, it does cover sectors traditionally seen as blue-collar, such as manual workers working in transport. As far as white-collar workers go, it ranges from relatively low-skilled clerical workers to highly educated managerial and professional staff.

Until reading this, I agreed with the accepted wisdom in my union that although union benefits didn’t cause people to join, they were important in retaining members once they had joined. This research (and my own experience in growing the NTEU’s membership at Swinburne by over 40 percent in a year) has made me change my view: there is almost no benefit to having a “member benefit” scheme.

I’m signed up to several unions’ email lists — and most of them (possibly all) prominently include as headline stories “member benefits” like Union Shopper, discount movie tickets and financial services (mortgages, etc). I’m not sure what the open rates or click-throughs would be, but this research certainly should cause unions to reconsider this issue.

Four effective “calls to action” to use on your union campaign website

Alex — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 11:42:08 +0000

Calls to action should be the life-blood of your union’s campaign website (and indeed, your main union website). Whether you want the visitor to join your union, send an email, donate to a strike fund or subscribe to your union newsletter, your website should be geared around encouraging visitors to your site to do something.

Making a great call to action is more of an art than a science – there is no magic formula, since different unions, websites, actions and campaigns will have different challenges and backgrounds. However, what can help your union is testing – A/B Testing lets you try two or more variations of your call to action and see which gets the best results.

Another thing unions can do is look at organisations and campaigns that have a lot more money, time and expertise – and see what they do. After all, why should unions reinvent the wheel? And of course, there are some unions that are as good as the best non-profit and political

Barack Obama

Obama’s website and online strategy was credited for leading his campaign’s fundraising efforts. Not only did the Obama campaign regularly change his site’s splash page (aimed at signing people up), but they made extensive use of A/B Testing of content, buttons, colours and photos vs videos.

His main site (the image above is from the splash site) has three prominent calls to action “above the fold” (that is, the section of the website that is visible without scrolling). Obama’s site is a good example also of strong verbs linked to the call to action. Each of the call to action buttons have been extensively tested – and different buttons appear when you are logged in to MyBO, depending on how often you interact with the site, donate or do something.

National Union of Workers

I’ve written previously about the NUW website, designed by Publicity Works, as a good example of a union website. The NUW website has three prominent calls to action (only two are visible above) – which are “join”, “get active” and “get help”, which are clearly tied to the main reasons visitors would go to the NUW site.

The NUW call to action buttons are different from the other examples here, because they don’t look like buttons. If I were the NUW, I’d do some A/B testing to see if people interact with the buttons more if they looked different. Nevertheless, they are prominent and different. The good thing however is that the buttons are consistent and throughout the site have a similar slanted design for other buttons.

Finally, the buttons sit across “the fold” – that is, for many screen resolutions the calls to action may not be visible without scrolling. Luckily, the main menu items at the top of the site are similar to the three main calls to action – “get active”, “get informed” and “get assistance” – so the site really has two prominent calls to action.

Firefox Internet Browser

Firefox is the web browser that has given the juggernaught Internet Explorer a run for its money. In just a few short years, Firefox went from no presence to more than 10% of global browser usage, and directly caused Microsoft to introduce modern features.

The Firefox website is effectively a campaign site aimed at explaining why the visitor should download Firefox, and then providing a very clear instruction on how to do so. Compare the simplicity and clean design of the Firefox site to more colourful, busy version for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer site. The entire site almost entirely fits “above the fold” – there is no extraneous text or images, and it’s all geared to it’s core purpose: getting you to download the browser.

The call to action not only has a beautiful icon of Firefox’s logo, as well as a nice large, green button with clear explanatory text and secondary information (which you can bet had its colour and text A/B tested).

Australian Services Union

The Australian Services Union have just got a new website. I’ve chosen this example to show how unions can integrate a strong call to action in their banner image. While the site does have a lot going on – including news, a large menu, campaign graphics, photos of officers and so on, the main image on the homepage has a clear call to action: “join”.

The call to action in this case is preceded by the question “not a member” – so the “join” button is placed in context.

These buttons are built into the flash image – so the background image changes, and the buttons change when you hover your mouse over them (a nice feature).

This site could probably have its homepage simplified a bit, to make its core purpose(s) clearer – in this case, joining, info for new members, and a delegates’ portal seem to be the primary actions on the site, but at the moment they are all competing for attention.

Read about how to make the ultimate union campaign website here.

What do you think? Do you have any other examples of good union calls to action (or any good calls to action generally)?

Eight union websites worth checking out

Alex — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 23:52:42 +0000

I often get asked about union websites – and what makes a good website. There’s loads of general advice out there about how to get a fantastically designed website, and what goes into making them usable and interactive. Check out Smashing Magazine as a good place to start for general advice. You could also check Creative Unions for a showcase on the best trade union design and campaigns.

What I thought would be interesting and useful would be to track down some good union websites and highlight some of their best features.

The websites below aren’t the absolute word on “best” union websites, and by no means are any of them perfect. I’ve tried to find sites in Australia and internationally (and US sites feature prominently).

1. NUW

http://www.nuw.org.au/

What’s good:

Very clear calls to action – Join, Get Active, Get Help
Members are front and centre
Option to sign up to the e-news letter

2. SEIU

http://www.seiu.org/

What’s good:

Major news and campaign items are clearly highlighted.
Lots of options for taking action and engaging with the site.
Multimedia/featured video (YouTube) on home page.

3. Warehouse Workers United

http://www.warehouseworkersunited.org/

What’s good:

You can join the campaign from the front page
There’s a Spanish version of the website.
Very clear and simple layout with lots of “white space” (i.e. not cluttered)

4. Walmart Workers for Change

http://www.walmartworkersforchange.org/

What’s good:

Clear call to action – “Watch Video” – with other options to get involved.
Email update signup and Spanish version of the site
Campaign news is prominent

5. UNITE HERE

http://www.unitehere.org/

What’s good:

Major union campaigns are easily accessible from front page
Clean design and consistent colour palette
Links to Facebook, Spanish site and e-newsletter on home page

6. MUA

http://www.mua.org.au/

What’s good:

News and campaigns are separate
A clear “About” secion is on the front page
Slider puts most important content at the centre of the page without drowning out the other parts of the site

7. Blue Green Alliance

http://www.bluegreenalliance.org/

What’s good:

Great colour combo that ties thematically with the purpose of the site
Mission statement is made clear
Calls to action are most prominent part of home page.

8. United Steel Workers

http://www.usw.org/

What’s good:

Slider shows a thumbnail of the content, as well as makes important content prominent
Media and blog are separate, both include RSS
E-news signup form on home page

What do you think?

Have I missed some really good sites from other countries? Is your union’s site well designed or cutting edge?

Four harsh truths about union websites

Alex — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 07:37:54 +0000

There’s been a lot said about union websites – here’s four things we all know but are worth saying again.

You’re not engaging anyone

Your website doesn’t engage your members. Even if you allow comments. Even if you create a union “blog”. Even if you add a “share” or “tweet this” button to the bottom of each page. Your media releases aren’t of interest to the majority of your members – nor are your tweets or Facebook updates that are just links to your media releases.

Your website shouldn’t be solely a broadcast tool. You shouldn’t just use it as an opportunity to tell your members (or potential members) how good you are, how great your campaigns are or how bad employers are.

If you do enable comments, don’t be affraid of negative comments – welcome them. If your dissaffected members aren’t bagging you out on your website, they are doing it somewhere else (like one of a million forums, or on Facebook, or on Twitter) where you won’t get the opportunity to respond and give your side of the story.

You won’t get a million hits

If you build it, they won’t come. Your members aren’t waiting at their computers for your latest site update. Just uploading your latest media release or a PDF copy of the union newsletter won’t result in large numbers (or even small numbers) of people swarming to your website to read the latest editorial from the union secretary.

Just because you are on the web doesn’t mean that everyone gets told when you’ve updated it. Just because you’ve put a link out on Facebook, Twitter or on email, doesn’t mean that anyone will visit your site. Just because you’ve discovered Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), doesn’t mean that loads of people will visit your site from Google.

The long and the short of it is, most people will only visit your site to find contact details on how to call or email someone in the union. You will have to work very hard to get people to visit the site on a regular basis, such as having a union blog that is updated daily (or more often). Even then, it’s unlikely your union website will be getting loads of hits.

(Quick tip: if you want 1000s of hits per day by “cheating”, set your union’s staff’s home pages to the union website.)

Your union secretary isn’t a web expert (unless he/she is)

Your union secretary should have an opinion about the website, but unless he or she is a design and useability expert, he or she should stay out of decisions relating to functionality, design and useability. You don’t get a layperson to advise a rocket scientist about the aerodynamics of the spaceshuttle, or a brain surgeon about brain surgery. The union secretary shouldn’t get bogged down in the minutiae of the website. They should be involved at a strategic level.

The bosses will read it – get over it

And so will other unions. Seriously.

Be careful about what you put on the site, but don’t live in fear that your every word will cause a libel courtcase. The last thing you want happening is that your website never gets updated or has no content because you’re affraid that the bosses will read it and “uncover” your strategy, download special “delegate only” material or read training manuals for activists. Most employers don’t give a damn, and those that do are unlikely to use what they find on your site effectively.

Union website design tip: always include a favicon

Alex — Fri, 21 May 2010 03:54:57 +0000

Just a quick tip for when you’re designing your union website: always include a favicon.

A favicon is the little 16 pixel by 16 pixel icon that represents your website next to the address bar or in a tab.

The Creative Union's favicon rendered by Google Chrome.

The favicon is an important part of your union’s website design. All major browsers will render the favicon, and it is used by most people to easily identify a website. This is especially the case for users who make use of tabbed browsing. Favicons are an important part of your union’s brand and the branding of your union’s campaign.

Quite a few union websites forget about their favicon. This is especially the case for websites built using Drupal and Joomla, both of which come preloaded with generic favicons. Not changing or customising your favicon is often the sign of a sloppy designer – and can be perceived by site visitors as being unprofessional.

The new WorkChoices ads

Alex — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 22:23:29 +0000

The ACTU Organisers Conference saw the launch of the election year advertisements from Australia’s labour movement.

I’ll be writing up some highlights of the Organisers Conference (you can see some of the tweets using the #powerup hashtag) later, including some interesting campaigns that were showcased. In the meantime, here are the ACTU ads.

This year was great

Alex — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 23:21:08 +0000

The ITUC has launched a new online campaign highlighting the exploitation of workers and children in the third world.

The campaign’s website – Change the World - is very professional, although it is unfortunately flash-based meaning that it takes a long time to load.

The campaign’s posters are amazing – very confronting and stark in exposing the truth behind international big business’s role in child labour, and socially destructive outsourcing.

Check all the posters out here.

Five effective political lobbying tools for unions

Alex — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 04:41:09 +0000

Unions and union members are the largest voluntary associations in Australia, representing millions of workers in tens of thousands of work places. Legislation can have a profound impact on the rights and entitlements of working people, such as changes to occupational health and safety, tax, industrial relations, and trade and industry policy.

It is therefore entirely natural for unions and union members to lobby parliamentarians. Over the last few years, many unions have increasingly sent delegations of members to Canberra or State Parliaments to meet with key Members of Parliament, Ministers and advisors.

With the Federal election coming up this year, and state elections in Victoria in November 2010, it is timely to consider some effective lobbying tools. I’ve written here about two tips for union members to lobby their MPs – which is pretty general advice. Below are five more concrete tools for unions and union members to lobby their MPs.

1. Direct Contact

Direct contact covers a range of different tools, including letters, phone calls, emails, and faxes, urging a certain position on a specific issue.

Letters: Letters are fairly effective, but only if they are written by local constituents. Members of Parliament tend to ignore letters from people outside their electorates. They also tend to ignore “form letters” – since it is obvious that they are from the same campaign. Far better to get union members to write their own letters but provide “taking points” or an issue briefing so that members can easily see the main issues, but write the letter in their own words.
Phone calls: Again, phone calls are only valuable from constituents (this will be a theme), and it is unlikely that any callers will be able to personally speak to the MP. However, the electorate officers will take notes of calls, especially if there are lots of calls about the same issue. Unions considering this should provide talking points for their members, as well as some simple Q and As so that the members can rebut any party or government lines.
Emails: Email campaigning was originally thought of as revolutionary. Supposedly you could get hundreds or thousands of people to press a button and send an email to a boss or politician. However, recently it’s become clear that for email campaigns to succeed, the volume of emails must by truly massive. Eric Lee suggests that an email campaign needs a minimum of 5,000 or so emails, and from my experience in organising several email campaigns, this is about on the money. Politicians get so many emails that its easy for them to ignore email campaigns of any size except the truly massive. Filtering technology allows MPs to easily partition their inboxes to that it doesn’t impact their work. Similarly, by emailing MPs, Ministers or a boss, you hand over the contact details of your supporters. In several cases, I’m aware of Ministers and bosses emailing each of the protesters back with a carefully written rebuttal of the campaign. Unions should be aware of this eventuality and plan for a contingency. Nevertheless, email campaigns are great ways to build your email lists. Personal, custom written emails from your supporters are far more effective, and a letter has more power than an email.
Fax: This is a fairly old-school lobbying technique, and mass-fax campaigns do little except waste paper. I’ve spoken with several MPs who’ve been subject to fax campaigns, and in each case they advised me that their electorate officers disposed of the mass faxes. The net impact: zero.

The general advice, which is fairly standard, is that personal emails, letters and calls from constituents are more effective than form emails and letters. Phone calls are more effective than letters, which are more effective than emails. Faxes (in my view) are least effective.

2. Personal Intercepts

Personal contact is most effective of all. The contact need not be with the politician, but can be with their electorate officers and advisors. There are several places that this personal contact can occur: meetings in the MP’s electorate or parliamentary office, at fundraisers, debates, or public events like street-stalls or town-hall meetings. Unions in Australia can also try to make contact with Labor MPs or advisors at branch meetings or policy committee meetings.

This kind of contact can be either union members, or officials. In either case, the person making contact should be properly briefed on the issue, and, most importantly, seek some kind of commitment. This could be a formal meeting, a pledge (see below) or some kind of assistance or statement.

Contact can then be followed up – and the union should consider whether this follow up can be made public. For example, the union could write a letter to the local paper reporting on the meeting and any outcomes. They could write a blog post on their website. Or they could get the union member to call the local talk-back radio to recap the encounter. Of course, the union and union members should make sure that they are not revealing discussions that they undertook to keep confidential.

3. Pledges and Surveys

This is a tactic used often in the USA, and sometimes by conservative groups in Australia. They are surveys or pledge letters sent to MPs asking them for a public statement on their position on a particular issue.

The pledge can be useful for both political persuasions. For example, the union could send a pledge asking the candidate or MP to pledge that “I, candidate X, pledge not to vote to to remove the rights of working people…” If the candidate or MP responds in an unfavourable way (or does not respond at all), that is an opportunity to get some local news.

Similarly, MPs or candidates that respond positively can be future allies on that issue, and could be followed up with a letter or personal visit.

4. Social Media

I’ve written extensively on how unions can use social media. During elections, social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube can be useful as both a media aggregator for campaign media stories, and also to disseminate key messages.

In my view, email is the most effective way to get your message out and to have supporters actually do something in the real world. Email is also useful in building a following on Facebook or Twitter. Analytics can ensure that you can see how effective your efforts are.

Importantly, social media is not a magical solution, but it can make a small campaign look much larger than it really is.

It is also useful platform to get free media. Political parties do this all the time by releasing a campaign advertisement on YouTube rather than on television. This ad nevertheless gets played on prime-time news, amplifying its effect much more than it ever would by itself. A key element to ads like this is production quality – the YouTube ads should be television quality in both sound and vision.

5. SMS/Text Messaging

Smart phones are becoming ubiquitous and almost everyone with a mobile phone knows how to send and receive text messages. The technology to use SMS effectively is also becoming affordable, giving supporters and union members instantaneous updates, event details, campaign messages and links to online campaign websites.

Similarly, unions can also encourage members to send text messages to MPs or bosses.

It boggles me that the ACTU Rights at Work campaign doesn’t have an iPhone app or apps for Android or Blackberry phones (UPDATE: I’m advised that work is being done on an iPhone and Android app – although there is not one currently). Similarly, I’m aware of no Australian political party with an iPhone app (although that’s the subject of another post).

Iphone apps for unions could have a range of uses, including making campaign videos and other media available on a member’s phone, as well as make facts and figures available immediately, and allow members to be directly “patched” to an MP’s office to have a phone conversation. Iphone apps could also allow union members to sign petitions and send emails on the go.

Most of the tools I’ve gone through here are fairly standard and mostly low-tech. I hope to see some innovation from the union movement, both in Australia and for the mid-term elections in the United States.

With most Australians online and owning mobile phones, even unions that cover blue collar industries, or low-paid service sectors will find that their members have regularly checked email addresses, Facebook accounts and oft-used SMS capable phones.

Delegates key to union power

Alex — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 08:37:09 +0000

Back in 2003-04, David Peetz and Barbara Pocock (from Griffith University and the University of Adelaide) conducted a survey of 2500 union delegates to examine the power of workers in their workplace. You can download the paper here (pdf).

The paper on the report is definitely worth reading and at 11 pages (many of which are graphs), you can do it fairly quickly.

What I took out of it is this:

Local power was stronger where:

unions were democratically organised;

delegates were confident, active, had clear roles and had strong networks of support at the workplace and with the union office, particularly through the organiser;

unions promoted common identity through inclusive policies than took seriously women’s issues;

the employer (and the delegates’ supervisor) were supportive of the union delegate’s role; and

where job security was not declining.

Training indirectly helped strengthen local power. Employer-related factors were only one eighth as important as union-related factors.

All of which stands to reason, and definitely accords with my experience. The key is that delegates are central to union power in the workplace.

What union members want from their union's communications

Alex — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 03:23:21 +0000

In my line of work, I hear a lot of opinion expressed as fact. A common one is that “union members don’t want our communications to look too corporate”, or “our members want a lot of detail, not a short summary”, or “our slogan should be ‘screw the boss’ or something like that”. You get the idea.

Union organisers often have years of experience in talking with members, motivating them to action, getting them to listen. But they are not communications professionals.

Most of these experiences are based on “anecdotal” evidence. Useful, but sometimes misleading. For example, union activists and delegates are a very different audience to an inactive member. While many union members are progressive, and support or vote for Labor (or Democrat, or Lib Dems, or Greens, or Socialist Alliance), many are also “centrist”, a-political or even conservative. In the 2004 Australian general election, research revealed that around 40% of union members voted for John Howard! (This number was improved in 2007, where some unions’ research revealed a Labor vote of 60% or greater amongst their members.)

Nevertheless, my point is that unions often make communications decisions based on “gut feeling” or anecdotal, untested assumptions.

There has been some research into what union members, and workers generally, want from communications from their union. The research includes polling and focus groups, of members and non-members. I’ve seen some of these (unfortunately confidential) reports, produced by several unions, including my own and the ACTU. (I should also note that I have worked as an organiser at one of Australia’s largest unions, and in my view, union communications should support and compliment a union’s organising strategy.)

Without revealing all of the details, a clear motif appears from the results. Generally, across the board, union members and workers generally, want communications that are:

Positive, proactive, forward looking, friendly
Authentic – no cliches
Not adversarial or victimising (they don’t want to be made into victims or to have to fight their employer)
People focused (centred around members, colleagues, peers, the community they serve)
Professional and of a high standard

Positive, proactive, forward looking, friendly

Most union members are not attracted by communications (leaflets, posters, emails, phone calls) that are negative, reactive or backwards looking. They don’t like constantly having to “fight against” their employer or the government. They want their union to build, not tear down, and they prefer messages that represent a struggle restore rights as improving, not “clawing back” their working conditions.

Authentic – no cliches

Union members respond – like most people – negatively to cliches. The union movement has a large supply of labour-related cliches, most of which are not well-received by union members. Many non-members also respond poorly to the “militant” slogans used by many unions. This is not to say “you shouldn’t use slogans” – you should. Rather, your union’s slogans should summarise a positive, people-focused campaign goal.

What members and non-members want instead is communications that show that the union is made up of real people. They don’t like faceless bureaucrats, or “generic” images/text.

Not adversarial or victimising

Most workers like their jobs and want to feel proud of their work. They want to feel like they achieve something positive during their working day. While they can come into conflict with their employer from time to time, they don’t like to be constantly fighting. Unions that present a message that pits a group of workers in a (never-ending) fight against their boss will not be maximising their communications with a significant section of workers – especially non-members.

Similarly, workers don’t like to feel like victims. Victims are powerless, and connote emotions such as shame. Unions should be empowering members, and lifting them up. Presenting workers as victims goes counter to this.

People focused

Put your members at the centre of communications. Campaigns and communications need to about about them, not you. Whether it was Work Choices or the Employee Free Choice Act, unions need to emphasise improvements for workers, not threats to their unions.

Professional and of a high standard

Workers live in a world of high-standard communications, whether on television, the Internet or in print. There is an assumption that the communications (letters, leaflets, posters, ads) are well written, professionally designed and easy to understand and use. Unions have long been laggards in adopting modern design standards – this needs to end. (This goal is one of the reasons why I co-founded Creative Unions.) Unions can’t get away with having sub-standard, amateurish design for their communications. Many organisers I have dealt with say “members don’t like slick, corporate design”, or “members don’t want us spending heaps of money on design”.

Unfortunately, the evidence from research shows the opposite. Members do want good design. They want to know that their dues are going to a union that is professional in everything it does – industrial advice, campaigns, and – yes – design.

Unions need to be authentic – slick, corporate designs are probably not appropriate. But good design doesn’t need to be corporate. This is something that the environment movement has learned – you can have excellent design that is useable and intuitive, without it looking like a Coke advert (the World Wildlife Fund is a great example).

Key messaging advice for unions

Alex — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 06:35:26 +0000

Every union communication challenge is unique – the circumstances, membership, employer, and so on are different every time. Having a framework to assist in messaging for diverse campaigns can make each campaign easier, and can help union communications anticipate what the employer (or opponent) may say. (George Lakoff called this “framing”.)

The messaging quadrant

The essence of effective union key messaging is based around four key ideas:

Your key message: a narrative for your campaign, explaining what you are doing, why you are doing it, and why your members (and workers in general) should support the campaign.
Your message about them: Your union needs to frame the employer and anything they say – this is your “counter-punch”, supporting your key message.
Their spin on your message: The employer will try to re-butt your key message. You should inoculate your members against criticisms of the union by the employer or opponent.
Their message: An employer in a dispute will have their own message in a dispute or campaign. Your union message needs to re-state what they are saying in your own words, and expose hypocrisy and double standards.

A good union campaign messaging will continually push the union’s key messaging, and rely on the other three pillars to respond to whatever the employer says.It is very easy to respond to attacks from an employer if you’ve already thought about what they will say and how you will react. If you’ve already pigeon-holed the employer, then you’re forcing them into a space that is good for you and bad for them.

An essential part of this is consistency. Once your campaign team has chosen your key message, be very careful about changing it. Switching messages can expose you to ridicule by the employer as a “flip flopper”. The members and others listening can get confused as to what the union is doing and saying.

Don’t be afraid of going negative. The employer does. They attack the union, they attack union members, they attack the rights workers have to take industrial action. They key is to turn their negativity against them, and to turn your attacks into positives. Your negative message is your “counter-punch” – finding their hypocrisy and exposing it to ridicule.

Framing your key messages

Speak the truth: Whatever your key message, it should be true. And true in the strongest sense. Don’t try to get away with half-truths, grey areas or white-lies. Don’t fudge things or tell lies by omission. This will be found out by the employer, and used to attack and undermine your union.
Take the high moral ground: You should make sure that you communicate your union’s integrity on the campaign issue. The union (and its campaign) should be selfless – it is “doing the right thing”.
Offence, not defence: The union’s communications should be pro-active, rather than waiting for the employer to do or say something. Pre-empt their attacks, and be prepared to respond to an attack by the employer.
Appeal to people’s better nature: Your main key message needs to be positive and optimistic. Link your message into the values of your members or the target audience. Look beyond union cliches (like “solidarity”, talk about “responsibility”).

You can get “Don’t Think of an Elephant”, by George Lakoff here.

Using Google Docs in your union campaign

Alex — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 06:14:40 +0000

Google Documents is a free online service that provides word processing and spreadsheets that are stored online (in the “cloud”).

Google Docs basically allows you to mimic Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint. The main feature (in my view) is that it is online, so it can be accessed from any computer connected to the Internet, and the second main feature is that files can be edited by multiple people at the same time.

Most of the basic features from the Office Suite are available – formatting, basic calculations, and so on – are available, although Google Docs is not as powerful as MS Office – yet. For basic word processing and spreadsheet work (without pivot tables and other advanced features) are more than capable of being handled by Google Docs. It also makes a change history for files, like the “track changes” function in Word – so you can go back and see who’s made what changes, and undo them if necessary. Files created or imported into Google Docs can be exported into native Word files – it can also read most common file types – such as .doc files and .xls files.

Google Docs is a potentially powerful tool for unions. It allows the creation of files that multiple people can edit and update. Changes appear immediately, and two or more people can open, view and edit the same file at the same time. The creator of the file can set access rights for individuals or groups – allowing some people to view the file only, and others to view and edit.

Drafting documents

Unions draft 100s of documents – from campaign leaflets to logs-of-claims, media releases, collective agreement clauses and letters of dispute notification – and more! Many of these documents are sent via email to scores of people, all of whom may make edits. This creates multiple versions of the same document, resulting in someone having to reconcile them.

Google Docs allows for the creation of a single, “master” document, that can be edited by multiple people simultaneously. All of the edits appear in the same place, and it is easy for the document owner (or decision maker) to revert unwanted changes. This can dramatically speed up drafting of documents, and allow more people (such as delegates, elected officials or staff) to be consulted in drafting important files. It also solves the problem of having several different versions of the same document.

Unions could also use Google Docs to develop draft logs of claims or agreement clauses. The membership could log in to Google Docs using a generic log in, and allowed to make changes. This could operate in a similar fashion to “wikis” – allowing open collaboration by a large number of people. Alternatively, access to edit the document could be limited to the “bargaining team”.

Maintaining databases

Google Docs offers spreadsheets. A big part of organising is maintaining good, accurate databases of members, work sites, density, and so on. Google Docs can easily provide this function – but allows multiple people to access the information at once. An excel spreadsheet on a network can only be opened and edited by one person at once. Google Docs doesn’t have this problem.

For unions that give organisers smart phones – Google Docs can be viewed remotely using a smart phone (such as the iphone or an Android phone). Thus, an organiser can check someone’s membership while on site, rather than waiting to get back to the office.

Databases can also be viewed and edited by remote union offices. For unions that have branch offices in several distant locations, this can be very useful. Rather than having to email files to remote organisers, they can log in online, and access and edit the database.

Reducing Costs

Few unions have lots of money to spend on unnecessary IT, and Microsoft relies on the expensive enterprise licenses for its Office Suite to make its mega-bucks. A union that did not require the “power tools” of MS Office’s advanced features could ditch Microsoft altogether and rely on Google Docs. (Of course, access relies on an Internet connection.)

Google Docs is free to use for not-for-profit organisations (and is only $50 per user per year for other organisations – cheap!). A union could also look at using Google Apps – a “native” version of many different Google services (including Gmail). This would allow unions to have their Google services appear as a part of their website. For example, LEAN uses Google Apps – so our Google Docs doesn’t use “docs.google.com”, but rather “lean.net.au/docs”. A union could have “yourunion.org/docs” to access all of the Google Docs services. Access would require log in of course.

Eric Lee from LabourStart has written about how there are alternatives to Microsoft Office, such as OpenOffice. My view is that online services are becoming increasingly competitive, and the collaboration features are far more useful than anything currently available from OpenOffice or Microsoft Office.

Case study: Google Spreadsheets and mass-call database

Recently, at the union I work for, we made extensive use of Google Docs for a State-wide campaign, coordinating around 100 union officials, delegates and activists over around a month. I recommended Google Docs be used as the main storage point for databases. The campaign involved calling the majority of the union’s members. So as to track how many calls were made, and to whom, we needed a database that was easy to use and accessible to multiple people simultaneously.

Google Docs allowed us to create the database of people we wanted to call. Union staff and activists could start calling immediately, from their desks or from the locally established call centre. They were able to update information straight from their internet browser. Because the updates were live, it meant that there wasn’t any cross-over in calls. Anyone else accessing the spreadsheet could see that someone had already started the call. Members responses could be tracked live, as could the number of calls made. This was very useful strategically, as it allowed me (coordinating everything) to determine if we were on track to making enough calls, or whether we needed additional resources and support.

The feedback from union staff and activists who used Google Docs was very positive. It was easy to use – just like using Excel. Mistakes could be undone easily. It allowed them to see who else was making calls – so they could keep each other accountable. For activists it also made them feel part of a larger effort than just a single person making calls.

Case Study: Google Forms and signup

Another excellent use for Google Docs is its “Forms” function. It allows the creation of online forms, such as contact forms, that people can fill out. The data collected by these forms is then stored in a Google Spreadsheet. The forms are completely customisable, with lots of options such as check boxes, drop down menues and so on.

The form I created is for the Sustainable Campus campaign – and is a signup form to allow activists to register their interest in participating.

As most members at the union I work have a computer with Internet access, and they regularly check their email, we decided an online signup form was best.

Google Docs allowed its easy creation, and I was able to easily embed it in the web page. We are then able to get live results for the number of people who’ve signed up to the campaign. This information can be exported as an .xls file or other file types, and used to create email lists, mailing lists and so on.