Shortly after John Sweeney became president of the AFL-CIO in 1995, an open letter from labor ally Thomas Geoghegan to the new labor leader was published in The American Prospect and contained ideas on how to revive the movement. Done in the style of David Letterman’s ’Top 10’ lists, suggestion number one was ’Understand Media.’
Shortly after John Sweeney became president of the AFL-CIO in 1995,
an open letter from labor ally Thomas Geoghegan to the new labor leader
was published in The American Prospect and contained ideas on how to
revive the movement. Done in the style of David Letterman’s ’Top 10’
lists, suggestion number one was ’Understand Media.’
Sweeney has gotten the message. New PR programs have been paying
dividends, according to the AFL-CIO’s own polling. But the AFL-CIO’s
most ambitious gamble is yet to come.
The union is starting a new, low-cost Internet service called
Workingfamilies.com aimed at current and retired members. Communications
Workers of America president Morton Bahr told The New York Times: ’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-mails in
protest?’
The service is slated to start next month, and the initial goal is to
sign up one million subscribers who will pay a dollars 14.95 monthly
fee. It is also hoped that special deals can be worked out to obtain
low-cost computers for subscribers.
’Unions are doing something a lot of companies are doing, too - they’re
becoming dot coms,’ says Paul Furiga, VP of Ketchum and head of the
labor communications practice. Internet technology can achieve a goal
that visionaries in organized labor have long discussed: a real
nationwide communications network.
In the 1920s, the Chicago Federation of Labor started a radio station,
WCFL, to not only counter the ’capitalist’ media but to address the
political and cultural interests of workers. Author Nathan Godfried
wrote in WCFL: Chicago’s Voice of Labor 1926-78, that CFL official
Edward Nockels even envisioned having WCFL become the flagship station
of a nationwide labor broadcasting system. But the AFL’s leaders failed
to share his dream.
More recently, Geoghegan advanced an idea similar to Nockels in The
American Prospect. And in 1997, Scott Sherman proposed in The Nation
that unions should consider investing in a national newspaper. If only
15% of the AFL-CIO’s 13 million members read such a newspaper, Sherman
said, it would surpass the circulation of The Wall Street Journal. But
the prospects for the new Internet project?
Drexel University sociology professor Arthur Shostak contends ’this
portal could prove to be the most consequential risk that the labor
movement has taken in the last 50 years. If they pull it off, it can
create the electronic community the movement requires to gain momentum
in the 21st century. If they fail, the failure will compound labor’s
many ills.’
As the author of CyberUnion: Empowering Labor through Computer
Technology, Shostak stresses that the project will need the right
content, interactivity, as well as a ’minimization of PR and
maximization of candor.’ He contends that too many union web sites are
presently ’billboards’ and younger workers will expect more
interactivity than most currently offer.
Shostak believes unions must provide greater two-way communication
between members and leadership. He fears the union that demands a voice
in an unorganized industry may find itself confronting an employer who
says: ’I’ll let you unionize when you let your union members have a
voice in your chat room.’
This interactivity, even internal democracy, which Shostak proposes, may
threaten some union leaders. As union expert and University of Virginia
history professor Nelson Lichtenstein notes: ’Effective communication
can create turmoil that leads to factions.’
But the AFL-CIO has been busy using PR to help improve organized labor’s
perceptions with the public.
Sweeney came to power in 1995 promising to provide a ’New Voice for
America’s Workers.’ Under his leadership, the AFL-CIO’s tabloid was
revamped and stronger emphasis was placed on organizing. It also
inaugurated the ’Today’s unions. You have a voice, make it heard’ PR and
advertising campaign that sought to show how real people were helped by
unions.
’We explained to local union officials and publication editors,’ says
Deborah Dion, AFL-CIO spokesperson, ’that the story is best when real
folks tell it. When we do rallies and press events in the field, we try
to highlight the rank-and-file.’
Surveys for the AFL-CIO by Peter D. Hart Research Associates suggest the
campaign has been successful.
The percentage of Americans holding negative views toward unions has
plunged from 34% in 1993 to just 23% this year. More non-unionized
Americans are willing to consider voting to join a union than 15 years
ago. And perhaps most important, by a 37% to 18% margin, young adults
hold more positive than negative views toward unions.
’When people think about unions, they think of strikes and pickets, but
unions are smarter than that now,’ says Sam Singer, head of GCI
Kamer-Singer’s new labor relations practice. ’They are playing the PR
game better than ever before.’
Pollster Brad Bannon of Bannon Research credits Sweeney with having
moved beyond emphasizing the traditional interests of wages and benefits
to issues such as raising the minimum wage, curbing HMOs and improving
public-school facilities that will appeal to unionized and non-unionized
workers alike. ’Unions know that in order to survive they have to talk
to not only their own members, but the whole country,’ Lichtenstein
says.
The traditional tool of union PR was publications, notes Rex Hardesty, a
senior associate at Tricom Associates, which handled PR during part of
Lane Kirkland’s tenure as AFL-CIO president. ’Now, unions are doing the
kind of work that more fully fits the definition of PR.’
Unions are working to forge alliances with churches, academic and
minority groups. And today’s digital economy represents a prime
organizing opportunity.
One innovative project in Silicon Valley called Together@Work provides
temp workers with training and counseling to help them obtain better
benefits and pay.
The change can also be seen in individual unions. The Laborers’
International Union of North America (LIUNA) never used to have a PR
department. Now, it has a five-person staff and spokesperson David
Roscow constantly pitches stories. But the fact that labor reporters are
a dying breed makes the job a bit tougher.
The AFL-CIO needs to replace over 300,000 members a year just to break
even in membership. It has enjoyed success in meeting this objective
lately, but can it regain the strength in membership it once commanded?
That remains to be seen. However, Furiga takes the AFL-CIO’s PR
initiatives seriously enough to assert ’what unions are doing in
cyberspace and their other communications is something that companies
should be prepared to accommodate in thinking about their own relations
with employees.’
