Online Organizing and Social Media WPR

Online Organizing and Social Media

Is Your Organization Social?

• Do you know what social media is?

• Do you Facebook?• Does your company Facebook?• Does your company employ

Facebook (or other social media) for its positive employee relations?

Our Purpose

• To begin a conversation about different ways employers can (and should) be using social media in their positive employee relations practices

A Simple Premise• Unions are kicking employers’ butts in social

media• Penetrating the workforce

– Often in stealth– Sometimes in full view– To build support– To run campaigns – To maintain momentum

• Does this, in fact, present opportunities for employers’ positive employee relations efforts?

A look into what unions are doing…

Steps to a Union Organizing Campaign

unseen by management– Initial contact from disgruntled

employee(s)*– Identify leaders/organizing

committee– Develop issues/campaign themes– Develop/map profile (by department,

shift)– Build support, quietly– Investigate company vulnerabilities – Develop issues/campaign themes

Build majority support– Go public– Maintain support– Attack the company and its issues

Build majority support. After building your committee and identifying key issues, you need to talk openly with your co-workers, discussing issues, and building union support. This begins the “public” phase of your campaign. Through one-on-one discussions with workers in your workplace, evaluate the support that exists for a union around your key issues.

Source: CWA

Traditional Union Tools Include…

• Handbilling• Fliers• Telephone Calls• Home visits• Union Salts (or Moles)

“Quick mass organizing through social media has become synonymous with the term “flash

mob,” so could “flash union organizing” by labor unions be the next logical step?”

Union organizing with new technology

• Facebook – Worldwide, there are over 1.39 billion monthly active Facebook

users (MAUs) which is a 13 percent increase year over year.

• Snapchat– When a user sends a message they get to decide whether it will

live for between 1 and 10 seconds. After that it’s history, probably.

• Twitter– Good for #Hashtag campaigns

• GroupMe– It's like a private chat room for your small group.

Have as many as you want, and it's always free. Now, you can coordinate with coworkers, organize a game night, and keep in touch with family all in the same place

Smart Phones & Texting

• Under the new “ambush election rules” employers are now REQUIRED to furnish telephone numbers.

• This includes cell phone numbers

• Unions have been using text messaging for organizing for a long time.

• Expect texting to increase.

Unions & technology

“After going public, we showed unity by wearing red wristbands, and we adopted a “brother’s keeper” strategy: when Human Resources or management would approach a co-worker to discuss the union, we would insert ourselves into the conversation or stand around them so they didn’t feel alone. We checked up on people in different stores to make sure they were okay.”

“We also used technology to communicate and keep those who were weaker confident. I started a chat with GroupMe, a group text messaging service, and added everyone who had signed cards to be public. We also had CWA organizers, Verizon landline workers, and our attorney on the chat. GroupMe helped us to keep open dialogue about the anti-union rhetoric from management in each store. We also alerted each other about corporate visitors and any intel we’d collected to decipher their strategy.”

Organizing with new technology

Coworker.org allows you to start, run and win campaigns to change your workplace.Have an idea for improving your workplace? Start by creating a Coworker.org petition and talking to your co-workers about your campaign. Every day, people are launching and joining campaigns around issues large and small -- from improving an office breakroom to providing paid sick leave to employees. Anything is possible when co-workers join together.

Hmmm…That sounds like “Concerted Activity”…

Unions are using social media to appeal to Millennials

“Micah Mitrosky, a 31-year-old IBEW organizer from Local 569, believes there has never been a better time for unions to reach out to people her age and younger.”

“Labor leaders are learning that reaching younger workers means communicating in new ways—using technology like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and texting. They also know that the younger generation has vastly different expectations about work and the work-life balance than their parents did.”

Still the ‘Grand daddy’ of them all…• 151 million users in the U.S.

Still the ‘Grand daddy’ of them all…

Twitter, by comparison

• Twitter – 15%• Facebook – 50% (+/-)

Twitter Campaigns

Teamsters (Int’l):197K on FB

29.6K on Twitter

UFCW (Int’l):59K on FB

19.5K on Twitter

To top it off…E-Signatures To Now Be Used For Petitions!

“The General Counsel’s guidance is effective immediately. The guidance could be viewed as another example of the Board bypassing regulatory processes to institute union-friendly procedures. The practical impact of the guidance is that unions may immediately use email and social media to gather signatures with limited review of their authenticity.”

To paraphrase Vice President Joe Biden, “This is a BFD”…maybe even bigger than BFI.

Several unions are already taking advantage of E-signatures…

“It’s no secret that HR and senior business leaders are lagging in their adoption and understanding of social media usage by both their employees as well as outside entities and organizations like unions who pose a risk to organizations…”

Jessica Miller-Merrell

Research Reveals How

Labor Unions Use Social Media

February 22, 2012

What can YOU do?

Get your head out of the sand.

Get Engaged Now…• Make a decision to engage (or keep your head in the sand)

• If you choose to enter the arena, START NOW– Developing your audience now is crucial

• Use Social Media for POSITIVE EMPLOYEE RELATIONS– Internally driven & focused– Macro and micro groups, pages

• Maintain a constant PER campaign

• Learn to “share” items with your audience

• Keep content constant and fresh

What About Text Messaging• Unions are using it everywhere

• Great tool for positive employee relations For sharing good news Celebration of achieving goals Thanking employees Links to resources

Some Important Items To Consider

• It you wait, it’ll be too late– Building an audience takes time– Message penetration takes time– Focusing on only union issues may have other legal

ramifications

Do you develop ‘closed’ company group?

If so, Macro as well as Micro (site specific)?

Some Important Items To Consider

• Use Mainly As Positive Employee Relations-Centric Tool

• Be aware (but not afraid) of the “share” factor

Some Important Items To Consider• ‘To moderate or not to moderate?’ (That is the question.)

– If so, how much? (PG rated is a given…

• Develop commenting rules

Again, this presentation is a starting point to begin a conversation about different ways employers can (and should) be using social media in their positive employee relations practices

The conversations are taking place.

The questions you need to answer are: Will you and your organization be part of it? Or, will it take place behind your back?

QUESTIONS?

Online Organizing and Social Media WPR

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