Digital Revolution Toolkit

You want to recruit more members? But you don’t even know which workers are already organised, who they are, where they work? 

Ensure that your trade union organisation has an up-to-date database of its membership. The personal membership data should be segregated by: age, gender, labour market sector and other important information. This not only provides a clear profile of the workers who are members of the trade union but also provides trends on the labour market and where the main potentials and emerging sectors are for organising new members. This is essential in tailoring campaigns targeted at new members.

Collecting data is important but not every piece of data is relevant or useful. Unions need to know specifically what data they will need in order to achieve their goals. To help you decide, ask yourself some questions: What data are you missing that would be really useful to know? If you knew this information, how would it change your strategy? If you do not have an answer, then it is not yet the time to start collecting data. The first step is always knowing why the information is needed. 

Now that you know why you want to collect data, then it is time to choose how you are going to get the data. All you need to do is ask questions! 

Surveys and questionnaires

Surveys and questionnaires are an easy way to collect feedback on your initiatives and policies; they are also a great way to reach out to your members and supporters and show them that you care about what they want and need from you. 

Belgian colleagues in the FGTB regularly do surveys among their members to ask them about their working conditions, difficulties, and expectations. They then use that data to push for campaigns that are relevant to the needs of their members.  

Irish colleagues were unsure how to structure their recruitment campaign. They wondered how many workers would be interested in establishing a local union in their workplace versus the amount of workers who would be opposed to it. The best way to find out… was to ask. They sent out a survey and found that 46% of respondents were positively inclined to workplace unions while only 16% were opposed. This finding formed the basis of the structure of their campaign.

Petitions

As far as we can tell, petitions are one of the oldest forms of solidarity used to change our conditions. History shows that enslaved workers building the pyramids in Egypt petitioned their overlords for better working conditions. Today, petitions are still relevant as they are an easy way to gather useful data by rallying supporters around a common cause.

There are misconceptions that petitions are no longer useful but it is clear that they do two main things: Either tell decision makers to do something and/or to gather data about supporters and invite them for further actions.

Here some tips for creating successful petitions: 

• Set an achievable goal: Have a win possible in real world conditions

How to write a petition that achieves its goals? The first and most obvious solution is to define a goal that can actually be won in the real world. A petition to ‘’end capitalism’’, ‘’end world hunger’’, ‘’build a workers’ utopia’’ might all seem like things that we want but there is no way a petition with enough signatures would ever provide enough food for everyone.  Try a petition like: “let Ryanair workers drink water on the job”, or “tell your MEP to vote against new austerity measures”.

• Direct the demand: Target the decision makers that matter

Remember that a petition is a noun, but it is also a verb. Many petition creators make the mistake of properly targeting the demand.  You need to petition someone, but who? You should not just petition ‘’the government’’ or ‘’the United Nations’’ or even ‘’the union’’. Target an individual or individuals who have the power to make the change that you want. That way, you can deliver the petition to these specific decision makers and influence their minds and actions. 

Croatian colleagues at SSSH recently started their journey with building their own petitions platform. This platform has the ability to add your own issues so that they can be targeted to the right people in the national context. Find out more here

• Keep it short and clear: Your demands should not be buried in walls of text

We should be careful not to fall into this bad habit – the habit where we try to explain every possible point in the petition text. The petition should be short, concise and clear. You are not writing a policy document, you are writing a demand. Put a little context at the beginning so that everyone understands why this particular issue is a problem and then go directly into the demand. 

As an example, Bulgarian colleagues from CITUB and PODKREPA were able to collect more than 100.000 signatures supporting energy and mine workers with some clear demands:

• Ensure sufficient time and provide for a smooth transition
• Analyse the opportunities for energy independence
• Ensure workers’ participation, well-paid jobs, better working conditions and a clear plan for the Maritsa East complex

Keep in mind that there is nothing wrong with placing a link at the bottom to direct supporters to ‘’find out more’’ where they can read all your background policy documents for those that really want to understand the issue in depth. 

• Raise emotion: Anger and indignation are calls for people to act against injustice

Anger is one of our natural responses to injustice, there is nothing wrong with clearly laying out why we should be angry about a certain issue. Emotion helps improve engagement with your campaign so do not be afraid to write something stirring and evocative. When European austerity rules would force governments to cut from the healthcare of your parents or the education of your children all the while that CEO salaries are on the rise, you have every right to let activists know that this has to be stopped. 

• Follow up: Keep your supporters engaged 

After your petition is out, make sure to maintain the momentum and to foster a sense of community among those who signed it. Here some tips on how to keep people motivated and involved in your campaign: 

• Welcome new supporters: Make it clear that they are now part of your activist group

• Add key statistics: Show what you have been able to accomplish as an organisation

• Offer clear next steps: Send messages with instructions about how to get involved

• Show victories and updates: Each step of the campaign should be highlighted to the supporters

• Add others’ logo and share the plan with their mailing lists

• Ask your supporters to help you to collect more signatures. They are already convinced, and if you engage them, with crowd-sourcing you can achieve a multiplying effect, so don’t be shy and ask them to talk to and share the petition with their friends, family members, co-workers, etc. 

Examples of keeping supporters included come from a recent ETUC campaign. The Paris and Brussels demonstrations against austerity used petitions to gain supporters and engage membership. When the ETUC marched in the streets, supporters who signed petitions received updates in the lead up, and on the day. Each demonstration was followed by a 10% increase in the contact database. The lesson from this is simple, when trade unions do concrete actions, people become interested.

Publicly available data 

Sometimes important data is hidden just under our noses. Whether it is the Eurobarometer at European level or financial statistics from your national ministries, there is data available to use to our advantage. 

Lithuanian colleagues found that some of their most useful research for a campaign was already done for them and publicly available. Education unions took ministry data to use for collective bargaining and in their demands for changing labour policy. The ETUC uses sites like Eurofound, Eurostat and tracks the Eurobarometer to get a sense of what Europeans as a whole are thinking and feeling so that we can campaign on issues that working people need.

Data is not good forever. It needs to constantly be refreshed and updated, otherwise it could turn out to be useless when you really need to get information or to mobilise quickly. A major reason for keeping data up to date is the legal responsibility to do so but also, high quality and relevant data leads to the best decisions on where to take the union next.

P & B Agentur communication agency reminded colleagues at an ETUC digital trade unionism seminar that keeping your contact list healthy and up to date is crucial to ensuring that your messages reach the right audience and to avoid negatively impacting your spam scores:

• Regularly review your database to identify inactive subscribers who haven’t engaged with your content for an extended period. Look at who’s really active, maybe let those go who haven’t clicked on anything for years because it is bad for your spam count!
• Instead of immediately removing inactive subscribers, you can also explore strategies to reactivate them (for example through targeted re-engagement messages). 

As an example, British colleagues in the education sector had a lot of contact information for members but had not always updated it in a way that kept it fresh. When a scandal happened in schools, they realised that mobilising their membership was very difficult because many emails and phone numbers were out of date. They chose to learn from this experience and invested a lot of time to update all of their data so that they could launch an anti-racism campaign which in the end turned out to be very successful because of member engagement.  

Another example from Dutch colleagues comes from their data updating habits. They always update contact information when someone passes away so that all data is kept fresh which means that they avoid embarrassing emails to deceased members.

The final step is almost obvious. You have collected your data, built your database and now it is time to use that data. This should be the moment that you campaign to gain members, keep members and push for changes that improve the lives of workers. 

Unions 21 have shared tips and techniques for improving the use of data and have kindly shared a report that is a resource for officials and activists who want to improve their understanding about data, and a tool for strong data advocates in unions to use as they encourage and make the case for greater data use. You can read their policy paper here:https://unions21.org/ideas/using-data-to-build-strong-unions