From Ink to I-Pods: Communicating with Members Key to Building, Strengthening CWA

By Janelle Hartman

Chances are, you're reading this story in what the news biz calls the "dead-tree" edition of the paper. Then again, you might be reading it online at CWA's website.

Either way, you're staying informed about your union. How you get your news isn't so important. Making sure that CWA national headquarters, your district, sector and your local communicate with you quickly and effectively is what's critical.

As CWA looks toward the future, communication will play a vital rote. What's happening in your local this week? What are other locals around the country doing to organize and ignite their membership? Where does national leadership stand on legislation affecting working families and how can you help get good bills passed and bad bills defeated? Is your pension at risk? What's your union doing to tackle the nation's health care crisis?

"All locals must make communications a top priority," CWA President Larry Cohen said. "Collection of member e-mails is critical — e-mail bulletins are the fastest way to communicate with members. And to have both a website and a newsletter is ideal because between the two you are likely to reach the vast majority of members."

Several locals today are reaching out through electronic alerts to members' home e-mail addresses. At Local 4250 in Chicago, President Steve Tisza sends news articles about outsourcing to a list of 200 to 300 members and other union activists several times a week. He's been doing it for four years, since AT&T threatened to replace his members with workers from India in the event of a CWA strike. Members and anyone else interested can sign up for the alerts on the local's website.

For the last year, Local 4340 President Ed Phillips has been using an "e-mail tree" to keep his Ohio members apprised of mobilizing activities and pending legislation important to workers, what he calls a "steady diet of information." E-mail alerts go to members who have registered their e-mail addresses with the local and those members contact others who don't have e-mail or aren't signed up. He estimates that he reaches about 60 percent of his members that way and hopes to increase the numbers.

A pioneer in e-mail communications — at CWA and beyond — was Seattle-based WashTech-CWA Local 37083. Today the association of high-tech workers has 17,000 e-mail subscribers nationwide who get electronic newsletters twice a month and alerts urging them to take political action on specific bills.

"We do the whole trifecta," WashTech President Marcus Courtney said. "We write original news stories that are of interest to high-tech workers and we link that to politics and organizing and then we try to drive national media coverage, which helps us build and grow our list."

One of the newest ways of communicating was demonstrated by leaders of the Canadian Media Guild, part of The Newspaper Guild-CWA, when the Canadian Broadcast Corp. locked out 5,500 workers for 50 days starting in mid-August 2005. In addition to constantly updated web reports, the Guild produced podcasts about the strike as well as reporting local and national news that members would normally cover on the job.

Courtney, who's now looking at using text-messaging to reach members and subscribers, said podcasts and other cutting-edge technology may not work for every local or sector. But he urges union activists to experiment, as WashTech did beginning eight years ago with e-mail alerts.

"People talk about Howard Dean and MoveOn.org," he said, referring to the ways both campaigns aggressively used e-mail in 2004. "We did it back in 1998. We're the original pioneers, and that's something CWA should be proud of."