Are you a Local Officer or Steward wondering how you can get your members more involved in strike mobilization?
At the last Vancouver Area Council meeting, Robert Strang, President CEIU 20944, shared his tips/best practices for mobilizing for the strike vote. He also took the time to think about things and jotted them down in an email.
In his own words …
Below is what we try to follow as much as possible. Maybe this can be useful for others.
Information distribution
- People need to be informed as to what’s happening. Sometimes we get lazy and assume everyone’s up to date. We need to use whatever means work to get to as many members as possible. For us, desk drops and talking with people work the best. We also have a website and make sure people know where to check for updates on the PSAC national site.
- Use good sources like the PSAC sites and newspaper articles. Using mainstream articles adds credibility. Some people think union info is spin. For example we printed up articles about Martin’s freeze and the pay raise for cabinet aides, along with a PSAC article.
- Avoid rhetoric and tired slogans. Or if you use them during rallies etc. make sure you also distribute news and facts.
- When there’s things happening, make sure that people know about it. Strike while the iron is hot. It’s easy to elicit support for a strike when there’s stories/ evidence that they’re trying to stiff us.
- Publicise the truth. People are already concerned about negotiations and their wages. Most don’t really know what negotiations are like or what’s happening. All we do is provide the info. Let them come to their own conclusions and reactions. That’s when it’s time to channel our reactions into some sort of action. In our case, we thought that this would be a good time to bring out the mass grievances. I altered the language a little bit from the original one in Peterborough so that it was more palatable to our members.
- Don’t confuse member indifference (low turnouts at AGMs etc) that we often see with complete indifference. Many members don’t want to bother with extra-curricular activities most of the time because they’re busy working and have lives outside work. I don’t really blame them. Members do care when it comes to negotiations and their paycheques. That’s when you really want to be on the ball.
Active local executive
- Don’t sleep. Stay on top of things. Stay positive.
- Keep the executive going. Get people trained and involved. Don’t allow your executive to be dominated by 1 or 2 people: Keep it informal and social. Most of us are sort of friends.
- Make your executive representative and democratic. Ours has every ethnic, gender and sexual orientation represented in our office. Some are more into politics and campaigns, others into being well-organised and efficient. Executive meetings should be open discussions, not one person informing the rest. All important decisions should be discussed with the whole exec. even if only by email/phone if you can’t have a meeting for each issue. We demonstrate that we are more democratic and egalitarian than mgmt.
- Stay organised and divvy up the tasks. No one can do it all. Our secretary finds politics and debates boring but is super-organised and very helpful. Our treasurer wants to just be involved as a treasurer and UMCs. He does a good job of it. Even people who want a “smaller” commitment because they are very busy are very helpful. Be accepting of a variety of perspectives and levels of commitment in the exec and with the members. Not everyone is an activist. So it’s flexible and open but still tightly organised all at the same time. In fact it’s probably best to have a mix of loudmouth activists, more sane folks, organised bureaucratic types and whatever else is representative of your office. All of one type isn’t as good.
- Recruit from time to time. People come and go. You need to be able to deal with some flux.
Thanks, Robert!