Engagement Newsletter Issue No. 4: What is it with Union Meetings?

 

Building engagement between union leaders and their members has never been more important, and identifying the many moving parts is the first step. This newsletter will continue to explore these issues and identify various strategies to build engagement—I hope you find it informative. We’re growing our distribution list with every edition, please pass this newsletter along to your friends and colleagues and encourage them to sign up at info@colelabour.ca.

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This edition was inspired by some questions I received from a senior representative of the firefighter sector in British Columbia who asked me about union meetings, remote attendance, and related questions. He and other union leaders have raised these issues: enough to warrant a series of newsletters to more fully explore each. So, with that in mind…what is it about union meetings and member attendance?  

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Behavioural vs. Attitudinal Focus 

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An earlier newsletter focused on how we assess member engagement—whether through a behavioural or attitudinal lens. Observers often consider meeting attendance as a proxy for member engagement. This “behavioural” measure is very limiting and inadequately considers a more suitable, multidimensional definition of member engagement. The alternative, “attitudinal” lens includes, but is not limited to, such things as the members’ frequency of reading union literature, watching videos, promoting the union in conversations (both during and outside of work), or assisting new members with understanding the union’s purpose and practices. This attitudinal lens assesses the ongoing relationship between the organization’s leaders and followers; their levels of awareness of and participation in the daily operation of the organization, particularly as it relates to supporting the organization’s mission, vision, and goals. 

We often think of these elements as part of the members’ “social identity” or their role in an “organizational citizenship” capacity. We will examine these important factors in future newsletters. In the end, assessing meeting attendance is an incomplete exercise—meeting attendance is important, but it should not be the sole metric when measuring engagement. 

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The Purpose and General View of Member Meetings

 

In broad terms union meetings have four purposes: (i) ceremony, (ii) member communications to elected officials, (iii) elected officials communications to members, and (iv) a means of decision-making.

 

The ceremonial aspect is often brief but should not be dismissed as unimportant. Ceremony is an opportunity to recognize the organization’s independence from the employer, its member-representation focus, unique history, and is an important moment to reinforce its purpose, mission, vision, and goals. Ceremony also typically recognizes the contributions of earlier members or achievements of the past, which is important in defining the long-term purpose of the union. 

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The two communications purposes may appear self-explanatory but cannot be undervalued. They invite scrutiny of the value and effectiveness of bidirectional communications—is there meaningful information exchanged between the union’s leaders and members in attendance, or is the meeting a one-direction reporting to the membership? There is an abundance of literature that supports the observation that persons assess their willingness to participate based on, in part, to their ability to have meaningful input into the organization. Some observers of union member engagement describe the decision to more actively participate in terms familiar to economists who characterize it as an “experienced good.” In other words, members often determine their longer-term interests based on their initial, or early impressions of the organization and whether they will benefit from investing more effort in the organization. This is particularly so for new generations of members who often have had little pre-employment exposure to what unions do. Leaders may want to consider whether meetings can be described as “action-oriented” or “information delivery” and whether bidirectional communications can be improved. 

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Finally, do meetings have a decision-making purpose and how meaningful are those decisions—are they administrative or substantive? Similarly, is the decision-making process hurried or perfunctory, or is it deliberative and inclusive? 

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The Key Takeaways 

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What does all this mean? A 2010 survey of 4,500 electrical workers found that 67% of the members, with seniority ranging from one to thirty years, had never attended a union meeting following their first swearing in. The survey also found three reasons why members were disinclined to attend “reporting” style meetings; (i) they had trust in their union’s leadership to   run the organization, (ii) they were not interested, (iii) they could receive the same information through discussions with others, including shop stewards, members who attended, elected representatives, or newsletters.

 

One of the key takeaways is the opportunity to reflect on the nature of the exchange of information with a particular focus on the direction of information from the members to the union’s leadership. This is consistent with a “followership” approach to assessing meetings, where members value the opportunity to provide meaningful input. 

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Summary  

 

Limiting our assessment of engagement to behavioural measures, like meeting attendance, unnecessarily focuses the issue on organizational leadership—“What am I doing as the leader and why are the members not attending?” This is hardly a surprise: bookstore shelves are overflowing with content on leadership—we are preoccupied with it as the solution to these puzzling, and misunderstood circumstances. I do not dismiss the importance of leadership—it is one of several critical factors in union engagement—but I would argue that the consideration of engagement issues is more thorough when examined through a “followership” lens. What motivates members to attend a meeting and how can we develop strategies to increase this motivation? It may be as simple as conducting a survey or focus group to seek the membership’s input (which itself is consistent with the “valued input” interests that are critical to a followership perspective). We will be spending more time in future editions of this newsletter looking at member engagement through a followership lens.

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Dr. Bill Cole is the principal at COLE LABOUR with more than forty years of experience working with labour unions across North America. His research has included member engagement, union leadership and members as followers. He also has extensive experience in collective bargaining and dispute resolution in the public and private sectors. Check out his website at colelabour.ca 

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