Abstract
In the United Kingdom (UK) youth unemployment for those aged between 16 and 24 has increased to alarming levels during the current recession, reaching almost 1 million in 2013 (ONS, 2013). Two of the most important social movement actors to mobilize support for government intervention, and to resist the Conservative-Liberal Coalition’s policies of welfare austerity and workfare (MacLeavy, 2011), are UKuncut 1 and Occupy London. 2 Since their formation in 2009 both of these organizations have developed an organizational and communicative capacity (Castells, 2012) that has not gone unnoticed by the trade union movement. The potential of social media for grass-roots organizing and public engagement has garnered particular attention with unions launching similar initiatives of their own. Table 1 below provides an overview of three of their main social media streams.
UKuncut and Occupy London social media streams.
This research note examines how a new UK union initiative, Union Solidarity International (USi), employs social media in its online campaigning. Launched on May Day, 2012, the organization is the result of a collaborative trade union project headed by Unite. 3 USi has two aims: first, to get the general public to see unions as sites of resistance to neoliberalism 4 by getting trade union stories out to the public without the bias of mainstream media affecting them; secondly, to link the organizational and structural power of trade unions – for instance, branch networks – with the dynamism of social media. This involves informing, educating and campaigning with trade union members in the UK and Ireland on the issues facing the trade union movement across the world. USi’s three flagship campaigns are Solidarity with Greece, union organization of Brick Kiln Workers in India, and domestic workers. An important part of their overall strategy is to engage young people, given this group’s high use of social media, whether in or out of the workplace. 5
Website and social media
USi’s website 6 serves as the hub of all of their social media activities. This includes the world’s most used social media streams – Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube – as well as less well-known ones such as Flipboard 7 and This Is My Jam 8 . Until now, the two most popular pages on the site have been a campaign against Nestle and water privatization and an article about the American company Walmart building on a Mesoamerican site of huge cultural importance. The first has had over 12 000 views, while the second had just below 5 000 in five days. The working assumption has been that the popularity of the campaign has been its unique angle. This iterative approach to learning what works and rapidly adapting to users’ behaviour has enabled USi to increase their communicative capacity considerably. Since the beginning of 2013 USi managed to double the number of individual visitors. The top three national destinations from website traffic are: (1) the UK (31 per cent), (2) USA (21 per cent) and (3) Greece (14 per cent). Overall the total number of hits (physical resources requested from server) was 105 239 and the total number of views (pages seen by visitors) was 36 223 after one year of operation.
A review of USi’s five largest social media streams also clearly reveals a substantial and growing capacity to reach people. Table 2 provides an overview of the five most successful social media streams.
Performance of five largest social media streams, May 2012 to May 2013.
Compared to other like-minded organizations, USi’s Facebook stream with 2 038 likes has developed strongly.
Demographically, however, the data reveal that 32.2 per cent of their audience is 35–54 years of age compared to 20.2 per cent among 18–34 year olds. This is mirrored in their other streams. While surprising it does reflect the demographic composition of trade union membership. The gender gap, however, is more pronounced online with 62.4 per cent of users men and 36.1 percent female. Figure 1 provides a breakdown of USi’s Facebook performance.
Demographic and geographic breakdown of Facebook likes, 1 January 2013 to 31 March 2013.
USi's Twitter stream has also performed strongly, comparatively speaking, as Table 2 below illustrates (see also Tables 3 and 4). Measured together USi reaches 3 600 people daily through their Facebook and Twitter streams.
Facebook performance of similar campaigning organizations.
Twitter performance of similar campaigning organizations.
YouTube
A particularly important aspect of USi’s communicative work has been centred upon the use of their YouTube channel to publish pioneering public web conferences with progressive economists including James K Galbraith, Michael Hudson, Steve Keen and Yanis Varoufakis. These video conferences draw a significant share of their channels’ views. For example, the interview with Michael Hudson, uploaded in October 2012, was viewed more than 3 000 times on their YouTube channel. The channel also publishes trade union stories and updates involving trade unionists from around the world. Over the last three months, users watched 144 625 minutes on USi’s YouTube channel. Again these statistics compare favourably to other campaigning organizations such as Justice for Colombia (12 902 hits and channel created in Dec 2006); Cuba Solidarity (130 204 hits and channel created in January 2007), IndustriALL (7 893 hits and channel created in April 2012) and the global union UNI 9 (78 818 hits and channel created in April 2007). Figure 2 provides an overview of USi’s YouTube performance over the first nine months of operation.
YouTube performance from 1 May 2012 to 22 March 2013.
Social Media Training Manual
Over the summer of 2013 USi is launching a social media training manual on online campaigning for trade unionists based upon the knowledge and expertise they have garnered so far. The central aim of this strategy is to engage young people, both in and out of work, and increase their participation (AFL-CIO, 2012). The manual includes the strengths and weaknesses of online campaigning (e.g. clicktivism, swarm organizing, and overcoming the gender gap); a review of all the technologies available; and examples of best practice (USi, 2013b). The manual will form an integral part of an education course that will be offered to trade unions in the UK and Ireland through workshops and online seminars for those unable to attend.
Endorsements
In the UK, there has been a great deal of interest among unions and a number are represented on their Advisory Board. So far USi has received formal endorsements from: BFAWU, GFTU, GMB, PCS, RMT, TSSA, UCATT, Unison’s North West region and Unite. Internationally USi has also received endorsements.
These include:
CNM/CUT (Brazilian Metal Workers –1 million members)
FISAC/CGIL (Italy – 90 000 members)
National Union of Workers (Australia – 83 000 members)
South African Municipal Workers Union (180 000 members) and Sikhula Sonke (South Africa – 5 000 members)
Athens Labour Centre (250 000 members), OLME (Greek Secondary School Teachers Union – 90 000 members), POTHA (Hellenic Entertainment Federation), Union of Employees in Chemical, Pharmaceutical, Cosmetic and Related Companies in Greece (UCBF), Union of Employees in the National Theatre (SEETH), Diktyo Episfalos Ergazomenon kai Anergon – Network of Precarious Workers and Unemployed, Panhellenic Association of Employees in Unremunerated, Mortgage and Land Registry Offices (SYPAM).
Finally USi has received endorsements from the Jimmy Reid Foundation, Red Ladder Theatre Company, Scottish Left Review, Thompsons Scotland, Thompsons Solicitors, and has the practical involvement of a few other NGOs and solidarity groups. Looking forward to the future, USi is confident that more trade unions and confederations will endorse the project (such as those from South Africa, Australasia and North America) although formal support must often await the unions’ internal constitutional processes.
Future prospects
Until now USi remains one of the few examples of trade union supported or initiated organizations that use every possible social media stream on a daily basis to campaign for change. Their performance so far clearly demonstrates the potential of a trade union based campaign platform and social networking facility to increase interest, participation and activism, thereby increasing campaign effectiveness and capacity. USi’s most significant challenge is maintaining consistency across the social media streams due to limited human and financial resources. With regard to young people, further experimentation is required to increase their engagement. Judged by USi’s performance so far, this could well represent a watershed moment in the history of trade unionism that helped stem the tide of a rising demographic gap in union membership.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.