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Managing the Media: Communicating Labour at High Tech U by Christopher Bodnar and Patricia MazepaCommunications
Committee Unit
1, CUPE 4600 Teaching
& Research Assistants Carleton
University |
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For the twelve hundred teaching and research assistants in CUPE
4600, the alarm was sounded by a strike vote after the university
administration had failed, once again, to take our major contract
proposals into timely and due consideration. For the membership
in general, this was a call to the responsibilities of union membership
and necessity of collective action. For the local’s executive,
standard components of union organization became critical, as the
possibility of a strike was now imminent. In particular, bargaining
negotiation and membership mobilization became the priorities, with
the view that the essential link between the two was communications.
More than ever, communication with our membership, the larger university
community and the public, became essential, as a strike would necessarily
involve all of them. The
challenge was in front of us to make our bargaining position known
and understandable to a wider circle than our membership. Indeed,
if we were not understood as workers, how were we going to garner
support from the larger community? Just as importantly, how were
we going to make the connections between the commodification and
privatization of universities understood in terms of labour? Wouldn’t
the perception be that we were just demanding more money and draining
limited public funds?
To give you some background, the TAs and RAs at Carleton have been
unionized since 1984, and every two years (beginning in June) we
are in contract negotiations with the university. Over its history,
Carleton’s administration has traditionally taken their time to
deal with negotiations over the summer, setting their own time schedules
and agenda. The union is consistently forced into calling a strike
vote in the fall (or later) to demonstrate membership’s resolve
to strike and to move management to negotiate over issues they would
otherwise ignore. Where it could be treated by the administration
as an opportunity to build trust and work together for progressive
change and improvement of our working and learning environment,
it is a patronizing procedure that wears on the members. It drains
the local’s limited resources and reflects a profound lack of respect
for students as employees of the university. Negotiations are prolonged
and controlled by management according to their own schedule and
aims to control our ability to mobilize. This year the negotiations
were following the now-familiar pattern, but the situation was different
from previous years in two important ways. First,
the University is being touted as one of the pillars in the “new”
economy and has branded itself in publicity as “High Tech U”. The
title is intended to signify a transition to cater to the demands
of the high-tech industry which, together with the various levels
of governments, is part of the overall plan to convert the national
capital into a high-tech centre known as Silicon Valley North.
Any threat to that plan garners attention from government, business
and the local media, and this year we became such a threat. Second,
and arguably more important, our mobilization efforts were affected
by both the challenges and successes of the York Strike. This added
necessary momentum to our mobilization efforts and heightened media
attention as well as the interest of CUPE National and CUPE Ontario,
which thus brought our relatively isolated position into public
view. The
public first heard of a possible strike situation at Carleton in
a brief smattering of articles on 30 November 2000, following the
breakdown of talks with management. This was the result of our union
representatives making direct contact by phone and a media release
to all local media outlets within two hours of the break-off. The
action was in response to a threat by management to go to the media
first and intentionally embarrass the union. The story received
some attention because of York’s success, and as a result of the
union initiating media contact, reports were largely from the union’s
position. By
quickly responding to management threats and contacting the media,
the local gained three important advantages. First, the media became
familiar with contacts from our local, recognizing our willingness
to deal with them honestly and in a timely manner. As well, the
public’s first hint of a strike came from the union’s perspective
– an advantage we worked hard to maintain throughout our mobilization.
Second, by getting basic coverage of the breakdown, the story was
on the media’s radar, and was covered sufficiently to allow us a
reprieve in order to regroup and plan for further mobilization.
We were then able to do a comprehensive mail-out to membership over
the December break informing them of negotiation status, strike
preparation and meetings to be held in January 2001. Although the
administration’s timing had been planned to thwart a strike by pushing
us into December (when picketing would be less disruptive), it actually
allowed us the time to prepare for mobilization at the beginning
of the winter term. The
next time the public heard about the potential strike was through
an editorial article in the local newspaper The
Ottawa Citizen (15 January 2001:D3). Entitled “The last thing
that Carleton needs is a strike”, the editorial recommended that
our members should vote “no” in a strike vote and suggested that
the administration avoid a “blunder into a big, messy labour fight”.
This direction was given as a warning to Carleton to save a carefully
constructed but precarious reputation, which was no doubt tied to
the branding of Ottawa as conducive to the high tech industry.
For CUPE 4600, and the communications committee in particular, the
article served to alert us to crucial aspects of our mobilization
strategy. When
faced with the enormous responsibility of strike action, insecurity
becomes acute, whether it is on the part of the administration or
the union. As a likely unintended side-affect, the editorial prompted
our attention to the vulnerabilities of the employer. While we
tended to think of our union as small in comparison to the resources
and support structure of the university, we held to the knowledge
that it is still within universities’ best interest to avoid strikes.
We needed to appreciate that there is considerable power in withholding
labour despite the many arguments suggesting otherwise. Also, we
had to remind ourselves that strike action, if necessary, was wholly
justified. All the contract proposals had been derived from membership
surveys and the justifications that were written in their support
were legitimate, again despite the many vociferous external challenges
against them. Further, we needed to clarify each of these proposals
in terms of their connections to the processes of privatization
and commodification of the university. Increased wages and tuition
indexing were thus explained in terms of how they facilitated more
affordable, accessible education, and class size was described in
terms of the “quality of education” that Carleton likes to advertise
more than it actually delivers. Second,
the newspaper article contained a battery of inaccuracies regarding
our membership composition, issues under negotiations, and linkages
to the greater processes of privatization. All the standard negative
characterizations of unions were contrived as the article depicted
us as a greedy self-interest group willing to hold student’s hostage
for selfish wage increases that would “drive students into the hands
of private colleges”. Such false accusations could have gone a
long way to restrain our members from striking, and divide us from
the rest of the university community and the general public. We
had just lost round one in the public ring and we needed to get
in shape for round two. Taking
stock, we recognized two types of media: those we control such as
advertisements and our newsletters, and those we cannot control
such as media reports and management communications. In recognizing
this difference, we were able to focus on refining consistent and
precise messages to outlets that we could not control. Communication
became central to the local’s organizing efforts and we involved
ourselves in all areas of mobilization and strike preparation -
from police protocol meetings to daily mobilization preparation
sessions. This involvement allowed us (as a communication team)
to be knowledgeable in all areas of strike preparation and external
relations of the local and act as a central resource point for information.
As part of our communication network, we first established a web
page off of CUPE National’s page in order to provide information
to our membership and the community in general, and then we established
an email distribution list for our membership through TAO Communications.
We further concentrated on communicating with our membership through
newsletters and information pickets, with guidance from CUPE’s (2000)
handbook, Communicating CUPE.
Lastly, we engaged with the corporate media as a significant player
in our mobilization efforts. Research
on media coverage of labour indicates that representations of labour
are typically inaccurate or negative (Cirino 1971; Kalaski 1992;
Parenti 1986; Puette 1992; Winter 1997). Most coverage is congruent
with the dominant hegemony in which organized labour is considered
to be gadflies, at best. At worst, unions are viewed as power-hungry
anarchists intent on destroying a supposed democratic way-of-life.
Included in this view is that local action is manipulated by “big
labour” Mafia, that it’s the union’s fault for labour disputes and
for any breakdown in negotiations, and that the union is led by
a handful of professional strike-loving agitators who do not represent
the membership (despite their being elected). Addressing academic
unions in particular, in our case the union was blamed for increasing
inequality between students because of our so-called “privileged”
positions as teaching and research assistants (TAs/RAs), for crippling
university budgets, and for destroying public education. Unions
need to recognize that negative representations of labour are standard
to all corporate-owned media, even before the employer engages in
their own media and public relations campaign, which will likely
support and exaggerate these further. Nevertheless, a relation
with corporate media has to be established. Although it is a relationship
that is unequal and adversarial to begin with, it doesn’t follow
that they should necessarily be treated like an enemy and ignored.
For better or worse, the public gets the bulk of their information
from the corporate media, so we found it essential to work with
them in getting our message out as accurately as possible. In
preparation for extensive media contact, we developed a variety
of information tools that were of particular benefit throughout
mobilization. This included the following: the maintenance of a
media contact list, a backgrounder on the local’s history, statistical
sheets on membership composition, a timeline describing the events
leading up to a strike vote, and lastly, a list and brief explanation
of our negotiating positions. For person-to-person contacts, two
primary and two backup spokespeople were designated for the local.
Each of these contacts had a union mobile phone programmed with
a comprehensive list of media contacts. As we got closer to negotiations
and the deadline set by the strike vote, contact intensified so
that we were operating on a near 24-hour on-call basis. This was
exhausting work and contacts need to schedule-in call-answer shifts
(which, regrettably, we didn’t do). In
addition to improving the methods of communication, we worked to
refine our media message. We chose three of the most significant
bargaining demands and worked at providing easy-to-understand descriptions
of each, relating them to our struggle for affordable, quality public
education. Each one was elaborated in speaking notes for all of
our spokespeople. The messages were also relayed by variety of brochures
and posters specifically designed for each of the collective groups
in the university community. These included graduate and undergraduate
students, faculty, other unions on campus, and other workers coming
on to campus such as bus, taxis and delivery drivers. To each we
addressed a pamphlet outlinging the relevance of our proposals explaining
how these and other actions intersected with issues of their concern.
For specific groups we also composed a letter to the organization
representing groups on campus (e.g. Graduate Students’ Association,
Canadian Federation of Students, and Carleton University Academic
Staff Association, etc.) providing explanation, and justifications
for our request of their support and solidarity. Our message was
further refined and widely distributed in a series of radio and
print advertisements produced by CUPE National. The ads explained
the local’s position and pointed out the contradictions of Carleton’s
“education for life” slogan in comparison to their actual treatment
of their students and employees. The ads ran for two weeks leading
up to the strike deadline at approximately thirty spots a week on
each of the twelve major commercial and campus radio stations in
Ottawa. The print ads ran weekly in both commercial daily papers
and the Carleton student news magazine. A further
foray into media research indicates that as commercial news takes
on the characteristic of infotainment, media industries look for
conflict and chaos for the content of their news reports (Hackett
and Zhao 1998, Karim 2000, Moeller 1999, Winter 1992). To illustrate
the conflict and to appear neutral and objective, journalists will
normally look to provide two sides of the story. They will search
for members who may disagree with majority decisions and they will
focus on the “innocent victims” of the impending strike that weighs
more negatively on the union if coverage follows the biased standard.
Demonstration of oppositions is evident in the “Letters to the Editor”
section, and was exemplified in our case in a later editorial article
in The Ottawa Citizen
(30 January 30 2001;D4) that presented opposing views from within
our membership on the question of strike action. While
the media will search out the membership for individual stories,
it is crucial that the union contacts and spokespeople are on the
journalist’s list as a consistent and reliable source of information.
It is should also be recognized that the journalist’s job is increasingly
difficult as media outlets reduce the number of journalists in their
newsrooms (Winseck 2001) and rarely assign reporters to labor “beats”
(Winter 1992). Given that the individual journalist assigned to
the story may not be an expert in labour negotiations or the overall
issues involved in the strike, it is up to the union to ensure that
they are well informed. In
surveying the coverage during our mobilization, the majority centered
on rallies at the university and on membership meetings where reporters
expected confrontational comments from representatives of CUPE Ontario
and CUPE National. As these stories were covered and public attention
was piqued, the need for further public discussion prompted some
additional and beneficial coverage for us. As a result, the work
we had put into briefing notes and statistics soon paid off as these
were occasionally repeated word for word in articles (e.g. Rogers
2001). While we were prepared for the media queries, it would have
been easy to lose control of the situation had the guiding principles
of our communication strategy been ignored. The principles that we established were based on the democratic organization of the local that begins with the membership as derived from face-to-face meetings, the bargaining survey, and other forms of internal communications. As a result, we would only speak about facts surrounding the negotiations and bargaining positions of our membership. Moreover, comments made by spokespeople on these issues reflected the decisions of the membership rather than any one particular person. In devising and refining our communication strategies, principles of democratic decision-making in the local manifest themselves in a set of guidelines in engaging with the media. In addition to suggestions already made here and in the handbook Communicating CUPE, these are as follows: · Recognize
that this is the public record. You will be held accountable for
what you say and management may use this to get an injunction against
you in the future; · Do
not boycott the media because of an unfavorable report; · Do
not comment on rumors or speculate. Your job is to represent the
membership and forward factual information, not to provide color
commentary; · The
media want to know what your job is and what your personal opinion
is. Only speak about areas of which you are knowledgeable; · Never
take the risk of changing the organization’s public stance by making
a personal comment in place of the membership’s position. From
our own experience, the local’s executive council gave authority
to the bargaining committee to decide whether there would be a strike
based upon the status of negotiations down to the half-hour before
picket lines were set to go up. This concentrated discretion at
the hands of a few individuals who were incredibly tired after a
48-hour period of intense bargaining. In addition, when the strike
was postponed only moments before the picket lines were to go up,
we were assigned a large responsibility to communicate the strike
status to the media. Had the mobilization, bargaining, and communication
teams not adhered to the position of the membership and communicated
proper information within the half-hour before the strike deadline,
the entire democratic process of the local would have been destroyed.
It was a narrow miss. In our local, the problems with working on
such a restricted time line under the pressures of the media and
bargaining processes continues to be debated on how to guarantee
democratic operating principals within our local in the future. In
the end the membership accepted the contract as negotiated by the
bargaining team. Both management and the union were satisfied with
the outcome. Significant gains were made in the following areas:
(1) tuition indexing which was legally worded as “tuition increase
allowance” for the university’s political purposes, (2) intellectual
property rights, (3) maternal and parental leave payments and (4)
union participation in decision-making processes such as class size
and the administration of a new employee assistance fund (for child
care, eye glasses and international students workers’ health insurance
premiums). The negotiations could have come to a satisfactory conclusion, if it weren’t for management’s actions, however. Rather than using their experience to further satisfactory contract negotiations throughout other universities, the Carleton University administration seems to have taken a typical business view of student unions as adversaries. They may be under the influence of the corporate media, who, true to form, lambasted the university for “giving in to the union”. For example, in her March 1 Financial Post column, Diane Francis reported on a memo sent by Carleton to other Ontario universities. Under the heading “Whipsawing for fun and profit”, Francis declared, “It is time we had provincial bargaining for universities. Carleton and York Universities folded recently, allowing the militant Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) to win large concessions in an era of constraint.” Claiming Carleton to be a “vulnerable” campus, Francis quotes the memo leaked to her by Carleton administration: Watch out for the mediator who is handpicked by the union. Watch out for the fact that union outsiders bargain for more moderate employees of the university involved. Watch out for threats because they pick on campuses that can be strangled, traffic-wise, which maximizes the effect of any strike.
While
the university rushed to assure corporate Canada that they are still
on board, Carleton chief negotiator David Van Dine attended to public
relations by giving a conciliatory response to queries from The Ottawa Citizen on the tentative agreement:
In
the interest of labour peace, we settled. We wanted to settle on
terms that were satisfactory to the university and the union. The
settlement was within a framework that we could live with and we
are pleased to do that and avoid a strike (1 February 2001: B2). Aside
from inaccuracies in the memo and Francis’ assessment (the mediator
was the Chief of the Office of Mediation for Ontario and agreed
to by Carleton administration, the bargaining team never allowed
“union outsiders” to control negotiations, and it was Carleton management
who saw fit to hire a professional strikebreaker with experience
as the Ottawa Police labor relations officer), the commentary serves
as a stark warning for labour organizers in the future. Universities
recognize that there are allies in anti-union organizing in journalists
like Francis and media like the Financial
Post. At least this corporate media outlet appears ever-ready
to support union- and strike- breaking activities. Moreover, by
approaching the media in the aftermath of its defeat, Carleton management
has now recognized the importance of communication strategies for
their future efforts. Nonetheless, rallying media support was easier
than we anticipated, and Carleton provided little resistance assuming
there would be a lack of membership and other support for the union.
They were wrong. As
university management appears to be pooling collective experience
to fight workers’ demands in the future, workers must also attend
to our victories and defeats. Unions cannot take for granted the
work of other locals or of their national organizations in past
struggles. We need to share as much information and resources as
possible in order to effectively realize worker solidarity. Just
as important - considering the media professionals employed by York
University to fight against CUPE 3903 - it would be naive to assume
Carleton would not have stepped up their public relations efforts
had a strike taken place. They had also proven that they have instant
access to the whole student population and will use email, and internal
and external mail-outs to our membership, and employ their substantial
resources and power networks if necessary. When such tactics have
been used, the challenge remained to foster relations not built
on adversary but on mutual respect in future efforts to improve
our working and learning environment. In
the end, CUPE 4600 members were able to successfully negotiate a
contract meeting the union memberships’ proposals. An instrumental
element to our success was the maintenance of strong, open lines
of communication with membership, the university community and the
public, largely through the corporate media. At a time when a public
relations campaign can win the university more support than a solid
reputation for quality education, strong media relations can be
the key to success for labor groups attempting to fight for decent
working conditions and a living wage. Universities, however, are
not oblivious to the power of communication strategies in labor
disputes. It should be expected that they will strike back harder
in future disputes. As corporations, governments, and universities form “partnerships”, and work to transform knowledge into an economy, universities into industries and education into training, academic labour is the fulcrum of struggle. Through our experiences we realized that our contract IS the point of convergence for several issues. While these include the continual improvement of the working and education environment, it also is one of the fundamental sites where government and university policies facilitating privatization and commodification are revealed. Our contract legally provides us with limits to withstand and work to reversing such trends, and to increase public awareness of their ramifications. This is why communicating through all forms of media is essential. Bibliography Barlow,
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the People: How the News Media Use Bias,
Distortion and Censorship to Manipulate Public Opinion. Los Angeles:
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Robert and Yuezhi Zhao. (1998) Sustaining
Democracy? Journalism and
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[1] Although we took responsibility for communications, union work is always a collective effort. We would like to thank John Peters from CUPE 3903 (York University), our primary spokespeople Finn Makela, VP External and Aalya Ahmad, President CUPE 4600 and the rest of the CUPE 4600 executive for their dedication and assistance. |
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