Improving "Join us" sections of union sites

Cross-posted from my blog, Planting Liberally

Recently, while doing a bit of research for a post on organizing online workers, I came across the "Join a union" section of the AFL-CIO's website. Unfortunately, their "Join a union" page is really not very well-suited to prospective union members at all. Instead, the page is geared towards passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.

I'm all for the EFCA, and I hope it becomes law as soon as possible. But when someone comes knocking at your front door, you don't thrust a petition in his or her face.

This is not a minor point. The AFL-CIO's page is the first result when I search for "Join a Union" in Google. With 53% of Americans wanting union representation (PDF), and only 12.5% actually having that representation, there's potentially a very large group of people online who are looking for information about joining a union, but not finding it. Employers know that workers do research online in order to inform themselves about union representation, and they hire creepy union-busting web developers to get their message out online. Unions should respond with helpful, informative, and action-oriented "Join us" websites.

At some point in the near future - perhaps next weekend or a bit later - I plan to write up a post about a variety of tools unions can marshal to recruit and organize workers online; if you have any thoughts on that, please drop them in the comments. Today, I'm just going to look at the online front doors of a few prominent unions, and make suggestions for how they can better greet potential members.

Looking at the AFL-CIO's Front Door

I didn't mean to pick on AFL-CIO in the intro. Welcoming new members online is a challenge for any organization, no less so for a complex organization like AFL-CIO.

That being said, there are a number of problems with the Join a Union section of the AFL-CIO's website. First and foremost, the website must be made more appropriate to people who want to join a union. It's fairly safe to assume that someone who clicks "Join a Union" wants to know about her rights, the benefits of union membership, how unions work, and what he or she actually needs to do to join a union. It's not safe to assume that she knows what the Employee Free Choice Act is, or why it's relevant to her life. While EFCA is great, and I support it and want it to become law as soon as possible, I think there's a time and a place for promoting EFCA, and the "Join a Union" page isn't it.

Second, the website must not put the burden of joining a union on the potential member. The site visitor could be under fear of harrassment or intimidation at work; or she could be simply ambivalent about joining. The website should be written under the assumption that the visitor's interest in joining a union is fleeting and shaky; the website should make as much effort to retain the visitor, give her the information she needs, encourage her to join, and help her take the next step to joining.

On the one page I found that seemed to be dense with information about joining a union - How to Join a Union Where You Work - the burden of joining was placed squarely on the visitor's shoulders. (You may want to visit that page before continuing with this section.) The page is organized into "steps", with the steps being:

1. "Know your rights" - I applaud the AFL-CIO for educating workers about their rights. I whole-heartedly agree that workers should know that under US law, they have a right to collective bargaining, and the US government encourages them to use that right. Phrasing "know your rights" as an action step might or might not be helpful. On the one hand, it encourages the site visitor to think of herself as having already taken one step on the path to joining. On the other, it may push away a potential member who wants to learn more about unions, but might not want to join one right this instant. It would be interesting for some union or another to set up an experiment to test how site visitors respond to the concept of "know your rights" as an action step. Either way, there is a big, obvious problem with this section - it starts with a huge block of legalese grabbed from the National Labor Relations Act. If you are familiar with NLRA and know the history of the union movement, that is very inspiring text. But if you're curious about joining a union, chances are that this text will be difficult to understand or confusing. Quoting NLRA as supporting material is a fine idea, but making it front and center probably is not.

2. "Find out which union is right for you" - I think this is jumping the gun; it assumes that the site visitor is highly motivated to join a union. I think a better "step 2" would be something like "learn what a union can do for you". Even assuming that "find out which union is right for you" is a good second step, the text here is not very useful. Somehow, the potential member is supposed to sift through a long list of fifty-odd unions, and ascertain which is the one most appropriate for her; or, she's supposed to visit her state or local labor council (which one? state? or local?), navigate that council's website, find someone to call, and ask about joining a union.

3. Get in touch with a union organizer. Again, I think this is jumping the gun, perhaps more so than step 2. How does the site visitor know that her boss won't find out that she contacted the organizer? How does she know her information's safe? Or to consider an even more mundane issue - what if she can't find the link to the contact form (which is hidden in a block of prose)? What if she doesn't know which union to choose in the drop-down list on the contact form? A simple way to improve this step is to include the contact form directly on the How to Join a Union page, and to include text which guarantees that information is confidential, and that it's ok to leave the "Union" drop down list blank if the visitor is confused.

Other "Join a Union" sites

I said I wouldn't pick on AFL-CIO, and I want to get an idea for the other kinds of "Join a Union" content available on other union websites. So I did a quick survey; here's what I found.

• Change to Win, the labor federation which broke away from AFL-CIO in 2005, has no "Join a Union" content at all. There's a Why Organize? page, which is very short on content and seems more aimed at labor insiders than potential members; and there's the Join our movement page, with a link buried deep on the right-hand side of the page; this page seems more geared to political allies of labor (e.g., progressive activists) than to potential members. If Change to Win wants to recruit new members, the website certainly doesn't show it.
• SEIU, the largest and perhaps most imaginative and forward-looking union in the country, has a good page that summarizes the benefits of union membership, and a nice soft-sell more info page, but that's about it. There's no contact form, nothing about knowing your rights, or anything like that. The more info page also puts the burden of finding information on the site visitor's shoulders.
• CWA, the communication workers, has a reasonably good Join Us site. The text is relevant to a potential member, user-friendly, and even includes a picture of a cute dog. Second-level pages give potential members a good overview of a typical campaign, and explain what potential members can do to organize their worksite. There still seems to be too high an expectation that the potential member will do all the heavy lifting. In part, I think this assumption reflects CWA's philosophy that organizing campaigns are best started from within a workplace, as opposed to being started by external organizers. Overall, this section of the CWA site is very good, and is probably the best one I've seen.
• The Teamsters also have a very good Join Us site. Answers to many basic questions (Who are the Teamsters, What are the benefits of joining, etc.) are easy to find, and the contact form is also easily accessible. There is a subtle difference between this section of the Teamsters website and the corresponding section of CWA's website: while CWA targets visitors who may want to start a union and to organize their workplace, the Teamsters seem to be targeting visitors who are in the middle of an organizing drive, and want to get information about the union - perhaps so they can decide how to vote in a union election. This difference might be a reflection of a different organizing philosophy. Overall, I think the Teamsters site is very visitor-friendly.
• The UAW has had very serious trouble retaining membership in the past decade or two, and has been very aggressive about trying to organize its way out of decline. Last year, UAW committed $60 million to strategic organizing efforts, and their website reflects this commitment. The Organize section of the site is extremely user-friendly, and provides a potential member with all of the basic information that visitor might be interested in. The contact form is easy to find; it's got a statement of confidentiality (albeit buried at the bottom of the page), and a guaranteed return call, and even an expected time frame for the return call. The site is visually pleasing - it has a distinct and warm color palette, the design is open, and there's a good smattering of photos, graphs, and other graphical cues. The site doesn't make organizing resources available in the same way as CWA's site, but again, this difference might be the result of a different organizing philosophy. Overall, I think this is a very good site.
• The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) is one of the fastest-growing unions in the country, owing to its focus on the public sector. About 36% of public sector employees are unionized, and AFSCME has benefited tremendously from the recent growth in this sector. Unfortunately, AFSCME's website totally lacks a "Join Us" section. I hunted around for a while, but couldn't find anything; the only remotely related content was a brief description of the union under "about us".
• UNITE-HERE, the union of textile, hotel, and restaurant employees, has sponsored some innovative and impressive campaigns recently, notably Hotel Workers Rising. The Join us page is simple and better than AFL-CIO's by degrees (in fact, the content appears to be essentially copied from AFL-CIO's website, and improved slightly). The link is buried deep in the left-hand side of the page, and there's only a single page worth of information. On the other hand, that page has relevant and user-friendly content, and includes an easy-to-use contact form.

Tips for "Join Us" websites

I could go on and on, but I think this brief tour has identified several things which unions can do to improve their online front door. Some of these are borrowed from existing websites; others are, so far as I can tell, not really reflected in current union website practice.

• Develop a Join Us micro-site. A micro-site is a small, narrowly targeted website focused around a particular goal. Many companies use micro-sites to promote a flagship product; presidential candidates use micro-sites to promote a policy proposal or to attack their opponents; and some unions use micro-sites to promote a particular organizing campaign. A Join Us micro-site is a good way to provide potential members with plenty of good information in an easy-to-find format. Micro-sites also help visitors focus on the target goal (joining the union,) without being distracted by the wide variety of content on the union's website (political news, contract negotiation updates, etc.) The closest thing I've seen to such a micro-site is the organize section of UAW's site. AFL-CIO could do its affiliates, especially the smaller locals and regional labor councils, a big favor by developing a good general-purpose Join Us microsite; smaller affiliates which don't have enough money for that kind of thing could just link to the site. Of course, the same goes for CtW, which has to play a lot of catch-up in this area.
• Provide good, accessible, well-organized content. Even websites with plenty of user-friendly content - like the Teamsters - often don't organize it very well. Join Us websites should have information organized in a logical progression, gradually enticing the visitor to become more and more involved with the union. Using steps, as the AFL-CIO does, is good practice, but the "leap" between each step should be pretty small. Also, it's probably wise to devote a single page to each step.
• Include a contact form; prominently ensure confidentiality and follow-up. The contact form is perhaps the most important piece of a Join Us website. Getting a contact sign-up is probably the most important goal from such a site. To that end, the form should be easy to read and shouldn't require any information which the user wouldn't have readily available. Promising confidentiality and follow-up, as the UAW does, is extremely important; it gives the visitor assurances that her interest in a union won't somehow end up in her employer's hands.
• The site should be visually pleasing. In most of the sites I visited, the text was difficult to read, crowded into a small column, and very dense. The UAW's site was perhaps the main exception to the rule; and the first page of AFL-CIO's site, despite other problems, was also very nice to look at. This is not a trivial point: a visually pleasing site makes visitors feel that they're getting involved in something pleasant. A site which is crowded and dense makes visitors feel that they're getting involved in something difficult and complex.
• Joining a union is fun and pleasant. Far, far too many union websites have a tone, both in terms of content and in terms of design, which is set to somewhere between "very serious" and "grim." Forming and running a union is serious business, of course, but being in a union is not all about conflict, struggle, and difficulty. It's not even just about material benefits. It can also be fun; it can make work more pleasant and rewarding; and it can be a good way to get to know your co-workers better. There's a rich history of union-inspired art and music which testifies to this joyful side of union life (and there's plenty of music and art that testifies to the ugly face of union-busting). Unions should not downplay the seriousness and importance of their work; but I think they should give potential visitors a glimpse of the satisfaction and enjoyment they'll get out of solidarity, not just the material benefits. Some sites, like UAW's and UNITE-HERE's, give member testimonials which go part of the way in painting this picture. I'd really like to see sites which go further, evoking music and art, in addition to member testimonials and plain old good design, in evoking this side of the union story.

Unions face a lot of challenges these days in recruiting new members, and there are many things that can and should be done to break down those barriers. But the lowest-hanging fruit is improving communications with those people whose motivation to join is high enough that they will visit the "Join us" section of a union's website. In contrast with legal measures like EFCA, improving the look and feel of a Join us website is easy, relatively cheap, and may reap immediate rewards. Unions should not write off this important communication venue.