The AFL-CIO Working Families Network is propelling union communication and outreach to a new level of e-mobilization.

When the AFL-CIO launched the Working Families Network (WFN), a free database system that helps unions create and manage networks of activists using the Internet, delegates to the federation’s 2001 24th Biennial Constitutional Convention in Las Vegas stopped by computer terminals set up for convention participants and tapped out more than 3,200 e-mail and fax messages to members of Congress on trade and economic legislation.

This spring and summer—just 18 months later—WFN members from more than two dozen affiliated unions and more than 50 state federations, central labor councils, 200 local unions and constituency groups sat at their keyboards and sent more than 400,000 messages to the White House and Department of Labor opposing the Bush administration’s plan to eliminate overtime pay. They e-mailed another 240,000 to Congress protesting legislation to substitute comp time for paid overtime. The number of activists on the Working Families Network now tops 1.1 million, up from just 20,000 in early 2002.

Union activists have enhanced their traditional work of informing members about important working family issues by providing members opportunities to shape public policy with this state-of-the-art mobilizing tool (see box).

Developed by the AFL-CIO, the system gives each participating organization management and control of its own Working Families Network program, website, membership list and message. Local unions, central labor councils and state federations can tailor messages for local and state issues. In late August, more than 170 campaigns were up and running. Through the Working Families Network, the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO mounted an e-campaign to state legislators to support the defeat of tax legislation that threatened public schools and services, while SEIU Local 250 contacted northern California health care workers, e-mobilizing them to contact their state lawmakers in support of a bill to provide health care insurance for all California workers.

Along with the e-mail campaigns, WFN allows participating groups to build a database of activists who can be called on for rallies, Voice@Work actions, election campaigns and other activities.

“Internet activism is the newest and a uniquely exciting organizing tool available to activists and organizations,” the AFL-CIO Executive Council said in statement from its August meeting, where council members called on unions to expand their issues mobilization efforts and take advantage of the Working Families Network to mobilize their members around working family issues.

Whether it’s the Communications Workers of America building bargaining solidarity among Verizon employees through regular e-mail updates or the AFT-affiliated New Mexico Federation of Educational Employees (NMFEE), which credits WFN for successfully involving members in a campaign that restored collective bargaining rights, the Working Families Network is wiring unions for action. Here’s a look at how three union groups are e-mobilizing.

Connecting for bargaining rights

E-cstatic: Teachers in New Mexico used the Working Families Network to mobilize members in the fight to restore collective bargaining rights for state workers. Gov. Bill Richardson (D) (second from right) celebrates the victory with AFT and AFSCME members.

In 1999, New Mexico’s public employees, including some 30,000 school, college and university workers, lost their collective bargaining rights when Republican Gov. Gary Johnson vetoed legislation that would have maintained their rights.
This year, with Gov. Bill Richardson (D) in office, NMFEE, AFSCME and other unions moved to reinstate collective bargaining.
“We asked people to do two things,” says NMFEE President Christine Trujillo. “First, send a message to their legislator about how important it was to restore our collective bargaining rights and then to tell a friend by forwarding the e-mail to them.”
WFN member action alerts include a tell-a-friend option that allows users to forward the e-mail. In many cases, those friends opt to join in the campaign and become part of the Working Families Network.

The tell-a-friend option is largely behind the growth of NMFEE’s e-mail list, which jumped from 1,000 e-mail addresses to nearly 4,000 of the union’s 7,000 members in a little less than a year.

Through WFN, e-mail recipients are matched with their own state and federal lawmakers, ensuring their messages carry more weight, because they come from constituents.

“We were able to inundate legislators with messages from their constituents on the collective bargaining bill,” says Trujillo. “We got such great response that one day when I saw the Speaker of the House, he said, ¡¥Please, we get the message, tell your folks to back off.’ ” State legislators got the message so well, in fact, the new collective bargaining law passed by a large margin and was signed into law in March.
As a result of the new law, some 7,000 state employees in more than a dozen New Mexico state departments and agencies won recognition with AFSCME in August. This fall, NMFEE is utilizing the Working Families Network to build support for two education amendments to the constitution and in organizing drives around the state.

Building community

In Albany, N.Y., “WFN is helping us form stronger relationships with our affiliates and make connections and build relationships with our supporters that might have taken years to establish in the past,” says Prairie Wells, Capital District Area Labor Federation communications director, who manages the federation’s network.

The area federation sends out weekly bulletins on organizing efforts, contract fights and other union news that keep activists up to date and build a sense of unity, says Wells. Starting out with a little more than 200 e-mail addresses less than a year ago, the federation has built an e-activist community of some 1,200 union members and community supporters.

When Working Families Network messages go out to community supporters, valuable connections are made. After the area federation sent out its first meeting notice to plan for the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride (see story, page 8), one recipient, a woman from Argentina who had been active in that nation’s union movement, got in touch with a friend with a radio show.

“He called us for an interview,” says Wells. “We did the interview. During the interview, we got phone calls from three immigrant workers who called us from their cell phones at work and asked to be part of our events. That was a real goose-bumps moment.”

Strengthening solidarity

Months before the contract for 80,000 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic CWA mem-bers at Verizon neared expiration, CWA launched its Unity@Verizon initiative—and a key component involved e-com-munication with members, including a website dedicated to bargaining updates, e-action messages, news from Verizon local unions and tips to build solidarity and mobilize community support.
“We started several months before bargaining began to make people aware of what the issues were going to be and to build up our e-mail address list,” explains Beth Allen, who manages CWA’s Working Families Network.

From the website and through e-mails, CWA Verizon members and supporters have received detailed, almost daily updates on negotiations and messages of support from other CWA locals and other unions. They have had opportunities to send messages urging Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg and President Lawrence Babbio to negotiate a fair contract. They also have e-mailed their U.S. senators, asking them to sign a letter from Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) urging Seidenberg and Babbio to reach a fair resolution.

Allen says the Unity@Verizon campaign has built a strong sense of solidarity among a workforce spread across 11 eastern states and the District of Columbia.

“We do the updates, and when people send us e-mails in support, we turn around and put them in the next e-mail and that makes a nice circle when they see their comments the next time. We are getting a lot of feedback that this is a really effective way to keep people informed and mobilized,” Allen says. @