In 1968 I celebrated Labor Day in the middle of a strike.
I was hired by Illinois Bell Telephone’s public relations department when I got out of the Navy in April of that year, shortly after a five-month strike began. Because the telephone company cannot shut down during a strike, management employees were pressed into service to keep the system working. I was a switchboard operator, installed phones and drove a supply truck through hostile picket lines.
I finally got around to working in public relations but strikes became a key component of my career. I went through six contract strikes: 1968 and 1971 at Illinois Bell, 1974 at Western Electric, 1983 and 1989 at Illinois Bell and a school strike in 1998 when I was an independent consultant. Not counting wildcat walkouts.
After that first strike I was a public relations manager rather than a substitute installer. I handled media relations for the Western Electric strike in 1974, employee communications for Illinois Bell’s 1989 strike, and assisted with strike-related PR in 1971 and 1983.
Strikes are best avoided and can be devastating if allowed to drag on for months. When they happen, managing communications is an interesting professional challenge that I found satisfying.
How strikes happen
Union-management bargaining is an adversarial process in which both sides press demands and negotiate a compromise. Labor contracts are detailed and the minutiae of union jurisdiction, shift differentials and work rules are as open to negotiations as wages and benefits. Management usually is willing to trade higher wages and benefits for more flexible work rules.
Information warfare is part of the process because the union needs the support of its members to go out on strike if necessary. Management needs to explain its position to employees, customers and investors. Local politicians may get into the act at the request of the union. Both sides use a variety of legal tactics that generally will be misunderstood by the news media.
When bargaining begins, unions members vote to authorize a strike. This does NOT mean they are voting to strike (as the news media report) but merely authorizing their leadership to call a strike if negotiations break down. Otherwise the union will have no bargaining power.
When negotiations break down the union calls a strike. Not all strikes are alike. A strike lasting a few days is largely symbolic: Workers blow off steam, are convinced that their leaders are tough and make up any lost wages with overtime. More serious strikes last longer.
Wildcat strikes are walkouts that are not authorized by the union, usually by a small group of employees expressing a local grievance. I’m sure it was just coincidence that I saw a number of wildcat strikes on warm Friday afternoons in springtime.
A strike has its own rules of engagement. The union has the prerogative to be combative and shrill because it needs the news media to motivate its members and enlist public support for the strike. Management, on the other hand, must be restrained and statesmanlike to maintain its relations with customers, investors and regulators. The result is a media slugfest in which the union attacks and management counters union disinformation in a cross between a chess game and a bar fight. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The news media arena
Strikes at large companies are always newsworthy. Most reporters know nothing about bargaining procedures and labor law and are inclined to side with the union. During the first day of the Western Electric strike I had an amusing exchange with a reporter on live radio. The reporter announced that 16,000 employees were on strike and asked me to comment. I quickly corrected him and said we had 11,000 employees on strike.
For some reason the reporter chose to argue with me (on live radio), insisting that the union claimed 16,000 strikers. I explained that the company is in a better position than the union to know how many people are at work because they punch timecards and we pay them. The reporter continued to stand by the union’s claim. Finally I said: “If you want to believe there are 16,000 people on strike that’s fine, but let me assure you that only 11,000 of them work for Western Electric.”
Some union disinformation tactics are more challenging. During Illinois Bell labor negotiations the union got the National Organization for Women to release a statement charging that the company’s proposed contract was unfair to women because it offered higher wage increases to top technician job titles that were dominated by men. Within a few hours we countered with statistics showing that employees in lower pay grades were being offered a higher-percentage wage increase, and that the majority of employees promoted into the top job titles were women. The news media quickly dropped the story and many of our women managers dropped their NOW memberships.
Since management usually is on the receiving end of media attacks, quick response is essential. At Illinois Bell and Western Electric my public relations colleagues and I worked closely with labor relations executives and lawyers who could approve our statements quickly enough to win the news cycle.
That was not possible when I worked with a suburban school district during a teachers’ strike. The school board spent all day micromanaging a media statement and the union dominated the news coverage. I resolved to never again take on a public school board as a client.
Keeping employees informed
Communicating with employees during a strike is even more important than fighting the news battle. Most employees have only a vague idea of why they’re striking. A proposal for modest changes to the company medical plan will prompt folks on the picket line to scream that the company is taking away their healthcare.
Employee communications is a long-term investment. Illinois Bell and Western Electric, both subsidiaries of AT&T, had earned credibility by keeping employees well-informed through publications and supervisory communications. Illinois Bell’s phone-in employee newscast on an answering system was so popular during strikes that we had to add circuits to meet demand for up-to-the-minute information.
Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works in Chicago had a general manager who was good at communicating with employees on the factory floor. The strike called by the company’s national union saw vandalism and violence at other locations, but at Hawthorne the GM visited the picket line every day to chat with striking employees. I could even ride my bicycle through the picket lines without being hassled.
The communications job isn’t over when an agreement ends the strike. The union needs to convince its members to ratify the contract — not a sure thing – by boasting that the strike was a decisive victory. Most union contracts are a victory for management, too, but management needs to wait until the contract is ratified to tell shareholders how much money the company saved by negotiating more flexible work rules.
As inflation continues to drag down the economy we’re likely to see more strikes. In most cases, at least in the private sector, they will end quickly and confirm a healthy balance of power between labor and management. I will enjoy watching from the sidelines, will miss the gamesmanship and will not believe what I see in the news media.