All the union news that's fit to blog...
In the last post, we talked about how digitisation isn’t just about tech – it’s about adapting to meet members’ modern needs and expectations. But of course it is also about tech, and about unions developing a new relationship with it. Tech systems shape what unions are able to do every day. And just as … Continue reading Digital unionism means systems and investment
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When trade unions talk about digital change, it’s easy to start with systems: a new CRM, an app, a website redesign. But when members experience the union, they don’t encounter this technical infrastructure. They encounter journeys. The TUC Digital Lab has worked on many themes around members’ interactions with their unions, such as online joining, … Continue reading Digital unionism means meeting members’ expectations
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In the 6 years we’ve been operating the TUC Digital Lab programme, the pilot projects, events and shared learning we’ve been running with our affiliated unions has generated a huge amount of content. There are reports, how-to-guides, case studies, workshop write-ups and blogs. It runs to over 330,000 words in all. And as it’s spread … Continue reading What is digital trades unionism? A short blog series
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Online voting in UK trade union statutory ballots is being introduced this year, as part of the government’s broader reforms to modernise workplace rights, under the Make Work Pay agenda. This is something the TUC and unions have consistently campaigned for, over more than two decades. And union experience with indicative ballots means we have a … Continue reading Preparing the union for online statutory balloting
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We’ve just released the latest major version of the TUC’s digital healthcheck tool, version 4.01. It’s been more than five years since our last version, so we wanted to revisit it and make some changes to reflect the fast-moving world of technology. What’s different, and what’s the same? We’ve looked across the whole tool to … Continue reading TUC digital healthcheck v4 – A new version of our union benchmarking tool
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The internet is getting worse by the day. Platforms like Google, Facebook or Amazon are getting unusable – crammed with intrusive ads, user surveillance and AI slop content. Tech workers who used to add value for users are laid off to improve share prices. It’s all part of the big tech playbook to build monopolies, … Continue reading Tech unions vs enshittification
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Brian Young is the founder and director of Action Network – a progressive tech co-op that’s become a backbone for digital campaigning and organising across the US labour and progressive movements. It operates the Action Network campaign CRM internationally, and is currently about to offer its organising toolset Action Builder to Europe for the first … Continue reading Building union power in the digital age: Lessons from Action Network’s Brian Young
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Brian Young is the founder and director of Action Network – a progressive tech co-op that’s become a backbone for digital campaigning and organising across the US labour and progressive movements. It operates the Action Network campaign CRM internationally, and is currently about to offer its organising toolset Action Builder to Europe for the first … Continue reading Building union power in the digital age: Lessons from Action Network’s Brian Young
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Phishing is the most common form of cyber attack, and in the last couple of years it’s been the starting point for some of the most damaging attacks on unions. Around the world and in the UK, unions have lost millions to scams, had their members’ personal data stolen, and been locked out of their … Continue reading Video: Why and how unions should use phishing simulation
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Cyber-crime is growing year on year in the UK. At the same time trade unions’ reliance on digital technology to operate effectively raises the stakes ever higher. If our computer networks are compromised by criminals, the results could be disastrous for our ability to operate, our finances, and the trust of our members. Even with … Continue reading Email phishing simulation to keep unions safe
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Back in 2015, Microsoft launched Windows 10. It quickly became the go-to operating system for businesses and individuals alike, thanks to an improved user interface, stability and compatibility with a wide range of hardware. But as technology moves on, so too does support. With Windows 11 having now been available for four years, Microsoft has … Continue reading Does your union still have Windows 10 PCs? Here’s what to do before Microsoft support ends
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A year on from our first TUC Digital Lab workshop exploring how unions might make use of Artificial Intelligence, we got together again to take a deeper dive into the topic. We were joined by Hannah O’Rourke of progressive digital network Campaign Lab to look at what unions had learned in the last year about … Continue reading How are unions using AI? What should our next steps be?
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We all aspire to ground our decisions in real data where possible, giving our unions’ activities the greatest chance of success. But in reality, there are often barriers to achieving this. Unions have lots of data, but it may be trapped in systems that few people can access. Sometimes data is paper based, in files … Continue reading Data visualisation for trade unions
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Online voting in union statutory elections has been a long time coming. The TUC launched our first campaign for eballoting in 2002, and unions started using it for non-statutory elections 25 years ago this year. Today, other organisations already make widespread use of the technology – from appointing boards for mutuals and NGOs, to electing … Continue reading Online balloting moves closer for unions
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Over the past three years, Australian unions have grown by an impressive 12.3%. Growth has been across most industries and in most unions. Particular areas have been in childcare and early years, amongst casualised industrial workers, and in the gig economy. New members have skewed younger and female. These achievements come on the back of … Continue reading New rights, new tech and union growth in Australia.
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Union building never gets anywhere without lots and lots of one-on-one conversations in the workplace. Whether it’s persuading workers to join, persuading members to take roles in collective actions, resolving conflicts, or negotiating between members and employers, a lot of these conversations can be difficult. That places high expectations on the union reps who need … Continue reading Augmenting union education with AI – PCS Case study
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When Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) announced changes to representation arrangements for its recognised unions, it agreed to improve the information it shared with new staff in grades A – C about their recognised unions as part of their onboarding journey. The bank agreed to giving background information on the unions, with videos and direct web … Continue reading Developing a targeted union landing page for employer inductions – Accord case study
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A new practical guide from the TUC Digital Lab. Effective digital engagement is crucial for unions to recruit new members, support and retain members, or to get members to take steps towards activism. And well-designed, high-performing landing pages are an important tool for achieving these goals. In each case, you need to convince a user … Continue reading Building more effective landing pages for unions
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A case study from Join Together on how they helped NEU to redesign their online joining process, and increase completed applications by 60%.
The post How Join Together revolutionised online member sign up for the NEU appeared first on TUC Digital …Read more…
The value of retaining union members is obvious. Unions should always be recruiting new members, but losing them unnecessarily means you need to work even harder to grow. This TUC Digital Lab webinar launched our new guide “A six-step plan to retaining more members”. Sam Jeffers of Join Together and Guste Matuleviciute of RCM joined unions … Continue reading Video: Retaining members webinar
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