Who’s winning public opinion fight?
Charitable causes, fixing boilers all part of the art of persuasion
Britten Hepting was a little ticked off at Unifor.
The pickets around the Co-op Refinery Complex were delaying her husband, Shawn. He’s a truck driver, and the line was costing the family money. But then Shawn got to talking to the workers. He mentioned his young son, Easton, and the horrible pain condition he suffers from.
When the members of Unifor 594 heard about a Gofundme campaign to pay for Easton’s treatment in Italy, they sprang into action.
The Gofundme shot up by more than $10,000 within a couple days. Hepting was immensely grateful. Though she’s still not choosing sides, she’s warmed to the members of Unifor 594.
“Any ill feeling that I even had towards them before is not even a thought right now,” Hepting said. “I don’t feel anything but gratitude.”
Supporters of Unifor 594 wanted people to hear about the good deed. On their Facebook post promoting Easton’s fundraiser, they tagged virtually every media agency in the city. “Perhaps we can get a news story,” one commenter suggested. Two supporters sent links to the Leader-post, with one saying writing about the story would be better than “trying to put down the members of Unifor.”
In the bitter labour dispute between Unifor and the Co-op Refinery Complex, winning in the court of public opinion is part of winning at the bargaining table. Both sides are using almost every public relations tool at their disposal, from advertising to social media to well-publicized charitable activities.
Unifor 594 members helped Regina’s Buddhist centre with its dysfunctional boiler, while Coop Refinery Complex donated a sizable sum to the Leader-post’s Christmas Cheer fund.
The stakes aren’t quite so high as in the Crown strike, of course. Public opinion is critical in a dispute where one side is responsible to the voters. It matters less in the private sector. But it still matters, according to Scott Walsworth, associate professor of industrial relations at the University of Saskatchewan’s Edwards School of Business.
“In the private sector, public opinion is important if customers have a choice to go elsewhere,” he said. That’s particularly true in the Co-op system, where consumers are also, essentially, shareholders. Walsworth said a boycott campaign can go a long way in a labour dispute — if it works.
“On its face that’s a very effective strategy, because if you can essentially cut off the revenue of the employer, it makes the need to settle the dispute so much more important for the employer,” he said.
That’s precisely what Unifor 594 is trying to accomplish through its “Boycott Co-op” campaign. Local president Kevin Bittman thinks it’s working.
“When you visit the other gas stations in town, you definitely see that there’s less people shopping at the Co-op,” he said.
“I think it definitely is having an impact.”
He figures his members alone spend millions at the local Co-op every year. That’s all gone, Bittman estimates. And he insists Co-op shoppers from outside the union local are joining the fight.
Troy Verboom, CEO of the Sherwood Co-op in the Regina area, hasn’t noticed. He said sales are where they should be this time of year. The boycott has had no measurable impact, he said.
As for the mood of his members, he’s heard from supporters and opponents of the union. But not many.
“Personally I’ve taken a dozen or so calls,” said Verboom.
He knows he has the most to lose of any Co-op in the province. The union members are good customers. So are their families. But he isn’t pressuring Federated Co-operatives Limited (FCL) to give in to Unifor’s demands.
“FCL shares their profits with the retail co-ops and that provides us with the opportunity to share our profits with our members and support the communities in which we serve,” he said.
“The pressure is that has to continue.”
Bittman countered that local management also played down the impact of the Saskatoon Coop strike, but the numbers later showed a greater loss compared to the year before.
Tony Van Burgsteden, vice-president of finance with FCL, said local Co-ops “100 per cent supportive of us.”
“They still see people coming to their stores, filling up with fuel, going into the food store,” he said.
FCL has made a serious advertising push in the Regina area to keep it that way. They’ve lined the stretch of the Ring Road closest to the refinery with billboards to push their message to commuters — on the ride to work and back.
“What’s Unifor striking for?” the first one asks.
The rest purport to answer that question, in FCL’S terms, laying out everything the company is offering from performance bonuses to “pension choice.”
Those billboards get Unifor mad. The union points out — correctly — that its members aren’t striking, but locked out.
Unifor has countered with its own billboards. It has also placed ads in the Leader-post pushing a simple boycott message with big visuals. Co-op has taken out more verbose newspaper ads. Both sides have produced their own videos and shared them online.
Barbara Phillips is a marketing professor at the Edwards School of Business who has studied union advertising. When asked to rate who’s doing a better job of putting out effective ads during the refinery dispute, she picks Unifor.
“Right now, I think the union is winning in the sense of having really clear ads,” she said. “They have a really clear call to action. They show the people that are affected. They show a diversity of people. They show solidarity.
“I find that’s a bit lacking on the other side so far.”
She finds some of the Co-op ads text-heavy, overly complex and short on visual interest.
“I understand that they have complex things to explain,” she said. “But the problem is, people don’t read complex things. They don’t care.”
There are things both sides are doing well. They’re both using big, eye-catching numbers to make their points. Unifor points out the refinery makes $3 million per day, while the refinery has drawn attention to the $123,000 an average unionized worker earns annually.
“The company’s trying to frame the union as greedy and unreasonable; and the union is trying to frame the company as greedy and unreasonable,” Phillips said.
Unifor might have the advertising edge. But a winning message doesn’t mean winning the war, in
Phillips’s view. Even with the best advertising, changing attitudes is hard. Changing behaviour is harder still.
The default setting is for people to ignore the message and carry on as before, shopping at the Co-op.
“They’re facing a huge barrier because people are creatures of habit and we don’t like change,” Phillips said.
“Inertia is on the side of the company.”
Walsworth notes that over the past 15 years, Saskatchewan has become more “business friendly” at labour’s expense.
“People don’t react with the same kind of shock and horror when they hear that scabs are being brought across the picket line.”
Unifor’s decision to post a video of people it claimed were “scabs” at CRC may have attracted shock and horror online — but much of it was directed against the union. Unifor has since edited out a photo of restaurant owner Kalpesh Patel, who said he was misidentified and threatened to sue.
Walsworth said there’s no firm evidence about how the public reacts to that kind of video. He thinks it’s more about intimidation than public relations.
“The downside of course, is that the general public sometimes feels that this is an overly aggressive tactic,” he said.
“Whether or not the backlash is worth it remains to be seen.”
Bittman thinks whatever animosity the union might have attracted is outweighed by the support.
“We get way more honks than fingers in a day,” he said Thursday, the same day an angry trucker was photographed giving picketers at a blockade a one-finger salute.
As for Hepting, she admits she initially had some suspicions about whether her family was becoming part of a public-relations campaign. But she doesn’t really care. She prefers to assume the best in people.
Even if the Unifor members wanted to publicize their donations, she believes they chipped in for the right reasons.
“I choose to believe that they did it to help us,” she said.
They’re facing a huge barrier because people are creatures of habit and we don’t like change. Inertia is on the side of the company.