Labor Rising & Leading Labor will take the weak technology that currently exist; and turn it into a powerful and aggressive platform that will substantially raise market share; and the younger members will lead the way. We as Building Trades members will negotiate our future CBA more along the lines of the massive social signals we collectively have – along with the skills we bring to the job.
If you’ve been following Labor Rising you already know we’re making large strides in reclaiming the labor movement in the Building Trades – and that we’re putting technology at the forefront of the movement. So far we’ve had our first 29 classes – 24 Foundations level classes, which are our classes recommended for Organizers/Agents that want to change the dynamics of market development in their local, and 6 Advanced classes, which take a deep dive into Controlling the Hiring of the non/anti-union, Opposition Research and very potent use of technology across 4 areas to make our Organizers equipped with the tactics to win!
The composite overview has been a 3.78 out of 4 – those in training really get what we’re doing and more they’re walking away with actionable strategies for tangible growth in market share. Now that the word has gotten out on Labor Rising, our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/laborrising) is up to 4,605 likes; the phone is busy, and the e-mail box is mostly full. So we released 2 more classes – 2 at the Foundations level and 1 at the Advanced level – you can check out www.laborrising.com for details on the new classes.
Anyways, you get the picture. Labor Rising adds a ton of value and as is the case with Organizing, we’re having a great time doing it. It’s a blast watching the reaction of our Organizers when they hear about how technology will be at the forefront of recapturing our market share. Everyone gets the new value proposition that Leading Labor brings www.leadinglabor.com the only question we’re getting is why we haven’t heard about this until now. Our Leading Labor consultants don’t really have the answer as to why this is such a new idea to unions – they’ve been doing this for clients since the Internet began. So our organizers sit there scratching their, often grey, hair – a little pissed, but mostly primed and ready to take action.
See I’m a grey hair as well and the more time I spend with these graduate students and high technology consultants the more I realize the chasm between what we know and what they know in regards to technology is huge. It’s the size of the Grand Canyon. If you’ve looked across the Grand Canyon you can appreciate the distance I’m referring to. They grew up with this stuff. To them its second nature and when you combine that with a formal business education, years of experience performing for clients, and Labor Rising you get Leading Labor.
When the first graduate student and I started to craft the strategy behind Leading Labor I got a little carried away with my research – I’ve been known to do that with research – it’s my nature. I had to know the current situation and how unions were using technology. I personally spent months and then years on my computer in addition to the pros. Anyways, I visited 1380 building trades’ union websites. Brothers and sisters, it wasn’t good. The website design and development was, as a composite – part of the problem. Flash being used wholesale, pictures without properly formatted content, tags with no relevancy, no Blogs to establish content on what we do, no You Tubes, no Google analytics etc… and the list is very long. Our vendors as a group gave us garbage. The Internet has fundamentally changed the way our markets work. The change is still fairly new in the grand scheme of things but it’s clear we do need help and to move! The good news is we now have a solution that can be understood and we have professionals who can deliver results. Our technology consultants are hard core. They have lots of actual case studies and examples on their ability to deliver results.
The best part of all this is how powerful it is for unions. Leading Labor leverages a dormant core competency unions already maintain for increased member hours and a really NEW value proposition which leads to growth in market share. It produces bottom line results for our contractors which means they happily stay, more it makes bringing on non-union contractors a whole new ball game.
Unions are sitting on a powder keg of social signals which if properly structured can change the dynamics of market development and politics decidedly in our favor.
The only thing stopping us – is us!
Danny L Caliendo
Organizer
Labor Rising Group
