By Becky Wright, Executive Director, Unions 21 | 4 min
When early unions were created, there was no telephone, no typewriter and until the late 19th century, no affordable newspapers. Organising workers across even a single town, let alone a national trade or industry, was a logistical challenge that still shapes the way our unions are structured.
Then, the platforms were the pubs, places of worship and the street. Hand written records and any physical gathering were the main technology.The first technological shift we had to adapt to was the arrival of affordable printing, which allowed for easier communication outside the meeting room as well as access to rule books. Railways and the telegraph allowed workers to connect and coordinate across distances and the national union conferences became physically possible, and a paid organiser could actually travel a circuit of branches.
Like any aspect of union structure, we need to regularly assess the platforms and technologies that we use to ensure that we are able to build strong capacity.
Who does our current technology stack serve? Do we have legacy systems built around compliance and reporting rather than organising and bargaining?
What infrastructure are we talking about?
Today, a union needs to consider its platforms as being grouped for the following need:
Data infrastructure, which relates to membership and employers: A CRM should be seen as the union's intelligence system and the single source of truth for membership data. Unions also need support to map workplaces, identify activists, track conversations and run digital organising campaigns.
Case management: Which covers logging, tracking, escalation pathways and reporting on outcomes of individual representation and allows the union to escalate to bargaining priorities.
Communications platforms: Distinct from the CRM, this covers how the union actually reaches members whether through email, SMS, apps, WhatsApp groups and member portals etc.
Financial, HR and governance systems are often seen as less glamorous but are very important to the union’s running as it covers dues collection, expense management, branch financial reporting and audit trails and staff development.
Across all of the above, there's a question about how unions use data to make decisions. Are density trends visible in real time? Are bargaining outcomes tracked? Is there a culture of using data for accountability, or is it collected and ignored?
It also needs to consider some key principles when creating a technological system that works for your union.
Principle one: Your data is your intelligence
A union that doesn't know its members can't organise them. Too often these systems are treated as admin infrastructure rather than what they actually are: the union's map of its own terrain.
Good membership data infrastructure tells you where density is falling before it becomes a crisis. It tells you which workplaces have no active rep, which sectors are growing, and which demographics are underrepresented in membership compared to the workforce. It gives your organisers something to work with rather than something to wrestle with.
Principle two: Technology should follow the work, not define it
One of the patterns we see repeatedly is unions adopting platforms because a peer union is using them, or because a supplier has made a compelling pitch, rather than because the platform solves a specific problem they've diagnosed. This is particularly acute with case management. Handling disciplinaries and grievances is one of the most member-facing things a union does, and the way that work is organised (how cases are logged, assigned, tracked, escalated) shapes the experience members have of their union.
When case management is driven by the constraints of a system not built for purpose rather than by what good casework practice actually requires, members and staff feel it.
Principle three: Today, communications infrastructure is organising infrastructure
Many unions still treat their communications platforms as a broadcast channel. Something goes out, members receive it, job done. But communications technology, used well, is one of the most powerful organising tools available.
The shift from broadcast to dialogue isn't just a tone question. It's a structural one. It requires platforms that allow two-way interaction, data that tells you who is engaging and who isn't, and a genuine commitment to acting on what members tell you. Without that last part, no platform does the job.
Principle four: Integration is a strategic choice, not a technical detail
Membership data needs to connect to case management. Communications platforms need to draw on organising intelligence. Financial systems have to easily connect with all systems. Each silo is a friction point, and friction, at scale, costs unions capacity they can't afford to lose.
The question of how your systems connect is a strategic question that deserves deliberate attention, not something to be resolved ad hoc when the pain gets bad enough.
