Text Messaging 2

Just an update on the progress (slow) of my local unions experiment with text messaging. Sent a 400 piece mailing and got a poor response. Only about a dozen members responded, a majority of whom wanted to be contacted in Spanish. My thought that folks would jump on this because we would automatically alert them to new job postings appears, with hindsight, to have been optimistic. There are a couple of other possible explanations for the response rate. We had a number of bad addresses (which this experiment is trying to redress), we suspect that many members just don't open mail from the union, and/or the letter could have been lost.

So, it's back to the drawing board. Steve suggested a contest with prizes to get people to buy in. This is certainly a possibility, but I think it will take a concerted effort on my part to sell stewards and leaders on the program. At our next leadership assembly I will take some time to speak with the leaders and do a more in-depth push to persuade folks to try it.

Meanwhile on the tech side a couple of developments. In a response to one of my earlier posts I had some contact with a service bureau that dispatches and forwards text messages. The pricing is problematic. Although, it was cheaper than some services, it is still a per message charge of .05 with some bulk discounts. This is an American pricing model which I think will collapse in the future. The only way this will work for unions is a monthly price for unlimited messages both coming and going.

Another vendor has demo-ed for me a virtual dashboard which allows you to dispatch, at one time, voice messages, emails, text messages at no charge. It does not allow you to receive text messages. The idea is to cut out the service bureau and the per message charge by driving responses either to a special url, phone bulletin board or voice call. We sent a message in both Spanish and English and tried to drive people to a specific web page in their chosen language. People received the text message but apparently did not have the capacity to go to the url and fill out a simple survey because, once again, the American model charges a premium on web browsing and if it is a choice between a calling plan and a plan plus web access I suspect most still choose voice. The good part of this is that the Local can own the software/hardware to dispatch messages in various mediums, the bad thing is you can't receive text messages.

I am still trying to figure this problem out. The easiest way would be to have a service bureau in the equation, but I already have too many hops if I want to include translation and preserve the multi-medium option.

HC in a post has pointed to a site called "meebo" which is an IM site. I've gone there but haven't really had a hard look. It does appear that it's multi-lingual - which is interesting. When I have the time, I will investigate further.

However, hc also indicated that he though text messaging would be useful only if there was encryption otherwise it should be abandoned as a business app of little tactical value. If I understand him correctly, I don't agree for a couple of reasons.

First, there are many, many, examples of either progressive forces or low-income workers using text messaging successfully, both in the U.S. and abroad, without any special security precautions, which I've spoken about in my earlier posts. Second, employers would need member phone numbers to access the network which they currently do not have. Third, even if employers or right-wing forces could worm in, so what?

If text messaging as a technology is easily perverted by the opposition it is a criticism you could make about any digitial technology. For example, I recently read a story where youtube was used to plant an anti-global warming, anti-Al Gore, video and disguise it as a funny submission by an ordinary person. In fact, it was developed and deployed by the oil companies.

Disinformation from the right-wing is nothing new, whether it is in the form of planting spies and provocateurs at union meetings, letters to the editors as "concerned" citizens attacking workers as "greedy", or phoney web posts. If anything, digital technologies make it easier to research and "out" disinformation and there are many cases of this happening including the youtube one. It will always be a fact of political life. Secrecy is over, we just have to suck it up.

Another quick note. 1199 Ohio is about to launch a member leader intranet along the lines of Myspace which is really exciting. This is an experiment to let members control the discussion and something I haven't seen unions do before. They have taken great pains to vette and prepare their member leaders over a period of seven months and say they have a solid core of 500 members ready to participate. They are even offering free computer training. I will be watching this experiment closely to see what benefits/problems they encounter and as a model for my own attempts at tech innovation in union locals.