Unions, social media and young workers—evidence from the UK

• Date: 01 March 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12154
• Author: David J. Houghton,Andy Hodder
• Published date: 01 March 2020

40 New Technology, Work and Employment © 2019 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and

John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

New Technology, Work and Employment 35:1

ISSN 1468-005X

Unions, social media and young workers—

evidence from the UK

Andy Hodder and David J. Houghton

This paper explores the way in which the youth sections of

three British unions use social media. We contribute to both

the literature on unions and young workers, and union engage-

ment with social media by providing the rst systematic exam-

inations of union youth sections’ social media usage in terms

of method, scope and content. The paper examines differenc-

es in Twitter usage between the youth sections of GMB, PCS

and Unite over a two‐year period from June 1, 2014, to May 31,

2016. The paper considers the extent to which these union ac-

counts fully utilise the interactive capabilities of social media,

and whether the content of messages is specically targeted to-

wards young workers. We nd similarities between the three

accounts in terms of message content and focus and that the

youth sections of unions are more involved with the interactive

capabilities of Web 2.0 than the existing literature suggests.

Keywords: trade unions, young workers, social media, union

renewal, union communications, Twitter, Web 2.0.

Introduction

This paper explores the way in which the youth sections of three British unions use

social media. A complex relationship exists between young workers and unions, with

the extant literature, suggesting that while young workers are not against unionisa-

tion, membership among this age group is particularly low (Hodder and Kretsos,

2015). Much has been written about the potential for unions to embrace the Internet

(Greene et al., 2003; Martinez Lucio and Walker, 2005) and social media platforms such

as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (Bryson et al., 2010; Panogiotopolus and Barnett,

2015) to engage young workers and improve levels of organisation and activism. It has

been suggested that these new technologies are ‘changing the face of community en-

gagement because of their ability to recruit people to causes, organize collective action,

raise awareness, inuence attitudes, raise funds, and communicate with decision‐

makers’ (McAllister, 2013: 93).

Young people in particular have high levels of engagement with social media. In

January 2018, 88 per cent of Internet users aged 18–29years were using at least one

social media platform (Pew Internet Research, 2018). The use of social media by unions

is pertinent to young workers as it has been argued that unions ‘need to adopt the

communication technologies used by young people’ (Bailey et al., 2010: 57), with

Hodder and Houghton (2015) urging future research into this area. However, what is

Andy Hodder (a.j.hodder@bham.ac.uk) is a Senior Lecturer in Employment Relations, Birmingham

Business School, University of Birmingham, UK.

David J. Houghton (d.j.houghton@bham.ac.uk) is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Birmingham Busi-

ness School, University of Birmingham, UK.

Unions, social media and young workers 41

© 2019 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and

John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

lacking from the research is a discussion of how and for what purpose different unions

use social media.

In this paper, we contribute to both the literature on unions and young workers, and

union engagement with social media. In doing so, we revisit and re‐examine previous

debates about union democracy. To do this, we provide the rst systematic examina-

tions of union youth sections’ social media usage in terms of method, scope and con-

tent. The paper examines differences in Twitter usage between the youth sections of

GMB, PCS and Unite over a two‐year period from June 1, 2014, to May 31, 2016. The

paper considers the extent to which these union accounts fully utilise the interactive

capabilities of social media, and whether the content of messages is specically tar-

geted towards young workers. The remainder of the paper is structured as follows.

The next section provides an overview of the existing literature on unions and young

workers, before the methods are outlined in Section 3. Section 4 discusses our ndings

and explicates the similarities and differences between the ways in which the three

unions use Twitter. The nal section concludes the paper.

Review of the literature

Following a substantial period of union decline throughout the 1980s and early 1990s,

trade unions began to reassess their agendas in order to survive. Central to the union

renewal agenda has been the need for unions to increase their appeal to under‐repre-

sented groups, including young workers (Murray, 2017). The reasons for low levels of

unionisation among young workers have been debated in the existing literature (see

Waddington and Kerr (2002) and Hodder and Kretsos (2015) for a detailed discussion).

Unions have long been criticised for not being appealing to younger workers, but since

the turn to organising, there has been evidence in the UK and beyond of union initia-

tives to alter this (Cha et al., 2018; Simms et al., 2018). Improving the image of unions

has been central to these initiatives in order to create an agenda to which young people

can relate (Serrano Pascual and Waddington, 2000). Unions have attempted to im-

prove their visibility and relevance to the younger generation, who are often found to

have limited knowledge of unions, and potentially be malleable to joining unions if

they were to be made aware of their existence and purpose (Gomez et al., 2002; Freeman

and Diamond, 2003). However, it should be noted that some have cautioned against

some union approaches that may pigeon‐hole or patronise young workers (Dufour‐

Poirier and Laroche, 2015; Hodder et al., 2018), advocating instead for organising

workers as workers, rather than specically young workers (Simms, 2012: 113).

There have been several union attempts to change their image among young people

and the wider public through greater utilisation of their ‘communicative power’—in-

creasing their presence on the Internet and social media (Geelan, 2015). The early liter-

ature on unions and the Internet (Web 1.0) focused on whether unions would be able

to utilise the Internet as a ‘radicalising and mobilising force, extending participation

and eroding barriers to activism’ (Saundry et al., 2007: 181). It was proposed that this

could be achieved through a ‘distributed discourse’—the reimagining of union democ-

racy to reduce or even remove the bureaucratic barriers said to exist between a union’s

leadership and ordinary members (Grieco, 2002; Carter et al., 2003; Greene et al., 2003;

Hogan et al., 2010).

Having evaluated union activity online in a number of different case studies, Greene

and Kirton (2003: 331) argued that the Internet had the potential to reinvigorate union-

ism through ‘the creation of new channels of communication and new opportunities to

participate—particularly for women members’. These new safe spaces would enable

democratic discussion free from interference, aided by more readily available internal

union information: ‘At the touch of a button, the individual union member can poten-

tially access and marshall a range of relevant industrial relations materials which

would have been almost impossible for the individual citizen to identify and collect

together in the past’ (Greene et al., 2003: 284). Around the same time, Freeman (2004)

and Freeman and Rogers (2002) were encouraging a form of ‘open source unionism’,