Labor Unions and Social Media

I worked 7 years for a stevedoring company. As you may know, unions of this industry enjoy a high level of power, since they can stop the international trade of a country. I had good and bad experiences, but what I've seen in during my short experience is a shift on the way they communicate. When I started working, the  management didn't wanted them to have events together, because they will "network" and share ideas and probably join power to ask the company for additional benefits. In 2012, the idea of not having an event between different unions, didn't make sense, because they where already connected using blogs, facebook and twitter.

We as future managers should learn on how to efficiently communicate with unions, to build a sustainable future together, not against them. Social Media will play (are playing) an active role in this future of new communications and companies should learn how to use them to increase collaboration with unions.

The following link, shows media use by unions in USA and Canada:
http://www.mediabadger.com/2011/10/use-of-social-media-by-unions-canada-usa/

This is a blog for promoting social media usage in unions:
http://cyberunions.org/category/social-media-2/

This is a guide on how to use social media for unions, can be interesting to learn the strategies unions are implementing to define the way the company will communicate to them:
http://assets.usw.org/districts/district-02/documents/Social_Media_For_Unions.pdf

I hope you find this topic interesting.

Best regards,
Tomas Labra