Just two days into the SEPTA strike and both sides were
already issuing snarky news releases:
The union needs “added urgency to reach an agreement to
go back to work,” SEPTA board Chairman Pasquale T. Deon said.
“SEPTA’s bargaining team and high-priced outside lawyers
stonewalled contract talks for months prior to the strike,” said Willie Brown,
president of the Transport Workers Union Local 234.
What kind of media strategy is this?
Pretty typical, but maybe a little premature on the
vitriol, said public relations strategists on both management and labor sides
familiar with labor disputes.
Even if labor and management can’t agree on a contract,
they can agree on one important strategy: Each wants the public on its side,
and that’s particularly the case in a strike that so affects the daily lives of
the public.
“You want to point out how the workers’ position is
helpful to the public,” said Candice Johnson, a top union spokeswoman for the
Communications Workers of America, the union that was on strike against Verizon
Communications Inc.
“You try not to negotiate your deal in the media,” said
Susan Buehler, executive vice president of the Bellevue Communications Group, a
Philadelphia public relations agency that has represented management in labor
disputes at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, Temple University Hospital, and
Acme, as well as several area school districts.
“But in the case of SEPTA and the fact that so many
people are impacted, people want to know why, what are the specifics. The best
way is to communicate through the media. You don’t want to go tit for tat on
every issue, but you have to lay out the argument,” she said.
Late in the strike’s second day, SEPTA’s Deon issued a
news release that criticized the union for a lack of urgency, laid out its
bargaining positions on the pension, wage increases and health care, and urged
the union to suspend its strike during the election, if an agreement is not
reached. The next morning, Brown countered with a release that accused Deon of
misleading the public and elected officials.
Experts insisted they weren’t specifically criticizing
the board or the union in discussing strategy. But the consensus was that
toning down the rhetoric in favor of facts is generally the best course.
“I’m not a big believer in calling names and making
allegations,” said Michael Sitrick, of Sitrick & Co., a Los Angeles crisis
communications firm called in during many big-stakes conflicts. “People may
interpret that the louder the screaming, the less the facts.”
Johnson said much the same: “You want to build public
support, and you can’t do it if you are just screaming at the other side or
just being perceived as angry.” An effective strategy, she said, would be allow
workers to give the message to the public through the media, so the public
understands the issues from the workers’ perspectives.
Johnson’s counterpart at Verizon Corp., Rich Young,
director of external communications, said news releases may be aimed partly at
updating the striking employees more quickly than would be possible with a
letter in the mail.
“Union members don’t know what’s going on from hour to
hour and from day to day,” he said. “During a strike, there aren’t a lot of
effective ways to communicate with them.”
But, he said, it can be tricky.
Journalists, he said, tend to be sympathetic toward
unions, and many are represented by unions. (Journalists at the Inquirer, Daily
News, and philly.com are represented by the Newspaper Guild, a division of the
Communications Workers of America.) “And their lens is toward the common man
rather than toward the big corporation.”
While strategists from both sides aren’t averse to
pointing out misdeeds committed by their opponents, that’s not the best
approach, according to Andrew McDonald, managing director of the public affairs
division of BerlinRosen Public Affairs, a New York agency that often represents
unions. His comments just as easily could have come from any of the management
media consultants interviewed:
“Talk less about the negotiation process," he said,
"and more about the impact on people’s lives.”
Source: Philly.com
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