Member Engagement NL | Cole Labour

Member Engagement & Participation

Member Engagement and Participation Newsletter

No. 5, January 2026

What is it with union meetings?

Some time has passed since my last newsletter on member engagement. As many readers know, five years ago I decided to research union leadership and member engagement at the doctoral level. Researching the cause, and potential remedies for leader-member disengagement has been fascinating and, best of all, is now completed (the degree, not my work on these issues). Building engagement between union leaders and their members has never been more important, and identifying the many moving parts is the first step. This newsletter will continue to explore these issues and identify various strategies to build engagement—I hope you find it informative. We’re growing our distribution list with every edition, please pass this newsletter along to your friends and colleagues and encourage them to sign up at info@colelabour.ca.

This edition was inspired by some questions I received from a senior representative of the firefighter sector in British Columbia who asked me about union meetings, remote attendance, and related questions. He and other union leaders have raised these issues: enough to warrant a series of newsletters to more fully explore each. So, with that in mind…what is it about union meetings and member attendance?

Behavioural vs. Attitudinal Focus

An earlier newsletter focused on how we assess member engagement—whether through a behavioural or attitudinal lens. Observers often consider meeting attendance as a proxy for member engagement. This “behavioural” measure is very limiting and inadequately considers a more suitable, multidimensional definition of member engagement. The alternative, “attitudinal” lens includes, but is not limited to, such things as the members’ frequency of reading union literature, watching videos, promoting the union in conversations (both during and outside of work), or assisting new members with understanding the union’s purpose and practices. This attitudinal lens assesses the ongoing relationship between the organization’s leaders and followers; their levels of awareness of and participation in the daily operation of the organization, particularly as it relates to supporting the organization’s mission, vision, and goals.

We often think of these elements as part of the members’ “social identity” or their role in an “organizational citizenship” capacity. We will examine these important factors in future newsletters. If you did not see the earlier newsletter that more fully considered the behavioural and attitudinal perspectives, I would be happy to send you a PDF version (email me at info@colelabour.ca). In the end, assessing meeting attendance is an incomplete exercise—meeting attendance is important, but it should not be the sole metric when measuring engagement.

The Purpose and General View of Member Meetings

In broad terms union meetings have four purposes: (i) ceremony, (ii) member communications to elected officials, (iii) elected officials communications to members, and (iv) a means of decision-making. The ceremonial aspect is often brief but should not be dismissed as unimportant. Ceremony is an opportunity to recognize the organization’s independence from the employer, its member-representation focus, unique history, and is an important moment to reinforce its purpose, mission, vision, and goals.

The two communications purposes may appear self-explanatory but cannot be undervalued. They invite scrutiny of the value and effectiveness of bidirectional communications—is there meaningful information exchanged between the union’s leaders and members in attendance, or is the meeting a one-direction reporting to the membership? There is an abundance of literature that supports the observation that persons assess their willingness to participate based on, in part, to their ability to have meaningful input into the organization. Some observers of union member engagement describe the decision to more actively participate in terms familiar to economists who characterize it as an “experienced good.” In other words, members often determine their longer-term interests based on their initial, or early impressions of the organization and whether they will benefit from investing more effort in the organization. This is particularly so for new generations of members who often have had little pre-employment exposure to what unions do. Leaders may want to consider whether meetings can be described as “action-oriented” or “information delivery” and whether bidirectional communications can be improved.

Finally, do meetings have a decision-making purpose and how meaningful are those decisions—are they administrative or substantive? Similarly, is the decision-making process hurried or perfunctory, or is it deliberative and inclusive?

The Key Takeaway

What does all this mean? A 2010 survey of 4,500 electrical workers found that 67% of the members, with seniority ranging from one to thirty years, had never attended a union meeting following their first swearing in. The survey also found three reasons why members were disinclined to attend “reporting” style meetings; (i) they had trust in their union’s leadership to run the organization, (ii) they were not interested, (iii) they could receive the same information through discussions with others, including shop stewards, members who attended, elected representatives, or newsletters. One of the key takeaways is the opportunity to reflect on the nature of the exchange of information with a particular focus on the direction of information from the members to the union’s leadership. This is consistent with a “followership” approach to assessing meetings, where members value the opportunity to provide meaningful input.

Summary

Limiting our assessment of engagement to behavioural measures, like meeting attendance, unnecessarily focuses the issue on organizational leadership—“What am I doing as the leader and why are the members not attending?” This is hardly a surprise: bookstore shelves are overflowing with content on leadership—we are preoccupied with it as the solution to these puzzling, and misunderstood circumstances. I do not dismiss the importance of leadership—it is one of several critical factors in union engagement—but I would argue that the consideration of engagement issues is more thorough when examined through a “followership” lens. What motivates members to attend a meeting and how can we develop strategies to increase this motivation? It may be as simple as conducting a survey or focus group to seek the membership’s input (which itself is consistent with the “valued input” interests that are critical to a followership perspective). We will be spending more time in future editions of this newsletter looking at member engagement through a followership lens.

Union Engagement Newsletter – Taking it to the Next Level

I have had great feedback on this newsletter over the last two years, including reader comments or questions (as was received by the B.C. firefighter and others). I’m planning to take this newsletter up to the next level in the spring to include more content, deeper analysis, and other subjects of interest to union leaders. I hope you will continue to join me.

Previous Newsletters

If this is your first newsletter on this topic and you want to receive the earlier edition, please email us at info@colelabour.ca and we will send you a PDF copy.

For more information about COLE LABOUR, visit our website here.

COLE LABOUR

Bill Cole created COLE LABOUR in early 2023 to focus on collective bargaining, interest arbitration, negotiation training and organizational development for labour unions, with a particular focus on first responders and health care. Bill has extensive experience representing unions in collective bargaining in the police, firefighter, health care, airline pilot, hotel workers, steelworkers, broader public and private sectors. He has wide-ranging experience in mediation and interest arbitration in multiple sectors and jurisdictions across Canada. Bill has developed and delivered introductory, intermediate, and advanced negotiation training to thousands of union representatives across North America.

Bill is a Senior Research Associate at Harvard's Center for Labor and a Just Economy. He is a regular speaker at Harvard's annual Trade Union Program where he works with union leaders from around the world on issues relating to collective bargaining and member engagement.

He is the co-author of The Art of Collective Bargaining available at Thomson Reuters.

Subscribe to our Newsletters.

If you think others would find this newsletter interesting, please feel free forward it to them.

We offer the following newsletters:

Collective Bargaining in Canada
Interest Arbitration in Canada
Police Collective Bargaining in Canada
Firefighter Collective Bargaining in Canada
Paramedic Collective Bargaining in Canada
Union Member Engagement & Participation

All our newsletters will be delivered in digital format, by email. If you would like to subscribe please confirm which newsletter you are interested in at info@colelabour.ca