James A. McClure

In 1968 I celebrated Labor Day in the middle of a strike.

I was hired by Illinois Bell Telephone’s public relations department when I got out of the Navy in April of that year, shortly after a five-month strike began. Because the telephone company cannot shut down during a strike, management employees were pressed into service to keep the system working. I was a switchboard operator, installed phones and drove a supply truck through hostile picket lines.

I finally got around to working in public relations but strikes became a key component of my career. I went through six contract strikes: 1968 and 1971 at Illinois Bell, 1974 at Western Electric, 1983 and 1989 at Illinois Bell and a school strike in 1998 when I was an independent consultant. Not counting wildcat walkouts. 

After that first strike I was a public relations manager rather than a substitute installer. I handled media relations for the Western Electric strike in 1974, employee communications for Illinois Bell’s 1989 strike, and assisted with strike-related PR in 1971 and 1983. 

Strikes are best avoided and can be devastating if allowed to drag on for months. When they happen, managing communications is an interesting professional challenge that I found satisfying.

How strikes happen

Union-management bargaining is an adversarial process in which both sides press demands and negotiate a compromise. Labor contracts are detailed and the minutiae of union jurisdiction, shift differentials and work rules are as open to negotiations as wages and benefits. Management usually is willing to trade higher wages and benefits for more flexible work rules.

Information warfare is part of the process because the union needs the support of its members to go out on strike if necessary. Management needs to explain its position to employees, customers and investors. Local politicians may get into the act at the request of the union.  Both sides use a variety of legal tactics that generally will be misunderstood by the news media. 

When bargaining begins, unions members vote to authorize a strike. This does NOT mean they are voting to strike (as the news media report) but merely authorizing their leadership to call a strike if negotiations break down. Otherwise the union will have no bargaining power. 

When negotiations break down the union calls a strike. Not all strikes are alike. A strike lasting a few days is largely symbolic: Workers blow off steam, are convinced that their leaders are tough and make up any lost wages with overtime. More serious strikes last longer. 

Wildcat strikes are walkouts that are not authorized by the union, usually by a small group of employees expressing a local grievance. I’m sure it was just coincidence that I saw a number of wildcat strikes on warm Friday afternoons in springtime.

A strike has its own rules of engagement. The union has the prerogative to be combative and shrill because it needs the news media to motivate its members and enlist public support for the strike. Management, on the other hand, must be restrained and statesmanlike to maintain its relations with customers, investors and regulators. The result is a media slugfest in which the union attacks and management counters union disinformation in a cross between a chess game and a bar fight. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The news media arena

Strikes at large companies are always newsworthy.  Most reporters know nothing about bargaining procedures and labor law and are inclined to side with the union. During the first day of the Western Electric strike I had an amusing exchange with a reporter on live radio. The reporter announced that 16,000 employees were on strike and asked me to comment. I quickly corrected him and said we had 11,000 employees on strike. 

For some reason the reporter chose to argue with me (on live radio), insisting that the union claimed 16,000 strikers. I explained that the company is in a better position than the union to know how many people are at work because they punch timecards and we pay them. The reporter continued to stand by the union’s claim. Finally I said: “If you want to believe there are 16,000 people on strike that’s fine, but let me assure you that only 11,000 of them work for Western Electric.”

Some union disinformation tactics are more challenging. During Illinois Bell labor negotiations the union got the National Organization for Women to release a statement charging that the company’s proposed contract was unfair to women because it offered higher wage increases to top technician job titles that were dominated by men. Within a few hours we countered with statistics showing that employees in lower pay grades were being offered a higher-percentage wage increase, and that the majority of employees promoted into the top job titles were women. The news media quickly dropped the story and many of our women managers dropped their NOW memberships. 

Since management usually is on the receiving end of media attacks, quick response is essential. At Illinois Bell and Western Electric my public relations colleagues and I worked closely with labor relations executives and lawyers who could approve our statements quickly enough to win the news cycle. 

That was not possible when I worked with a suburban school district during a teachers’ strike. The school board spent all day micromanaging a media statement and the union dominated the news coverage. I resolved to never again take on a public school board as a client. 

Keeping employees informed

Communicating with employees during a strike is even more important than fighting the news battle. Most employees have only a vague idea of why they’re striking. A proposal for modest changes to the company medical plan will prompt folks on the picket line to scream that the company is taking away their healthcare. 

Employee communications is a long-term investment. Illinois Bell and Western Electric, both subsidiaries of AT&T, had earned credibility by keeping employees well-informed through publications and supervisory communications. Illinois Bell’s phone-in employee newscast on an answering system was so popular during strikes that we had to add circuits to meet demand for up-to-the-minute information. 

Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works in Chicago had a general manager who was good at communicating with employees on the factory floor. The strike called by the company’s national union saw vandalism and violence at other locations, but at Hawthorne the GM visited the picket line every day to chat with striking employees. I could even ride my bicycle through the picket lines without being hassled. 

The communications job isn’t over when an agreement ends the strike. The union needs to convince its members to ratify the contract — not a sure thing – by boasting that the strike was a decisive victory. Most union contracts are a victory for management, too, but management needs to wait until the contract is ratified to tell shareholders how much money the company saved by negotiating more flexible work rules. 

As inflation continues to drag down the economy we’re likely to see more strikes. In most cases, at least in the private sector, they will end quickly and confirm a healthy balance of power between labor and management. I will enjoy watching from the sidelines, will miss the gamesmanship and will not believe what I see in the news media. 

Futurists and science-fiction writers have been warning us about artificial intelligence for years. Movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey advanced the notion that computers eventually will be smarter than we are and ultimately will take over. Open the pod bay doors, Hal.

Now artificial intelligence (AI) technology is here. ChatBot systems like ChatGPT connect a language capability to large-scale digital research – which enables it to answer questions and write college term papers. It’s as if the annoyingly lame “chat” feature on customer service websites just graduated from MIT and swallowed Google. This has led to speculation about the number and kinds of jobs AI could replace such as customer service people, data analysts, paralegals, market analysts, even journalists.

So powerful is this technology that experts like Elon Musk are calling for a pause in developing artificial intelligence to figure things out and make sure the technology is used responsibly. 

Predictably, the politicians are getting involved. The rapid growth of ChatGPT is prompting calls for regulation from Congress. I’m sure our elected representatives are concerned about the potential impact of artificial intelligence on democracy and their constituents. 

There may be a more important motivation:  Politicians are worried that artificial intelligence will replace THEM.

This may be a valid concern, especially for members of Congress. Consider what our elected representatives actually do. They make speeches. So can ChatGPT. Legislators review information and vote on legislation. Check. We already know ChatGPT is politically biased. I’ll bet the system even can be programmed to ask donors for contributions.

The senior senator from my state is a case in point. Since the U.S. Senate no longer debates legislation, his speeches on the Senate floor are largely performative and ripe for ChatGPT. My senator is in such lock-step with his donors and party leaders that his floor votes probably could be handled by a basic iPhone app. His social media posts already may be automated. 

Replacing Congress with artificial intelligence would be disruptive, of course. How can we expect 435 representatives and 100 senators to find honest work? Will we still need ribbon-cutting ceremonies for government projects? 

There may be some advantages, however. Artificial intelligence is lots better at math than any elected representative. It would be less likely to approve government spending the taxpayers can’t afford. 

What if a robo-representative could be programmed to evaluate public opinion polling and actually represent the views of the majority of its constituents? It probably would adopt moderate positions on issues such as abortion instead of stampeding to the extremes pushed by advocacy groups. 

This could make the government logical, businesslike and unifying, and that would be really disruptive. Eliminating political outrage would threaten the business models of CNN, Fox News, the New York Times and other media. But I guess the news media could survive by adopting their own radical change: use automated reporters to produce fair and balanced news coverage. 

I’ve been watching with bemusement as one American institution after another loses its credibility with the public. Fewer people believe much of what they hear from authority figures and I can’t blame them. I’m interested in this because I spent my public relations career helping employers and clients build trust with employees, customers and government regulators.  

It’s not complicated. In general, people will believe what you say if you do not lie to them, listen to them and refrain from harming them. The Public Relations Society of America’s code of professional ethics says roughly the same thing in fancier language. 

I saw these principles in action because I worked for a reasonably honest company. AT&T’s Bell System depended on a favorable reputation to sustain its regulated monopoly. Every employee signed a pledge to safeguard customer privacy, and I know of several executives who were fired for misbehavior. It may have helped that the chairman was a former Eagle scout. 

The company generally was treated fairly by the news media because we never ducked reporters’ questions (and in those days media still covered news fairly). When I worked in media relations at Illinois Bell and Western Electric, we made it a point to be accessible to reporters 24 hours a day. Our answers did not always satisfy reporters but we never refused to comment. 

We had an agenda, of course, and promoted it with the understanding that the news media were not going to accept our talking points at face value. Rare attempts to spin the news fell flat. When AT&T became one of the first companies to report more than $1 billion in earnings, reporters laughed when the news release from the company’s headquarters in New York expressed the number as $1100 million instead of $1.1 billion. 

Building credibility with employees was equally important. Our employee publications, in addition to recognizing and highlighting employees, delivered information on issues affecting the business as candidly as possible. I had regular skirmishes with the company’s lawyers over this. 

During a period of massive layoffs at Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works, management needed to keep employees informed without arousing speculation in the news media. The solution was a confidential newsletter that was distributed to supervisors to guide them in talking to employees. While it was impossible to predict future layoffs, supervisors were able to explain to employees that more cuts were likely if present trends continued.

This long-term investment in credibility paid off during the frequent labor disputes and strikes the telecommunications industry encountered in the 1970s and 80s. Illinois Bell had a phone-in employee newscast on an answering system. It got little traffic under normal circumstances but was so popular during strikes that we had to add circuits to meet demand for up-to-the-minute information. During one strike a competing union hotline failed to gain traction because employees trusted management’s newscast more. 

Our biggest communications challenge was the court-ordered breakup of the Bell System in 1984. The largest corporate reorganization in history (at that time) was an unprecedented shock to an employee culture built on stability and certainty. For the first time, executives could not tell employees what was going to happen because the future of the business was tied up in antitrust litigation and regulatory proceedings. It was natural for some employees to suspect that the bosses know but aren’t telling us.

The solution was a series of employee town meetings that became a permanent part of the company’s communications. After some initial discomfort, Illinois Bell’s executives became comfortable answering questions from employees. A few even acknowledged responsibility for management’s occasional missteps. Being candid about what they knew, what they didn’t know, and why they didn’t know it renewed confidence in management and helped employees develop a tolerance for uncertainty. 

The same kind of challenge to credibility is facing American institutions and most of them are failing in the eyes of the public. Only 52% of Americans still trust the U.S. Center for Disease Control, 44% trust the FBI and only 16% trust newspapers. Members of Congress and used-car salesmen have roughly the same reputation for honesty. 

I wonder if the high-powered communications experts these organizations employ will start advising their principals to be transparent, candid and truthful. It’s not rocket science, and if all else fails it might work. 

When I get curious about a controversial political issue (okay, that ‘s redundant) one of the first things I do is check the public opinion polls. That’s because I’m a recovering opinion pollster.

One of the most satisfying jobs in my public relations career was as the opinion research director at Illinois Bell Telephone in the 1980s. Opinion polling is an important way to measure public relations work. Tabulating news coverage or web clicks does not really tell you whether you’ve raised awareness or changed opinions. Survey results are a reality check that may shatter assumptions (and I enjoyed being the corporate gadfly). 

I had no academic background in opinion research but worked with top-notch outside experts, including an advertising agency research director and a market research professor. Every business lunch with these folks was a master class.  

Opinion research can guide policy when it’s used effectively. My biggest project was when Illinois Bell sought regulatory approval to replace a patchwork of local telephone rates in the Chicago area with a single plan of usage-based rates. Because rate proposals like this had been defeated in other states by regulators and legislators, gaining public support was critical. 

We conducted more than a dozen focus groups and a number of telephone surveys to determine the issues most important to customers and test their reactions to specific proposals. (I was in hog heaven because the hundreds of millions of revenue dollars at stake in the rate proposal justified a generous research budget.) Our survey results helped shape the final rate proposal and ease negotiations with consumer groups and regulators. The rate plan ultimately was approved. 

A focus group is a facilitated discussion with a dozen or so people to elicit their opinions. Researchers observe the discussion behind one-way glass or on video. This is qualitative research that identifies issues and reveals a range of viewpoints but does not represent a majority opinion. It’s a good way to test products and TV commercials. You don’t want the boss observing a focus group, by the way. He’s bound to say: “See? I was right all along. That lady agrees with me!”

Major decisions require a two-step process: Focus groups to identify what the issues are, followed by a quantitative survey of hundreds of respondents to determine majority opinion. Focus group findings help formulate questions for these large-scale surveys. Without this step, you may miss something important when you write the questionnaire. 

Once in a while focus groups can guide a clear decision. Illinois Bell’s rate proposal would have eliminated a premium plan with unlimited calling for a flat monthly rate. In the focus groups we noticed that the most outspoken consumers, who emerged as virtually every group’s natural leaders, subscribed to the unlimited plan and liked it. We quickly concluded that angering the people most likely to write their legislators was not a good strategy, and persuaded management to grandfather the unlimited plan for existing customers instead of eliminating it. 

Public opinion often changes over time as events unfold, as we see with many political issues. During the run-up to the court-imposed breakup of AT&T in 1984, I conducted a tracking survey that asked the same questions in a series of surveys over several years. We found that customers overwhelmingly favored the breakup until it actually affected them. Then some were indignant: “You mean I have to get long distance phone service from a different company and pay more for local service?” When I presented my survey findings I described the sudden opinion shift as the “holy shit moment.” 

We may be seeing a significant shift in public opinion on gun control in the wake of a spate of mass shootings. Congress is working on bipartisan legislation that reflects a strong public consensus for expanded background checks and “red flag” laws but avoids measures with less public support such as allowing teachers to carry guns and banning “assault-style” weapons. 

Opinion survey findings are only as useful as their interpretation. When I worked with Unilever’s foodservice business I conducted a first-ever satisfaction survey of hundreds of employees who attended a lavish annual sales meeting. My survey respondents liked the presentations, hotel accommodations and recreational activities but were critical of the food. This worried the sales department. A month or so later I conducted a survey of another employee conference and found similar criticism of the food. Then I noticed that when I went out to lunch with the company’s managers they always critiqued the restaurant. I discussed this with my clients and we came to the same conclusion: This was a food company and the employees were foodies. Criticizing what they were fed was in their DNA and was not a management problem. 

Academic research is important and mostly useful. I enjoyed partnering with college professors in surveys for the National Stuttering Association. But I’m inclined to trust corporate surveys a little more because businesses have a bigger stake in the outcome. An academic paper that’s later refuted is embarrassing, but a blunder like Coca-Cola’s New Coke costs millions of dollars and ends careers. Professional polling companies also have a lot of skin in the game.

One of the reasons I check polling data as part of my news consumption is that politicians and pundits not only fail to represent public opinion but often misrepresent it. On the contentious abortion issue, for instance, polls show that the majority of Americans favor a right to abortion in the early stages of pregnancy but only about 20% support late-term abortion and 10 to 15% want abortion to be completely illegal. 

The end of Roe v Wade will force politicians to play for keeps on this issue for the first time by actually passing legislation. Opinion polls suggest that most Americans will support the kind of moderate laws most European countries have enacted. Yet some politicians — who apparently have not read the polls — are stampeding to the fringes by pushing for either completely unrestricted abortion or a total abortion ban. It will be interesting to see ow this plays out.

Election polling is particularly slippery. Deciding whom to survey requires guessing which groups of people are going to vote, which may not be the same mix of people who voted last time. I enjoy getting calls from local political pollsters during election season. Sometimes they test campaign arguments by asking my reaction to statements such as: Candidate X failed to pay his taxes in 2011. Does this make your opinion less favorable? My usual response is: No, I already know he’s a crook. Usually I can guess which candidate sponsored the survey.