Thread by @TobiasHigbie

4 weeks into the biggest strike in US higher education history, the UAW is clearly winning the PR battle. A 🧵 on campaign communications, the changing media landscape, and the next phases of #UAWonStrike /1
latimes.com/california/sto…

Reports abt #UAWonStrike at UC's 10 campuses have been notably sympathetic. UC tried first to portray union demands as greedy, then to reassure public they had been negotiating in good faith all along--the union is being unreasonable and mean, we need a mediator! Didn't work /2

In previous years, media more often repeated UCs talking points--esp. listing graduate employee salaries on 100% FTE basis when most are limited to 50-66% FTE. That talking point didn't fly this time. Is unionization at news orgs like @latguild helping to educate reporters? /3

Also helps that more than 70% of the public express support for labor unions, up from just 48% in 2010. Apparently, UC doesn't know this.

Side note: stock image with this story is indicative of long-standing media framing of organized labor. /4 news.gallup.com/poll/398303/ap…

What worked for the UAW? The voices of union members framed the terms of #UCStrike. Stories about impossibly low salaries, struggling to survive in the context of the wider cost of living crisis, living in cars and going hungry amidst plenty. UC can't win that fight. /5

Labor historians will look back on the short videos featuring union members as a key messaging strategy that really worked. These and others are on the UAW's Vimeo page /6 vimeo.com/user128315726

Now comes the hard part. As Michael Meranze notes, the UC approaches the conflict as a normal negotiation while the strikers "cannot continue with relatively minor adjustments in the dollar amount of their monthly pay." So far UC's offers are not enough /7 utotherescue.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-st…

Beyond the bargaining table, not part of the UAW, students are protesting university austerity more generally under the banner #COLA4All. On five UC campuses, undergrad groups temporarily "liberated" dining halls to highlight food insecurity /8

https://twitter.com/CharmaineSChua/status/1600635749736402944

4 weeks into the strike, our education machine is falling apart w/o the labor of UAW members. UC slow-walked the negotiations and now wants to lay the blame for the chaos on strikers and faculty supporters. That story probably won't play either, but we'll soon find out /9

Postscript: interested in progressive campaign communication and framing strategies? I recommend the Words to Win By podcast: wordstowinby-pod.com