The Free Media and Labor: Communicating Trade Union Campaigns, Victories and Struggles

If there is a big challenge among trade unionists today, it would be the new way of communicating labor ideas, struggles and victories.

“We have a wide range of social media platforms for free, but how do we use them to meet the ends of our laborers?”, “How does effective and modern communication affect labor campaigns in the offline world?”, “How do we use the different types of free media as a campaign tool for labor campaigns?”—these questions were asked during the Policy and Campaign Strategic Planning of Building and Wood Workers International (BWI).

Headed by BWI Education Secretary Carlo ‘Tos’ Anonuevo, the event was “designed to rethink the ways of doing communications of policy officers of BWI and its affiliates to magnify the impact and reach of BWI’s campaigns”, he said.

The participants took courses on topics on Labour Advocacy Campaigning, Innovative Campaigning, Social Media, Investigative Journalism and Labor Research. BWI Global Campaign Director Jin Sook Lee said that “effective communication by learning free platforms on social media will boost labor campaigns and help it win”.

After the refresher and learning courses, the participants immediately had communication-campaign planning sessions for certain topics of interests of BWI Global. “Our time here should be spent on the practical ones so that we don’t plan, plan, plan, but we do, do, do and make the change we need to see”, said BWI General Secretary Albert Emilio ‘Ambet’ Yuson.

The activity ended up with a site visit to Rappler Philippine Office, a new media news company to learn experiences of Rappler in the communication industry. Rappler related on how civic engagement and communication blend with each other using social media platforms.

The 3-day BWI Policy and Campaigns Workshop was conducted in Discovery Suites, Ortigas, Pasig City with FES-Philippines last 16-18 April 2018.