By J. Heath Shatouhy
Your union needs to be able to publish its own content without routing through someone else first—no waiting on a vendor to process the request. No hoping the right person is available. When something happens that members need to know about, the decision to send should sit with the union, not with whoever’s managing the queue.
If that’s not how it works today, the consequences aren’t just operational. They’re legal. And over time, they show up in whether members stay engaged at all.
Most communication platforms built for unions don’t give locals direct publishing access. Content goes to the vendor’s team first to be formatted, approved, or simply processed before it reaches members. It’s the standard model, and most locals accept it because it’s what they were sold. Some have tried to fix it with new platforms before, gone through months of setup, and ended up back where they started.
But the complaint we hear most often from locals who’ve been through the managed-service model isn’t about the platform. It’s about the wait. A time-sensitive update submitted on a Friday sits until Monday. A safety notice queues while the situation it describes is already unfolding. By the time the message lands, the window has closed, or members have already heard something else.
Direct publishing, where the local controls when content goes out, without a vendor in between, is a different design choice. Not every platform has it, but it’s worth knowing which kind you have.
When management has news, it goes through systems they control, on their schedule, without coordinating with an outside party. The union doesn’t have that by default.
What most locals are working with instead: an email list that hasn’t been updated since the last contract. A Facebook post where a third of members see if the algorithm cooperates. Stewards getting a text and passing it along — differently, to different people, at different times.
By the time the union’s message lands, members have already heard management’s version, or three versions from the group chat. Either way, you’re not setting the record; you’re correcting it. Research from MIT found that false information spreads six times faster than the truth.[1] Every one of these problems — the management gap, the legal exposure, the long-term engagement drift — has the same root cause: the union doesn’t control when its own message goes out.
Unions carry a duty of fair representation. Part of that duty is keeping members informed — about grievance deadlines, workplace safety hazards, benefits changes, and contract updates. That obligation doesn’t come with a grace period for a slow workflow.
When a member misses a filing deadline because the notice came two days late, or a safety issue wasn’t communicated before someone got hurt, the question of who bears responsibility gets complicated. The communication processes the union relies on become part of that conversation, whether anyone planned for it or not.
The immediate fallout rarely gets traced back to the communication itself. The steward who spent a full shift on the phone because the update didn’t go out. The member made a decision based on what HR told them because the union’s message hadn’t arrived. The grievance that didn’t get filed because the deadline passed before anyone knew it was coming.
Each of these is recoverable on its own. But they don’t stay isolated; they accumulate into a membership that has quietly learned not to look to the union first. And once that habit is established, the long-term cost is harder to reverse than anything that happened in the short term.
Member participation in union elections has dropped 42% in recent years.[2] Members who regularly hear from the union before management frames an issue are more likely to pay attention when it matters. Members who’ve learned to expect a lag in communication tend to disengage in ways like skipping votes, sitting out actions, and showing up less.
In right-to-work states, that drift has direct financial consequences. Membership rates there are roughly half the rate of non-RTW states — 6% versus 13% [3] — and members who don’t feel connected to the union are the first to question whether dues are worth paying.
Now consider our earlier example regarding a late Friday announcement, but with direct publishing in place. Management announces a shift change at 4:00 p.m. The business agent drafts a response, hits send, and every member has the union’s position in their pocket before they clock out. No ticket submitted. No weekend wait. No Monday morning spent correcting what management said on Friday.
That’s not a dramatic transformation. It’s just the union being first. But being first consistently on the news that matters, at the moments that count, is what builds engagement and trust. And that habit is what shows up when the union really needs people to move.
If management put something out to your members today, how many steps would it take before the union’s response reached everyone?
If that answer makes you uncomfortable, it’s worth understanding why. Not because the people involved aren’t working hard, but because the process may not be built for what the union requires.
Learn more at unionstrongapp.com