When information needs to get from union leaders to workers, or from workers to leaders, or from one group of workers to another, we need to make sure that information is communicated quickly, accurately and directly. Arbolitos, also known as worker communication action networks, help us to do this.
Arbolitos, or “little trees”, are small worker action networks of no more than 5 to 7 workers. One person in each group is responsible for communicating information to the others. Communication is person-to-person and one-to-one.
Arbolitos got their name from aviation workers in South America. Trees start small and grow. The name helps us remember that worker networks require a lot of gardening and patience. There are a lot of branches, and there is a constant need for pruning.
Building and sustaining arbolito networks is critical to all of our union work. One of the most common mistakes unions make is to run campaigns and organising, collective bargaining, organisational transformation or advocacy work without the full support and involvement of the workers involved. If workers are uniformed and/or uninvolved, employer pressure and misinformation will be more effective. Improving worker communications and asking workers to take action is key.
There are many methods we can use to communicate with workers: newsletters, leaflets, websites, telephone calls, email, text messages, social media, news media meetings and person-to-person contact. All types of communication are useful, but the most effective communications are with person-to-person contact. Arbolitos help us organise these person-to-person contacts in a systematic way.
Thai Airways, a national carrier with a union collective agreement, created a low cost subsidiary, Wingspan, with no union and lower wages and conditions. The Thai Airways workers started reaching out to the Wingspan workers. At the beginning they had four Wingspan worker contacts. Wingspan workers are cabin crew, check-in and ground staff (catering, baggage and ramp services). Of the 4,000 permanent workers, over 3,000 received low daily wages (instead of monthly salaries), with no benefits. Workers had not received a pay rise in three years.
The Wingspan workers, with support from Thai Airways workers, built an extensive arbolito network, which enabled them to grow their membership, increase the education of the workers, and prepare for a strike. The new union now has the vast majority of the workers as members, has negotiated their first contract, and continues to organise.
In most cases, the largest group of workers in a workplace are the uninvolved workers, not the anti-union workers or the union activists. The uninvolved workers are the ones we need to reach, and the uninvolved workers benefit the most from ongoing personal conversations and connection. Many workers do not have fixed worksites. For these workers arbolitos are particularly important.
To form arbolitos, we can sort workers by home address or postal code, work teams, who knows who, work area, transport to and from work, shift or type of work. One easy way is to simply ask workers to identify 5 to 7 persons who they are willing to keep in regular contact with.
If your arbolito is large enough you will need coordinators, who will keep in touch with each worker who has an arbolito group of 5-7 workers.
You may want to set benchmarks for your arbolitos. For example, you might want to have one-to-one contact with 70% of the workers before you publically confront the boss or enter into negotiations for a collective agreement.
Asking workers to communicate with a small group of their coworkers is a simple and clear leadership task. Later, the arbolito leaders may want to take on other leadership responsibilities in the union, but this an easy task to begin with and does not require taking a public stand against the employer.
Each communication should include a request for workers to commit to a specific activity, an action step. The task should begin with things that are familiar, comfortable and low risk. The risk level can increase when workers are ready.
Workers will make their own decisions about how much risk to take when. Worker risk levels are likely to change as circumstances change, as additional information is added, and most importantly as their relationship to other workers and the union changes.
When workers are facing pressure or repression, you may not want the communicators to speak openly about the union or the existence of the arbolito structures. Use the arbolito structures to strengthen social relationships and discuss working conditions more generally or other topics of interest.
Accountability is critical. You will want to get regular reports from all the arbolito communicators. Ask whom they have spoken to and who participated. Assist with any questions that may come up. Do frequent spot checks to make sure that the correct message is being communicated.
If a communicator does not speak to their people, reassign the work or leave it undone until someone else comes forward. If a communicator does speak to their people, give support, recognition and leadership and educational opportunities. Prepare to be constantly changing and adjusting the arbolitos, pruning and fertilising as you go.
You will be looking for leaders and potential leaders to help build the arbolito networks. Good leaders are not necessarily the most outspoken or even the ones most in favour of the union. Good leaders are the people who are willing to do the work of organising and communicating with others.
Workers get involved in unions for many different reasons. Be able to share your own story of why you are involved. Sharing with each other deepens our relationships.
To identify leaders, ask workers who they rely on when there are workplace problems and who organises social events. Ask potential leaders to do small tasks and then spend time with those who complete the tasks.
Arbolitos can be used to target specific groups of underrepresented workers and get them more involved. Workers might be underrepresented in terms of age, work location or area, shift, type of worker, language, culture, gender, or any other grouping. Where there is more than one language or culture in a workplace, arbolitos are especially useful, as they allow for workers to discuss union issues in their own language and culture.
Arbolitos support union structures and workplace leaders, but they do not replace them. Workplace delegates and leaders should help identify potential arbolito communicators, while supporting, mentoring and holding them accountable.
When arbolito communicators are talking to other workers, the most important thing to remember is to not talk, but to listen. This is especially important if the workers are apathetic or fearful. An organiser should be listening about 80% of the time and talking not more than 20% of the time. If you don’t know the answer to a question, tell the person that you will find out and get back to them. Providing an open ear, support and solidarity is the most important thing.
Workers need to trust the information they receive from the union more than they trust what the employer, the media and often what their own friends and family are saying. The more workers trust each other and the union information, the easier it is to organise and campaign.
In 2015, after Macri (the right-wing candidate) won the presidential election in Argentina, activists developed an organising methodology known as “molecular organising”, which is based on developing small networks of people, similar to the arbolito structure. Molecular organising is based on people that you are in regular contact with (family, friends, coworkers, neighbours….). The goal was to engage, connect and discuss rather than avoid politics with people you are in contact with.
Workshops were held throughout the country, training activists on how to listen closely, ask questions to, and converse with, friends and family members about the upcoming national presidential election.
The goal of molecular organising is not to see another person as the “other”, but as someone to learn from, someone distinct but equal and to be able to listen and connect with empathy. In the words of the molecular organisers “A chemical change provokes substantial transformations in materials, changing its properties. When two different elements make contact and mix, they transform their molecular structure to transform into a new element. The connection with another element is a necessary condition to obtaining the new reaction. Nothing new will be obtained by talking to our already convinced comrades or arguing with hardcore rivals”.
Workshop participants practiced together how to listen and converse with empathy and committed to conversing with their family and friends about political life at a time when such conversations could be seen as divisive and difficult. Molecular organising was credited with helping win the election from the incumbent neoliberal candidate. However, molecular organising is much more than winning votes. In the words of Gastón Garriga, one of the founders, “To win a discussion with someone we know and care about is not the same as winning a vote”.
“Campañas Moleculares: Political Communication During Times of Big Data and Fake News, edited by Gastón Garriga, 2019, page 44-45
Will arbolitos be useful to your organising campaign? If so, how and where?
Discuss the workplace leaders’ structure of our union. How will you involve these union leaders in the creation of the arbolitos?
How will your recruit, train and support workers in forming arbolitos?
What information will you need to collect? How will track the arbolitos and develop accountability? How will you keep and maintain records?
What problems might arise from setting up arbolito networks? How might you overcome these problems?