Quarter-million calls made during Toronto CUPE Strike In the longest-ever strike in Toronto Civic workers’ history, the 26,000 members of CUPE Local 79 and TCEU Local 416 staged an epic showdown with Mayor David Miller, who was determined to wring massive concessions from City employees. Miller particularly targeted the longstanding sick day banking system that had been negotiated years ago in lieu of a wage increase. Over the course of the nearly six-week strike, Local 79 President Ann Dembinski and Local 416 President Mark Ferguson used Union Calling several times to update members on bargaining, quash rumours, announce rallies, bolster ...

Saskatchewan Nurses – Working Conditions Survey Saskatchewan Union of Nurses President Rosalee Longmoore, called over 8,000 SUN members to survey them on what they would do if working conditions for nurses in the province did not dramatically improve over the next three years. Saskatchewan is currently short over 1,000 nurses and the stresses on existing nurses are becoming intolerable.  

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1000A Membership Bargaining Survey UFCW Local 1000A used Union Calling to survey over 14,000 supermarket members throughout Ontario on their bargaining priorities. In several subsequent calls, President Kevin Corporon kept members continuously updated during prolonged contract negotiations. The knowledge gained from the survey was invaluable in giving the bargaining committee the confidence that they were speaking for the members. The bargaining update calls created unprecedented solidarity that resulted in an excellent settlement that raised wages and protected jobs even though the employer was experiencing marketplace difficulties and was undergoing major restructuring.

Just want to say thank you again for the speed in which Union Calling gets messages out. I realize that it was short notice but I continue to be impressed with the work of your organization. I have passed this on to many other groups within OECTA as an effective and cost savings way of communicating with members.

We kept our membership around Ontario up to date on collective bargaining developments using Union Calling. The members loved having one consistent message that was always timely. They felt like they were part of the negotiation process, well informed and eagerly awaiting the next update. At the end of negotiations, late at night, Union Calling got an urgent message out amazingly fast. Their people are great and really care about unions.

Our Local has been using the services of Union Calling for the last few years to provide messaging to our membership as well advertising our membership meetings. As a direct result of our Union Calling messages, we have had an increase in member attendance and involvement in our Local union activities, meetings and events. As well, Union Calling has been able to accommodate our short notice requests. I called Union Calling late on a Saturday night for an urgent call that had to go out on Sunday. My call was answered immediately by a person, not a machine, and my ...

Union Calling is friendly, accommodating and very easy to work with. They bring a welcome personal touch to a technological business. We highly recommend them.

Within 3 hours of my first call to Union Calling, our 1200+ members across Canada began receiving our message. With a 90% successful connection rate, and an average cost of less than a postage stamp per member, this is the most efficient and effective means of getting a message out that we’ve found! We plan to make it an integral part of our negotiation communications.

Union Calling’s multilingual capability helped bring out hundreds of our members to a successful rally for International Hotel Workers Day. We had lots of positive feedback about my call to them.  

Union Calling helped make our rally at the Toronto District School Board a great success and they have always been there for us when we have to contact our members quickly.  

Thank you for going the extra mile to accommodate our messaging over the past week. I know there were several times we gave you very short notice and your response was “we’ll get it done”. Our members really liked the direct communication and I’m confident we will continue to use your service in the future.

The response to your service was overwhelmingly positive. The turnout for the meeting was huge and I believe the calls made a big difference in getting the members out to the meeting. Your service is “A-one” and we would not hesitate to use you again.

Union Calling was a key component of our communications campaign, which helped us keep DynaLIFE Dx employees informed prior to, and following the successful union certification vote.

This is the best new idea in membership communications to come along in a long time! Our members really appreciated hearing directly from me what was happening during our negotiations. In the past, they got much of their information about bargaining progress from the media or from rumours. We made six call-outs at critical points during negotiations and the response was totally positive.

Just want to let you know that several people here have been very impressed with the results from last week’s phone broadcast. Awesome speed and coverage. We are happy campers. Thanks for the good fast work.

We used Union Calling to keep our Master Bargaining Committee and Stewards informed of important developments during recent negotiations with Loblaw Companies. It was a very efficient way of delivering the news. Everybody got exactly the same message at more or less the same time, even though they were scattered over an area of more than 500 square miles. This really works. It’s quite effective and the feedback we got was that it was very well received by our members.

We used Union Calling to alert our members on Sunday of Brampton Transit’s plan to adopt new policies that would violate our collective agreement. I told our members, in no uncertain terms, that we would grieve these violations. On Monday, when management said that the union approved these new policies, our members knew it was a lie, and responded accordingly (in no uncertain terms!). Union Calling kept us one step ahead of management. It’s a great service that helps us level the playing field.

It was really something getting a personal message from the president. It didn’t matter that it was a recording because everyone knows he couldn’t call us all individually. What matters is that he wanted to communicate something important to us and he did it in his own voice. It’s a lot better than a letter, a lot more personal. Everybody I’ve talked to who got the call was impressed.