During the course of campaigning for Equity Council, I’ve had several conversations, all of which seem to come down to a number: 9%.
That’s the percentage of members who turned out to vote in the last Council Elections. Last year’s elections for specialist and regional committees saw only a 6% turnout. And my local branch typically sees about 5% of the membership actually showing up regularly. All of them in the same ballpark, nothing reaching double figures, and all suggesting that over 90% of Equity members don’t feel a sense of engagement.
What can we do about this? Easy, we can spend time writing to them, phoning them up, throw a party or maybe pop round for a cup of tea and a chat. My branch often has a high-profile speaker that invariably brings a massively increased turnout. So it’s quite easy to get people interested or excited for a brief time. Then they mostly fade. It’s not really about giving people a great one-off initiative that’ll give them a quick buzz, it’s about offering them something in a way that makes for sustainable engagement.
You might wonder why I find this troublesome. Because if those 90% aren’t engaged, the union can’t properly operate on the basis of its members’ strength, those elected have a very weak mandate, and ultimately, there’s a stronger risk that the 90% might leave. More subjectively, but on first-hand judgement, rather than statistics, I find it worrying when many people I work with come over all pale and distant at any mention of ‘Equity’. These are professional performers, and if the union that’s meant to represent them gets that response, this tells me something just isn’t sitting right.
I believe that to address that, we have to start asking not “What?” but “Why?” Why do 90% of members regularly not feel engaged?
Is it because they feel Equity doesn’t have anything to offer them? Maybe not, or more would have left. There are a number of member benefits, which may be useful or not, depending on your area of work, or indeed whether you’re working or not. Equity’s current thrust is away from being a provider of such services, but I don’t believe that in itself is of huge significance. Those services are useful, but they don’t offer the sort of weight to be a vital ‘must-have’ reason for being part of Equity. If you’re working in the West End, regional theatre or TV, Equity’s relevance is manifest in the working terms and conditions you benefit from. But how many people is that? Increasingly I find myself speculating that this too might be around that figure of 9%.
I’ve spoken with a number of colleagues, many of whom either pay their subs but aren’t terribly bothered (or indeed feel alienated) because they’re not working on Equity contract jobs, or others who have simply stopped paying their subs because they’re not getting Equity-contract work and therefore don’t feel part of the Equity ‘fold’. I could argue that there are all sorts of other services they’d get if they kept their membership, or give them a guilt-trip about their duty of solidarity and support for other actors. But the truth is, these services don’t feel like a persuasive argument in isolation, and we seem to have an individualistic culture where everyone feels so disempowered they’re hard pressed to look after their themselves, never mind supporting each other.
What I want to be able to say to people is something that really resonates with them, strikes at the heart of their sense of professional existence, and makes them feel that Equity is a deeply integral (and integrated) part of their working life, however much work they get, or whatever sort of work they do. I want to be able to articulate a ‘must-have’ quality that Equity represents for them.
I’ve been asking that question for a few years. It stemmed from hearing older members yearn for the days of the closed shop (which some still do), when Equity could afford to have restricted entry. I rarely heard those people say “and that gave us a great sense of collective power”: the message I heard was usually that the closed shop let Equity cater to a self-interest of protecting work for its members, but that was a tremendous ‘must-have’ reason for being a member.
We have moved on, but can we create a similar sense of Equity’s worth, while being a mass-membership union? I’d like to think so. I don’t necessarily know how, but suspect it does lie in the territory of creating value. Brand value if you will. If Apple can have half the population sticking iPods to their ears and still feeling special about that, surely we can achieve something similar. It’s about Equity tapping into a sense of aspiration and emotional engagement and having members feel that Equity membership is part of delivering on those aspirations. It’s not necessarily about giving them something individually (like services), but if Equity can achieve a position of respect, status and authority in the industry, this will be reflected on its members, and their sense of the value of membership.
Another possibility is that those 90% just need to see some evidence that Equity speaks in terms that make sense to them. Certainly we should celebrating the successful negotiation of an improved agreement, but let’s not get carried away in thinking everyone will celebrate. Those who see such jobs as a distant hope might – understandably – feel underwhelmed, and possibly even more resentful. It may be a question of working out what a union can meaningfully deliver to the 90%, but the first stage is surely to start listening to – and hearing – them.
A further route might be to piggy-back the Big Society. I find myself cringing at this, and have been very sceptical of the pre-election proposal to put vital national services into the hands of well-meaning amateurs. But – and this depends massively on how Big Society plays out – if it does manage to create a greater sense of social responsibility and civic engagement, that could itself do a lot of the work for us. If the coalition government can actually create a society (assuming they acknowledge the existence of such a thing), where social contribution is prized more highly than individual achievement, not only would that help give status to Equity, but especially credit those who give their time in active service of their community.
So, the Gwyndaf challenge to you is this: what’s the big ‘must-have?’ It’s a precious and elusive thing, and I need your help in finding it.
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