Rhetorical Strategies in Union Organizing

Abstract

This study examines a union organizing campaign to assess the rhetorical strategies used by both union organizers and management. Bowers and Ochs’s typology of agitation and control rhetoric is used to analyze these strategies. The union organizers relied on promulgation (e.g., sarcasm, co-opting company messages, and straightforward explanation), polarization, and solidification to gain worker support and later added specific forms of focusing on the issue, visualizing the future, making personal testimonials, using repetition, and having the last word. Management relied on counter persuasion, which included diversion of attention, drawbacks of change, images of a negative future, education, sarcasm, and polarization to resist the organizing effort. The analysis underscored the importance of examining labor organizing campaigns from a rhetorical perspective. Future studies concerning organizing campaigns are discussed.