The United Domestic Workers (UDW), a voluntary union for more than 200,000 home care and family childcare providers in California, faced a common challenge that many unions encounter – reaching their widespread membership. Members aren’t centralized in factories or offices; they work in private homes all across the state. But by leveraging innovative tools like peer-to-peer texting, UDW has overcome these barriers and revolutionized its member engagement. Here are the highlights from a recent conversation with Dan Arel, UDW’s Director of Communications, about the union’s journey.
A Mission Rooted in Support
Q: Can you tell us a little bit about UDW?
DAN: We represent about 200,000 home care and family childcare providers in California. We are a voluntary union, thanks in part to a Supreme Court ruling in 2014 called Harris v. Quinn, which meant that we could no longer just automatically sign up members as they joined the program. We have to actually go out and get them to voluntarily sign a membership card.
The members that we represent are home care providers. They take care of clients in the IHSS program, which is the In-Home Supportive Services. So this is a state-subsidized program at which low-income seniors and people living with disabilities can then pay a family member or any caregiver. On the childcare side, it's similar. We represent childcare providers who care for families in their homes, instead of larger centers that you see. They take care of kids who are on the state subsidy program, which is a program that helps low-income families be able to go back to work or keep their jobs even when they can't afford childcare.
Q: What are some of the challenges UDW has faced with such a large member base?
DAN: This year we reached a hundred thousand members. We are now at about 110,000 entering the new year here, making us the third-largest AFSCME affiliate in the country. We are not set up as a council, we're just one gigantic union. And so that presents its own challenges and things like that, but it's a huge accomplishment to grow from.
We kind of realized the general public didn't know who we were. When you think of workers in a steel factory in Pittsburgh, you think of United Steelworkers. When you think of Teamsters, you think of all these different things. When someone says, ‘My mom's a home care provider,’ you don't go UDW. We are large and we have this political force, but no one knows who we are. So one of the biggest challenges that we faced was public awareness. I want people to think of home care and childcare and think of UDW.
[UPCOMING WEBINAR: How UDW Mobilizes Members with Peer-to-Peer Texting]
The Turning Point: Peer-to-Peer Texting
Q: What started your texting journey?
DAN: Where we started was Hustle. That was the first we'd ever heard of. That was the first kind of organization that came in and got on our radar and we had this thing, but not really, we didn't know what to do with it yet peer-to-peer texting became this thing that we hadn't explored. And then 2018, the Camp Fires hit in Northern California and wiped out an entire city that we had members in. So 85 people died tens of thousands displaced. I mean the entire city itself was just left in rubble and we didn't know if our members were okay.
We didn't know what they needed. We didn't know what was happening. And it became like the wait, we can text them. We tried peer-to-peer for the very first time with a simple,”are you okay and what do you need?”
Q: What sort of campaigns are you running now? What does a regular week or month texting your members look like?
DAN: On the regular when there's no natural disasters or giant elections happening, it is mostly a lot of membership meeting turnout, but turnout for things like food drives or diaper distributions. Really it's about getting our members access to information, whether that be a membership meeting, food, or other things that we've come in touch with that we have to give out or to connect them to. Obviously it's huge during election season, so we're just coming out of election season, but we registered probably thousands of people to vote through Prompt.io.
Prompt.io For Union Workflows
Q: Are there certain features that have changed the way that we're able to mass communicate?
DAN: We had used Hustle in the past. One of the big things that moved us from Hustle was every single time I needed to target a certain subset of our membership, I had to go to our data department, ask for a new list of those people, upload it, and then create a campaign. With Prompt, one of the things that has been our saving grace is we upload one master list with all the tags and data sets we need.
Q: Are you running campaigns in multiple languages?
DAN: Yes, Spanish and Vietnamese! We're going to start doing a lot more graphics in our texts in Vietnamese because it helps us shorten what we're putting in the text message and then we can just make a text flyer or video for the event. So I believe that we'll be expanding into more languages as this time goes on.
Looking to 2025 and the Future of Unions
Q: How do you see UDW’s work expanding with texting?
DAN: These are the kind of platforms that we can use to get info out, rally, make the calls, take action. But at the end of the day, it's also going to be that big touch point of thinking back to the fires. Asking ‘Are you okay? And ‘what do you need?’ This is their union. This belongs to the members and it's about them. And so reaching every member during those times and making sure they're okay.
I envision there's going to be a lot of that communication going out of like, ‘Do you need help becoming a citizen?’ And that will be the way that we can connect people to our department that is going to be tasked with doing just that.
Q: Are there any 2025 campaigns that you're looking forward to?
DAN: There's a campaign coming up that is going to be massive for our members, and it is statewide bargaining for IHSS. So currently we represent 21 counties of California for home care providers, they all have to bargain for a contract in each county.
Q: Is there any advice you’d like to give other unions trying to engage members?
DAN: While email and traditional things like that will be a part of it, where we get the most bang for our buck is in texting.
You don't have to do things as you've always done them. If we stuck to the way we always done things, we never would've seen the membership turnout that we have. We need all of these unions to survive. We lost enough during Covid. We don't need to lose more now, especially with the government that's going to try to trip away at workers' rights. Unions are going to become more important than they've ever been in our lifetimes at least.
The story of UDW highlights the transformative power of peer-to-peer texting as a tool for union engagement. Peer-to-peer texting has given UDW a direct line to its members, enabling the union to meet their needs, amplify their voices, and rally for transformative change. As UDW prepares for statewide bargaining and other critical campaigns, texting will remain a cornerstone of its strategy.
As unions face mounting challenges in the years ahead, UDW’s experience serves as a roadmap for innovation, resilience, and the critical role of technology in organizing for the future. If you’d like to learn more about texting for member engagement, join our upcoming webinar “From Text to Action: How UDW Mobilizes Members with Peer-to-Peer Texting” on March 5th.
