How to Survey the Members on Climate Change

If your Union is seeking to gain a deeper understanding of its members’ opinions and concerns on climate change, use our Union Climate Change Survey!

Here are some basic suggestions about using this survey:

Start with a committee – this needs to be a group activity. Getting the surveys out, making sure members respond, and tabulating the results are tasks that need to be shared. A committee approach also helps demonstrate support for doing the survey.

Define a target group – the survey can be conducted of members at a meeting, a stewards conference, or any Union gathering. It can be used to survey a worksite, a local, or larger group within your union, or even across several unions – like a labor council or state AFL-CIO.

Decide how to actually conduct the survey – basically it can be done three ways.

1. The survey can be distributed and the members asked to fill it out and get it back to the union. Usually it is best to have stewards or other activists get the surveys out and collect them.
2. The survey can be conducted by an activist asking the member the questions and recording his/her answers.
3. The survey can be posted online with active fields to put responses. Members would need to be alerted to its location and encouraged to complete the survey.

Run a “campaign” to increase membership response – just like a bargaining survey, or other membership activity, the more you promote the survey and encourage responses, the more responses you will get. Depending on the size of the target group, it takes some work and maybe some resources. But it does not have to be excessive.

Tally the results – utilize your committee to tally up the survey responses. Make lists of statements written into the survey answers.

Let people know the results – you need first & foremost to share the results with the group that was surveyed. Beyond that, you will want to give the information, maybe with a short report, to Union leadership, up the hierarchy as far as you feel you can go. You might want to consider social media and press work as well.

Click HERE to download “Union Climate Change Survey.”