Creating a Labor Union Survey: Expert Help, Template
Allen Frantsen, CPA - Managing Partner
Our labor unions are not narrow, self-seeking groups. They have raised wages, shortened hours, and provided supplemental benefits.
Identify What Members Truly Value
MaxDiff is a research method used to measure relative preference by forcing respondents to make clear trade-offs. Instead of evaluating items in isolation, participants select the most and least important options from small sets, revealing what truly matters when choices must be made.
The results produce scored outputs that highlight relative importance across all items, helping teams focus resources where they will have the greatest impact. By clearly separating high-value drivers from lower-priority factors, MaxDiff supports more efficient decision-making and reduces wasted effort.
Types of Union Surveys
Contract Negotiations
This is a typical use of union surveys. Information collected from a survey can help quantify what union members need or value most for an upcoming contract. That data can be shared with the company's management to help improve transparency and open up communication.
Validate Information
A union survey is perfect for validating information or claims made by management. For example, a company's management may say to the union leaders, "We offer enough training." A union rep could send out a survey to the members and find out the opposite; employee training is lacking.
Surveys can also be used to build email and phone number lists, which would help increase communication with the union.
Improve Voter Turnout
Improving voting turnout is an important reason for a union survey. If engagement seems low, union leaders can send a survey to make members feel more engaged, and their opinions matter.
General Feedback
General feedback could ask union members how much they trust union leaders, how communication between the union and members can be improved, or ideas on how to get members more engaged.
A general union survey could also include a Net Promoter Score question. This question will give you a precise number to track and benchmark over time. Increasing this number means more engaged and happy union members.
Using rating scales alongside open-ended questions allows unions to combine measurable trends with qualitative insight. This approach helps leaders identify priority issues, monitor progress over time, and make informed decisions based on structured member feedback rather than isolated anecdotes.
Collecting Union Survey Responses
Before collecting large-scale responses from all union members, you should do a test. Send the survey to a few union members, union management, and the company's management. Gather feedback to make sure questions are correctly asked or if additional questions need to be included.
SurveyKing offers numerous ways to collect responses. Here are the convenient ones for union surveys:
Simple Web Link
A web link is the easiest way to collect responses. You can email this link to members from an internal email program, include in on flyers, or even print a QR code and include it on posters in the workplace.
SurveyKing offers an option to have members enter their employee or union ID to proceed with the survey, eliminating low-quality responses. An option can be marked only to allow one response per device, eliminating the possibility of ballot-box stuffing.
Email Invitation
This method sends an email from the SurveyKing system to each union member (or other recipients) that are imported. Messages can be customized and could even dynamically include a member's first or last name. In addition, each email contains a unique survey link for the individual. This method helps boost response rates, as reminders can be sent to people who have not yet taken the survey.
Anonymous Surveys
Labor unions often rely on anonymous surveys during contract negotiations or member votes. Anonymity ensures every voice is heard without fear of retaliation, leading to more candid responses and higher participation rates. With features like passcode access to prevent duplicate entries, SurveyKing makes it easy to gather secure, untraceable feedback that union leaders can trust.
Analyzing Results
The reporting section for each survey includes charts, graphs, and data tables. Data can be filtered, segmented, and exported. In addition, presentational items such as commentary can be added. Reports can also be customized by deleting or adding questions as needed.
Benchmark Results
Track results over time. If you notice employee satisfaction is low for a department, keep track of that number. As you conduct surveys, look for improvements.
MaxDiff
Look at the probability of an item being selected as most important. The ratio of least/most preferred will identify divisive attributes; some employees might value one thing while others strongly oppose the same thing.
Segments
Separate your results by job category, department, location, or tenure. You might notice the needs of the different employees are different.
Sharing Results
Each survey report you create can be shared with one click via the "Share Report" button. This creates a shareable link for your report. The link can be sent to union members, union management, company management, and outside stakeholders. These end users can multiple the data on their end without affecting your report, enabling users to reach their own conclusions from the data.
Each report counts the number of unique devices that submitted a response. This helps to increase transparency further. In addition, if union members get an interactive report with data favorable to their contact stance, it helps increase union trust.
How We Can Help
SurveyKing can build a complete, customized solution for your organization and provide support at every stage.
Most groups begin with a preliminary survey that includes open-ended questions such as asking members to list the top three things they want most. This first survey helps identify key priorities and also builds verified email and phone lists for future communication. While the preliminary survey is underway, our team helps categorize and summarize responses to identify common themes.
Next, we’ll design a follow-up survey based on those insights. This second phase is more detailed and focused, allowing leadership to prioritize issues and prepare for upcoming negotiations.
Once responses are collected, our analysts will guide your team through the results, build custom reports, and provide advanced statistical modeling to help translate member input into an actionable strategy.
In addition to surveys, we can help modernize your voting process. Options include fully electronic voting or hybrid systems where members vote using paper mail ballots with QR codes, which are tallied electronically, making participation easier while maintaining auditability and transparency.
For organizations that need broader technical or financial leadership, we also offer executive consulting services for financial guidance. CTO support helps unions improve their data systems, infrastructure, and technology integrations. CFO services strengthen budgeting, dues forecasting, and financial reporting, aligning resources with member priorities and ensuring long-term fiscal health.
By combining analytics, technology, and strategy, SurveyKing helps labor unions and associations engage members more effectively and make data-driven decisions with confidence.
Labor Union Survey Sample Questions
- How would you evaluate the working conditions in your area?
- How often do you attend union meetings?
- What do you believe the union’s top bargaining priority should be? (This could be a preliminary survey question, used to create a MaxDiff or ranking question then)
- Do you know who your steward is?
- How often do you attend union meetings?
- How do you stay informed about union activities?
- Do you see value in being a union member?
- How often do you communicate with your steward about union or job matters?
- Which benefits do you find LEAST and MOST important during this round of union negotiations?
- What are the top 3 things that would make working conditions better? (Click Ranking Question)
- Do you think the supervisor is fair in terms of punishment for work violations?
- How much confidence do you have in management's ability to grow and sustain the company?
- What would you do to improve the organization?
- Do you feel the organization provides adequate training?
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We have you covered on anything from customer surveys, employee surveys, to market research. Get started and create your first survey for free.