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Join the Member Action Team (MAT)
What is a MAT?
The Member Action Team is a tool to communicate with and mobilize members around issues they care about. The communication works two-ways, allowing Union and bargaining leadership to relay important information to the members and members to send feedback and suggestions to the leadership. MAT also works as a resource for members to ask for help and information from the Union. When a Union Action is pending, the MAT will ensure strong turnout and member participation for the event.
MAT Structure
MAT Coordinator(s): one or more individuals who work directly with Union leadership and the Bargaining Team. MAT Coordinators relay member feedback to leadership, disseminate important information to members through MAT Captains, and plan and mobilize members for Actions.
MAT Captains: leaders in the actual worksites who relay information to and from a specific group of coworkers. To avoid overwhelming any one MAT Captain, the goal is to have one captain in each University building or worksite with 5–10 bargaining unit members. To achieve this goal, we need roughly 150 MAT Captains throughout the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus and extension offices.
Stewards: While not all MAT Captains need to be Stewards, all Stewards should be MAT Captains. Since Stewards know the members in their worksite best, so they will be tasked with recommending people they think would be good MAT Captains to the MAT Coordinator to help us reach the goal of 150. This also reduces the burden on individual Stewards, especially in employee-dense building such as McKinley Health Center.
IMPORTANT: MAT Captains should represent the diversity of the workforce. This includes not only race, gender, and age, but also worksite, job classification, shift, etc.
Examples of MAT communications:
- Listening to co-workers issues, problems, and concerns and communicating them to leadership
- Providing contact information of the nearby union steward to co-workers
- Distributing written communications, such as newsletters or flyers, to co-workers
- Welcoming, orienting, and signing up new employees
- Letting the union leadership know of new employees so they can be invited to New Hire Orientation
- Relaying updates on contract negotiations from the Bargaining Team
- Motivating and mobilizing members to participate in Union Actions, including distributing materials (wrist bands, fliers, signs, etc.) that may be necessary for the Actions
AFSCME 3700 