To form arbolitos, we can sort workers by home address or postal code, work teams, who knows who, work area, transport to and from work, shift or type of work. One easy way is to simply ask workers to identify 5 to 7 persons who they are willing to keep in regular contact with.
If your arbolito is large enough you will need coordinators, who will keep in touch with each worker who has an arbolito group of 5-7 workers.
You may want to set benchmarks for your arbolitos. For example, you might want to have one-to-one contact with 70% of the workers before you publically confront the boss or enter into negotiations for a collective agreement.
Asking workers to communicate with a small group of their coworkers is a simple and clear leadership task. Later, the arbolito leaders may want to take on other leadership responsibilities in the union, but this an easy task to begin with and does not require taking a public stand against the employer.
Each communication should include a request for workers to commit to a specific activity, an action step. The task should begin with things that are familiar, comfortable and low risk. The risk level can increase when workers are ready.
Workers will make their own decisions about how much risk to take when. Worker risk levels are likely to change as circumstances change, as additional information is added, and most importantly as their relationship to other workers and the union changes.
When workers are facing pressure or repression, you may not want the communicators to speak openly about the union or the existence of the arbolito structures. Use the arbolito structures to strengthen social relationships and discuss working conditions more generally or other topics of interest.
Accountability is critical. You will want to get regular reports from all the arbolito communicators. Ask whom they have spoken to and who participated. Assist with any questions that may come up. Do frequent spot checks to make sure that the correct message is being communicated.
If a communicator does not speak to their people, reassign the work or leave it undone until someone else comes forward. If a communicator does speak to their people, give support, recognition and leadership and educational opportunities. Prepare to be constantly changing and adjusting the arbolitos, pruning and fertilising as you go.
You will be looking for leaders and potential leaders to help build the arbolito networks. Good leaders are not necessarily the most outspoken or even the ones most in favour of the union. Good leaders are the people who are willing to do the work of organising and communicating with others.
Workers get involved in unions for many different reasons. Be able to share your own story of why you are involved. Sharing with each other deepens our relationships.
To identify leaders, ask workers who they rely on when there are workplace problems and who organises social events. Ask potential leaders to do small tasks and then spend time with those who complete the tasks.
Arbolitos can be used to target specific groups of underrepresented workers and get them more involved. Workers might be underrepresented in terms of age, work location or area, shift, type of worker, language, culture, gender, or any other grouping. Where there is more than one language or culture in a workplace, arbolitos are especially useful, as they allow for workers to discuss union issues in their own language and culture.
Arbolitos support union structures and workplace leaders, but they do not replace them. Workplace delegates and leaders should help identify potential arbolito communicators, while supporting, mentoring and holding them accountable.
When arbolito communicators are talking to other workers, the most important thing to remember is to not talk, but to listen. This is especially important if the workers are apathetic or fearful. An organiser should be listening about 80% of the time and talking not more than 20% of the time. If you don’t know the answer to a question, tell the person that you will find out and get back to them. Providing an open ear, support and solidarity is the most important thing.
Workers need to trust the information they receive from the union more than they trust what the employer, the media and often what their own friends and family are saying. The more workers trust each other and the union information, the easier it is to organise and campaign.