The Free Trade Union Confederation of Latvia organized a public campaign against the Latvian government's 2008 budget, which did not fulfill promises to increase salaries for police and medical workers. Through stakeholder analysis, media monitoring, and historical research, the Confederation developed a strategy to pressure the government through demonstrations, collecting signatures for a potential referendum on amending the constitution, and engaging with politicians and media. While the government only partially met the Confederation's demands around medical salaries, the campaign succeeded in getting some wage increases, collecting signatures, resigning the Prime Minister, and increasing the Confederation's influence.

1. Categorie:
Public politics campaigns
Title of campaign:
Free Trade Union Confederation vs. Government: Budget 2008
short common description of the campaign::
Free Trade Union Confederation of Latvia (LBAS) is the biggest
non-governmental organization in Latvia that unites 165 000 trade union members
in 2900 companies. As the only NGO that stands for the rights of employees in the
social dialogue LBAS works in National Tripartite Cooperation Council together
with Latvian Employers' Confederation and the Government.
September 2007 was a critical point in tripartite negotiations on State Budget for
year 2008 as the Government was considering breaking the promise on increasing
salary for policemen and medics. Confederation's demands to comply with
minimum of declarations were flatly ignored. Due to a lack of time till official
ratification of the budget it was impossible to organize a legal strike. Therefore on
3 October, LBAS board made a decision to carry out democratic protest activities
in order to force the inclusion of LBAS demands into State Budget for year 2008
and to increase LBAS' stake in the National Tripartite Cooperation Council.

2. research work done during the campaign:
During pre-planning phase Consultancy implemented the following research:
1) Stakeholder analysis. Consultants used Power/Interest Grid to map out and
prioritize stakeholders and their groups. To get an insight more than 15 interviews
with stakeholders and members of free trade unions took place before developing
the grid. After comprehensive analyses consultants came to an unpleasant
conclusion that the only stakeholder groups LBAS can rely on during the sensitive
campaign are their own employees, partly member-organizations of LBAS and
several opinion leaders outside the walls.
2) Establishment and ongoing execution of media and political monitoring has an
important impact both on stakeholder analyses and communication strategy.
3) Media Content Analysis of relevant publications since end of 2006 was ran to
analyse how the public opinion of politicians has became contradictious since
than.
4) Changes in ratings of political parties were analysed to find the reasons why the
ratings of leading parties has dropped substantially since elections in 2006. The
time when LBAS campaign was executed clashed with the period when the parties
had critically low support from the society because of several mistrustful
resolutions.
5) Historical research was implemented to investigate the activities carried out by
trade unions and NGOs before WW II. New ideas with historical relevance were
brought out.

3. strategy:
In the planning of communication the following stakeholder groups were included:
free trade unions and its members, employees of LBAS, experts and opinion
leaders, working population, government, political parties presented in Parliament
and media.
Main objective: to gain acceptance of LBAS demands for raising salaries of
policemen and medics. Secondary objective was to increase the awareness of
LBAS and to establish its impact as one of three national social partners and the
only that stands for the rights of working population.
Key points of the campaign strategy:
* To motivate the members of trade unions and other working population to
participate in ongoing protest activities demonstrating that the whole nation
supports activities of LBAS.
* In order to demonstrate the power of LBAS on influencing political processes in
Latvia - a historical idea was brought up to implement the amendments of
Constitution allowing citizens to dismiss the Parliament ahead of time.
* Organizing regular open meetings with all political parties in Parliament
regarding State Budget and amendments for Constitution provoking political
pressure on government.
* Raising awareness and understanding of the LBAS demands for Budget through

4. media by involving supportive experts and opinion-leaders.
As most effective communication channels were chosen: internet site lbas.lv,
LBAS internal newsletter, meetings and discussions with politicians, experts and
media representatives.
Core messages during the campaign:
* LBAS will not step back from its demands.
* If Parliament will not support the working population, nation will vote for its
rights to dismiss the Parliament.
* LBAS represents more than 165 000 its members and the interests of all the
working population.
Regular public discussions with deputies were organized in order to maintain
active dialogue with political parties on necessity of including LBAS' demands for
wage increase in the Budget for 2008. During the events media attention was
brought to the fact that government has not included even the minimum wage
increase they had previously officially confirmed.
Meanwhile in collaboration with the former chairman of the Constitutional Court
historical amendments to Constitution were adapted and elaborated to give
electorate rights to dismiss the Parliament. Up to now only the State President
acquired such rights but had never used them since the President is elected by the
same Parliament. LBAS declared that unless the government establish a
constructive dialogue and comply with the former promises, they will forward the
amendments to referendum.

5. Right before the most important Parliament plenary meetings on the State Budget
project in 11 October and 24 October 2007 grand demonstrations in front of
Parliament building were organized. As part of these protest activities gathering of
signatures for official referendum on amendments of Constitution was started.
Results of the campaign and evaluation::
* On 7 November 2007 Prime Minister announced his resignation due to
incapability to align the budget with the needs of society.
* After starting the demonstrations and gathering the signatures Government
agreed on increasing wages of policemen, as well as workers in educational and
cultural sphere. Nevertheless most sensitive issue on the salaries of medics was not
solved fully - demands of LBAS were implemented for about 40%.
* Meanwhile LBAS succeeded with gathering necessary 10 000 signatures for
evoking official signature gathering procedure by Central Election Committee.
* These activities provided LBAS the opportunity to publically explain and accent
its role in the social dialogue and to ensure a new quality dialogue with the new
Government.
* More than 7000 people from different regions and working spheres participated
in the protest demonstrations.
* Throughout the campaign from October to December media coverage reached at

6. least 240 publications in national media, 64 stories on TV and 70 broadcasts on
radio, as well as publications in internet portals and blogs. Visits to LBAS internet
site increased from 350 to 1200 unique visitors a day.
* Since the beginning of the campaign LBAS experts were asked to express their
opinion on all important decisions processed by tge Government. In media the
representation of LBAS management and experts increased by 80% in comparison
to the year before the campaign.