Organising model

The organising model, as the term refers to trade unions (and sometimes other social-movement organisations), is a broad conception of how those organisations should recruit, operate and advance the interests of their members. It typically involves many full-time organisers, who work by building up confidence and strong networks and leaders within the workforce, and by confrontational campaigns involving large numbers of union members. It is often contrasted with the service model, and sometimes to a 'rank-and-file' model. The organising model is strongly linked to social movement unionism and community unionism.

The prominence of the model, and the debate over its worth, is at varying stages in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. The debate is important because the model is one of the more credible contributions to the discussion of how trade unions can reverse the trend of declining membership which they are experiencing in most industrial nations, and recapture some of the political power which the labour movement has lost over the past century

Organising and the history of trade unions

Trade unions originally existed to organise their members democratically, and during their early growth, they typically put a strong emphasis on active recruitment and militant rank and file action, including strikes. By no means did they always unambiguously act in the interests of their members, but they were perceived of as organisations which existed to struggle for collective action. Particularly since the end of World War II, however, the trade unions have tended more and more to act as service providers for their members: providing legal advice, training and so on; eschewing mass-based, militant action. During the '60s, '70s and onward, this trend deepened, with union density among the workforce falling all the while, until it could be measured at between 10% and 20% in many industrialised countries. In the context of this history, the organising model is in principle not so much a new conception, as an attempt to recapture the essence of the labour movement. However, the way in which it has been recaptured has been quite particular.

Defining the organising model

It is often claimed that the principle underlying the organising model is that of giving power directly to union members. While the practical exercise of the model sometimes leaves something to be desired in this respect, its embodiment of a set of campaigning and organisational approaches is much less ambiguous. The organising model in its ideal type has these features:

• Proactive recruitment drives.
• Proactive campaigning, involving a large commitment of resources and large numbers of members.
• Creative campaigning tactics - including demonstrations, street theatre, media stunts, direct action, civil disobedience, music etc.
• Strong emphasis on the importance of personal contact in organising. Organisers will often put in long hours talking to workers about their situation, and what they believe the union can help them achieve. Visits to workers' homes will often be a component of this.
• Acceptance of the view that workers need to take some appreciable responsibility for winning union struggles and making the union strong. Hence an attitude geared toward empowering workers.
• As a central tool of both recruitment and campaigning, the identification and recruitment of leaders from among the workforce, to spread information about the union, and encourage others to join and take action.
• These leaders working together in a campaign committee, to steer campaigns [1].
• A conception of leadership in which leaders are those willing to take the initiative and contribute effort, rather than one based on authority. It will be hoped that leadership (as confidence to initiation organisation with others) will spread as broadly as possible.
• Strong relationship (especially in America) to Social Movement Unionism and Community Unionism which (respectively) seek to ally the labour movement to broader social movements and to local community organisations - including for example, campaigns such as United Students Against Sweatshops and ACORN.
• Employment of relatively large numbers of full-time staff union organizers and member organizers in order to facilitate the above.
• In order to finance this, typically a relatively high level of membership dues relative for industrial—as opposed to craft—unions.

Unions that employ the organizing model often try to apply the above tactics in "internal"/representational/bargaining campaigns, not just "external" organising/recruitment campaigns. Indeed, many unions that employ the organising model attempt to "bargain to organise" -- that is, win a greater right to organize non-union workers through pressuring an employer through using current members collective strength. In contrast, the service model focuses on the provision of services - such as legal advice, training, or even consumer discount programmes - to members. Practitioners of this model will generally avoid industrial, or direct, action of any kind, preferring to develop a 'good relationship' with employers. Typically, but not necessarily, service model unions will be less democratic in structure.

Resurgence in America

In the mid 1980s, the SEIU union found itself in a state of crisis. Dwindling membership threatened to finish it off entirely. A period of intense internal discussion gave rise to the view that a radical program was needed to rebuild the union, and make it relevant to current and potential members. The Justice for Janitors campaign was launched as the organizational spearhead of this realization; beginning in Denver, Colorado in 1985. Working along the lines described above, the SEIU experienced a huge growth in membership, and a significant number of high-profile public victories for workers. (Though some proportion of the SEIU's membership growth has resulted from mergers, such as with 1199). In 1988, an AFL-CIO organised teleconference of trade unionists recognised the potential of the nascent organising model, gave it its name, and resolved to spread it throughout the trade-union movement: this was an element in the model's popularisation. The success of Justice for Janitors did not go unnoticed and other unions in America have increasingly used its tactics. In 1995, former SEIU President John Sweeney was elected president of the AFL-CIO on the New Voice slate, on a platform of spreading the organising model across the members of the federation. The extent of the success of this is disputed, with some suggesting that more rhetoric has changed than anything, but it did have at least some effect. The SEIU is currently the largest private-sector union in America, trailing only the public-sector NEA in active membership, and has received numerous plaudits for its victories. It should be noted that the tactics and strategies of the SEIU and Justice for Janitors go beyond the organising model which is, as has been described, an approach to local level organising and campaigning. It applies to a drive for recruitment of members and leaders on the level of a firm or city. Other aspects of the SEIU's strategies are national or international. For instance, the drive to gain industry-wide coverage across a large geographical base - i.e. to organise janitors not only within one building, but across a whole city, state and eventually all across the USA - or the advocacy of union mergers.

Resurgence in the UK and Ireland

The British Trades Union Congress (TUC) inaugurated an Organising Academy in 1998, to fulfill a similar role to that of the AFL-CIO's Organising Institute in the USA (or ACTU's Organising Works programme in Australia). Whilst the graduates of the Academy have produced positive results [2], in general the model has not been implemented in the UK with the same comprehensive commitment as it has been by some unions in the USA. There are questions raised by writers on Industrial Relations about whether the transfer of the SEIU's organising model has been faithful, or whether a watered down, less radical version has been instantiated. Sarah Oxenbridge [3], for example, writes "community organising and organising model methods provided the means by which Californian Unionists put their 'social movement unionism' philosophies and strategies into practice, on a daily basis (see Heery 1998). However, it may be that most British Trade Unionists will instead see the organising model as - more simply - a range of recruitment tactics, and will pick and choose from amongst these tactics." The Transport and General Workers Union (T&G) has begun to make some of the more serious moves of any of the larger British unions to learn from the SEIU's strategies - though some smaller unions (such as Community) have been applying the organising model for some years. In 2005, the T&G launched a Justice for Cleaners campaign, which has been organising workers in Canary Wharf, the Houses of Parliament, and, towards the end of the year, on the London Underground. In the former of these two, improvements in wages have been won by workers. The tactics of Social Movement Unionism have been utilised, insofar as the campaign organisers have worked closely with, for example, The East London Citizens Organisation (TELCO), which has brought in members of faith groups and other trade union branches. However, there remain concerns about the T&G's commitment to rank and file workers' action, considering how the union acted during the Gate Gourmet strike. The Irish general union SIPTU established an Organising Unit in 2004 and its president, Jack O'Connor, set as his objective the transformation of SIPTU - hitherto firmly committed to a servicing agenda - into an organising union. SIPTU is also seeking to learn from the experience of the SEIU. It remains to be seen how (and whether) a commitment to the organising model of trade unionism can be reconciled with the union's traditional support for national 'Social Partnership'.

History in Australia

Prior to the 1980s, the Australian labour movement did not explicitly conceptualise the relationship between the union hierarchy and the membership in terms of "organisation" or "services." Traditional distinctions, inherited from long-term conflict, between the "Groupers" (a branch of the a Catholic-oriented National Civic Council) on one hand and the Communist Party of Australia on the other, have dictated the terrain of membership/leadership relationships. These relationships were fundamentally those of small unions which catered to their members by combining elements of rank-and-file organising, hierarchical organising, and gaining benefits for members through industrial or non-industrial action. Successful unions met their members' demands for militancy, or anti-militancy, and for an internal union culture which developed a feeling of belonging. Both "right wing" and "left wing" unions could be bureaucratic, or member controlled, militant or anti-militant. However, after a wave of massive industrial unrest and unprecedented increases in wages and conditions during the 1970s, the union movement became more restrained in their demands, and part of the official apparatus of government during the ALP-led, neo-corporatist, Accord period (1983–96). While unions had amalgamated prior to the Accord, and the Australian Council of Trade Unions had itself absorbed other lesser peak industrial councils, the accord period and the later enterprise bargaining period encouraged mergers into super unions. These super unions often obliterated previous small union identities and loyalties (on both the "left" and "right" of the trade union movement) and created unions with a relatively artificial internal culture. Often the largest union in the merger imposed its internal culture on the other divisions of the new union. Additionally, during the period of mergers, the traditional links between members, local organisers, industrial officers, branches and the peak leaderships of unions broke down. While the pre-1980s period of trade unionism in Australia was never characterised by deep links between leaderships and rank and file members, the structures within unions which allowed rank and file members to feel involved and this part of the union broke down. This presented a challenge to the union movement. Another key feature of the model in Australia is the Organising Works program which was established in 1994 to recruit organisers from union members and university students. Organising works is a relatively unique program in Australia, in that it combines explicit training in trade unionism with an apprenticeship system with specific trade unions. Generally, organising works has focused recruitment on university students rather than existing trade union members, and only a limited number of unions have participated in organising works.

Criticisms

Most practical criticism of the model has emerged as a criticism of the practice of the model by the SEIU and other organising unions, especially in America. Criticisms from the left generally contrast (explicitly or not) 'organising' to a 'rank and file' model, in which the confrontational style of organising, and broad-based member involvement in campaigning is supplemented by broad-based member power. Criticisms from the Right are either arguments in favour of service model unionism, or attacks on some of the trade union practices which are often involved in strikes.

Criticisms from the right

Critics argue that the organising model is inappropriate to the task of unions in the modern global economy. They say that industrial disputes of the type that organising engenders are harmful to the national economies in which they occur: by increasing uncertainty and raising wages (labour costs), they will make economies less attractive to inward investment. Hence, working people will suffer in the long term, as the less investment there is, the less jobs there will be. The conclusion of those who take this line is that unions should emphasise their service aspects, particularly those that contribute toward the well-being of the employer as well as the employee.

An example of an argument of this form can be found in the pamphlet co-written by British Labour MP John Healey and published by the TUC [4], which emphasizes how unions can grow and serve the business interests of employers by taking on the role of training their members. In addition, there are the criticisms levelled by the anti-union Right, who often associate collective action with the tyranny of 'Big labour', contrasted to the free operation of the capitalist labour market. Characteristic examples of this type of criticism can be found in public statements of the anti-union National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation [5].

See also

Organized labour portal

• Trade Unions
• Labour Movement
• Services model
• Community Unionism
• Social Movement Unionism
• Union Organizer

List of unions associated with the organising model

Note: the organising model is claimed by a very broad group of bodies, this list will be indicative only:

• Service and Food Workers Union Nga Ringa Tota, New Zealand
• Service Employees International Union (SEIU), USA
• Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU), Ireland
• United Voice, Australia
• Unite Union, New Zealand
• UNITE-HERE, USA

External links

• The British TUC's New Unionism pages. The Resources section hosts a number of pamphlets which are useful contributions from both sides to the debate over Organising and Services.
• Article from Labor Notes summarising five books which constructively criticise the SEIU from the Left.
• Article comparing Trade Union strategies in USA and New Zealand. Includes details of the origin of Organising as a formally recognised concept in America. Sarah Oxenbridge, working paper, March 2000.
• Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Australian Union Revival. Hanley and Holland, working paper, May 2003
• Table contrasting the organising and service models in a variety of respects. A useful summary from LA Labor.
• Real Organizing: A discussion on organising from a rank and file perspective. Also hosted by LA Labor.
• Organizing Committee Handbook from LA Labor.
• The Unite To Win proposals from the New Unity Partnership. The proposals concern the national level union structures that, they argue, are necessary to facilitate the organising model.
• Argument against the NUP's Unite To Win proposals
• Articles hosted by Labor Notes on the NUP proposals
• Union Organising in Big Blue's backyard - case study by Findlay P; McKinlay A, published 2003 in the Industrial Relations Journal, on an ISTC (now Community) organising campaign in Scotland. Article may only be available to those with an online subscription to the journal, such as many universities will have.