Innovative trade union strategies (FNV 2007)

Innovative trade union strategies

Innovative trade unionstrategies

Dirk Kloosterboer



ForewordThe world is changing fast, and these changes affect the position of workers and the

unemployed. Globalisation, outsourcing, privatisation, capital mobility and

restructuring of the welfare state cause employment and income insecurity.

Historically, the trade union movement has played a crucial role fighting for decent

wages, workplace health and safety, working hours, equal rights and a safety net for

those who cannot work. As leaders of the trade union movement, we inherit this

tradition. We have a responsibility to do all we can to make sure that our organisations

will continue to help bring about social justice.

We must make sure that our organisations are ready to organise workers in the

expanding services sectors; to take on multinational corporations; to create solidarity

among people with diverse backgrounds; to forge coalitions with other organisations

and to engage young people in the trade union movement.

These are not easy times for the trade union movement. We cannot just sit back and

blame globalisation, or structural economic changes, or hostile governments, or the

supposed reluctance of young people to be part of trade unions. We must focus on

what we can do to adapt our organisations to the changing circumstances.

In a way, the trade union movement must reinvent itself in order to deal with the

challenges of the 21st century. It is tempting to think of trade union renewal in terms of

pilots and experiments, but that is not enough. We need to make real decisions on

resource allocation, staff recruitment and training policies, strategic alliances. These will

not be easy decisions.

Fortunately, we can learn and draw inspiration from a number of unions that have

pioneered innovative approaches. Some of these have been surprisingly successful.

Some unions have achieved substantial membership growth. More importantly, unions

have built a position of power and have used that power to improve the situation of


Publisher

Stichting FNV Pers

Author

Dirk Kloosterboer ([email protected])

Photography

Paul van Riel / Hollandse Hoogte

Design

B5 / Boudewijn Boer

Print

ZuidamUithof, Utrecht

Production

FNV Marketing & Communicatie

Price

15 euro (excluding p&p). Copies can be ordered from the FNV, [email protected].

May 2007

workers, often vulnerable workers at the lower end of the labour market.

The future of the trade union movement is not just a matter of national organisations; it

is something that we have to deal with at the international level. In May, we will discuss

organising and trade union renewal at the Congress of the European Trade Union

Confederation (ETUC). This will be a crucial opportunity for the European trade union

movement to adopt an agenda of change.

The present report describes successful examples of how trade unions across the world

have taken on today’s challenges. I hope these examples may serve as a source of

inspiration.

Agnes Jongerius

President, Netherlands Trade Union Confederation (FNV)

Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies


Contents

1 Summary 11

2 Introduction 2

2.1 Developments in the Netherlands 4

2.2 About this report 5

3 Why trade union renewal 5

3.1 Crisis in the trade union movement 6

3.2 New ambitions 8

3.3 Barriers and opportunities 9

4 Themes 10

4.1 Ethnic minorities and migrant workers 10

4.2 Youth 13


7 Appendices 52

7.1 Literature 52

7.2 Abbreviations 66

7.3 A framework of union-community coalitions 68

7.4 Endnotes 70

Innovative trade union strategiesInnovative trade union strategies

4.3 Unemployed 15

4.4 Service industry and non-standard work 16

4.5 Activists and internal democracy 18

4.6 Recruitment, organising and marketing 19

4.7 Organising 21

4.8 Corporate campaigns 22

4.9 Local initiatives 23

4.10 Local economic policies 24

4.11 International 26

4.12 Coalitions 28

4.13 Politics 32

4.14 Think tanks and research 34

4.15 Partnership 36

4.16 Strategy and organisational change 37

5 Examples 38

5.1 Justice for Janitors 38

5.2 Wal-Mart 39

5.3 Living Wage 41

5.4 Community benefits agreements 43

5.5 Union Cities and Street Heat 44

5.6 Union Summer 44

5.7 Steelworkers 45

5.8 Worker centres 46

5.9 Organising Academy 47

5.10 Autonomous unions in France 48

5.11 Euromayday and flexworkers 49

5.12 Learning reps 49

5.13 Community unionism in London 50

6 Conclusions 51

Innovative trade union strategies10

1 1 SummaryUnions in many countries have seen their memberships decline during the past years. In

addition, their position has weakened as a result of factors including a globalising

economy, erosion of workers rights and increasing labour market flexibility.

Some unions, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, have responded to this situation by

running assertive organising campaigns at the workplace, engaging in strategic

research, strengthening their position in local communities and launching

internationally coordinated campaigns. Increasingly, such approaches are also

providing inspiration for unions in Europe.

The new strategies have as yet not solved the problems of the trade union movement.

In most countries, union density is still declining. However, some unions and some local

coalitions have been surprisingly successful, gaining tens or even hundreds of

thousands of new members and improving the conditions of millions of workers, often

low-paid workers in the growing service sector.

The present report describes some examples of innovative trade unionism. At the

moment, it is difficult to say what kind of approach will work under what

circumstances: this is still very much a matter of trial and error. That said, there do seem

to be some general characteristics that can be identified in many successful initiatives.

Innovative trade union strategies 11


Long-term commitmentSome crucial campaigns have taken as long as twelve years before bearing fruit. It is

important to convince union members (and staff) of the importance of investing time

and resources in long-term objectives.

Partnership not without strength Collaboration with employers and with governments can yield important results,

provided that unions do so from a position of strength and actively involve their

membership in what they do.

Battle of ideas In many countries, unions have to cope with a political climate that is hostile to workers

and their organisations. Some unions have successfully set up think tanks and worked

with research institutes to regain the initiative and gather support for alternative

economic and social visions.


Organising new groupsMany initiatives focus on organising new groups, which are underrepresented among

the unions’ membership: young people, ethnic minorities, and workers in the growing

services sectors. Organising these groups is essential if the trade union movement is to

remain a relevant social actor in the future.

Unions have developed systematic approaches to workplace organising and have set up

institutes to train new organisers. Although organising campaigns generally do not

specifically target groups such as ethnic minorities; some of the most successful

campaigns have been in sectors with high shares of minority workers.

Bottom up and top downInitiatives need to be bottom up in order to have real grassroots support and to reflect

the issues that are of concern to the population. However, they also need a strong

commitment from the top, in order to overcome resistance to change and to have the

level of coordination that is needed to be able to take on large corporations and to

influence government policies.

Local and internationalAt the local level, unions build community support and test innovative approaches. At

the same time, international networks are crucial to be able to cope with the

consequences of a globalising economy.

At the local level, unions have launched living wage campaigns, set up workers’

centres, created think tanks, campaigned for worker-friendly economic development

policies and launched political campaigns, often mobilising low-income voters.

Increasingly, campaigns are also being coordinated internationally.

Social justiceOpponents often try to depict unions as outsiders who are fighting for narrow self

interests. In order to counter this, unions frame their objectives as social justice issues.

For example, American unions have been able to win the support of Republican voters

for initiatives that aim to ensure that every worker receives a decent wage.

CoalitionsCoalitions with community organisations strengthen the support for political

campaigns, help unions get in touch with ‘hard to reach’ workers and help counter the

image of unions pursuing narrow self-interests.


2 2 IntroductionIn the Netherlands, as in most other Western countries, the trade union movement is

trying to find out how to cope with changing circumstances.

2.1 Developments in the NetherlandsThe Netherlands has had a reputation for its polder model, in which social partners are

actively involved in all kinds of consultative bodies, decisions are based on

compromises, collective agreements are binding for entire sectors and strike action is

rare. The trade union movement had a rather strong institutional position, which

means that there was no strong necessity to organise and mobilise workers.

The social climate changed as a result of the 11 September 2001 attacks, and the

murders of right-wing populist Pim Fortuyn (6 May 2002) and film maker Theo van

Gogh (2 November 2004). After eight years of government by a broad ‘purple’

coalition consisting of Social-Democrats, Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats, a series

of centre-right governments was in power from 2002 onward, headed by the

Christian-Democrat Jan Peter Balkenende. The Balkenende governments cut social

benefits and tried to introduce labour market reforms. They also discussed abolishing

the automatic extension of sectoral collective agreements.

The trade union movement launched campaigns against government policies, first in

2003 and then in 2004. The level of contention was unusual for the Netherlands, as

evidenced by a headline on the front page of the International Herald Tribune: ‘Hey,

look! A strike in Holland!’ On 2 October 2004, a demonstration was organised against


across Europe are considering how to adapt to societal changes. In this context, it was

decided to make an updated, English-language version of the report, in order to

facilitate the exchange of information. A request for information was sent to

researchers. Both the TUC’s Union Ideas Network (UIN) and the list serve of the ILO’s

Global Union Research Network (GURN) proved very helpful in identifying relevant

literature. In addition, information was collected through a series of interviews with

officials of FNV-affiliated unions, carried out by Tonny Groen (policy advisor, FNV).

We would like to thank the many people who provided input for the report and who

commented on draft versions. Special thanks are due to Paul Nowak (TUC), Amanda

Tattersall (University of Sydney), Gabriela Portela (ETUC), Jana Fromm (TCO), Eddy Stam

(FNV Bondgenoten), Annie van Wezel and Tonny Groen (both FNV Vakcentrale).

The present report does not pretend to give a complete or even a balanced overview of

developments in the global trade union movement. Its objective is rather more

pragmatic: to stimulate the exchange of ideas and experiences that may be helpful for

unions and confederations that are trying to figure out ways to adapt to changing

circumstances and to regain the initiative. The main focus is on material from Britain

and especially America.


a number of policy initiatives, most notably the plans to cut early retirement provisions.

With over 300,000 protestors flooding the Amsterdam Museumplein, this was one of

the largest political manifestations the country had ever seen.

Meanwhile, there have been some experiments with the adoption of methods

developed abroad, especially among trade unions affiliated to the FNV Confederation.

Most notably, Eddy Stam, the official at FNV Bondgenoten responsible for the cleaning

sector, worked with the innovative American services union SEIU to introduce the

organising approach, prioritising membership growth and member engagement. SEIU

organisers have given training courses to FNV Bondgenoten officials active in cleaning,

agriculture and other sectors. The SEIU also seconded one of its organisers to a project

that aims to organise cleaners in The Hague.

Meanwhile, the FNV confederation made a number of visits to Britain to learn from the

TUC confederation’s experience. Public sector union ABVAKABO FNV invited experts

from the British TUC and affiliated union T&G, and sent a high-profile delegation to

America to meet with SEIU organisers. Unions have started to introduce elements of

the organising approach in the Netherlands, although these efforts are still limited to

small-scale pilot projects. FNV Bondgenoten has further set up a training programme

on organising for its own staff. ABVAKABO FNV is planning to introduce organising at a

rather substantial scale. A pilot in the health care sector will start soon.

At confederation level, there has been a renewed emphasis on reaching groups that are

underrepresented among the affiliated unions’ membership, such as young people and

ethnic minorities. One initiative has been the creation of FNV Jong, a network of young

activists that has had some success in putting issues on the political agenda, most

notably unemployment among ethnic minority youth (§ 4.2). Another challenge is the

increasing decentralisation of government policies. The FNV is in the process of forming

local groups of activists who will be charged with forging coalitions with community

organisations and influencing municipal policy (§ 4.9).

2.2 About this reportIn April 2005, the FNV published the results of a desk study on trade union innovations

in a report De vakbeweging van de toekomst: Lessen uit het buitenland (The Trade

Union Movement of the Future: Lessons from Abroad). This report provided input to

unions in the Netherlands that are trying to redefine themselves. Presently, unions



3 3 Why trade unionrenewal

Membership of a trade union may bring along practical benefits, but unions are not

only important for members: how they operate shapes the entire society. For example,

countries with high union density tend to have a more equal income distribution and a

smaller share of low-paid workers. Trade unions also contribute to a properly

functioning democracy, boosting voter turnout in elections and giving workers a voice

at work. Further, how trade unions operate has an impact on employment – this impact

may be positive as well as negative.1

Trade unions can thus have an important impact on society. Much depends on the

choices they make. Do they act only on behalf of a privileged group of workers who are

already members, or do they try to involve new groups of workers? Do they prioritise

job growth over environmental concerns, or do they advocate sustainable growth? Do

they have transparent and democratic decision-making structures, or are decisions

made in back rooms? Do they fight for equal rights, or do they leave it at symbolic good

intentions? Do they actively involve their membership, or do they treat them as passive

consumers?

Now that the future of the trade union movement is insecure, these questions gain

added urgency. All the more so, because they are connected to developments such as

the globalisation of the economy and the increasingly flexible nature of work. In many

countries, therefore, a debate is raging about the role and the future of the trade union

movement. This debate is fuelled by the innovations that some unions have carried out.


An important indicator of union strength is union density, that is, the percentage of the

workforce who are union members. In the 1990-2003 period, union density has declined

from 15.5 to 12.4% in the USA and from 33.1 to 26.3% in the European Union.4

Union Density in EU countries, 1985-20045


3.1 Crisis in the trade union movementRecently, a German commentator declared the death of the unions (even though ‘the

closest relatives are keeping it a secret’).2 While this is an exaggeration, there is no

denying that trade unions in many countries are coping with serious problems. Union

density is declining and the unions have difficulties organising young workers.

Meanwhile, unions have a negative image. They get the reproach that they are too

much on the defensive, obstructing the vitalisation of the economy and the creation of

new jobs.

Unions further cope with the growing elusiveness of employers, who can transfer jobs

abroad, outsource work, exploit vulnerable workers such as undocumented

immigrants, and erode job security. These factors make it easier for them to play out

groups of workers against each other. The position of workers is further undermined by

cutting safety nets such as social benefits.

Meanwhile, many governments have become increasingly hostile to unions. In the

1980s, Ronald Reagan took on the air traffic controllers and Margaret Thatcher the

miners. More importantly, they introduced legislation that weakened the position of

unions. Examples include regulations that make it more difficult to strike, to influence

political decision-making and to carry out solidarity actions to support workers at other

companies. In Australia, an economy previously marked by its European-like level of

wage centralisation, enterprise bargaining and individual contracts are now legal, and

can be offered to workers covered by a collective agreement, undermining collective

bargaining. Even in Sweden, where the trade union movement has a very strong

institutional position, it is feared that the new right-wing government may take

measures to undermine union power.

Because of these developments, it has become easier for companies to take a tough

stance towards unions. The most important symbol is the Wal-Mart Corporation (5.2),

but the phenomenon is becoming ever more widespread. American companies hire

union busting consultants to keep the union out. One of the most popular techniques is

the one-on-one, during which an individual worker is subjected to a cross examination.

Other techniques include showing anti-union videos and threatening to close a plant.

Companies routinely fire union activists (this happens in a quarter of all formal

recognition elections; every 23 minutes a worker is said to be fired or discriminated

against for supporting a union). This is illegal, but the sanctions are minimal. Some

British companies have started hiring American union busting consultants as well.3


Netherlands

Belgium

Luxembourg

France

Germany

Italy

Denmark

Ireland

UK

Greece

Spain

Portugal

Austria

Sweden

Finland

Cyprus

Malta

Estonia

Latvia

Lithuania

Poland

Slovakia

Czech Rep

Hungaria

Slovenia

1985

1995

2004

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 %

enough to regain union strength. More impressive is the performance of individual

unions that have adopted an organising agenda. Through campaigns targeting

companies such as Sainsbury’s and easyJet, as well as other recruitment efforts, T&G

has organised 500 new activists and 11,500 new members.8

An international campaign coordinated by the IUF organised 45,000 workers in Russia

between 1997 and 2005. Before the campaign, IUF-affiliated unions did not have a

presence in that region (§ 4.11). The most successful example of membership growth is

the American services union SEIU. Ten years ago, it had 1.1 million members; today, the

number is close to two million. While some of this growth is the result of other unions

joining the SEIU, even more members joined as a result of organising campaigns. An

example is a campaign organising 450,000 home care workers.9

Membership growth is of course not a goal in itself. The real test of success is whether

unions have been able to improve the situation of workers and achieve social justice.

The T&G campaign at Sainsbury’s for instance won 70,000 workers a wage increase as

well as four years back pay of unpaid holiday pay. American living wage campaigns are

estimated to have increased the wages of 100,000 to 250,000 working poor, while

recent campaigns to increase the minimum wage at state level are estimated to have

benefited at least 1.5 million workers (§ 5.3). Another success was recently achieved by

a coalition of French trade unions, students’ unions and other organisations, who

managed to turn back legislation that would have worsened employment protection

for young workers.

3.3 Barriers and opportunitiesProponents of change often try to create a sense of urgency by use of ‘scary graphs’:

simple graphs that show that the trade union movement is doomed unless it manages

to organise young members in growth sectors.10 However, an awareness of

membership trends may not be enough.

It is no coincidence that many innovative approaches have started in the Anglo-Saxon

countries: here anti-union government policies have been most severe. According to an

international comparison, unions will only change if they feel a strong need to do so.

Membership loss in itself may not be enough to create a sense of urgency, as long as

the union movement still has an institutional position to cling to. Only when that is

taken away is it likely that real change will occur.11


3.2 New ambitionsAt the end of the 1980s, a counter movement began. A famous example is the Justice

for Janitors campaign of the American services union SEIU, which managed to secure

an important victory under circumstances that seemed very hostile to union success.

The president of the SEIU, John Sweeney, was in 1995 elected president of the AFL-CIO

confederation. His ‘New Voice leadership’ tried to get the new approach adopted by

the entire trade union movement. This new approach consisted of multifaceted,

strategic and assertive campaigns, in which publicity was actively sought after.

American researchers have called the approach comprehensive campaigning.6

Campaigns emphasised not just workers’ direct material interests, but also issues such

as human rights and social justice. Other important aspects include coalitions with

community organisations, corporate campaigning, a strong presence at the local level;

and organising the low wage service economy, with its high share of ethnic minority

workers.

In 2005, a heated debate erupted on the course of the AFL-CIO. A group of unions

headed by SEIU’s Andy Stern said that the federation was not doing enough to promote

the new organising approach. Eventually, a number of large unions left the AFL-CIO to

form the Change to Win federation. The impact this move will have on the American

(and foreign) trade union movement is still hard to gauge. While there are definite signs

of crisis, the split might also trigger necessary changes. In any case, the two federations

closely collaborated in the 2006 Midterm Election campaign and are planning a joint

lobbying effort to push for universal health insurance. Despite the split, the American

union movement ‘had its best year ever’, the Change to Win chairwoman commented.7

The American shift to union renewal has inspired innovations in Britain and Australia,

where unions have also faced falling density and weakening social and political

influence. In Australia, renewal strategies began in the mid-1990s after density levels

had collapsed from 50% in the early 70s to 25% by 1995. Changes in Britain occurred

later, given the higher and more stable density levels. Increasingly, continental

European unions are also experimenting innovative approaches. At the European level,

the ETUC will put the new organising approach on the agenda of its 2007 Congress.

While the trade union movement’s problems are in no way over yet, there have been

some inspiring successes. In the UK, union density seems to have stabilised and even to

have risen slightly, after having dropped from almost forty to less than thirty percent

between 1990 and 2003. However, most commentators say that this is far from


break that resistance. A good example is the Justice for Janitors campaign, which was

forced on some locals by the national union (§ 5.1).17

Organising campaigns may sometimes take as long as twelve years before paying off in

terms of increased strategic leverage. This ‘lag time’ may leave union leaders in a

vulnerable position. They have to convince union staff and members to invest in

changes, even though the fruits may be slow in coming.18

Holders of key positions do not always have an interest in changing the way in which

the union operates and in organising new groups of workers: this might erode their

own power base within the organisation. A study of American local trade union

branches showed that innovations often did not occur until after an internal crisis,

which put new people in key positions. Importantly, these were often people from

outside the trade union movement, who had gained experience in other social

movements, and who were therefore able to look at the way the union operates in a

fresh manner.19

Trade union innovations are often spurred by lessons from outside the organisation.

These lessons may come either from other social movements, or from trade unions

abroad. For example, the British trade union movement actively used expertise

developed by the American trade union movement, and, like the AFL-CIO, decided to

recruit staff with no union background. Southern European unions have benefited

from the experience of their Northern European colleagues when it regards social pacts

with employers and the government.20

Innovations may also be spurred by outside pressure. At the end of the 1980s, the large

Italian federations were criticised by ‘comitati di base’ (grassroots committees) for

being too bureaucratic and not democratic enough. While it was unclear how many

people these committees represented, they did show their mobilising capacities in a

series of strikes. In a response to these actions, the federations decided to hold

referendums on all important agreements they would reach from now on (§ 4.5).

Incidentally, the competition of the comitati di base also urged the federations to set up

unions of self-employed workers. In America, the Jobs with Justice coalitions

sometimes are a catalyst of change.21


Additionally, researchers have found it takes a certain type of leaders who are prepared

to change and embrace new strategies. In the US, researchers have found that union

leaders with social movement experience are valuable. In the UK and Australia, union

leaders have similarly been found to be a critical component of organisational change

in unions. But, others have also found that while leadership is critical, it is not sufficient

– member support, participation and interest in the change process are vital for long

term success.12

An interesting example is Britain, where there has been an anti-union atmosphere ever

since the days of Margaret Thatcher. Inspired by the American example, the trade union

movement started to take initiatives to strengthen its position, among other things

through a stronger emphasis on organising workers.13 The Austrian ÖGB cites

government attempts to weaken workers’ organisations as the reason to introduce a

more militant, campaign-oriented approach. This new approach was inspired by the

American AFL-CIO.14

During the 1960s and 1970s, the German trade union movement formed a successful

alliance with protest movements and secured itself a strong institutional position.

According to critics, it has since been ‘resting on its institutional laurels’ too much. It

has been argued that German trade union movement was not desperate enough to

introduce real change, and that it would not do so until a crisis erupts.15 However,

promising new initiatives are now being taken, for example by services union Ver.di.

Social change often does not happen gradually. History knows short periods during

which society goes through rapid changes. Often this brings along institutional

changes that may have a long term impact on the organisations involved. As noted

above, the German trade union movement strengthened its institutional position

during the protest movement of the 1960s. For the American trade union movement,

the social mobilisations in support of the new deal in the 1930s were crucial.

Interestingly, in between such periods, the trade union movement is often written off,

also by people who are sympathetic to it.16

While external developments may exert a strong influence on trade union renewal,

internal factors play an important role too. Successful innovations often result from a

combination of grassroots mobilisation and top-down support. Mobilising workers is

indispensable to build a position of power, but the romantic idea that innovations flow

spontaneously from below does not seem to apply to trade unions. As in most other

large organisations, there is usually resistance to change. It takes top-down support to



4 4 Themes

4.1 Ethnic minorities and migrant workersSince ethnic minorities make up a growing share of the population, it is important for

unions to organise these groups. In addition, there is a strategic interest. A classic

means of undermining union power is by playing groups of workers against each other,

something which is often done along ethnic lines. Unions can only counter this by

actively organising solidarity on the basis of shared interests.

Some union members see immigrant workers as competitors on the labour market.

There may be resistance to organising these workers, especially if they are

undocumented. The British CWU has run an internal education campaign to convince

branches that all workers have a right to be organised in a trade union. The T&G and

GMB launched the Respect is a Right campaign, arguing that economic migrants

should be welcomed.22

Among many European unions, minorities, as well as women, have separate

committees and secretariats. However, many experts say that such bodies primarily play

a symbolic role and do not yield sufficient concrete results.

Most European unions have a rather strong institutional position, which does not rely

on their capacity to mobilise workers. As a result, the incentive to organise new groups

of workers is relatively weak. An interesting example is the British case, where racism

amongst union members was not uncommon until the 1970s. When Thatcher

introduced a union-hostile climate, there was a stronger incentive for British unions to


about issues such as the minimum wage, working time regulations and the right to join

a union. It is working with Solidarnosc to provide such information online as well.26

Labour migrants are often highly mobile. For this reason, they need quick solutions to

problems such as underpayment, which implies that legal procedures are unpractical. In

the Netherlands, there have been a number of wildcat strikes among Polish workers,

after which unions have successfully intervened to negotiate a settlement between

workers and the employer. In the agricultural sector, a project involving information

meetings and approaching workers when they go home at the end of the workday has

resulted in new members and activists.27 In Germany, the Europäischer Verband der

Wanderarbeiter (European Migrant Workers’ Union, EVW) has been created. This

organisation tries to defend the interests of Polish and other migrant workers by

directly approaching the employer, using the fact that many employers want to avoid

negative publicity.

British unions have found that immigrant workers not only seek advice on work issues,

but also on housing and finance. Unions seek collaboration with local agencies to be

able to provide wider support.28

In London, GMB organised 10,000 Asian workers through a community unionism

approach. A study of a number of campaigns found that organisers with an Asian

background played a crucial role, using methods that differ from common union

practice. For example, “Zaheer will sometimes disappear for a couple of months and

come back with 200 membership forms in his hand from some firm that we have never

heard of. When you ask him how did it go – he said it was all done in front rooms,

which is a different way of organising. We would never dream of knocking on people’s

doors”.

Events in mosques and community centres were organised to create community

support. The union also used trained activists who had been involved in a successful

campaign in their own company to talk to workers in another company, to tell them

what can be achieved.29

In America, organising campaigns among immigrant workers date back at least to the

1930s. Assertive union campaigns helped immigrants secure a position in society, while

immigrants in turn helped revitalise the trade union movement.30 However, after the

Second World War, the American trade union movement found itself in a stronger

position and became increasingly defensive. In the 1960s, some unions such as the


involve minority workers. Today, according to one study, the TUC is much more active

when it regards equal rights than for example the Danish trade union movement,

which still has a relatively strong institutional position.23

It is generally assumed that working with immigrants’ or minority organisations is an

important means for trade unions to get in touch with ethnic minority communities. A

British study among such organisations found that a large majority favour collaboration

with unions, but that most are unaware of union efforts regarding minorities. “They are

either doing nothing, or they are doing something and not telling anyone about it”,

one respondent commented.

It was found that ethnic minority organisations did not perceive trade unions as being

in competition for funds, which should make it easier to forge alliances with unions.

The study further found that employees of ethnic minority organisations often are not

members of trade unions. Respondents said that unions should more actively

communicate with minority organisations and communities.24

Southern European countries receive large numbers of immigrants, including a

considerable number of undocumented immigrants. In Southern Spain, unions have

created centres that immigrants can turn to for support. They also support

undocumented workers, because it is in the interest of documented workers to prevent

groups of workers being played out against each other. In the agricultural sector in

Murcia and Almería, eighty percent of members of the CC.OO confederation are of

Moroccan descent.

Even though unions try their best to organise immigrants, there is criticism as well. For

example, racist attacks on immigrants in El Ejido were condemned by national unions,

but local branches kept rather quiet. Immigrants also felt let down by the large union

federations when they tried to improve the position of agriculture workers through a

successful strike. 25

At present, there is a growing number of workers from Middle and Eastern European

countries entering European labour markets. Union responses are sometimes

protectionist, but there are also efforts to organise these workers, for example among

unions in Britain. The TUC is collaborating with the Polish Solidarnosc union. North

West TUC employed a Solidarnosc organiser in late 2005 and TUC-affiliated union T&G

now employs six Polish organisers. The TUC has also sent a delegation to a jobs fair in

Warsaw where UK employers were recruiting, in order to inform potential migrants


of the 1960s civil rights movement, it was also a means to stimulate cooperation

between the black and Latino communities.35

Meanwhile, several unions try to include stipulations in collective agreements to make

undocumented workers less vulnerable. In the cleaning sector, SEIU reached an

agreement that states that employers must notify the union when they know the

immigration service is planning an investigation. It was also agreed that employers will

only provide the immigration service with information if they are legally obliged to do

so. Hotel and restaurant union HERE reached an agreement that states that hotels must

re-employ workers who have been deported and who manage to return within two

years. If they do so within one year, their seniority will remain intact as well.36

The European organisation PICUM has done an extensive study of how unions and

other organisations in Europe and the USA protect undocumented workers. The

researchers find that unions can play a crucial role in preventing the exploitation of

undocumented workers. At the same time, organising undocumented workers is also

in the interest of other workers. It is argued that unions should convince their members

that “the only way to fight the tendency of worsening conditions and wage decreases

is by working together and building strength as a workers’ movement”.37

An illustration of how the interests of documented and undocumented workers are

connected is a study among agricultural workers in The Netherlands. During the past

ten years, the position of undocumented workers has weakened considerably, which

eventually led to more flexible jobs and income insecurity for other workers as well.38

4.2 YouthMany unions have an ageing membership and have difficulties organising young

workers. Young workers often have no standard jobs but have flexible contracts, or are

self-employed. The kind of jobs they have might well reflect what the labour market of

the future will look like. As long as unions are unable to organise young people, they

must seriously ask themselves whether they are prepared for the future.39

In Canada, teachers at a business school tried a rather unusual approach to get

students to understand the value of organising. A substitute teacher told them that

their bonus marks were cancelled and that their final exam would include all materials

studied during the entire year, rather than only the second half of the year.


United Auto Workers supported the civil rights movement, while Martin Luther King

helped organise a sanitation workers’ strike, but in general there was a conservative

attitude among unions. Immigrants were often seen as competitors in the labour

market.

In 2001, the AFL-CIO issued a statement that underlined the shared interests of

workers: “Too often, employers have attempted to divide workers by race, ethnicity

and immigration status, playing one group against the other to undermine solidarity

and preclude workers from achieving progress together. History has proven that

mistreatment of one group in a workplace will ultimately lead to the mistreatment of all

workers”.31

Progressive unions such as SEIU and HERE had already achieved successes organising

workers at the lower end of the labour market, such as cleaners and hotel workers (§

5.1). In general, such campaigns do not explicitly target immigrants, but in practice

these make up a large share of the workers in those sectors. Incidentally, unions need

to be careful not to be perceived as the advocates of one specific ethnic group. In Los

Angeles for example, relations with the black community where actively developed, in

order to prevent the union being associated exclusively with Latinos.32

Among unions, it is sometimes believed that immigrants are hard to organise, but that

seems to be incorrect. In America, the most important successes have been achieved in

sectors where many immigrants work. Interestingly, campaigns for formal union

recognition are most successful at workplaces with large shares of immigrant and

women workers. One extreme is a success rate of 35% at workplaces where the

majority of workers are white males; the other extreme being a rate of 82% at

workplaces where the majority of workers are non-white women. Researchers comment

that immigrants are not passive victims, but form the core of worker activism. 33

Organising becomes rather more difficult when workers are undocumented. In half the

American recognition campaigns, employers threaten to report undocumented

workers to the immigration service. The success rate drops to 35% in campaigns that

involve undocumented workers.34

In a number of ways, trade unions try to improve the situation of undocumented

workers. For example, an Immigrant Worker Freedom Ride was organised in the fall of

2004. Its objective was regularisation, but it was also a means to strengthen the ties

with the Latino community. Since the Freedom Ride was inspired by a famous campaign


The programme is run by student activists at the campuses, who may receive financial

compensation. At its start in August 2005, Tria had 13,500 members; within a year this

has risen to 18,000. The aim is to have 26,000 members by the end of 2007. Initially,

the share of Tria members joining a regular union after graduation was 30%, by now,

this has risen to 55%.

Five times a year, TCO publishes a students’ newspaper, produced by an independent

editorial board and sent to all students who receive a government grant. The

newspaper, which has a good reputation among students, combines articles on student

life with articles on the transition from education to work.

The TCO has also developed materials that teachers can use, aimed at 15-18 year old

students. These materials include a website, a teacher’s guide and a negotiating game.

The materials have been designed in such a way as to be attractive to young people. As

a result, at fairs, youth are drawn to the TCO-stand.43

In the Netherlands, young members of the FNV held a manifestation at the 2005

Congress, resulting in the creation of FNV Jong. FNV Jong is a network of young (under

35 year old) trade union members that can express views independently of the FNV. Its

chair, Judith Ploegman, has gained a rather high profile in the media. The aim of FNV

Jong is to get youth issues higher on the agenda both within and outside the FNV, as

well as to increase the visibility of the FNV among young workers. FNV further wants to

get the 235,000 young trade union members more actively involved in the

organisation. Ploegman has a seat on the Socio-Economic Council (SER), an official

advisory body. At her initiative, the SER has published a high-profile advice on

unemployment among ethnic minority youth.

The FNV-affiliated teachers’ union AOb has specific publications and a website with

practical information on teachers’ issues, as well as volunteer teachers giving guest

classes to students. It also offers a student membership of one euro per month. Since

the introduction of this approach three years ago, the number of student members has

risen from 300 to 1,800.44

The American trade union movement has been organising Union Summer programmes

since 1996, offering students an opportunity to gain experience with trade unionism.

Students who participated have created new organisations, such as Students Against

Sweatshops. In addition, some end up at key positions within the trade union

movement (§ 5.6). As the union movement is spending less time in back rooms and


Subsequently, the students were presented with an opportunity to organise to fight the

injustice done to them, which they eagerly did. Most students responded

enthusiastically to the experiment. Although the initiators assert it was the ‘most

effective classroom technique we ever used’ and suggest that the approach is ethically

defensible, it will probably not be used again because of practical constraints.40

In France, where density is low to begin with, only one percent of 18 to 29 year olds are

members of a trade union. The person responsible for youth issues at the CFDT sees the

problem as follows: “The relation between young people and the world of work has

developed faster than trade unionism. Workers used to be anchored to their jobs, they

made a career. Nowadays, youth have one insecure job after another, they struggle to

get a fixed contract and when the contract has been signed, they are less than eager to

join a union, because they are afraid to compromise their career perspectives. And

apart from that, the union has an image problem”.41

Nevertheless, the CFDT has managed to stop the decline. One means to achieve this are

campaigns in which the union goes to workplaces to inform seasonal workers of their

rights. Further, the CFDT has introduced a joint membership for working students in

both CFDT and students’ union Confédération étudiante (CE) at a reduced price.42

Young people are not lacking in social engagement, contrary to what is sometimes

thought. In France, they were involved in mass protests against Le Pen’s Front National

in 2002, in protests against the war in Iraq and in the Ni putes ni soumises organisation,

which works for women in the banlieues. Further, young people are involved in

campaigns at companies such as the Ibis hotel chain; the Monoprix supermarkets, Pizza

Hut and McDonalds (§ 5.10). More recently, students, social movement organisations

and trade unions jointly forced the government to withdraw plans to abolish

employment protection for young workers.

Various unions are looking for new ways to involve young people. In Sweden, three

TCO-affiliated unions have created the Tria programme, offering a joint membership

for students at a one-off price of about ten euro for the whole student career. Services

offered to this group focus on the transition from education to work. They are provided

with information, job interview courses, a mentor programme, statistics for salaries in

different professions and a resume review service. After graduation, they are contacted

by the local union organisation to ask them to become regular members of the union

connected to the profession they have chosen.


In Canada, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) is critical of relying on legal

procedures, because these force people to assume a passive role. Therefore, legal

procedures are combined with direct action. For example, groups of activists may go to

a social assistance (welfare) office to get staff members to consider an application. If

this does not help, pressure is increased. This method has the advantage that people do

not have to wait endlessly for their application to be processed, which is very important

for people with low incomes. The methods seem to have been inspired by the American

Welfare Rights Movement of the 1960s.48

In Sweden, Denmark, Finland and to a lesser extent Belgium, union membership

among the unemployed is relatively high. This is because social security is administered

by trade unions. In countries that do not have this ‘Ghent system’, the unemployed

tend not to be trade union members. The membership fee is certainly not the only

problem. In Britain and Germany, membership is almost free for the unemployed (one

euro per month or less), yet density among the unemployed is significantly lower than

among those with jobs, and this applies to an even higher degree for the long-term

unemployed. Apparently, the unemployed are not convinced that unions have

something to offer them.49

In Britain, the TUC has supported the development of Unemployed Workers’ Centres in

the 1980s and early 1990s. These centres “give the movement an answer to those who

claim that unions are only interested in helping people who already have jobs”, the

TUC says. However, unemployment no longer being the key issue it was before, many

centres are now finding it difficult to secure funding and are redefining their role, for

example by providing advice and a venue for language courses for migrant workers.

In France, Germany, the Netherlands and other countries, Euro Marches have been

organised by people who think that the trade union movement is not doing enough for

the unemployed. This organisation campaigns among other things for a European

social income. France further has autonomous unions that, like OCAP, engage in direct

action, for example by occupying social assistance offices (§ 5.10). In Ireland, the

government has chosen to include organisations of the unemployed and anti-poverty

organisations in social pacts. These pacts have dealt with the indexation of benefits,

among other things.50

In America and Canada, and increasingly in European countries as well, social

assistance recipients are forced to work in so-called work first or workfare programmes.

For example, in the Netherlands, over ninety percent of municipalities claim to have


more time campaigning on the streets, it becomes more attractive to young people. For

example, the creation of local Street Heat teams is a means to engage youth in the

trade union movement (§ 5.5). An SEIU organiser commented: “... I think the labour

movement is becoming a little more dynamic, so young, progressive activists think

that’s a cooler thing to do than maybe was true at another time”.45

Union Summer has been successfully adopted by other union movements. From 2001,

the Australian union movement has run a union summer program. Since 2003, that

program has been combined with the Working Students Union Network (WSUN), a

network of student activists committed to union issues that seeks to work on university

campuses to promote unionism and organise pathways to unions for students. These two

programs provide training and an environment where young union organisers and future

union stewards can test and develop their skills. Unions such as the Teachers union in

NSW have also developed programs targeting students as future union stewards while

still in university training, to reverse the trends of an ageing shop steward network.

It is sometimes said that declining density among young people would be a result of

individualisation. Organisations, in this view, should treat young people more as

consumers, for example by offering financial services to members. This type of

approach has been tested by various unions in Britain in the 1980s, but had little effect.

The underlying assumption that youth lack social engagement also seems to be

incorrect. What is correct is that because of individualisation young people have other

expectations of organisations. They want to be able to express themselves and they

want to take responsibility.46

4.3 UnemployedAmerican unions have little involvement with the unemployed, among other things

because union membership is often tied to the company where people work. It has

been argued that new forms of membership should be introduced that are not

dependent on working at a specific company, which would make it easier for the

unemployed to join as well. In Baltimore, the Solidarity Sponsoring Committee aims to

organise the unemployed. It managed to block a plan to force young unemployed

people to quit their education in order to accept a poverty job. After workfare

participants had been used to replace cleaners at a large hotel who had a wage dispute

with their employer, the Committee got the governor to sign an executive order

banning such practices.47


In some sectors, trade unions traditionally have high density, for example in

telecomunications and in banking. However, privatisation, outsourcing and

restructuring may cause membership levels to drop very fast. For example, a Norwegian

union lost half its members in Telenor within a couple of years. In banking, the blurring

of the boundaries with other forms of financial services may lead to a decline in

membership.54 Even faster membership decline than in Norway occured in Central and

Eastern European countries when companies were privatised after 1989.55

It has been argued that modern employees are very different from the traditional

manufacturing workers, whom unions are used to organising, and much more similar

to the workers who were organised by the predecessors of the trade unions in the 19th

and early 20th centuries. These were guild-like organisations, which organised not only

employees, but also the unemployed, the self-employed and foremen. These trades

associations offered their members opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills;

and also sometimes set up collective insurances. In addition, they performed a number

of tasks that would today be considered those of employers. For example, they

developed quality standards and sometimes acted as temp agencies. A negative aspect

of these organisations is that they often advocated the interests of their members at

the expense of outsiders.56

Some aspects of how these trade associations operated are today being used to

organise service sector workers. Examples include ‘guild-like clubs for dot.com

workers’ and organisations of the self-employed. Increasingly, the internet is used to

stay in touch with members. The German Ver.di uses text messaging to stay in touch

with nurses who provide home care. This type of organisations seem especially

successful at organising higher educated employees in the services sector.57

In the Netherlands, two unions have been created specifically to organise the self-

employed (these are the only unions with substantial membership growth). Sectoral

unions such as the journalists’ union and the haircutters’ union also have a considerable

number of self-employed members. In total, FNV-affiliated unions now have about

25,000 self-employed members. As substantial further growth is expected, it is likely

that the preferences of the self-employed will increasingly affect how the entire FNV

operates.

Self-employed workers join the union because of legal services provided (for example

debt collection) but increasingly the new unions are also providing a community, in

which members exchange information and help each other obtain contracts. In the


such programmes. Often, the unemployed have to do unattractive work that provides

little relevant work experience, while still receiving social assistance instead of a salary.

The programmes seem intended to push the employed out of social assistance rather

than to offer them better opportunities at the labour market. It is feared that this will

force them to accept bad jobs at poverty wages.

There have been attempts in America, Canada and European countries to campaign

against work first and to organise the participants in such programmes. These

initiatives have generally been coalitions of trade unions, anti-poverty organisations,

and community organisations. Most of these efforts have started at the local level, and

it has been difficult to connect them into wider struggles.51

4.4 Service industry and non-standard workIn the Western world, job growth occurs mainly in the services sector. However,

especially in commercial services, unions have difficulties gaining a foothold. The cause

is not necessarily that workers are uninterested in trade unions, but work characteristics

make it difficult for unions to organise them.

Workers are often scattered over many small workplaces, where they tend to be

working closely with their bosses and are sometimes confronted with paternalistic

labour relations. Many jobs are part-time and flexible, and turnover tends to be high,

making contact among workers rather ad hoc. For unions, it is very time consuming to

remain in contact with a large number of small workplaces, while workers are often in a

vulnerable position. Many workers, for example in call centres, fast food chains or in

supermarkets, work under strict control. For example, cashiers at the German Lidl

supermarket have to scan forty products per minute.52

One might expect that workers with non-standard contracts might be less inclined to

join a union because they have weaker connections to the workplace. However,

research in Spain has found that nonstandard workers are in fact more critical of the

economic system and more inclined to become active in a trade union than workers

with standard contracts. “Rather than asserting that outsiders are less likely to join a

union, it is more accurate to say that unions are less likely to reach and organise

outsiders as long as union organisational efforts are ineffective in the face of new

challenges, including enhanced employers’ resistance to unionisation”.53


4.5 Activists and internal democracySome American unions spend significant parts of their budgets on organising new

members, which leaves them with limited means to service existing members.

Therefore, they aim to make organising committees self-supporting as quickly as

possible. The support these activists receive is largely limited to training courses and

specialist advice.62 In union recognition campaigns, the win rate increases by half if the

rank and file are actively involved. An example is the Justice for Janitors campaign (§

5.1), in which members where trained for active involvement in the campaign.63

Besides practical reasons for actively involving members, this also contributes to the

emancipatory power of the trade union. A union that focuses on providing professional

services, by contrast, can achieve the opposite: this can create a feeling of dependence

and powerlessness among members. This risk increases when all problems are

interpreted as individual problems, and when they are dealt with through lengthy legal

procedures.64

Among trade union officials, there is sometimes reluctance to actively involve members.

An SEIU organiser said about his colleagues: “They want to help people... It’s a lot

easier to take care of someone’s problem than it is to train them to take care of their

own problem”. A similar attitude may lead to a preference for the back rooms. An

example is a local trade union leader who finds that he achieves more by making one

telephone call with the right person, than by mobilising three hundred people to

participate in a protest.65

However, American unions that focus on organising cannot do without the active

participation of members and also of activists who are outside the trade union

movement. Often, people are explicitly asked to commit themselves. People who turn

to worker centres for help are often asked to engage in volunteer work (§ 5.8). Jobs

with Justice activists are asked for a commitment to engage in activities on behalf of

other people at least five times per year (§ 4.12). Members of a HERE local agreed to

engage in activities outside their own workplace for at least two hours per month. A

similar commitment is sometimes asked of organisations. A Chicago living wage

coalition allowed organisations to participate in decision-making only if they managed

to contribute a bus-load of activists to protests.66

In Spain, works council elections are an important means for trade unions to show how

much support they have. These elections further have a practical interest: the outcome


near future, officials of other unions who are dealing with restructuring will be

provided with names of affiliated self-employed career counsellors who can advice

workers who are in danger of losing their jobs. There are plans to develop other similar

forms of member to member services in the future. The self-employed unions also try to

influence government policies. Important achievements include maternity leave and

retirement provisions for the self-employed.58

While these organisations tend to focus on high-educated flex workers, there are also

many jobs in supermarkets, call centres, hotels, restaurants and cleaning. In these

sectors, unions have successfully set up local campaigns (§ 4.9), formed coalitions with

other social organisations (§ 4.12) and used combinations of methods to increase

pressure on employers (§ 4.8).

Unions have not always been open to the idea of organising the self-employed and

agency workers. With regard to the latter group, a delegate at the 1974 TUC

conference reportedly said: “The only way to organise them is to kick them out”. While

this attitude has clearly changed, there are still union officials who do not see it as their

task to represent people with non-standard work.59

In America, it was found that ‘quasi unions’ – the term is used to designate both

initiatives targeting high-educated flex workers and initiatives for contingent workers

at the lower end of the labour market – can be successful in pockets of the labour

market where conventional unions have little reach. However, they seem to have

difficulty moving from successful local campaigns to broader and more structural

power. Quasi-unions often have an insecure financial base and their life-span tends to

be rather short: out of 30 initiatives identified in 2001, 26 were no longer operating

five years later.60

Agencies that provide legal advice to citizens can be an ally when it regards improving

the situation of contingent workers and the unemployed. For example, the British

Citizen Advice Bureaux worked with the TUC to promote greater awareness of part-

time workers’ rights.61 In the Netherlands, a newly formed legal advice agency (Het

Juridisch Loket) exchanges information with community organisations on

undocumented workers’ rights, while social counsellors provided valuable information

for an FNV study into the effects of stricter social assistance eligibility rules.


of Australian and New Zealand unions have raised membership fees by forty percent or

more, to cope with diminished institutional support. Of course, when doing so, they

must be able to convince members that the money will be well-spent. They have used

extensive consultations to win their members’ support. This has been particularly

successful when the membership fee rise has been part of a strategic response to a

crisis.70

A branch of the Australian TWU first carried out a survey among members on how they

felt about the union. When it became clear that the union had their support, members

were consulted under the slogan ‘it’s in your hands’, on the need to raise fees in order

to be able to wage a number of crucial campaigns. A majority of members did support

the measure. A union ombudsman was set up to deal with complaints about the fee

raise and other issues. The New Zealand Finsec union held a referendum among the

entire membership about a proposal to raise membership fees. Local meetings were

organised to discuss the issue. It managed to get over forty percent of the members to

participate in these meetings.71

4.6 Recruitment, organising and marketingIn many countries, unions are concerned about membership developments: even if

membership is not declining, growth is often insufficient to match employment growth

so as to keep density stable, let alone increase density. In America and Britain, some

unions that have focused on organising new groups of workers have been surprisingly

successful (§ 3.2). The choice to focus on organising may be met with resistance,

because it means that fewer means are available for servicing the existing membership.

There are important differences in how unions try to recruit new members. Many

campaigns target workplaces where the union already has a strong position; such

campaigns are referred to as ‘infill’. On the short term, this is more cost-effective than

organising new workplaces (‘greenfield’), but such a strategy will eventually limit union

presence to declining sectors.72 There is also a distinction between campaigns that use

marketing techniques in order to better sell the ‘product’ trade union; and, at the other

extreme, organising campaigns that aim to build a position of power in a specific

company or sector (§ 4.7).

While organising is still largely limited to Anglo-Saxon unions, the French CFDT recently

started training 500 ‘développeurs’ (at a smaller scale, it has been doing so since 1988).


decides how much money unions receive from the government. In addition, members

of works councils get paid leave; sometimes this is used to strengthen the union’s

position at other workplaces. Because so much is at stake at the works council

elections, unions launch workplace campaigns every four years, for which activists

receive specific training. Even though this model leads to periods of increased contact

between the union and workers, this tends to evaporate during periods between

elections.67

The Dutch FNV has successfully organised referendum-like member surveys on whether

or not to sign social pacts. This method was shown to be more effective at involving a

representative share of the membership in decision-making than traditional meetings,

which tend to be attended mainly by men.

Referendums had earlier been used by the Italian trade union movement. The large

confederations, pressurised by grassroots committees (comitati di base) that criticised

their lack of democracy, started to consider using referendums in the 1980s. In 1993, a

binding referendum was organised on a social pact with the government on income

policies. A million and a half workers cast a vote and two-thirds approved the pact. The

referendum increased the legitimacy of the union leadership, and contributed to the

absence of protests against the pact.

In 1995, another referendum was organised about a pact on pensions. This time, tens

of thousands of workplace meetings were organised to discuss the pact. Subsequently,

four and a half million workers participated in the referendum, again resulting in two-

thirds approving the pact. Since then, the method has been applied repeatedly. By now,

the enthusiasm has dwindled. Due to increased rivalry between confederations, there is

growing reluctance to organise referendums.68

Whereas Italian confederations have strengthened their position through referenda

among the membership, the French CFDT has experienced the opposite. On 15 May

2003, two days after a large demonstration involving a million protestors, the

confederation reached an agreement with the government on pensions, even though

the CGT confederation would have preferred to carry on the protests. For members,

the agreement came as a total surprise. There was a lot of indignation and the CFDT

found itself in an internal crisis. Within months, 35,000 to 50,000 members left the

CFDT, some of them joining CGT or autonomous unions.69

Referenda have also been used to decide on increases in membership fees. A number


which union is active in their sector, can join through Unions Australia. For the first six

months, they will pay a standard membership fee, which will be used to fund the

centre. The centre makes sure that membership details are transferred to the relevant

union. The unions will also receive organising and recruitment leads and suggestions as

to potential activists.77

The extent to which unions engage in organising and recruitment is partly related to

government policies. In countries where the trade union movement has a relatively

strong institutional position, the need to organise new groups of workers is felt less

strongly. Of course, there are risks involved in being dependent on government

recognition as a trade union movement. Such a position can easily be lost when a new

government is formed.78

While many unions at least in theory attach importance to organising and recruiting,

the retention of members is often less prominent on the agenda. Research in Britain

suggests that a stronger union presence at the workplace may be crucial for retention.

A significant part of union leavers did so because they were dissatisfied with some

aspect of union organisation.79

While the British study found that insufficient help for members with problems was an

important reason why people say they leave a union, this does not necessarily imply

that improving individual services and handling of grievances is necessarily the key to

better retention. In Australia, it has been observed that only a tiny minority of members

have individual grievances. The key motivator for membership is thought to be power:

“Could members be seen to work together and achieve the improvement in what they

wanted?”80

4.7 OrganisingSome unions in America, Britain and Australia have been very successful at organising

new groups of workers. Efforts are made to introduce the method in other countries as

well, including the Netherlands, Germany, Poland and Russia. Some hold that

organising is nothing but a return to workplace trade unionism. Others point out that

today’s organising approach is different because of its highly systematic nature and its

emphasis on empowerment.

There is no doubt that organising is indeed a systematic approach. Key elements


Over a one-year period, activists meet three times for one or more days to be trained in

communication skills and in planning workplace campaigns. The développeurs are

further to contribute to a less ‘sombre’ atmosphere within the trade union movement.

The CFDT has been coping with substantial membership decline as a result of a social

pact that was badly received by the members (§ 4.5). The développeurs are instructed

to respect workers’ decision to leave the CFDT, but they are to try to find out the

motives: has it to do with the union’s national policies, or with how it operates at the

workplace? The développeurs have reportedly been successful, especially in service

sectors ‘en plein boom’. For example, thousands of home-based child care workers

(assistantes maternelles) have been organised.

The colleagues of the formerly communist CGT also want to focus on recruitment.

However, it chooses not to train specialised développeurs, because it finds that all

activists must be involved in recruitment.73

Within the German trade union movement, the accent in recruitment efforts is still very

much on marketing campaigns. In addition, Ver.di and IG Metall have started to

negotiate financial benefits for trade union members in collective agreements.74

Experience in Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Sweden and Britain teaches that offering

financial services such a credit cards or insurances has almost no effect in terms of

gaining new members. Services that are more clearly work-related do sometimes prove

successful, especially with higher educated professionals and the self-employed. Such

services may include career advice, training and support for job seekers. The Norwegian

Grafisk Forbund even set up its own temp agency.75

In many countries, recruitment campaigns are hindered by the fact that unions use

different names and that workers often do not know which union they should join. In a

number of countries, confederations have tried to convince unions to use similar names

and logos. For example, in the 1990s, local SEIU unions used no fewer than 143

different names. SEIU decided to adopt a new logo and to provide free stationery, T-

shirts and redesign services to locals that decided to use it. By now all local unions are

part of the ‘purple army’. Merchandise including bowling balls, megaphones and

clothing yields $ 2 million per year.76

The Australian ACTU has recently created Unions Australia, a centre that aims to make

union membership more accessible. People who want to join a union but do not know


An issue that unions have not yet completely resolved is how to maintain workplace

organisation after or in between organising campaigns. Some think more or less

permanent campaigning is the answer, others prefer setting up structures such as

union learning centres (§ 5.12).

4.8 Corporate campaignsWhile corporate campaigns may require substantial means and perseverance, they can

be an effective means to take on powerful opponents. According to the Troublemaker’s

Handbook, requirements for success include a focus on solidarity issues; mobilising

members; research to identify targets; coalitions with community organisations and

creative and daring actions.82

It is important to understand the company, the sector in which it operates, and the

network of investors, suppliers and customers. It is also important to know in what

ways the company is subject to government regulations and whether there are options

for legal action against the company. Further, foreign subsidiaries and relations should

be included in this analysis. All this information helps to understand the company’s

weak spots, which may provide the union with leverage. For this reason, the AFL-CIO

and many American unions have created strategic research departments.83

The SEIU invests heavily in training its staff, and it has contracted with the American

Management Institute to provide it. It may seem odd to have the ‘opponent’ train your

staff, but the idea behind it is that a union must learn to look at a sector from a business

perspective. Of SEIU staff, it has been said that the Harvard Business Review was

probably their single most important source of information.84

Besides conducting research, a position of power must be built. This approach has been

summarised as follows: “we issued reports that documented the disparity between the

lives of the workers and the CEOs who managed the companies where they worked.

We publicized company failures to meet product- or worker-safety regulations. We

talked with members of the companies’ boards of directors. We submitted

shareholders’ resolutions and mobilized community supporters. We asked elected

leaders to intervene. And, of course, we also used effective old-school tactics: We

demonstrated, picketed, and led strikes when necessary”.85

The SEIU has developed a systematic approach to campaign design. Elements include


include identifying campaign issues; identifying and developing leaders and mapping

the workplace. Confederations in America, Britain and Australia have created institutes

where the organising approach is taught (§ 5.9).

Campaign issues, according to the TUC’s approach, must meet four criteria. They must

be widely felt (not just an individual problem); deeply felt (no use in starting a campaign

around an issue unless it is something that really makes people angry); winnable (for

example, job losses are an issue that people feel deeply about, but it is generally not a

good issue for an organising campaign) and visible (workers must be aware of what has

been achieved through the union). Effective one to one communication is taught, and a

lot of emphasis is placed on asking questions so campaign issues can be identified (‘so

what is it like to work here?’).

The period prior to negotiating a collective agreement may offer opportunities for

mobilising workers. However, organising campaigns need not be limited to periods of

collective bargaining.

Since organising campaigns largely rely on lay activists, leaders who can run the

campaign at the workplace have to be identified. Leaders need not be the workers with

the biggest mouth; they are the persons who are trusted by their colleagues. One to

one conversations are used to get potential leaders involved. In the SEIU approach,

such conversations are highly scripted and may involve mild psychological pressure

(‘But you just said that it is unacceptable how they treat you. So what are you going to

do about it?’). Potential leaders will be tested by giving them small tasks, for example to

contact a colleague about the campaign, and seeing whether they can be relied upon

to do as they have promised. Groups of leaders will make up organising committees,

which are to become more or less self-supporting.

An important task of the organising committee will be to collect detailed information

about the workplace. Mapping is a continuous process that helps to identify

opportunities and leverage points for campaigns. The information to be collected

includes who works at the company, what kind of work they do, where they meet, how

they feel about their work and about the union, who are potential activists, etcetera.81

Organising is of course not an end in itself, but a means to build power and obtain

results from employers. One way of putting pressure on employers is the strike, but

other instruments are used as well, often in combination (§ 4.8).


accept press advertisements. Eventually, an international union body endorsed an

international boycott and the value of the company’s shares dropped.

Toys ‘R’ Us tried to depict Handels as a third party that interfered with other people out

of organisational interests, but this approach failed. Handels’ campaign found

resonance with the general public, partly because of a concern about the presumed

loss of ‘Swedish values’ as a result of joining the EU. Toys ‘R’ Us was further at a

disadvantage because it had failed to study Swedish labour relations. Senior managers

had little idea of how a collective agreement might work. The personnel handbook

gave managers considerable power to change labour conditions as they saw fit, while

limiting employees’ right of free speech and requiring them to inform on colleagues,

who could be fired on the basis of a mere suspicion of theft (in contravention of

Swedish labour law). The company’s lawyers had translated the personnel handbook,

but had not bothered to adapt it to Swedish law and culture. Also, they had not

anticipated solidarity strikes, because these are illegal in the USA.87

4.9 Local initiativesUntil the 1930s, trade unions in many countries had a strong presence at the local level.

Since that time, many unions have more or less neglected the local level, but recently

there has been a renewed interest in local trade union initiatives. For example, the

American AFL-CIO set up the Union Cities programme to revive local labour councils (§

5.5). The French autonomous Union Syndicale Solidaires (§ 5.10) has decided to create

local branches in which different sectors are represented and to make funds available

for these branches.

In Norway, the confederation has gained success with local centres that support unions

and engage in joint political campaigns. In Germany, several unions merged into IG

BCE. The miners’ union contributed a strong local structure at places where members

live. This local structure proved valuable as a means to remain in touch with members

who change jobs more and more frequently.

The Dutch FNV is in the process of creating one hundred local groups of activists who

are to form coalitions and influence municipal policies. An effort is made to include

women, young people and ethnic minorities in these teams. One of the instruments to

influence local government policies is the bi-annual FNV Local Work and Income

Monitor, which compares the social policies of over two hundred municipalities. The


making conscious decisions regarding goals, targets, strategic approaches, tactics,

timelines and work plans; identifying who potential settlers are (the persons at the

negotiating table need not be the ones who make the decisions), what their interests

are, and what will move them; identifying who the audiences are; and escalating the

conflict step by step to increase pressure on the target.

In order to be able to create pressure, a ‘power web’ analysis must be made of the

target and its relations with the outer world. Such an analysis can help to identify

multiple points of leverage that may be used to get the target to move. The analysis

should consider in what ways the target depends on:

• Financiers/investors

• Owners

• Suppliers

• Media

• Other business interests

• Workers

• Customers / clients

• Government / regulatory agencies

• The community

Examples of corporate campaigns include the Justice for Janitors campaign (§ 5.1) and

the Steelworkers’ campaign (§ 5.7). Elements of this approach are beginning to be used

in Europe as well. In Norway, the Hotell og Restaurantarbeiderforbundet managed to

organise a number of companies through a combination of pickets, publicity, strikes

and boycott threats by other unions. In France, cleaners and activists targeted the Accor

hotel chain with a campaign involving an eleven month strike, protests at a

shareholders’ meeting and handing out protest cards in the lobby of a number of

expensive hotels. Among other things, they got the company to pay cleaners by the

hour rather than by the room, which is important from a perspective of work

pressure.86

In Sweden, the commercial workers’ union Handels successfully forced the Toys ‘R’ Us

company to sign its first collective agreement anywhere, after it had opened

megastores in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö in 1994. Handels had little

experience with this type of industrial conflict, but the Transport Workers Union

advised a strategy of gradual escalation. Handels launched a strike and called for a

consumer boycott. Sympathetic unions targeted the company by refusing to make

store deliveries, to repair their buildings, to provide financial services and finally to


own research institutes (§ 4.14). The Labour Studies Centre at Wayne State University

has created a website containing valuable case studies of local trade union innovations

in America.92

Many local initiatives try to create coalitions of different unions. There are several

reasons to do so. As was just mentioned, flex workers frequently change sectors,

making it important to have trade union initiatives that bridge these sectors. On the

other hand, the issues involved often require joint initiatives. Whether it regards living

wage campaigns or negotiations on local economic policies, different sectors are

involved and there would be no sense in unions acting on their own. This does not

mean that local inter-union collaboration is always easy; often unions have their own

agendas. On the other hand, successful initiatives often involve a joint union strategy at

the local level, as for instance in Los Angeles.93

4.10 Local economic policiesIn Europe, all kinds of local or regional bodies have been created to stimulate the

economy. Many of these initiatives aim to create new jobs in regions that suffer job

losses because traditional manufacturing sectors are disappearing. Programmes are

often subsidised by the EU and national governments. They can be rather substantial,

for example, a programme in Dortmund has been awarded over 50 million euro for the

next ten years, and 70 to 100 people are involved in the execution of the programme.

The aim is to create 70,000 new jobs.94

Not much is known about the effects of this type of programmes. There are positive

evaluations, but the criteria are sometimes rather misguided. For example, the EU

proclaimed a number of Italian programmes to be successful because they had

succeeded in spending the money quickly and in a correct manner.95 By now, there are

more and more independent evaluations, which are sometimes critical of how the

programme operates.

The reason to involve social partners and sometimes other social organisations in the

programmes is that they are supposed to be knowledgeable of what goes on in the

local community. Critics say this view amounts to ‘community fetishism’. For example,

various German programmes are very similar: they all aim to create some sort of Silicon

Valley, regardless of specific local circumstances. A partial explanation for this

uniformity is that all programmes used the same consultancy firm, McKinsey. Another


report always yields considerable publicity and city councils use the outcomes to debate

social policies with the administration. Past evaluations have shown the monitor to be

an effective instrument to influence municipal policies, especially if local activists are

persistent and form coalitions.88

Coalition research in North America and Australia suggests that coalitions are most

powerful if they can operate simultaneously at the local level and at the state or

national levels. Local organisation is effective for political influence as well as for

sustaining and building member engagement.89 A combination of top-down and

bottom-up approaches is required because unions need to deal with increasingly

diverse small workplaces, but also with large multinational corporations. “The key,

therefore, seems to be the ability to develop campaigns and structures which provide

sufficient flexibility to incorporate local specificity, yet which also provide enough

collective mass and centralized coordination as to allow workers to stand up to their

employers”.90

Developments at the workplace are indeed one of the reasons for the renewed interest

in local structures among trade unions. Flexible contracts and outsourcing cause

workers to be increasingly scattered over a multitude of small workplaces. Workers

frequently change jobs, often moving from one sector to another. These developments

make it increasingly difficult for unions to organise workers at the workplace. This

explains why some unions not only try to organise at the workplace, but also in the

neighbourhoods where workers live (often this approach is referred to as community

unionism).

An additional reason for local trade union structures is the fact that many governments

decentralise responsibilities to the local level.91 An example is the Dutch government,

which has in 2004 transferred responsibility for social assistance and labour market

policies to the municipalities, and is currently decentralising home care and social

welfare.

Important instances of trade union revitalisation can be found at the local level. In

America, coalitions of trade unions and other organisations have launched successful

living wage campaigns (§ 5.3). In over one hundred cities, worker centres have been set

up that support groups of workers who are difficult to organise; similar initiatives can

be found in Europe as well (§ 5.8). In some cities, unions wage campaigns for worker-

friendly economic policies, sometimes in coalitions with renters’ organisations (§ 4.12).

Local branches are involved in political campaigns (§ 4.13) and some have created their


and photo opportunities with politicians collecting a campaign check”, but in some

cities this has radically changed.101 The way in which unions operate in these cities

differs from European collaborations in that the union movement has created a

position of power for itself. They have done so partly through public campaigns, thus

solving the problem of the lack of transparency as well.

Unions have built local power through protests, coalitions with community

organisations, research, and political campaigns. They use their power to get living

wage ordinances passed, forcing companies using government funds to pay decent

wages (§ 5.3), and to regulate minimum wages and conditions and standards for retail

workers, including Wal-Mart (§ 5.2). In Maryland, unions succeeded in having twenty

percent of the budget surplus invested in a fund to be used for job creation and training

in times of economic downturn. In a number of cities, unions have campaigned

successfully for community benefits agreements (§ 5.4).

4.11 InternationalOne reason for unions to operate internationally is that the companies that they have

to deal with often also have an international orientation. Unions in Europe find that it is

difficult to get such companies to take responsibility for their role in the local and

regional economy. In America, recognition campaigns have a lower success rate in

companies that are active in more than one country. This is especially the case with

multinationals that have their headquarters abroad. In such companies, unions win

29% of their campaigns, as opposed to 46% in other companies.102

Until recently, international collaboration among unions used to consist mainly of

supporting trade unions in non-Western countries. However, this situation seems to be

changing. Increasingly, unions are aware of the importance of international trade

unionism in an environment of globalisation of capital, not just out of solidarity with

workers in other countries, but also as a strategic necessity.

Sometimes in coalitions with the globalisation movement, unions try to get social

standards included in international trade agreements. An important milestone of this

approach was the involvement of the trade union movement in the anti-WTO protests

in Seattle, in 1999.

According to some critics, trade unions pretend to stand up for workers in the South,


reason why local needs often play a secondary role is that programmes are often

designed according to the preferences of the funding agency.96

Meanwhile, democratic procedures and transparency are not always what they should

be. Often, the initiative is in the hands of a small group of ‘social entrepreneurs’ who

know each other well and who know where funding is to be found. Among them, they

take all the important decisions, without consulting the people they are supposed to

represent.97

A study of large-scale urban economic development programmes found a conspicuous

feature to be the ‘relatively low resistance and conflict they raise’. This was thought to

be a result of “the establishment of (quasi) non-governmental and non-accountable

institutions, the formation of ‘stake-holder’ interest networks, and the emergence of

compensating – but unfortunately often low budget – social economy measures”. Key

players in such networks are “Chambers of Commerce, associations of leading

economic groups, real estate developers, pension and other large fund holders, and/or

large international businesses”. These urban development programmes drain public

resources from programmes that benefit all citizens.98

While the programmes seem to be lacking in transparency, another question is what

results they yield for trade unions. Unions often cope with membership decline in the

regions where the programmes are carried out. Jobs are disappearing in sectors where

unions have a strong position, are disappearing. In its place, service jobs are created,

which are more difficult to organise. In Germany, there are ideas about how unions

might gain a position in these sectors, but these fail to be realised because service

sector union Ver.di is not involved in the regional economic programmes.99

Another issue is that the trade union movement has failed to properly analyse its own

position in the regional collaborations. The involvement in national social pacts has an

economic logic to it: unions offer wage restraint in exchange for jobs. At the local or

regional level, it is unclear what unions have to offer. The general impression is that

unions and other social organisations get to participate in discussions but have no real

influence.100

To the extent that European unions have insufficiently thought about how they can

built a position of power to influence the local and regional economy, they can learn

from their American colleagues. Of American union locals it has been said that they

traditionally “focused on banquets, golf outings, breakfasts with local business leaders,


colleagues overnight. Under such circumstances, solidarity often remains limited to

symbolic support.107

Nevertheless, there are examples of successful campaigns that mobilise workers in

different countries. An example are the international corporate campaigns, such as

those of the American steelworkers, who enlisted the support of unions in other

countries to be able to exert pressure on the financiers of their employer (§ 5.7).

A first step towards international collaboration is the exchange of information. Dutch

union FNV Bondgenoten sponsors the Company Monitor, an international research

project into the treatment of workers by subsidiaries of multinational corporations ABN

AMRO, Ahold, Akzo Nobel, Heineken, Philips and Unilever. The research is carried out

in collaboration with local unions.108

At its 2004 Convention, the SEIU launched its strategy to form sustained, international

coalitions in the service sector, building on previous campaigns with British and Danish

unions against firms such as Group 4 Securicor and FirstGroup. The strategy involves

dedicated partnerships with hand-picked unions, most notably T&G in Britain and

LHMU in Australia. Exploratory visits are made to other countries in order to select

unions that can be worked with on the basis of common purpose.

In order to build strong ties with partner unions, SEIU employs local union officials who

act as bridge builders between the SEIU and the local partner unions. It invests

significant resources in regional offices and organisers in Australia, Britain, South

Africa, India and Poland. In addition, membership and leadership exchanges are

organised, in order to connect campaigns to the rank and file.

Through the international services union UNI, SEIU has set up an international initiative

to organise cleaners and security staff. SEIU has invested several million dollars in

organising campaigns that target international food-service, cleaning and security

employers, and has assigned staff to Australia, Poland, Britain, India, France,

Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, South America, and South Africa. Following

the example of the SEIU’s Justice for Janitors campaign (§ 5.1), T&G has launched a

Justice for Cleaners campaign, and LHMU a Clean Start campaign.

The partnerships that grew out of the UNI initiative have helped mobilise international

support for striking cleaners in Houston. Plans are being considered to set up a similar

project in the catering industry in collaboration with the IUF.


but are actually motivated by protectionism. By forcing foreign producers to pay higher

wages, they would deny third world countries access to the international market. The

real objective would be to protect jobs in the West, at the expense of the South.103

However, this argument does not apply to the core labour standards, as agreed upon in

the ILO and ratified by many countries. These standards guarantee the freedom to

organise and to create unions, and prohibit forced labour, discrimination and child

labour. They do not impose wage levels on countries that accept the standards, but

they do give workers instruments to negotiate their labour conditions. Among trade

unionists, both in the West and in the South, there is overwhelming support for using

international trade agreements to force countries to abide by these core labour

standards.104

A country that is of increasing strategic interest to the trade union movement is China.

The huge supply of low-paid workers, who have virtually no right to organise, is seen as

a serious threat to the negotiating position of workers in Western countries. However,

there are some indications that Chinese labour relations are changing, presumably

because the government is concerned that the widening income gap may lead to social

unrest.

For example, the government forced Wal-Mart to accept unions in its Chinese outlets –

which is at odds with everything the company stands for (§ 5.2). At present, China is

preparing new legislation that would improve workers’ rights, for example by making it

more difficult to lay off workers. While it is unclear how effectively such legislation

could be implemented, the fierce opposition from corporate lobby groups such as the

American Chamber of Commerce and companies including Philips China suggests they

take the new law very seriously.105

Unions in the West have always refused to recognise the All China Federation of Trade

Unions (ACFTU), because it is not an independent union, but controlled by the state.

However, union leaders increasingly acknowledge the strategic necessity of having

some kind of collaboration with workers in China. Unions from Germany, Norway, the

USA and the Netherlands have visited the country.106

There is a growing tendency of unions trying to forge international coalitions, even

though this is often not easy. For example, changing ownership structures make it

difficult to create solidarity among workers who are employed by the same company in

different countries. The sale of a subsidiary may mean that workers stop being


Multinational corporations sometimes try to impose American labour relations on

workers at their European subsidiaries, but these attempts are not always successful.

For example, Toys ‘R’ Us was forced to sign a collective agreement with the Handels

union (§ 4.8). Wal-Mart pulled out of Germany, where it had problems coping with

strong unions.113

The trade union movement has had a rather strong institutional position in Europe.

However, changing circumstances force the European Trade Union Confederation

(ETUC) to reconsider its strategies. New activities include the coordination of protests

against the services directive. It has been argued that these protests may mark a new

phase for the European trade union movement, the traditionally strong institutional

position being replaced to some extent by a need to build power as well as fight a

battle of ideas.114

Another indication of a changing role of the European trade union movement may be

ETUC’s intention to discuss organising and trade union innovation at its 2007 Congress.

General Secretary John Monks commented: “The ETUC is working with its European

member unions to build a new strategy. It is unlikely that we will go to the lengths of

some of the Americans and see organising as practically the only union strategy for

growth. But that will clearly be an important part of our broader strategy”.115

4.12 CoalitionsIn the spring of 2004, Wal-Mart spent over a million dollar on a campaign to get

residents of the Californian city of Inglewood to vote for a proposition that would

exempt the company of all kinds of regulations. Because Wal-Mart has a poor

reputation as an employer (§ 5.2), the local AFL-CIO spent 110,000 dollar on a counter-

campaign. Even though Wal-Mart thus spent almost ten times as much on its campaign

as the labour council, sixty percent of voters voted against the retailer.116

This kind of ‘David and Goliath’ victories are not uncommon. Repeatedly, the American

trade union movement has achieved success despite its opponents having much deeper

pockets. A good example are the local living wage campaigns (§ 5.3). Such successes

are to a large extent due to coalitions with clergy, immigrants’ organisations,

neighbourhood associations and other community organisations.

It should be noted that some of the most powerful coalitions address not only issues of


The IUF itself has launched a global organising campaign, targeting specifically Nestlé

and Coca Cola workers. An office in Moscow provides training seminars to local trade

unionists at plant, district and national levels. The training programmes intend to help

them organise and develop union structures. While IUF-affiliated unions had no

members in the region in 1997, there were over 30,000 by 2003 and 45,000 by 2005.

However, unions in the region still depend on foreign assistance and they are not

expected to become financially self-sustaining in the foreseeable future.

Besides IUF and UNI, other global unions have initiatives to cope with international

production structures as well.

International coalition always has its challenges, as it requires a mutuality of interest

from unions in different countries. Mutuality may include a shared commitment to

organise, or a shared commitment to building industry power. For the future, SEIU-

president Andy Stern is contemplating new forms of international collaboration. For

example, rich unions might pay strike benefits to low-wage colleagues in countries with

poor unions. Also, strikes might be ‘outsourced’ to countries where strikes are legal and

will not provoke government retaliation.109

According to a report in The Times, British and American unions are planning to merge

into an international union. Unite, a British two million member union to be formed

from a merger of Amicus and T&G, is preparing for talks with the United Steelworkers

of America (1.2 million members) about such a move. Amicus and T&G already

collaborate with the SEIU, German union IG Metall and Polish union Solidarnosc.110

Workers in the West fear that international competition might cause them to lose their

jobs. One way of helping workers cope with globalisation is to offer them opportunities

to develop their skills. This is done for example through a successful union learning

project (§ 5.12) in the British banking sector. “Individuals and groups see themselves as

passive recipients of social and industrial change, see themselves as unable to resist

‘globalisation’, do not think that their voices are heard. This feeling of powerlessness is

reinforced when the union is seen as the ‘insurance policy’ that is called upon when

things get tough, a force external to the workplace. Learning is in, of and from the

workplace”, a spokesperson said.111

More in general, workers may benefit from dealing with outsourcing initiatives in a

proactive way. UNI has developed a handbook that helps workers and unions anticipate

outsourcing plans, collect information and develop a strategy.112


One of the advantages of human service work is that the work has to be performed

locally. Childcare workers, cleaners, homecare and most public services cannot be ‘off-

shored’. Because this work is fixed to the local area, coalitions with consumers and

other community organisations provide unions with an advantage against employers –

because they can build public support for unions and community demands in the same

space in which capital is fixed.120

Success has been achieved with campaigns against the privatisation of council housing,

in which public sector union Unison collaborates with local Defend Council Housing

groups. Unison has an interest in retaining decent jobs, while renters’ associations are

concerned about the disappearance of affordable housing. Often, renters are

blackmailed by the government, which says that overdue house maintenance will not

be carried out unless renters approve privatisation. In a number of cities, coalitions have

succeeded in blocking privatisation, and in this the support of the trade union

movement has proved crucial.121

Coalitions can be a way to counter the image that unions only pursue narrow self-

interests. For example, it would have been a ‘completely mistaken strategy’ to frame a

conflict between the Austrian government and railway staff as being about acquired

rights. Instead, an alliance with railway clients was formed, making it a fight against a

‘neoliberal and politically motivated’ attack on the railway service. In order to involve

local communities, the national slogan ‘Austria needs the railway service’ was joined by

local variants such as ‘Linz needs the railway service’.122

Effective coalitions require constant negotiation and a balancing of concerns between

what is held in common between the groups, and the individual interests that unions or

community organisations hold autonomously. An interesting example is a campaign

initiated by the Australian Teachers’ union NSWTF in collaboration with parents’

organisations, to stop public education budget cuts (see also § 4.14). The campaign

was primarily about maintaining the quality of public education, focussing on issues

such as reducing class sizes, improving school maintenance, supporting quality

teachers and professional development. However, union members wanted higher

salaries to be included in the demands, something the parents’ organisation opposed

because it feared that this would overshadow other issues. A compromise was reached

by calling for ‘the development of strategies to attract and retain teachers in an era of

teachers’ shortage’.

However, the government played the coalition partners against each other by offering a


union concern, but concerns that are in the mutual interests of both unions and

community organisations. Unions should also be aware that coalitions come in various

shapes and sizes, from ad hoc coalitions with community organisations around

particular events to deep, long term coalitions around shared interests and values. It is

important to recognise that coalitions vary, and ad hoc coalitions may be particularly

useful in reacting to a harsh employer or political attack, whereas deeper coalitions may

be more useful for building longer term proactive agendas. A framework of union-

community coalitions developed by Amanda Tattersall has been reproduced as an

appendix to the present report.

The fact that collaboration increases trade union power is an important motive, but

there are also other reasons to form coalitions. By working with community

organisations, unions show that they are not just defending narrow self-interests, but

fighting for social justice. Collaboration can further be a means to get in touch with

young people and ethnic minorities. Since coalitions can increase union power, they will

often be used in situations in which workers have a weak position, or the opponent is

very strong. Examples include campaigns for workers at the lower end of the labour

market, and campaigns targeting multinational corporations.

Collaboration between trade unions and community organisations can sometimes be

difficult. Community organisations sometimes feel that they are being used by unions.

For example, clergy stress that unions should not have a ‘rent-a-collar’ attitude. Unions

sometimes doubt whether community organisations can deliver on their promises.

Generally, it takes time to build mutual trust and it takes respectful relations to

negotiate coalitions that operate in the interests of both community organisations and

unions.117

Public sector unions sometimes form coalitions with users of public services to stop

privatisation, as for example in Britain in the 1980s. Such coalitions are not always easy

to sustain. Users are not always organised, which can make it difficult to reach them.

Also, they may be critical of public service employees if the quality of the services has

deteriorated, for example as a result of budget cuts. Social work in London faced this

problem, when clients wanted nothing to do with employees because they were

dissatisfied with the institution.118 On the other hand, public service workers may face

abuse from clients or clients’ families, which may in itself be an important organising

issue, although this does not necessarily rule out the option of simultaneously forging

coalitions with service users.119


Besides, there may also be cultural and class differences; for example, members of

environmental organisations tend to be higher educated than trade union members.126

Despite these differences, it is sometimes possible to form coalitions on the basis of

shared interests. For example, an American union suggested creating a fund to provide

training to workers who would lose their jobs as a consequence of environmental

policies. The idea behind this is that the entire society benefits from a cleaner

environment and that therefore the costs should not be borne exclusively by workers

who are employed in a sector that is not environmentally friendly. Also, in a number of

cities there are coalitions that promote environmentally friendly project development

that should simultaneously yield decent jobs and affordable houses (§ 5.4).127

An even more daring attempt at coalition building is made by the SEIU on Fisher Island,

Florida, ‘one of the most concentrated pockets of wealth in the nation’. The union

deliberately launched a campaign to organise low wage service workers here, because

it is a ‘microcosm of the nation’s increasing social and economic divide’. With the help

of the clergy, the SEIU is trying to engage some wealthy employers in its campaign,

hoping they will be moved by the ‘contrast between their affluence and the meager

existence of many of their workers’.128

Coalitions require organisations that have an eye for social issues. An interesting

example is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN),

which organises low and moderate income families. The organisation, with 220,000

members, campaigns for living wages, for affordable houses, against cuts in education

and against ‘predatory lending’ (loans with unfavourable conditions that are forced on

people through aggressive marketing). In many campaigns, ACORN works with trade

unions. ACORN is different from many other organisations in that it is largely

independent from external funding. Eighty percent of its income is from members and

activities such as lotteries.129

Another important trade union ally is Jobs with Justice (JwJ), an organisation with

branches in forty cities. Both organisations and individual persons are affiliated to these

branches. Activists are asked to commit to participate in actions at least five times per

year. JwJ often supports trade union actions, such as strikes, but also supports workers

who are not members of unions. In cities such as Denver, JwJ helped revitalise the local

trade union movement. Initially, some within the union movement were critical of JwJ,

because it was seen as a competitor, but now the AFL-CIO supports the organisation.

JwJ often uses Workers Rights Boards, made up of prominent citizens, which organise


6% wage increase, which narrowed the teachers’ focus to the wage issue rather than

public education more broadly. This was one of the reasons why the coalition with

parents’ organisations all but fell apart. However, when the government threatened to

pay the wage increase out of the general education budget, it shifted the issue back

from a wage issue to a general education issue. In order to protect the education

budget, unions and parents worked together, with parents taking the unprecedented

step of supporting strike action by the NSWTF. As one newspaper commented, “this is

not the usual fight by teachers over money; this has become a fight for the survival of a

valued and quality public education system”. Eventually, the union won a 12.5% wage

increase that was not paid out of the general education budget.123

Another potential union ally are organisations of health care users. In America, the

handicapped and the elderly can employ home care paid by the government. The user

of the service is at the same time acting as an employer. Caregivers, often immigrants,

are hard to organise. They work in isolation and turnover is high. In addition, going on

strike is not an option, because this would directly affect the elderly and the

handicapped. In California, the SEIU aimed to form coalitions with organisations of

health care recipients. Through intensive personal contacts with the leaders of these

organisations, it managed to build trust. After a campaign lasting for ten years, SEIU

managed to organise almost 150,000 home care givers.124

Similarly, health care coalitions have been a strong example of union and community

organisation in Canada, with the Ontario Health Coalition operating for over 15 years

in defence of public health care and against privatisation. Coalition work has been

most successful against hospital privatisation, where the direct interests of hospital

workers (to protect wages and conditions) match with the interests of the general

public who want to protect the standards of their local hospitals.125

In the Netherlands, the provision of home care is being decentralised to municipalities,

which are now outsourcing these services, sometimes to cleaning companies that are

cheaper than professional providers of home care. Existing coalitions of unions,

organisations of the elderly and organisations of health care recipients are being used

to put pressure on local governments to set higher quality standards for companies that

will provide home care.

When trying to form coalitions, it is important to be creative in finding approaches that

underline common interests. This certainly applies to issues like the environment,

where the interests of trade unions and environmental organisations sometimes clash.


When the trade union movement tries to influence political decision-making, this

usually takes the form of lobbying and negotiating social pacts. In addition, political

actions sometimes occur. Sometimes these take on the form of strikes, but in countries

such as Germany and Britain, political strikes are illegal. The trade union movement

tends to be careful when it regards involvement in election campaigns, although the

German trade union movement did wage a campaign in 1998 that helped the SPD and

the Green Party secure a victory.

The American trade union movement has much more aggressive election campaigns.

The fact that Al Gore in 2000 received more votes than George Bush was partly due to

an intensive grassroots campaign of the AFL-CIO and affiliated unions. In 2004, the

trade union movement spent 150 million dollar on an even larger campaign. Unions

and organisations such as ACORN mobilised 40,000 volunteers, who staffed phone

banks, made house calls, handed out leaflets and assisted with voter registration.

The fact that Bush still won the elections can be explained in part by the fact that the

Democrats had neglected socio-economic issues, in spite of the fact that there was

broad support among voters for issues such as raising the minimum wage (§ 5.3). In

addition, the Republicans had a much larger campaign budget, thanks to corporate

contributions from companies such as Wal-Mart (the largest corporate contributor to

political candidates’ campaign funds). Having learned the lesson of the 2000

campaign, they did not rely exclusively on television ads, but placed a strong emphasis

on personal contact with potential voters. They used the infrastructure of the

conservative churches and the Chambers of Commerce, while the National Rifle

Association (NRA) helped them reach voters at gun clubs.

Despite the recent split in the trade union movement (§ 3.2), unions and community

organisations again launched a large campaign for the 2006 Midterm Elections. It is

generally acknowledged that this campaign has been instrumental in the Democrats’

victory. This time, propositions to raise the minimum wage were successfully put to the

vote in six strategically important states, which had an important effect on turnout

among low-income voters.

In comparison with past campaigns, unions tried to reach beyond their urban

strongholds, for example by targeting suburbs. Of considerable importance is Working

America, an AFL-CIO ‘community affiliate’ (§ 4.12) with some 1.5 million members,

which seems to have had a substantial effect on turnout. In a poll commissioned by the

AFL-CIO, eighty percent of Working America members who did not vote in 2002 said


public hearings on issues involving workers’ rights. This method is often more effective

than legal protection of workers’ rights, because the government is not enforcing these

rights effectively.130

At the international level, some 200 NGOs, unions and social movement organisations

are members of the informal Our World is Not For Sale (OWINFS) network. This network

focuses on issues such as privatisation, outsourcing, structural adjustment, public

sector cut-backs, trade issues emanating from the WTO, etcetera. The experience of

Public Services International (PSI) is that collaboration has made other organisations

more aware of issues such as workers’ rights and trade union rights. “Initially, we often

had to bring up these concerns in any draft statement that the OWINFS was crafting

but, nowadays, such language is routinely inserted by whoever is writing the first

draft”.131

The AFL-CIO has in 2003 created Working America, a ‘community affiliate’ that aims to

organise people who do not work at unionised workplaces. Membership is free. By

going door to door, organisers have recruited some 1.5 million members. Working

America seems to have had a considerable impact on voter turnout in the 2006

Midterm Elections (§ 4.13).

4.13 PoliticsTraditionally, many European trade unions used to have close ties to the Social-

Democrats. For example, the British trade union movement still makes important

financial contributions to the Labour party. In France and Southern Europe,

confederations with a communist background exist as well. Almost everywhere,

confederations have distanced themselves from the political parties that they used to

be allied with, and they now are involved with a broader political spectrum.

In Spain, for example, the Social-Democrat Prime Minister González failed to conclude

a social pact, something his successor Aznar of the right-wing Partido Popular did

manage. More recently, the French CFDT refused to join the CGT in protests against the

privatisation of Gas de France. With presidential elections coming up, it was afraid to

get mixed up in party politics. In Britain, Labour Party funding from unions declined

from 66% in 1992 to 33% in 2001. Unions now spend more money on independent

political campaigns. These campaigns often target Labour policies, such as the

privatisation of public services.132


their promises to raise the minimum wage, improve health care, and to restore workers’

right to organise. If they fail to do so, “we’ll unelect them”.137

In the UK, the London Citizens coalition (§ 5.13) regularly organises meetings, typically

attended by around 500 members of affiliated organisations, in order to hold

politicians accountable. These politicians are presented with a ‘people’s agenda’, a

short list of concrete demands set by the members, and asked to say yes or no to them.

The large attendance makes it difficult for politicians to turn down the demands,

especially since the attendees tend to be politically involved citizens, who are likely to

vote. If politicians say yes to the demands, it will be monitored whether they actually

deliver. For example, London Citizens has been holding regular meetings with Mayor

Ken Livingstone after his 2004 re-election, in order to hold him to the commitments he

had made prior to the elections.138

In a number of countries, trade unions are involved in campaigns to stop or turn back

legislation that undermines workers’ and trade union rights. An example is Australia,

where 300,000 people participated in protests across the country on 30 November

2006. Earlier actions included a ‘Has your MP been naughty or nice?’ Christmas card

campaign; a campaign that got over 5,000 people to make an official submission to a

Senate Enquiry; and a campaign encouraging supporters to send 500 letters to local,

state and national newspapers, 50 being published the day after. The ACTU

confederation is now preparing a campaign for the 2007 election. The campaign will

involve setting up local groups and organising workplace discussions.139

Unions have a positive effect on political participation. In America, many studies have

found that union members are more likely to vote than other citizens. A recent

European study confirmed this, but also found indications of an indirect effect. Even

employees who are not members of unions themselves are significantly more likely to

vote if they work in a partly unionised firm than those in firms without a union

presence. The researchers suggest that creating an institutional context that facilitates

high levels of union density may be an effective means to improve political

participation.140


they did vote in 2006. The same poll suggests that Working America effectively reaches

traditional Republican voters: one-third are born again Christians and one-third are

supporters of the National Rifle Association.

Now that the union movement has helped the Democrats win the elections, it wants

them to deliver on union issues. High on the agenda are a raise of the federal minimum

wage, access to health care and tougher legislation to stop employers obstructing

union campaigns.133

At least as important as national election campaigns are the local activities of the

American trade union movement. Unions judge political candidates by their position on

important issues, on the basis of which they may or may not be endorsed. Through

massive grassroots mobilisation, coalitions of trade unions and community

organisations can effectively take on opponents who have much larger campaign funds

thanks to corporate gifts. Some central labour councils go even further, engaging in the

recruitment and training of political candidates. For example, a trade union institute in

San José claims that half the council members have received training from it.134

Unions seem to become more critical when it regards giving their support to political

candidates, because they feel tehy have been let down at times by candidates they had

helped get elected. For example, the labour council in Seattle tries to get more specific

promises from political candidates, subjects them to interviews by rank and file

members, and has developed a scorecard system to hold them accountable when

elected. Reportedly, this departure from the traditional approach to political deal

making has made some politicians nervous.135 In Baltimore, the trade union movement

and ACORN forced a council vote on a living wage proposal. They realised that the

proposal would be defeated, but council members were forced to take a position.

Subsequently, trade unions and ACORN campaigned against the candidates who had

voted against the proposal.136

At the national level, the SEIU asked candidates for the 2004 presidential elections to

visit local branches and to meet for an hour with regular union members, to see “if they

could hang out comfortably” with these workers. Only Howard Dean accepted this

procedure, thus gaining SEIU endorsement. Members wearing SEIU t-shirts visited

political meetings to ask candidates where they stood on health care. “Candidates,

accustomed to seeing purple-clad SEIU members at their events, would answer our

members’ health care questions before they were even asked”. The SEIU has further set

up an organisation ‘They work for us’ to monitor whether elected politicians deliver on


labour councils in cities including Los Angeles, New York, Connecticut, Denver, Seattle

and Cleveland have created similar research institutes. The Economic Policy Institute

has provided technical support to new local think tanks.143

In Denver, the Front-Range Economic Strategy Centre (FRESC) worked with a group of

Asian small businesses to block the opening of a Wal-Mart store in an urban renewal

zone, publishing research that revealed that it would be a ‘lose-lose’ deal both for the

city and for property owners. It also helped getting stricter environmental regulations

passed, publishing ‘smoking gun’ documents that revealed negligence both on the part

of the government and polluters.144

These institutions are not just ‘think tanks’ but self described think and do tanks,

seeking to combine organising and ideas to achieve a research-driven campaign

programme. Ideas must not only be developed and substantiated, but also

disseminated. For that goal, Working Partnership in collaboration with the local

university set up an eight-week course for leaders from trade unions, but also churches

and community organisations. Participants are taught about the economy, regional

power structures and how the government operates. In addition, the programme

connects people with different backgrounds.145 In other cities, similar courses have

been set up as part of the Building Partnership network.

In Germany as well, the trade union movement works with research institutes that are

sympathetic to its cause to influence public debate on regional economic development.

The government promotes a vision that favours international competitiveness over

workers’ interests. The trade union movement promotes another analysis, which puts

more emphasis on employment. This results in ‘Deutungskämpfen’ (fights over

interpretation) in which slogans play a key role. To counter the vision of a ‘fast

Dortmund’, the trade union movement presents the vision of a ‘social Dortmund’. In

Nürnberg, IG Metall introduced the expression ‘crisis region’ to draw attention to job

losses.146

Even though the German trade union movement is thus trying to develop its own vision

at the regional level, critics say that it has no credible alternative to the government’s

policy of budget cuts. In France on the contrary, social unrest in 1995 would have

resulted in a ‘return of the intellectuals’. An extensive network was created of research

groups, that publish critical analyses and that sometimes provide material for trade

union campaigns.147


4.14 Think tanks and researchIn America, there is a strong tradition of think tanks that feed public debate with

research and ideas. Both the left and the right are involved, but conservatives clearly

have the upper hand when it regards the development of ideas. Half of the think tank

experts quoted by the media are from conservative think tanks, while only sixteen

percent are from progressive think tanks. Major conservative think tanks outspend their

progressive counterparts by four to one.141

Although the right thus clearly has the upper hand when it regards the formation of

public opinion, there have been initiatives to counter this. An interesting example

regards campaigns to attach social conditions to government support for private

companies. Reflecting the right-wing criticism of ‘big government’, these campaigns

criticise ‘big corporations’. While right-wing ideologists insist that welfare creates

dependency, left-wing activists coined the expression ‘corporate welfare’ to draw

attention to corporate subsidies. In Chicago, ‘tours of shame’ were organised to

companies that pay poverty wages while receiving government support.142

It is important to recognise that there are broadly two ‘think tank’ strategies in

America. One is where progressive institutions have ‘in house’ researchers (for instance,

many US unions have an internal research team), and the second is where progressive

institutions build partnership relationships with public institutions (such as the Centre

on Wisconson Strategy, an organisation inside a university but acting with community

partners).

In the San José area, the trade union movement has created the Working Partnerships

institute, which receives support from charitable foundations and has a two million

dollar budget. Working Partnerships has built a reputation by publishing reliable

reports that have had an impact on public debate. For example, a number of studies

have been done into the growing divide between rich and poor in Sillicon Valley and

the rising number of poverty jobs. These studies helped create support for a living wage

ordinance (§ 5.3). Working Partnerships also did a study of the likely economic impact

of such an ordinance.

The institute further published a report that laid the groundwork for a campaign that

resulted in a decision that at least 5,000 affordable houses should be built at a newly

developed location. It also laid the foundation for a public health insurance for all

children of low income parents (including those who are undocumented). Meanwhile,


Immigration and Nationality Directorate has indicated that it will discuss with South

London Citizens how to follow up on the recommendations.

At the national level, the TUC has recently created the Union Ideas Network (UIN), an

initiative that aims to strengthen ties with researchers and policy makers. The UIN has

created a website where papers and ideas are exchanged. It also organises

conferences.150

4.15 PartnershipUnions in continental Europe have historically operated in a climate of institutional

support, with labour relations that focus on compromise rather than conflict. An

example is the Netherlands, where strike action is relatively rare. While this system has

produced favourable social outcomes, it has also made the trade union movement

vulnerable to changes in government policies.

A recent study hypothesizes that such partnerships are most likely to emerge when

governments are relatively weak, due to limited electoral support, sometimes

aggravated by political scandals. Another contributing factor is thought to be a

perception of a crisis that necessitates unpopular, neo-liberal economic measures.

Finally, partnerships would need a strong union movement with labour market power

and disruptive capacity, which is nevertheless willing to negotiate. In this respect, direct

democratic decision-making procedures such as referenda (cf §4.5) are thought to play

an important role. Without such procedures, radicals who are against collaborating

with the government can more easily dominate discussions and decision-making. The

study finally found that the role of employers’ organisations in the emergence of social

pacts is limited, but that their involvement is important for the durability of pacts.151

In Anglo-Saxon countries, partnership is sometimes advocated as a means to create

‘high road’ economic development that benefits both employers and employees. Such

high road approaches should focus on quality and training rather than cost-cutting.

However, the idea is far from uncontroversial. For example, critics in Britain say that in

many firms, “there is no high road or low road but instead a single road towards a new

flexibility based on task accretion, reduced job security and the threat of competition

between permanent and contingent workers”. The employers’ aim would be “to

engender a new employee awareness of market realities through the prism of

partnership”.152


In Australia, teachers’ union NSWTF in collaboration with a parents’ organisation

responded to education budget cuts by setting up an independent inquiry into the

future of public education. An independent academic was appointed to head the

inquiry and was provided with a research team and an office. Through hearings at

schools, teachers and parents were invited to give input. The inquiry helped put the

quality of public education on the public agenda and strengthened the union-

community coalition. At a later stage in the campaign, the ties between teachers and

union members would prove crucial to secure a victory (see § 4.12).148

Also in Australia, Unions NSW, the central labour council in NSW, has set up a

research-driven campaign centre, called Working NSW, to expand the capacity to

promote research and organising across the union movement and civil society. The aim

is for this institute to build bridges between academics, unions and community

organisations around issues consistent with progressive values, and in organisations’

mutual interest.

In London, the Geography Department at Queen Mary, University of London formally

affiliated to Telco, a local coalition of trade unions and community organisations (§

5.13). In a way, this can be seen as formalising a situation that already existed in

practice. The university has done a lot of research for the coalition. Besides doing

research, students have been involved as activists in Telco campaigns, including a

demonstration at Queen Mary demanding better wages for cleaners at the university.

As a result, Queen Mary is now the first ‘living wage campus’ in the UK.149

Besides commissioning academic research to support its campaigns, Telco’s umbrella

organisation London Citizens also sets up public hearings and citizens enquiries. An

example is a recent enquiry into Lunar House, the institution immigrants must turn to in

order to apply for asylum or citizenship.

Responding to complaints about service quality, South London Citizens parked a

caravan at the entrance to collect evidence from service users. In addition, statements

from staff were collected and a public hearing was organised. In sum, testimonies were

given by 350 individuals and 50 organisations.

The report found that clients had to wait outside the office for 4 to 6 hours, sometimes

in bad weather. Facilities for parents with babies were inadequate, and there were

many complaints about insufficient or contradictory information being provided.

However, the report did find that some improvements had been introduced. The


resource allocation (including allocation of staff time) toward major union objectives.

These comparisons can often be very disconcerting”.156

Some unions do make choices. The British T&G adopted a strategy for growth and

allocated £ 3 million to hire 100 organisers. In the 1990s, the SEIU decided to allocate

35 percent of its budget to organising. At the same time, the union all but abolished its

health and safety department and cut services to affiliates, leading to considerable

anxiety among its own staff.157

While appraisals of trade union strategy often focus on the share of resources spent on

organising versus servicing, it is also interesting to look at the sectors resources are

allocated to. In British unions for example, staff time is still mostly allocated to

traditional trade union strongholds rather than new growth sectors. Thus, there are

high concentrations of officers serving manufacturing and public administration, and

low concentrations in hotels, restaurants and business services.158

British unions have introduced performance management to promote recruitment,

organising and engagement with equality issues among their staff. Most union officers

now report regularly to a line manager, undergo formal appraisal and set and review

targets.

However, a study found that performance management did not have a decisive

influence on officers’ behaviour, probably because their professional role involves high

discretion. This seems consistent with the observation by an American researcher that a

command-and-control hierarchical model is ill-suited to the needs of innovating

unions. In the British study, it was found that training and advisory support are more

effective management tools. Further, it was found that the officers’ attitudes play a

crucial role. Since young officers were found to be more open to a change agenda,

recruiting young staff is also seen as a way to get trade union renewal implemented.159

In the American SEIU, organising jobs used to be seen as ‘career-ending choices, a place

for political losers and the uninspired’. Such views reflect union policies: “If a union

recruits its staff from local unions on the basis of success in collective bargaining and

servicing, promotes them on that basis, and provides primary access to political

advancement via ability to serve existing members, one should not be surprised to find

a large percentage of resources flowing toward traditional servicing activities”.160


The British government actively promotes partnership approaches. For example, the

Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) used to have a Partnership at Work fund and

has more recently created a £ 5-10 million Trade Union Modernisation Fund, to support

innovative projects that help unions adapt to changing labour market conditions. While

promoting partnership is not the main object of the latter fund, funding conditions do

favour constructive union-employer partnership and promote non-confrontational

roles for activists, such as ‘partnership champions’ and equality and diversity reps.153

While this might seem to be a text book case of co-optation, there is more to it than

that. For example, the government supports Union Learning Centres through a £ 14

million Union Learning Fund, which strengthen unions at the workplace (§ 5.12). Also,

the DTI acknowledges that vulnerable workers run a higher risk of mistreatment at

workplaces where there is no union and provides funding for a TUC-led project on

vulnerable workers.

In America, the SEIU is known for its confrontational campaigns. Nevertheless, its

leader Andy Stern claims that he rather uses the ‘power of persuasion’ than the

‘persuasion of power’. He tries to make deals with employers, promising that the SEIU

will not start negotiations until after it has organised a major part of the sector, thus

removing the employer’s fear of unfair competition. In return, he asks employers not to

obstruct the union’s efforts to organise workers. Recently, the SEIU has started to ask

employers to serve as ‘reference’ to other employers the union seeks as a partner: “our

current employers can vouch for our good-faith efforts to improve training or solve

problems that are important for business success”.154

While the SEIU’s commitment to partnership is no doubt genuine, it is also clear that

this union will not hesitate to fight when necessary. In Australia, it has been argued that

partnership can only be a viable union strategy if unions operate from a position of

power, and if they actively involve their membership; otherwise “workers will see

unions as an external force doing things for them and to them”.155

4.16 Strategy and organisational changeAlthough many unions adhere to an innovation agenda, implementation often remains

spotty and ad hoc. Decisions about renewal are made at conventions, but do not

always translate into day-to-day decision making and resource allocation. “A basic task

for decision makers concerned about ongoing strategic choice is comparing actual



5 5 Examples

5.1 Justice for JanitorsThe flagship of trade union revitalisation is the Justice for Janitors (JfJ) campaign of the

SEIU, which started at the end of the 1980s. The position of cleaners had been

weakened because large corporations had outsourced cleaning and because workers

could easily be replaced by immigrants from Latin America. Some of these immigrants

were undocumented, so if they joined the union, the employer simply called the

immigration service. The union reached the conclusion that traditional methods were

no longer working and started an assertive campaign to strengthen the position of

workers.

Importantly, SEIU realised that there was no sense in taking on just the cleaning

companies. Even if the union would manage to negotiate decent wages, the company

would become more expensive and lose its contract, with the result that cleaners would

lose their jobs. It was therefore important to deal with the clients of the cleaning

companies, that is, the owners of the office buildings. SEIU employed a researcher

whose task it was to analyse the sector and to find weak spots. This analysis was

subsequently discussed extensively with workers, to make them understand the market

and the leverage points for campaigns.

The SEIU’s approach consisted of trying to get to the cleaning company and the

owner of the office buildings in as many ways as possible. Companies were

confronted with ‘guerrilla legal tactics’. A building owner was confronted with direct

action at his golf club and street theatre at his favourite restaurant. Since the cleaning


than impressed by the methods employers used to intimidate them. In LA you risk

losing a $ 4.25 dollar per hour job if you join a union; in El Salvador, you risk getting

shot. The JfJ campaign was successful in cities with a high proportion of immigrants in

the workforce, but also in Milwaukee, where almost all workers are black.

Meanwhile, the success of JfJ has proven durable. The model has been applied in many

cities and the union has been successful in subsequent rounds of negotiations. Partly

owing to the reputation gained through the JfJ campaign, the union managed to create

a bargaining position for cleaners in supermarkets. Elements of the JfJ approach have

further been used in campaigns to organise workers at LA Airport.161 By now, JfJ also

has a number of international spin-offs, including the British Justice for Cleaners

campaign and the Australian Clean Start campaign (§ 4.11).

In 2005, the SEIU achieved an important victory by organizing 5,000 cleaners in

Houston, in the anti-union South. A ‘community liaison’ had been sent to the city two

years earlier, to enlist the support of the clergy, pension funds (to put pressure on

building owners) and political allies. During the campaign, 25 Spanish speaking

cleaners were flown in from other cities to organise co-workers. Despite the successful

organising drive, employers have dismissed the union’s proposal as ‘unrealistic’. The

cleaners had to go on strike and staged a sit in at a mall, resulting in 12 arrests.

Solidarity actions have taken place in other American cities as well as in Berlin, London,

Mexico City and Moscow. Eventually, the actions resulted in a victory for the

cleaners.162

5.2 Wal-MartSupermarkets try to reduce their costs, which sometimes leads to workplace abuses.

For example, the German Ver.di has published a black paper on Lidl163, whereas in the

Netherlands, there has been a scandal regarding Aldi. However, this is child’s play

compared to the American Wal-Mart corporation, with 1.4 employees the largest

private employer in the world. Most workers do not receive a living wage. The company

does all it can to keep the unions out. Generally, it succeeds.

Wal-Mart is known for its tight control of its corporate culture. Job applicants have to

do a ‘personality test’ that seems to test primarily how compliant they are. Barbara

Ehrenreich, who wrote a book about her experiences in low-paid jobs, found out that it

raises some suspicion if you respond to the proposition ‘rules have to be followed to the


company was part of the Danish multinational ISS, a trade union delegation from

Denmark was invited to come see how their company was treating workers in

America.

Local politicians were persuaded to exert pressure on building owners, who relied on

the local government for permits. Support came not only from Democrats, but also

from some Republicans, who found it important to have a good relationship with the

Latino community. Some politicians were at the front of protest marches, during which

some were even arrested. Numerous organisations also participated in the

demonstrations. Another source of support were other unions, including those of the

painters, the operating engineers, garbage collectors, carpenters and UPS drivers, who

refused to service the office buildings.

The activists had a keen eye for publicity. For example, they distributed flowers on

Secretaries’ Day because of the nuisance created by the actions. They also

demonstrated at the building where the television series LA Law was filmed, to protest

against the lawlessness going on there. An important aspect of the strategy was to gain

public support. One indication of the success achieved in doing so, is that the signature

red JfJ t-shirts became so popular that imitations entered the market. Despite their

popularity among the general public, activists were fired, arrested, and beaten up by

riot police; but in the end their perseverance forced the building owners to negotiate

with the union.

The campaign’s success has been achieved by a combination of grass roots mobilisation

and top down support from the national SEIU. The union has been investing heavily in a

campaign that would not yield results until after years. National support was also

important because some local union leaders were less than enthusiastic about the

campaign. Their power base within the union might be eroded if the composition of

the membership would change as a result of the efforts to organise new groups of

workers. At one point, the local board wanted to terminate the campaign, after which

the local was placed in trusteeship by the national union. The San Diego, Atlanta, San

José and Santa Clara locals also had JfJ campaigns forced upon them. The JfJ organisers

were no traditional union officials, but fresh blood coming from universities and social

movement organisations.

Another factor that contributed to the campaign’s success was the activism and

perseverance of the workers, who were often from Latin American countries. Often

they had a positive opinion of unions: ‘la unión hace fuerza’. In addition, they were less


discrimination of women and employing undocumented cleaners. Fines seem to be

calculated as costs of doing business.166

During the past years, Wal-Mart has been under attack from groups such as Wal-Mart

Watch and Wake Up Wal-Mart. In addition, a rather successful low budget

documentary ‘Wall-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price’ criticised the company. This is a

problem for Wal-Mart, because in order to expand in America it needs to target middle

income and urban customers, who are sensitive to negative publicity. In fact, a poll

found that 2 to 8% of Wal-Mart customers have stopped shopping at the chain

because of negative publicity. Since 2000, Wal-Mart’s stock price has fallen by 27%, a

drop said to partially reflect investors’ concern about the company’s image.

The company has set up a ‘war room’ with a ‘rapid response public relations team’ to

counter negative publicity. An internal memo suggested ways to cut costs without

giving ammunition to critics. In order to cut health costs, it was suggested to

discourage unhealthy job applicants by including activities such as cart-gathering in all

jobs. Another proposal was to hire more part-time workers, who are often not eligible

to health insurance. The memo further expressed concern about the fact that workers

who have stayed with the company for a number of years are more expensive, but not

more productive.167

According to employees in Florida, the company suddenly barred older employees with

back or legs problems from sitting on a stool when working for example as a cashier,

despite the fact that they had been allowed to use them for years. The new policy was

believed to be a means to get rid of older, more expensive workers. Changes in

workers’ schedules led to a spontaneous walk-out of almost all employees at a Wal-

Mart Super Centre in Hialeah Gardens, Florida. Even more remarkable than the protest

itself was the fact that Wal-Mart immediately made some concessions.168

An important method to fight Wal-Mart are campaigns that aim to deny the company

zoning permission or tax subsidies to open stores in big cities. In Chicago, unions,

churches and community organisations formed a coalition to stop the opening of two

stores. Wal-Mart hit back with a campaign for which it contracted the services of the

mayor’s brother’s law firm. An important argument used by Wal-Mart was that it

would create 600 new jobs. Opponents presented a study showing that more jobs

would disappear than be created. In the end, the municipality decided to allow one

Wal-Mart store.169


letter at all times’ by agreeing ‘strongly’ rather than ‘very strongly’ or ‘totally’. “When

presenting yourself as a potential employee, you can never be too much of a suck up”,

she concluded.

In addition, candidates have to do a drugs test, a rather common requirement in

America. Such tests have little practical use but to find out whether the candidate is

willing to undergo humiliations. If candidates pass the selection, they have to follow an

introduction course. They learn that they are not employees, but ‘associates’, and that

managers are not bosses, but ‘serving leaders’. They learn that Wal-Mart staff is really

one big family, and that they therefore do not need a union. And of course, they learn

the Wal-Mart cheer (‘Give me a W...’).164

If, despite all precautions, workers at a store still decide to organise themselves, the

headquarters will send a ‘labour relations team’ by private plane, often the very day the

call comes in. Sometimes subtle methods are used to frustrate organising attempts,

such as giving employees who do not want a union buttons saying ‘I can speak for

myself’. Sometimes, more drastic measures are taken. If necessary, the store will be

closed in order to get rid of the union, even though this is illegal. In the United States,

not one single store is organised.

In Canada, the UFCW nearly managed to secure a contract for one Wal-Mart store,

which, however, was subsequently closed. Now it is close to securing a contract for

another store. In the UK, where Wal-Mart operates under the name ASDA, there are

trade union activists in stores, but there is no collective agreement. In Germany, Wal-

Mart does have to respect sectoral collective agreements. However, the chain is

unsuccessful here, and has decided to pull out. In China, the company has been forced

to recognise the official state union ACFTU.165

In the USA, however, there is no question about recognising unions. An internal

management handbook said: “Staying union free is a full-time commitment... The

entire management staff should fully comprehend and appreciate exactly what is

expected of their individual efforts to meet the union free objective... This may mean

walking a tightrope between legitimate campaigning and improper conduct”. In the

past, Wal-Mart has been convicted for forcing unpaid overtime on workers and for

firing union activists. Recently, it reached a settlement in a case involving teenagers

working with dangerous equipment, including a chain saw. A court ordered the

company to pay $ 78 million in compensation to workers who have been forced to

work during breaks. The company is further involved in law suits regarding wage


5.3 Living WageThe living wage movement is one of the most successful initiatives the American trade

union movement is involved in. In the USA a Federal minimum wage applies, but this is

very low and not automatically adjusted for inflation; in fact, it has not been raised

since 1997. Many people have to take more than one job to make ends meet.

The idea behind the living wage campaigns is that someone with a fulltime job should

be able to support a family. Through lobbying, protest marches, occupations and public

hearings, coalitions try to get the local government to pass a living wage ordinance.

Sometimes local referenda are organised. These coalitions often include trade unions,

churches, and ACORN, a network of local community organisations. Often, coalitions

manage to find a couple of employers who support the idea of a living wage; this is very

important from a public relations point of view.

Usually, a living wage ordinance states that all companies that are contracted by the

government must pay decent wages to their employees. Often the ordinance also

applies to companies that receive government subsidies or tax cuts, and sometimes also

to subcontractors or to companies that rent from companies to which the ordinance

applies. It depends on the wording of the ordinance whether this will include for

example shops in shopping malls; or hotels, bars, restaurants, shops and security staff

at an airport. The wage level that companies have to adhere to varies, but generally it is

around $ 10 per hour, which is considerably higher than the Federal minimum wage of

$ 5.15 per hour. It takes a wage of $ 9.50 to raise a family of four above the official

poverty line.

Living wage ordinances have the additional advantage for public sector unions that the

pressure to privatise government services is reduced. Private companies can often work

cheaper than government agencies by underpaying their staff; living wage ordinances

makes such unfair competition more difficult. Sometimes ordinances include clauses

that prohibit the obstruction of union organising efforts. In addition, they may require

employers to have transparent personnel policies. In Pennsylvania, the living wage

campaign further argued that social welfare budgets should be raised, in order to allow

agencies to pay their staff a living wage.

In more than a hundred localities, living wage campaigns have succeeded in getting

ordinances passed, while dozens of campaigns are still running. Successes have not

only been achieved in progressive states, but also in the union-unfriendly south of the


Subsequently, the unions and community organisations ran a campaign for a living

wage for large mega-retailers in Chicago. This campaign ran for two years, and passed

an ordinance in July 2006. The ordinance was vetoed by the Mayor, and will now be a

major issue in the Mayoral elections in February 2007. If the living wage campaign

succeeds, it will be one of the most significant victories against Wal-Mart – but will have

been achieved by running a campaign about workplace standards, not exclusively

against this particular employer.

In the California city of Inglewood, Wal-Mart tried to circumvent the city administration

by asking in a referendum to be exempted from all kinds of local regulations. Here too,

a coalition of churches, unions and community organisations campaigned against Wal-

Mart. The union organised a protest involving ten thousand participants. Although

Wal-Mart had invested ten times as much in its campaign as its opponents, the initiative

was rejected by sixty percent of the voters.170

Although expansion into big cities is an important goal of Wal-Mart, the company

recently gave up plans for New York (or at least for Manhattan) because of fierce

opposition from unions, community organisations and politicians. A Wal-Mart

spokesperson blamed the defeat on ‘snobbish elites’ in New York that would have

something against the company.171

Wal-Mart spends a lot of money on marketing campaigns that portray unions as the

enemy of regular people. Unions are depicted as outsiders who look after institutional

interests, at the expense of jobs and low prices for the local community. For low-income

housewives, the chain is “an ally, an oasis of low prices in an unfriendly world”.172

For trade unions, Wal-Mart is important because of the huge number of employees,

but also because of the negative impact the company has on labour relations in other

companies. Other supermarkets cut wages and health insurance, arguing that this is

the only way in which they can compete with Wal-Mart. On the other hand, unionised

groceries in Canada welcome the unionisation of Wal-Mart stores, because this will

free them from unfair competition.173


held in Nevada and in Florida to raise the state minimum wage by one dollar. In both

states, George Bush received the majority of the votes for the Presidency, but two-

thirds of the voters supported the initiative to raise the minimum wage. The success in

Nevada and Florida was largely due to an active campaign waged by trade unions and

community organisations, including ACORN, which raised turnout among low-income

voters. At the same time, it is clear that many supporters of Bush find that raising the

minimum wage is the decent thing to do. Incidentally, Kerry failed to benefit from the

popular support for decent wages, because he did not adopt the wage issue in his

campaign.175

At the 2006 Midterm Elections, state minimum wage increases were successfully put to

the vote in six states. According to ACORN, the increases in the four states in which this

organisation was involved in the campaign will improve the pay of 1.5 million low-paid

workers. The minimum wage initiatives further contributed to voter turnout among

low-income voters.

5.4 Community benefits agreementsThe Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) has pioneered initiatives to get

unions and community organisations involved in economic development through the

strategy of community benefits agreements. These are legally binding documents

that are part of the formal economic development agreement between the local

government and the developer. The agreements may commit the developer to living

wage jobs at businesses that are involved in the development. Further requirements

may include providing affordable housing and childcare centres, setting up a youth

centre, local hiring, creating a neighbourhood improvement fund and refraining from

obstructing union organising campaigns. In one case, a developer himself

approached LAANE because community support can make it easier to get a proposal

approved.176

The model of the community benefits agreement has been applied successfully in other

cities as well. In Milwaukee, for example, a coalition of unions, religious organisations,

low-income women and families and neighbourhood organisations targeted a master

plan for the redevelopment of Park East, a project in which the City of Milwaukee

invests almost 20 million dollars. Through a combination of lobbying, research, and

public actions, the coalition managed to get a community benefits agreement passed.

The agreement sets wage requirements, mandates wage reporting, and requires green


USA. According to a late 2002 estimate, 100,000 to 250,000 workers are covered by

living wage ordinances. While this is a very small share of the total number of working

poor, it is a significant number nevertheless. It has been argued that living wage

campaigns, in order to be successful, need to be a combination of back room lobbying

and public actions to build power. Community involvement, while not a guarantee, has

been found to greatly increase the likelihood of success.

Of course, campaigns elicit resistance from corporate lobby groups such as the National

Restaurant Association; large multinational corporations such as McDonalds, Philip

Morris and Texaco; and smaller businesses. It is not unusual for living wage campaigns

to be outspent by opponents ten to one. Opponents argue that a living wage ordinance

is a ‘job killer initiative’; proponents will therefore have to be well-prepared to counter

such claims (§ 4.14). They will have to take into account that local media will tend to be

sympathetic to the point of view of businesses, because they depend on income from

advertisements.

Getting an ordinance passed is one thing, getting it implemented is quite another. In

Los Angeles, the trade union movement got the municipality to set up a new

department to oversee implementation. Also, funds where made available to educate

workers on the rights they can derive from the ordinance. LAANE, a think tank with ties

to the union movement, monitored all city meeting agendas to see what contracts

were coming up for bid and what subsidies were proposed.

It has been found that ordinances have the best chances of success if resistance to the

campaign is strong. This will force the trade union movement and its allies to create a

strong coalition to get the ordinance passed, which will subsequently be able to see to

it that it is implemented as well.

A living wage campaign strengthens the position of the trade union movement

through the coalitions it enters into and because it is an issue that contributes to a

positive image. In addition, living wage campaigns can be used to organise workers in

sectors that are difficult to organise. For example, SEIU and HERE strengthened their

position at LA Airport through a living wage campaign. A further advantage of living

wage campaigns is that they target the government. It is therefore possible to engage

workers without making them subject to employer repression.174

Since many workers will not be covered by living wage ordinances, it is preferable to

raise the minimum wage. At the November 2004 Presidential elections, referenda were


strategic analysis and stating concrete objectives. Activities include organising, creating

Street Heat teams, forming coalitions with community organisations, waging

campaigns to promote economic policies that create jobs, organising economics

courses (‘so union members can understand why workers and their families are

suffering, who did it to them, and what can be done about it’), lobbying for the right to

organise and increasing the diversity of official union bodies.

Many councils see Street Heat as the most important component of Union Cities. The

ambition is to recruit at least one percent of the local membership for teams that can

be rapidly deployed, for example for solidarity actions to support unions that are

active in sectors that are difficult to organise. The members of these teams can be

deployed for demonstrations, picket lines, and campaign phone banks. The council

also has to create a communication structure that enables the rapid mobilisation of

the team.

An example of Street Heat is the Justice Bus in Denver, which is filled with activists in

order to support unions or other local actions about ten times a year. Every summer, the

bus makes a trip to the worst employers to present a ‘No justice here’ certificate. For

balance, ‘Justice here’ certificates are presented to decent employers as well.

It appears that most councils have no trouble mobilising one percent of the

membership for Street Heat teams. These teams have proven to be an effective means

to engage youth, ethnic minorities and women in trade union activities. The teams also

made an important contribution to the mobilisation for the WTO-demonstration in

Seattle. However, the number of activities councils participating in Union Cities have to

engage in is a bit much for smaller councils, making the programme especially suited to

larger councils.180

5.6 Union SummerIn the 1960s, students’ organisation SDS announced that it would send students to the

factories to work there during the summer. At the time, the AFL-CIO did not applaud

the initiative: a warning was sent to unions to be on the alert for infiltrators. By 1996,

the attitude had clearly changed: the AFL-CIO itself took the initiative to organise a

Union Summer to bring students into contact with trade unionism. The inspiration was

not so much the SDS, but rather the 1964 Freedom Summer, during which over a

thousand privileged students went to the south to help register black voters.


design and job training and apprenticeship programmes. Further, employers are

encouraged to hire local and minority workers and there is a commitment to building

affordable houses.177

In Denver, Cherokee Investments needed zoning approval as well as $ 150 million in tax

breaks to redevelop an old factory site and build a ‘$ 750 million village of offices,

stores and apartments’. A local trade union-sponsored think tank helped launch the

Campaign for Responsible Development, calling for a community benefits agreement

that would include provisions on affordable housing, decent wages, neighbourhood

parks and beautification, and an on-site child care centre. A Cherokee spokesperson

commented that ‘They want 50 acres of labour utopia’. However, the campaign

mobilised hundreds of community members and ended up securing a community

benefits agreement. The agreement is seen as an important precedent for future

development projects.178

A variant of the community benefits agreement are project labour agreements in

Seattle, applying to construction sites at the airport and the waterfront. Through these

agreements, apprenticeship programmes, pre-apprenticeship programmes and a

mentor network have been created. Community activists from outside the unions have

been given a role in the monitoring and implementation of policies.179 Outside

America, London Citizens has used a strategy resembling the community benefits

agreement with regard to the 2012 Olympics (§ 5.13).

5.5 Union Cities and Street HeatAt the local level, the American trade union movement has central labour councils,

consisting of different unions. These local branches receive dues from the affiliated

unions, and sometimes also receive subsidies. Their income is generally limited, and

they depend largely on volunteers. During the 1930s and 1940s, these councils were

involved actively in politics, and they had strong ties to community organisations, but

since, many councils have become dormant. The Union Cities programme, started in

the 1990s, aimed to give the labour councils a role again in revitalising the trade union

movement. One of the major successes of the programme has been Los Angeles, where

the trade union movement gained a position of strength through an innovative

approach.

Councils that want to participate in Union Cities must draw up a work plan based on a


5.7 SteelworkersSince the 1980s, employers in America have confronted unions ever more aggressively.

An important milestone has been the conflict between Phelps Dodge, leader in the

copper industry, and the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) in 1983. The

company did not follow the usual pattern of threats and concessions, but entered the

confrontation with the union head on. Striking workers were replaced, the company

employed armed security guards and it convinced the government to bring in the

National Guard. The union was not prepared for such a tough confrontation and lost

the battle.

In 1990, a conflict broke out at the Ravenswood Aluminium Company, which followed

a strategy similar to Phelps Dodge’s. This time, the USWA resolved to win the conflict

no matter what. It was decided to run a campaign that combined a broad spectrum of

methods: careful research, step-by-step escalation and continuous worker

mobilisation.

Local trade union members followed the trucks that transported Ravenswood’s

aluminium, to find out who the buyers were. They convinced companies like the

Budweiser beer brewery not to use Ravenswood aluminium for their cans anymore.

They also issued a complaint with the health and safety authority. The first successes

did not make the union rest on its laurels, but instead it further escalated the campaign.

AFL-CIO researchers found out that one Marc Rich, an entrepreneur who had been

involved in all kinds of shady businesses, was running Ravenswood behind the scenes.

Rich had an interest in keeping his activities secret, so the union decided to follow him

wherever he went, generating publicity all the time. Trade union activists visited

Switzerland, the Netherlands, Britain, France and Rumania. They approached investors

and protested at trade conventions.

Thanks to the support of the local community, the strike was kept going for twenty

months. In the end, the strikers achieved a convincing victory. Laid off workers could

return to the company, workers won a wage increase and health and safety issues

would be addressed.

The USWA would continue using the strategy that had been developed during the

Ravenswood conflict. At first, it was thought that the strategy could simply be copied at

other companies, but that did not work. The union learned that every campaign must


By now, every year hundreds of students participate in Union Summer (the programme

was not offered in 2006 though). For a period of three weeks, students sleep in

cloisters, youth hostels or trailer parks, and receive 210 dollar per week. For eighty

hours per week, they learn about the trade union movement and participate in

campaigns, being on picket lines, handing out leaflets and making house calls.

The most important aim of the programme is not to achieve direct results in organising

workers, but rather to invest in long term results. For one thing, the programme aims to

improve the image of the trade union movement, especially among young people. On

the other hand, it helps create a new generation of student activists who are sensitive

to trade union issues.

The programme is rather successful. It has yielded a lot of positive media attention,

along with reporting on workplace abuses that had so far remained underreported. The

aim of creating a student movement with ties to the trade union movement has been

achieved as well. A well-known example is United Students Against Sweatshops

(USAS), an organisation that was founded by Union Summer participants. USAS runs

campaigns against the repression of workers by foreign companies that manufacture

clothes for companies such as Nike. In their campaigns, they make use of the fact that

university teams are important buyers of sports cloths.

Besides the sweatshop campaigns, there are also living wage campaigns (§ 5.3) at

numerous universities. These campaigns target the university in its capacity as employer

of cleaning and catering staff. Here too, former Union Summer participants have

played an important role. Although the results of the programme have thus been above

expectations, critics warn that ‘parachuting’ students must not take the place of

organising workers.181

Union summer is also an adaptable model. Since 2000, the ACTU Organising Centre

and Unions NSW in Australia have run a Union Summer program to increase the

number of young organisers and delegates in the union movement.


always most of the work is done by volunteers. Often, charitable foundations are an

important but uncertain source of income. Unions sometimes contribute as well, but

have so far not decided to allocate resources to worker centres on a structural basis.

There is a risk that solving workers’ problems may encourage passivity: workers will put

their trust in others to solve their problems, rather than taking action themselves. Many

centres try to counter this by encouraging service users to become volunteers

themselves. At a centre in Oakland, users can collect credit points by doing volunteer

work, which entitles them to services provided by the centre. At a Long Island centre,

people who want to follow a course must commit to spend at least ten hours

organising and training other workers.

The Long Island centre is often approached by workers who have been underpaid or

not paid at all by their employers. The centre has rather successfully pursued legal

action against such employers, but it realised that this approach contributed little to

organising workers. It was therefore decided to use a different strategy, visiting

employers with a group of a few dozen workers and a video camera to demand back

wages. Similar approaches have been used in Toronto and by anarchist activists

supporting restaurant workers in Amsterdam.183

5.9 Organising AcademyIn the 1970s, the AFL-CIO did not attach much importance to organising new groups of

members. “Why should we worry about organising groups of people who do not want

to be organised?”, the then president George Meany said. Later, it became apparent

that the trade union movement could not afford such an attitude, and in 1989 the

Organizing Institute was created. The Institute was to analyse what factors contribute

to the success of organising campaigns and to advise unions on the development of

strategies. In addition, it was charged with training new organisers. The institute is paid

by the federation and affiliated unions.

Following the AFL-CIO example as well as that of the Australian ACTU’s Organising

Works initiative, the British TUC and some of the affiliated unions decided to create the

Organising Academy. The initiative also aims to increase the diversity of trade union

staff. The average trade union official was ‘pale, stale and male’, with years of

experience as a trade union activist in a traditional sector. The academy has been able

to recruit a different type of employees: a majority of trainees are women under thirty


start from a careful analysis of the targeted company. Most campaigns include efforts

to put pressure on investors and shareholders; solidarity strikes and other actions at

foreign subsidiaries; and publicity campaigns that emphasise social justice and human

rights issues. This approach helped the union secure victories in situations that had

seemed hopeless at first.182

5.8 Worker centresWorkers at the lower end of the labour market are often difficult to organise by

traditional methods. Often, work is outsourced to small companies that go bankrupt,

only to be replaced by new companies. Workers have weak ties to the workplace

because jobs are often temporary and some workers have multiple jobs with different

employers.

An answer to this scattering of workplaces is to organise people not where they work,

but in the community they live in, an approach that is sometimes called community

unionism. Often, this involves the creation of workers’ centres. At most centres,

workers can get advice on labour and immigration law; sometimes advice on other

issues such as housing is also given. Many centres also provide training and education,

especially language and computer courses. Often, people who are not union-members

can use the services of the centre under specific conditions.

Generally, worker centres are pragmatic when it regards the choice of activities to be

offered. Some will for example organise bingo drives and other social activities to

strengthen the ties with the local community. A centre in Winnipeg provides space for

unions and an unemployed workers’ organisation, but also to a choir and an artists’

association, both with ties to the trade union movement. A centre in Los Angeles has

set up football teams and a band, and has participated in the local marathon.

Some centres have been created by unions, but others by community organisations

that felt that unions were not doing enough for workers at the lower end of the labour

market. In the USA, there are 135 worker centres. The British Unemployed Worker

Centres have a similar character. The Spanish CC.OO has created over one hundred

Centros de Información para Trabajadores Extranjeros, where immigrants can turn to

for advice and to follow courses.

Most centres have limited budgets. Some can employ a few staff members, but almost


The Organising Academy has further set up an advanced organising programme,

offering courses on ‘busting the busters’ (how to counter union-busting tactics used by

employers); organising beyond recognition (aimed at building sustainable union

structures at the workplace); training skills for organisers; using new technologies; and

strategic campaigning.

5.10 Autonomous unions in FranceIn France, besides the large confederations, smaller autonomous workers’

organisations are active. The most important is Union Syndicale Solidaires, which has

80,000 members. Within Solidaires, the so-called SUD unions play an important role.

An important characteristic of these organisations are their close ties to numerous

action groups. For example, key figures within Solidaires are also actively involved in

organisations of globalisation activists (ATTAC), the homeless (DAL), the unemployed

(AC!), and the undocumented. They also work with workers with precarious jobs at

chains such as Pizzahut and ‘McDo’, as well as in cleaning and distribution.

The membership of Solidaires is only a tenth of that of the CFDT confederation, but

organisations such as Solidaires are more influential than the size of their memberships

might suggest. This is due not only to their coalitions with other organisations, but also

to their direct action methods and use of publicity. For example, unemployed workers

visit companies equipped with video cameras to leave their resumes. Organisations of

the unemployed have also occupied a large number of branches of social security

agency Assedic, to demand an additional allowance for the unemployed. Other

methods include squatting buildings to provide housing to the homeless and providing

church asylum to the undocumented.

Of course, the unions are active at the workplace as well. Most companies are not

prepared for how young workers stand up for their rights. As one consultant put it:

“Most larger companies are used to a Red Army-style CGT, in which the troops follow

the commands coming from above. The young activists, they prefer direct action. They

are prepared to zap, to change unions if they feel they are not listened to”.

While the formerly communist CGT sometimes has difficulties with the methods of

young workers, this applies less to Solidaires. Solidaires does not have the traditional

federation structure: it is in fact little more than a network of small unions that operate

autonomously. They focus on practical workplace initiatives and do not want to build a


years old. Most had been trade union members prior to their enrolment and many had

been activists, but many had also gained experience in other types of organisations,

such as the students’ movement, civil rights organisations or the women’s movement.

As in America, there has been some resistance in Britain to recruiting external

candidates for the Organising Academy. Some unions have therefore insisted that

union activists be accepted as trainees. This will probably have the result that trainees

will somewhat more resemble the traditional trade union membership in the future.

Having higher union density than American unions and over 200,000 local union reps,

British unions have a bigger pool of activists to draw upon.

Trainees learn to plan organising campaigns, to map workplaces, to identify campaign

issues, to set up organising committees and to increase trade union visibility through

petitions, newsletters and surveys. It has been found that former trainees do indeed use

these methods in their organising campaigns.

In Britain, it has been found that former trainees had organised on average 360 new

members within a year. Taking their salaries into account, this would mean that the cost

per new member amounts to £ 77 on average, which is below what most unions

receive in membership dues per year. In other words, training organisers is cost-

effective. In addition, they had recruited on average 17 new activists per organiser.184

By comparison, studies in the 1990s found that graduates of the Australian Organising

Works institute organised on average 170 new members per year. The programme was

estimated to yield $ 2.7 million dollar per year, more than double the investment.185

TUC-affiliated unions employ some four thousand officials, while over 250 new

organisers have been recruited and trained by the Organising Academy. These figures

illustrate that changing the organisational culture of unions will fail unless ‘normal’

staff are trained as well. For this purpose, the Programme for Officers and Staff has

been created, with a curriculum that is similar to the one offered to new organisers.

In collaboration with the London School of Economics, the Leading Change

programme has been created. This is a ten day programme (including two days in

Washington), for persons in top leadership positions within the unions. They are

considered to be of strategic importance when it regards creating an ‘organising

culture’ within these organisations.


internet. It is emphasised that materials must look good: the objective is to “market an

idea of radical union activity, to see if it is possible to make radical unionism attractive

to the masses”.

The objectives of the movement include equal pay for agency workers; the right to

organise for flex workers; a basic income for all Europeans; and free access to

knowledge and information. Flexible work is not resisted but welcomed, on condition

of income security and equal opportunities.188

5.12 Learning repsIn an attempt to diversify its 200,000 workplace representatives, the TUC has been

creating new roles for activists. A successful example are the learning representatives or

learning reps, who provide advice on career development and learning opportunities at

the workplace. The learning reps are partly funded by the government.

There are already 14,000 learning reps, a third of whom are new activists, who have

helped over 100,000 people access courses in 2005. Among them are relatively many

young people, women and ethnic minorities. The ambition is to have 22,000 learning

reps and train 250,000 people per year in 2010. Although there are no data on the

characteristics of the users of the services of learning reps, it seems that many are

minorities, women, part-time and agency workers and workers at the lower end of the

labour market.

Besides providing workers with learning opportunities, the learning reps are also a

means to strengthen the workplace presence of unions and their ties with local

communities. In order to achieve this, they work with organisers, and use techniques

such as workplace mapping, workplace surveys and forming coalitions with community

organisations.

The TUC has published a brochure containing case studies of learning rep activities.

Some examples are listed below:

• In Lancashire, the GMB used learning services to build a reputation as a community

union, with strong ties to the Asian community. Among the learning reps is an imam

of a local mosque. Some workplace learning centres will be opened up to families and

friends of union members, some even to the entire local community.

• The CWU was used to Royal Mail branches where 99.9% of workers were members,


bureaucratic structure. In that respect, they resemble the anarcho-syndicalist CNT, with

three to four thousand members a small organisation, which is however popular

among young workers with precarious jobs.

The negotiators of the SUD unions have gained a reputation among the personnel

departments they deal with. According to personnel officers, SUD staff is ‘very

competent’ and they act with ‘a mixture of courtesy and threat’. The personnel officers

even seem to be a bit afraid of them: “I never forget that these are revolutionaries and

that they only strive after their own interests, and may even endanger of the company

in doing so”.186

Recently, the Social and Economic Council (CES) recommended revoking the

negotiating privileges of the five large confederations. If the advice is implemented, the

position of Solidaires might become stronger.187

5.11 Euromayday and flexworkersA few years ago, a movement of flex workers was created in Milan. Although they stay

clear of traditional trade unions, many activists do have a trade union background,

while many are also active in the media. The most visible activity of the movement is the

yearly Mayday Parade. These parades consist of theatrical direct action, including

pickets to force large chain stores to close their doors on Mayday. Often a statue of San

Precario, the invented patron saint of flex workers, is carried along. In 2003, 50,000

people participated, and the number has doubled since.

Meanwhile, the movement is becoming increasingly European, carrying out actions

across Europe. In January 2005, for example, there has been a joint occupation of the

Académie Française in Rome, to support the French ‘intermittents’, freelancers in the

cultural sector who were protesting against the abolition of special benefits to bridge

periods without work.

The movement tries to organise both ‘brainworkers’ – knowledge workers who often

work on a freelance basis – and ‘chain workers’ – the workers at store, hotel and

hamburger chains and elsewhere in the services sector. The traditional unions are

deemed ill-suited to organise these workers, if only because they are attached to

specific sectors, while flex workers often switch sectors. The flex worker movement

instead tries to find new ways to organise workers, assigning an important role to the


many, an important characteristic of these coalitions is the commitment to a long-term,

sustainable alliance, rather than ad hoc collaboration on specific issues.

In 2001, Telco started a living wage campaign, aimed at securing decent wages and

conditions for low paid workers in East London. Following some initial research, the

campaign started by targeting the wages and conditions of cleaners who work in

hospitals, and the banking headquarters at the prestigious Canary Wharf complex.

Pressure was built by mass attendance at hospital board meetings, demonstrations

outside hospitals, a three-day strike at a hospital, demonstrations and share-holder

attendance at HSBC’s Annual General Meetings, as well as the occupation of an HSBC

branch in the City. The campaign gained support from the Mayor of London, Ken

Livingstone, who has set up a living wage unit.

An important new phase in the campaign has been the involvement with the London

bid to host the 2012 Olympics. “Often with such large projects, people complain

afterwards that the local community has not benefited”, explained organiser Andrew

Crossley. “In this case, we wanted to get involved at an early stage, in order to make

sure that the local community does benefit”.

The efforts of London Citizens resulted in a letter of intent from the Mayor of London. If

London was to win the bid, he would promote the use of local labour; ensure that

workers are paid a living wage; train local residents for these jobs, especially in

construction; build at least 4,500 affordable houses; and improve local services.

At that time, the Olympic bid chairman indicated that this commitment to the local

community made the London bid ‘eminently more winnable’. Last summer, London did

indeed win the bid.

However, the recently set up Olympic Delivery Authority refuses to live up to the living

wage agreement. It claims that it would be illegal to make wage conditions on

contractors. Community organisations are protesting the decision. “We won’t stop our

campaign until we are sure that London 2012 will truly be a ‘living wage Olympics’,” a

London Citizens spokesperson commented.

The London initiatives can be seen as a successful instance of community unionism. A

recent study found that 22% of London’s low-paid workers were members of a trade

union, while two-fifths claimed to be active in a faith-based organisation. This suggests

that coalitions with churches and mosques may enlarge the impact of trade unions’

organising efforts.


but now also has to deal with data processing centres were no one is a member. It

often regards low-paid, temporary jobs, and over half the workers have an ethnic

minority background. At the Stockport centre, 360 out of 500 contract staff have

been organised, partly through learning services. Among the courses on offer are

language courses.

• Usdaw managed to increase density at a distribution centre from 54% to 99% thanks

to learning services. At the distribution centre, 1,500 people do shift work, sixty

percent of them women and 25% ethnic minorities. A questionnaire was distributed

among staff in order to find out their learning needs. The union negotiated

successfully for the wages of union learning reps to be paid by the employer.

• At a meat processing factory, T&G offers learning opportunities to Portuguese and

Spanish workers. These include IT, maths and English courses, but also citizenship

classes on how to access social services, register with a doctor and access legal

services.

• In the financial sector, Unifi has recruited 1,000 new members in one year thanks to

the learning services. These services are not only seen as a recruitment device, but

also as a means to help workers deal with the consequences of globalisation

(§ 4.11).189

5.13 Community unionism in LondonThe City of London is the richest region in Europe, but London also has hundreds of

thousands of low-paid workers, often recent immigrants from countries such as Ghana

and Nigeria. While unemployment remains the most important cause of poverty, over

one in three children living in poverty reside in households where at least one person

works.

The East London Communities Organisation (Telco) has campaigned successfully for

living wages in the expanding local service economy. Telco is a coalition of over 40

churches, mosques, trade union branches, schools, student unions, hospitals and other

organisations, founded in 1995. Collectively, these organisations represent at least

50,000 members.

Similar coalitions have been set up in other parts of London, under the umbrella

organisation London Citizens, as well as in Birmingham. The Citizens organisations not

only campaign for better wages, but also for issues such as affordable houses, safer and

cleaner neighbourhoods and a humane treatment of asylum seekers. According to



6Coalitions with community organisations may have other advantages as well. For

example, board members of hospitals may be members of churches and mosques

affiliated to Telco. “Once these community organisations get involved, the whole

dynamic changes” according to organiser Andrew Crossley. “It is no longer just

workers versus management”.

Collaboration with faith organisations is not entirely uncontroversial among trade

unionists. Some fear that achievements on women’s and gay and lesbian rights may be

compromised. However, other trade unionists say that unions are afraid to lose control

when they work with other organisations.

Public sector union Unison has worked with Telco organising in the health sector, while

banking sector union Unifi supported the campaign at Canary Wharf. The collaboration

with T&G has been somewhat difficult at first, but has improved, and a number of T&G

branches have recently affiliated to Telco. T&G is actively organising cleaners in London.

This is being done in collaboration with the American service employees’ union SEIU,

famous for its Justice for Janitors campaign (§ 5.1).

The Citizens coalitions include not only faith organisations and unions, but also for

example schools. School children participated in the Living Wage March as part of their

citizenship classes. Concern for street crime around schools was one of the reasons for

Telco to get involved in campaigns for safer and cleaner neighbourhoods.190


narrow self interests. In order to counter this, unions frame their objectives as social

justice issues.

Coalitions: Coalitions with community organisations strengthen the support for

political campaigns, help unions get in touch with ‘hard to reach’ workers and help

counter the image of unions pursuing narrow self-interests.

Long-term commitment: Some crucial campaigns have taken as long as twelve years

before bearing fruit. It is important to convince union members (and staff) of the

importance of investing time and resources in long-term objectives.

Partnership not without strength: Collaboration with employers and with governments

can yield important results, provided that unions do so from a position of strength and

actively involve their membership in what they do.

Battle of ideas: In many countries, unions have to cope with a political climate that is

hostile to workers and their organisations. Some unions have successfully set up think

tanks and worked with research institutes to regain the initiative and gather support for

alternative economic and social visions.


6 ConclusionsWhile trade unions in most Western countries face serious challenges, there is also an

enormous variety of innovative initiatives to cope with these challenges. These

innovations have not yet turned the tide for the union movement as a whole.

Nevertheless, some major successes have been achieved by individual unions and by

local coalitions. At present, it is difficult to say what kind of approach will work under

what circumstances. It is still very much a matter of trial and error. That said, there do

seem to be some general characteristics that can be identified in many successful

initiatives.

Organising new groups: Many initiatives focus on organising new groups, which are

underrepresented among the unions’ membership: young people, ethnic minorities,

and workers in the growing services sectors. Organising these groups is essential if the

trade union movement is to remain a relevant social actor in the future.

Bottom up and top down: Initiatives need to be bottom up in order to have real

grassroots support and to reflect the issues that are of concern to the population.

However, they also need a strong commitment from the top, in order to overcome

resistance to change and to have the level of coordination that is needed to be able to

take on large corporations and to influence government policies.

Local and international: At the local level, unions build community support and test

innovative approaches. At the same time, international networks are crucial to be able

to cope with the consequences of a globalising economy.

Social justice: Opponents often try to depict unions as outsiders who are fighting for



7 7 Appendices

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7.2 AbbreviationsABVAKABO FNV Dutch public sector union.

AC! Agir ensemble contre le Chômage. French organisation of the

unemployed.

ACFTU All China Federation of Trade Unions.

ACORN Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

Organisation of people with low and moderate incomes.

ACTU Australian Council of Trade Unions.

AFL-CIO American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial

Organizations.

AOb Algemene Onderwijsbond. Teachers’ union in the Netherlands.

ASDA British subsidiary of the American Wal-Mart corporation.

ATTAC Association pour une Taxation des Transactions financières pour

l’Aide aux Citoyens. Originally French organisation of

globalisation activists.

CC.OO. Comisiones Obreras. Spanish confederation, originally

communist.

CE Confédération étudiante. Students’ union, France.

CFDT Confédération Française démocratique du travail. French general

confederation.

CGT Confédération Générale du Travail. French confederation,

originally communist.

CNT Confédération Nationale du Travail. French anarcho-syndicalists.

CWU Communication Workers Union, UK.

DAL Droit Au Logement. French organisation that campaigns for the

homeless.

DTI Department of Trade and Industry, UK.

ETUC European Trade Union Confederation.

EU European Union.

EVW Europäischer Verein Wanderarbeiter. European organisation of

labour migrants.

Finsec Finance Sector Union, New Zealand.

FNV Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging. Netherlands Trade Union

Confederation.

FNV Bondgenoten Largest union in the Netherlands, private sector.

FRESC Front Range Economic Strategy Center. Research institute in

Denver.


Visser, Jelle

2006a. Union Membership Statistics in 24 Countries. Montly Labor Review, January:

38-49.

2006b. Europese arbeidsverhoudingen toen en nu: Van het ‘labour inclusive’ stelsel

naar een ‘deltamodel à la carte’? Sociaal Maandblad Arbeid 61(10): 454-64.

Voss, Kim and Rachel Sherman

2000. Breaking the Iron Law of Oligarchy: Union Revitalization in the American Labor

Movement. American Journal of Sociology 106(2): 303-49.

Waddington, Jeremy

2006. Why Do Members Leave? The Importance of Retention to Trade Union Growth.

Labor Studies Journal 31(3): 15-38.

Waldinger, Roger, Chris Erickson, Ruth Milkman, Daniel J.B. Mitchell, Abel

Valenzuela, Kent Wong and Maurice Zeitlin

� 1996. Helots No More: A Case Study of the Justice for Janitors Campaign in Los

Angeles. Los Angeles: Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.

Weil, David

2005. A Strategic Choice Framework for Union Decision Making. WorkingUSA 8: 327-

47.

Wills, Jane

2004. ‘Organising the low paid: East London’s living wage campaign’. In: G. Healy, E.

Heery, P. Taylor and W. Brown (eds.) The future of worker representation. Hampshire:

Palgrave Macmillan.

Wills, Jane and Melanie Simms

2003. Building Reciprocal Community Unionism in the UK. Capital & Class 82: 59-84.

Wrench, John

2004. Trade Union Responses to Immigrants and Ethnic Inequality in Denmark and the

UK: The Context of Consensus and Conflict. European Journal of Industrial Relations

10(1): 7-30.


TUC Trades Union Congress. British confederation.

TWU Transport Workers Union, Australia

UFCW United Food and Commercial Workers, America.

UIN Union Ideas Network, UK.

UNI Union Network International. Global union for skills and services.

UNIFI British finance union, merged with Amicus in 2004.

UNISON British public sector union.

UNITE HERE American union, result of merger of textile union UNITE and

hotel and restaurant union HERE.

USAS United Students Against Sweatshops.

Usdaw Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, UK.

USWA United Steelworkers of America. Organises metal workers, but

also government and health care employees.

Ver.di Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft. United Services Union,

Germany.

WSUN Working Students Union Network, Australia.

WTO World Trade Organization.


GMB General and Municipal Boilermakers’ Union. UK.

GURN Global Union Research Network of the ILO.

HERE Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union.

America. By now merged with Unite.

IG BCE Industriegewerkschaft Bergbau, Chemie, Energie. German energy

union.

IG Metall Industriegewerkschaft Metall. German manufacturing union.

ILO International Labour Organization. UN organisation of trade

unions, employers’ organisations and governments.

ISS Multinational cleaning and facility services corporation.

IUF International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant,

Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations.

JfJ Justice for Janitors. Famous organising campaign among cleaners.

JwJ Jobs with Justice. American coalition that campaigns for social

justice.

LAANE Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy.

LHMU Liquor, Hospitality & Miscellaneous Union, Australia.

NGO Non Governmental Organisation.

NSWTF New South Wales Teachers Federation, Australia.

OCAP Ontario Coalition Against Poverty. Organisation that uses direct

action on behalf of the unemployed and other groups.

OWINFS Our World Is Not For Sale. International network of organisations

concerned with globalisation issues.

PSI Public Services International. Global union federation.

SDS Students for a Democratic Society. American students’

organisation in the 1960s.

SEIU Service Employees International Union. Innovative and fast-growing

union in the USA.

SER Sociaal-Economische Raad. Socio-Economic Council, the

Netherlands.

SPD Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands. Social-Democrat Party

of Germany.

SUD Solidaires, Unitaires, Démocratiques. Group of autonomous unions

in France, now affiliated to Union Syndicale Solidaires.

T&G Transport and General Workers’ Union, UK.

TCO Tjänstemännens Centralorganisation. Swedish Confederation of

Professional Employees.

TELCO The East London Communities Organisation.



7.3 A framework of union-community coalitions191


Coalition elements

Common

Concern

Org.

Relations

Context

and the scales

of power

Coalition measures

Org

Common

Interest

Social Frame

Member engagement

Org

Commitment

and apacity

Structure

and Strategy

Political

Opportunities

Scale / Power

Strengths /

Weaknesses

Ad hoc Coalition

• Initiated by request to support a

specific group’s agenda/issue/event

• Initiated by either union or

community organization

• Single organisational interest

• Reactive message

• Often negative frame, often on

‘their’ frame

• Issue not necessarily connected to

union members

• One organization requests others to

support their strategy

• Campaign distant from members

• “rent-a-collar”

• Episodic and tactical rather than

strategic engagement

• Initiating organization develops

strategy

• No joint decision making or coalition

organizational structure

• Reactive and short-term and limited

to specific immediate opportunity or

threat

• Engagement of power occurs at any

level – can be at a level not related

to actual decision-making

• Tactical resources, boost campaign

morale, can lead to longer term,

more strategic coalition

relationships

• Do not themselves build powerful

relationships

• May create resentment over being

“used”

Support Coalition

• Issue or interest linked to a specific

organization’s agenda

• Specific concern linked to issue

(rather than value)

• Narrow frame

• Issue either dominated by union

members (union initiated) or

• Not connected to union members

• Coalition dominated by initiating

organization

• Campaign distant from members

• “rent-a-crowd”

• Short term coalition

• Formal organizational structure

• Informal union dominance of coali-

tion or limited union engagement

• Short term

• Organizations do not necessarily

share similar political practices

(cultural clashes)

• Formed around immediate

opportunities or threats, but set

medium timeframe for influence

• Engagement of power occurs at the

same level as the decision makers

• Can effectively coordinate and

direct resources to a reactive, single

issue campaign but reflect a

relatively superficial solidarity

• Can be one-sided and make deep

participation more difficult

Mutual-support Coalition

• Mutual direct interest of

participating organizations is the

basis of coalition

• Issues have direct connection to

organization members

• Union issues framed broadly as

“community issues”

• Deeper mobilization and

participation of organization

members

• Greater member and organizational

buy-in

• Joint decision-making and strategy

• Involvement of research and

planning

• Organizations share similar political

and cultural practices that lead to

mutual interests

• Shared power; orgs brings resources

to coalition

• Opportunities for engagement

calculated and strategic and created

by coalition/movement

• Engagement of power is sustained

and long-term on level of the

decision makers

• Deeper bonds may narrow the

number of organizational partners

• Easier to activate and mobilize

membership due to direct interest

connection – can open up deeper

coalitions

Deep Coalition

• Issues are direct to interest of

participating organizations and to a

broader social vision for all working

people

• Union and organizations actively

engaging rank-and-file members

• Significant buy-in and financial and

staff resources committed

• Decentralized structure based on

deep connections between union

and community groups at

membership level

• Long term strategic plan to build

power

• Movement building

• Opportunities for engagement

created by movement

actions/strategy which opens up

new opportunities for engagement

• Engagement of power occurs on

various levels including the level of

decision making and the local level

• Build upon a shared social vision – is

decentralized and can be explosive,

but difficult to “direct” because of

decentralized actions on multiple

levels of power

• Require organizations to see

themselves in a broad social vision

beyond their own self-interest

23 Wrench (2003). Of course, other factors play a role as well. For example, relatively

few immigrants live in Denmark.

24 Martínez Lucio and Perrett (2006), Perrett and Martínez Lucio (2006).

25 Renaut a.o. (2003). El Ejido: Hamann and Martínez Lucio (2003), Hartiti (2002),

FCE (2004).

26 Press release, 17 October 2006.

27 Agricultural sector in the Netherlands: interview with Mohammed Dahmani by

Tonny Groen, June 2006.

28 PSI (2006:14).

29 Holgate (2005).

30 Kahmann (2002b: 7-8 and nt 6).

31 AFL-CIO (2001).

32 L.A.: Frank and Wong (2004).

33 Bronfenbrenner and Hickey (2003). No victims: Milkman and Wong (2001).

34 Bronfenbrenner and Hickey (2003).

35 Karson (2004), Frank and Wong (2004), Reiss (2005).

36 JfJ: Erickson a.o. (2002a). Hotel staff: Meyerson (2000).

37 LeVoy and Verbruggen (2005: 51).

38 Benseddik and Bijl (2005).

39 Kahmann (2002a: 34).

40 Taras and Steel (2007).

41 Festraëts (2003). The quote is from Michaël Pinault.

42 Landré (2006)

43 Information provided by TCO, November 2006, February 2007.

44 Interview with AOb representative by Tonny Groen (FNV), September 2006;

information provided by Rutger Groot Wassink (FNV).

45 Voss and Sherman (2000).

46 Do not expect too much of financial services: Kahmann (2002a: 33), cf

Waddington (2006). Voice and responsibility: Festraëts (2003).

47 Simmons (2004), Reynolds (2003), Luce (2004).

48 Klein (2002: 37-40), Groves (2003). Welfare Rights Movement: Piven and

Cloward (1977: h5).

49 Albrechtsen (2004).

50 UK: TUC (2004a). Euro Marches: Behrens a.o. (2002). Ireland: Rhodes (2001).

51 Peck (2001).

52 Dølvik and Waddington (2002), Dribbusch (2004). Lidl: Kröger (2004).

53 Sánchez (2007).

54 Dølvik and Waddington (2002).


7.4 Endnotes1 Behrens a.o. (2004), Levi (2003), Esping-Andersen (1999).

2 Steingart (2006).

3 Bronfenbrenner and Hickey (2003), Clawson (2003: 5-7), Noble (2004: 136-7),

Stern (2006: 52). British companies hire American union busting consultants:

Heery (2003). The TUC Organising Academy has responded by creating a

‘busting the busters’ course for organisers.

4 The latter percentage for the European Union actually refers to 2002. Visser

(2006a).

5 Visser (2006b).

6 Bronfenbrenner and Juravich (1998).

7 Greenhouse (2006).

8 Bright (2006).

9 Stern (2006: 66 ff).

10 Scary graphs: Crosby (2005: 14).

11 Heery (2003).

12 Tattersall (2006).

13 Leopold (2006), Frege a.o. (2004).

14 Mernyi (2005: 9-10).

15 Heery and Adler (2004), Turner (2001, 2004), Behrens a.o. (2002), Baccaro a.o.

(2003).

16 The idea of periodic waves of protest causing important institutional change is

derived from social movement research (e.g. Tarrow 1998: 141ff; Piven and

Cloward 1997: 268; Sommier 2003: 111ff). In addition to the 1930s and the

1960s, the revolution year 1848 is often mentioned as well. On the relevance of

periodic mobilisations for the trade union movement, see Clawson (2003). In the

periods in between the trade union movement is written off: Turner (2001: nt16).

17 Combination of top-down and bottom-up successful: Milkman and Wong

(2001), Voss and Sherman (2000), Savage (2006). On resistance to change, see

also Heery a.o. (2002: 7).

18 Weil (2005).

19 Voss and Sherman (2000).

20 Heery and Adler (2004). TUC: Heery a.o. (2002: 7).

21 Self employed: Dølvik and Waddington (2002). JwJ: Luce and Nelson

(20062004).

22 PSI (2006: 12).


83 Greven (2003).

84 Waldinger a.o. (1996).

85 Stern (2006: 59).

86 America: Candaele and Dreier (2004). Norway: Dølvik and Waddington (2002).

France: Constanty (2004).

87 Vandenberg (2006).

88 America: Moberg (2005b). France: Barroux (2004a). Norway: Dølvik and

Waddington (2002). Duitsland: Behrens a.o. (2002: 16). Netherlands:

Kloosterboer (2005).

89 Tattersall (2006b).

90 Savage (2006).

91 Moberg (2000), Fine (2004), Dølvik and Waddington (2002), Olson and Steinman

(2004).

92 http://www.laborstudies.wayne.edu/power.html.

93 Collaboration not self-evident: Fine (2004), Wills and Simms (2003). LA: Frank

and Wong (2004).

94 Dortmund: Beese a.o. (2004b).

95 Milio and Simoni (2004).

96 ‘Community fetishism’: Teague and Murphy (2004). McKinsey: Beese a.o.

(2004a). Opportunistically adopting the funder’s objectives: Pichierri (2002).

97 Beese a.o. (2004a, b), Gambaro (2004), Baeten (1999), Pike (2002).

98 Swyngedouw (2005).

99 Beese a.o. (2004b).

100 Economic logic is lacking: Teague and Murphy (2004). Organisations only

involved because this increases chances of obtaining subsidy: Milio and Simoni

(2004), Pichierri (2002). Trade unions and community organisations have limited

influence: Gambaro (2004), Beese a.o. (2004a, b), Pike (2002), Pichierri (2002).

Dortmund: Beese a.o. (2004b).

101 Moberg (2000).

102 America: Bronfenbrenner and Hickey (2003). Europe: Beese a.o. (2004b),

Pichierri (2002).

103 On this debate, e.g. Pottier (2003).

104 Griffin a.o. (2003).

105 Barboza (2006). Philips: FNV chairwoman Agnes Jongerius quoted in de

Volkskrant, 21 October 2006.

106 Stern (2006: 23 ff), Volkskrant 21 October 2006.

107 Lillie and Martínez Lucio (2004).

108 Brouwer and Borsboom (2006).


55 Gennard (2007).

56 Cobble (2001), Wills and Simms (2003). Negative aspects: Rose (2000: 27-8).

57 Dølvik and Waddington (2002). Ver.di: Annesley (2006).

58 Information provided by Ronald van der Krogt (policy advisor at the FNV)

November 2006; interview with Marjan van Noort (Director of FNV Zelfstandige

Bondgenoten) by Tonny Groen, September 2006.

59 Heery a.o. (2004).

60 Heckscher and Carré (2006).

61 Abbott (2004).

62 Germany: Behrens a.o. (2002: 11). America: Heery and Adler (2004). On activists

in unions that emphasize organising: Dølvik and Waddington (2002).

63 Success rate: Bronfenbrenner en Hickey (2003), c.f. Clawson (2003: 91). Educate

members in JfJ campaign: Meyerson (2000).

64 Clawson (2003: 37).

65 Quote from SEIU-organiser: Voss and Sherman (2000). Local trade union leader:

Moberg (2000).

66 HERE: Voss and Sherman (2000). Chicago: Kest (2004).

67 Heery and Adler (2004), Hamann and Martínez Lucio (2003).

68 Netherlands: data provided by Vrouwensecretariaat FNV. Italy: Baccaro a.o.

(2002).

69 Lhaïk (2003). Number of leavers: Barroux (2004b).


71 Crosby (2006: 191 ff).

72 Heery a.o. (2000, 2002).

73 Barroux (2004b), Landré (2006).

74 Behrens a.o. (2002). Benefits for members: Spiegel Online 1 November 2004 (IG

Metall will Nichtmitglieder schlechter stellen) and 10 December 2004

(Weihnachtsgeld nur für Gewerkschaftsmitglieder). www.spiegel.de.

75 Dølvik and Waddington (2002). On services, see also Björkman (2006).

76 Stern (2006: 74-5).

77 Information provided by ACTU, November 2006.

78 Heery and Adler (2004).

79 Waddington (2006).

80 Crosby (2005: 80).

81 This paragraph is based on a visit to the TUC Organising Academy in July 2005

and on a two-day organising course in Amsterdam in October 2005, provided by

UNI / SEIU in collaboration with FNV Bondgenoten.

82 Ashby (2005).


140 D’Art and Turner (2007).

141 Noble (2004: 45-7).

142 Peterson (2004). Baltimore: Fine (2004), Chicago: Reynolds (2003: 15).

143 Byrd and Rhee (2004), Luce and Nelson (20062004, 2005), Frank and Wong

(2004), Reiss (2005), Simmons (2004), Byrd and Greer (2005).

144 Luce and Nelson (2006).

145 Brownstein (2004), Byrd and Rhee (2004).

146 Beese (2004a).

147 Germany: Rehfeldt (2004). France: Sommier (2003: 151 ev).


149 Katbamna (2006).

150 Kloosterboer and Göbbels (2005). UIN website: http://uin.org.uk. Lunar House

enquiry: Back a.o. (2006).

151 Baccaro and Lim (2006).

152 Danford a.o. (2004).

153 Stuart a.o. (2006).

154 Stern (2006: 105).

155 Crosby (2005: 226-7).

156 Weil (2005).

157 Bright (2006), Stern (2006: 64).

158 Heery (2006).

159 Heery (2006). America: (Weil 2005).

160 Stern (2006: 54), Weil (2005).

161 Waldinger a.o. (1996), Erickson a.o. (2002a, b), Meyerson (2000). See also the

movie Bread and Roses by Ken Loach.

162 Greenhouse (2005c, 2006b).162 Geenhouse (2005??, 2006??).

163 Kröger (2004).

164 Ehrenreich (2001).

165 Featherstone (2004), Lumsden (2005). On Canada see Lampert (2006).

166 Featherstone (2004, 2005). Unpaid overtime: Ehrenreich (2001: 183). Teenagers:

Greenhouse (2005a2005c). Work during breaks: BBC News, 13 October 2006.

Undocumented cleaners: Greenhouse (2005b2005d). Discrimination: Hays

(2004).

167 Barbaro (2005), Greenhouse and Barbaro (2005, 2006).

168 Gogoi (2006), Greenhouse and Barbaro (2006).

169 Kinzer (2004), Howlett (2004).

170 Broder (2004), Frank and Wong (2004).

171 Barbaro and Greenhouse (2007).


109 Tattersall (2006). See also Stern (2006: 111 ff). IUF: Garver a.o. (2007).

110 Buckley (2007).

111 Quoted in TUC (2004b).

112 De Bruyn and Ramioul (2006).

113 Barboza and Barbaro (2006).

114 Passchier (2006).

115 Monks (2006).

116 Broder (2004). According to Frank and Wong (2004) Wal-Mart even invested two

million dollars in the campaign.

117 Collaboration sometimes difficult: Needleman (1998), Levi (2003), Allex (2004),

Frege a.o. (2004). Dial-a-collar: Byrd and Rhee (2004), Byrd and Greer (2005).

118 Wills and Simms (2003).

119 Simms (2007).


121 Frege a.o. (2004). Trade union’s support crucial: Daly a.o. (2004). Defend Council

Housing: www.defendcouncilhousing.org. Cf. America: Brownstein (2004) and

Clawson (2003: 113).

122 Mernyi (2005: 34).


124 Needleman (1998), Clawson (2003: 127), Bronfenbrenner and Hickey (2003).

125 Tattersall (2006c).

126 Rose (2000, 2004).

127 Rose (2004). Local coalitions: Reiss (2005), Byrd and Rhee (2004), Byrd and Greer

(2005).

128 Porter (2007).

129 Kest (2004). See also www.acorn.org.

130 Clawson (2003: 45, 126). Levi (2003). Denver: Luce and Nelson (20062004). See

also www.jwj.org.

131 Information provided by Mike Waghorne (PSI), November 2006.

132 Hamann and Kelly (2004). Spain: Hamann and Martínez Lucio (2003). France: Le

Monde, 14 October 2006. Britain: Leopold (2006).

133 Greenhouse (2006a, 2006c), Moberg (2006), Lindo (2006), Connell (2006).

134 San José: Byrd and Rhee (2004).

135 Byrd and Greer (2005).

136 Reynolds (2003: 51).

137 Stern (2006), Kirkland (2006).

138 Kloosterboer and Göbbels (2005).

139 See Your Rights at Work website, http://www.rightsatwork.com.au/campaigns/.


172 Featherstone (2004).

173 Featherstone (2004).

174 Luce (2004). See also Clawson (2003: 167ev), Reynolds (2003), Reynolds and

Kern (2004), Olson and Steinman (2004), Frank and Wong (2004). For data on

ordinances and ongoing campaigns: www.livingwagecampaign.org.

175 Dreier and Candaele (2004).

176 Frank and Wong (2004).

177 Parker (2005).

178 Luce and Nelson (2006).

179 Byrd and Greer (2005).

180 On the historic role of central labor councils: Clawson (2003: 93). On Union Cities

and Street Heat: Kriesky (2001), Moberg (2000). Street Heat in Houston: Karson

(2004).

181 Union Summer: Clawson (2003: 43 ev). Living wage campagnes at universities:

Neumann (2001).

182 Bronfenbrenner and Juravich (2001), Greven (2003).

183 Winnipeg: Bickerton and Stearns (2002). Los Angeles: NAFFE (2002: 15). 135

centres in the USA: Heckscher and Carré (2006). Britain: TUC (2004: h.10). Spain:

Kahman (2002b: 23), Renaut a.o. (2003). Oakland: Needleman (1998). Toronto:

Gostick (2004), Berinstein (2004).

184 Organizing Institute: Foerster (2001). Organising Academy: Heery a.o. (2000).

Majority of staff still recruited internally: Beachler and Turner (2004). Additional

information on the Organising Academy was collected during a visit to the TUC in

Liverpool, 15-16 July 2005.

185 Hanley and Holland (2003).

186 Sommier (2003: 81ev), Syfuss-Arnaud (2001), Barbier a.o. (2003), Constanty

(2004), Barroux (2004a).

187 Simon (2006), cf. Pernot (2007).

188 Sullivan and Oudenampsen (2004), Foti (2004), Capocci a.o. (2004). See also

www.euromayday.org.

189 TUC (2004), Smith (2006).

190 Kloosterboer and Göbbels (2005), Wills (2004), Back a.o. (2005), Evans a.o.

(2005), Holgate and Wills (2007). London Citizens spokesperson quote on ODA:

www.peoplemanagement.co.uk, 26 October 2006.

191 Source: Amanda Tattersall (2005), There is Power in Coalition. Labour and

Industry, 16(2), 97. See also www.communityunionism.org.


Many trade unions have seen their memberships decline, whilehaving to cope with a globalising economy, the erosion of workersrights and increasing labour market flexibility.

Innovative trade union strategies describes how some unions haveresponded to these developments, by running assertive organisingcampaigns at the workplace, engaging in strategic research,strengthening their position in local communities and launchinginternationally coordinated campaigns.

Some of these initiatives have been surprisingly successful, gainingtens or even hundreds of thousands of new members andimproving the conditions of millions of workers, often low-paidworkers in the growing service sector.

“In a way, the trade union movement must reinvent itself in orderto deal with the challenges of the 21st century. Innovative tradeunion strategies describes successful examples of how trade unionsacross the world have taken on today’s challenges. I hope theseexamples may serve as a source of inspiration”. Agnes Jongerius,President of the Netherlands Trade Union Confederation FNV

Innovative trade union strategies (FNV 2007)

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