Organising model
Encyclopedia
The organising model, as the term refers to trade unions (and sometimes other social-movement organisations), is a broad conception of how those organisations should recruit, operate and advance the interests of their members. It typically involves many full-time organisers, who work by building up confidence and strong networks and leaders within the workforce, and by confrontational campaigns involving large numbers of union members. It is often contrasted with the service model
, and sometimes to a 'rank-and-file' model. The organising model is strongly linked to social movement unionism and community unionism.
The prominence of the model, and the debate over its worth, is at varying stages in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. The debate is important because the model is one of the more credible contributions to the discussion of how trade unions can reverse the trend of declining membership which they are experiencing in most industrial nations, and recapture some of the political power which the labour movement has lost over the past century
. However, the way in which it has been recaptured has been quite particular.
Unions that employ the organizing model often try to apply the above tactics in "internal"/representational/bargaining campaigns, not just "external" organising/recruitment campaigns. Indeed, many unions that employ the organising model attempt to "bargain to organise" -- that is, win a greater right to organize non-union workers through pressuring an employer through using current members collective strength.
In contrast, the service model focuses on the provision of services - such as legal advice, training, or even consumer discount programmes - to members. Practitioners of this model will generally avoid industrial, or direct, action of any kind, preferring to develop a 'good relationship' with employers. Typically, but not necessarily, service model unions will be less democratic in structure.
union found itself in a state of crisis. Dwindling membership threatened to finish it off entirely. A period of intense internal discussion gave rise to the view that a radical program was needed to rebuild the union, and make it relevant to current and potential members. The Justice for Janitors
campaign was launched as the organizational spearhead of this realization; beginning in Denver, Colorado
in 1985. Working along the lines described above, the SEIU experienced a huge growth in membership, and a significant number of high-profile public victories for workers. (Though some proportion of the SEIU's membership growth has resulted from mergers, such as with 1199). In 1988, an AFL-CIO
organised teleconference
of trade unionists recognised the potential of the nascent organising model, gave it its name, and resolved to spread it throughout the trade-union movement: this was an element in the model's popularisation.
The success of Justice for Janitors did not go unnoticed and other unions in America have increasingly used its tactics. In 1995, former SEIU President John Sweeney
was elected president of the AFL-CIO on the New Voice slate, on a platform of spreading the organising model across the members of the federation. The extent of the success of this is disputed, with some suggesting that more rhetoric has changed than anything, but it did have at least some effect. The SEIU is currently the largest private-sector union in America, trailing only the public-sector NEA in active membership, and has received numerous plaudits for its victories.
It should be noted that the tactics and strategies of the SEIU and Justice for Janitors go beyond the organising model which is, as has been described, an approach to local level organising and campaigning. It applies to a drive for recruitment of members and leaders on the level of a firm or city. Other aspects of the SEIU's strategies are national or international. For instance, the drive to gain industry-wide coverage across a large geographical base - i.e. to organise janitors not only within one building, but across a whole city, state and eventually all across the USA - or the advocacy of union mergers.
(TUC) inaugurated an Organising Academy in 1998, to fulfill a similar role to that of the AFL-CIO's Organising Institute in the USA (or ACTU's
Organising Works programme in Australia). Whilst the graduates of the Academy have produced positive results http://www.tuc.org.uk/newunionism/5yearson.pdf, in general the model has not been implemented in the UK with the same comprehensive commitment as it has been by some unions in the USA.
There are questions raised by writers on Industrial Relations about whether the transfer of the SEIU's organising model has been faithful, or whether a watered down, less radical version has been instantiated. Sarah Oxenbridge http://www.cbr.cam.ac.uk/pdf/wp160.pdf, for example, writes "community organising and organising model methods provided the means by which Californian Unionists put their 'social movement unionism' philosophies and strategies into practice, on a daily basis (see Heery 1998). However, it may be that most British Trade Unionists will instead see the organising model as - more simply - a range of recruitment tactics, and will pick and choose from amongst these tactics."
The Transport and General Workers Union (T&G) has begun to make some of the more serious moves of any of the larger British unions to learn from the SEIU's strategies - though some smaller unions (such as Community
) have been applying the organising model for some years. In 2005, the T&G launched a Justice for Cleaners campaign, which has been organising workers in Canary Wharf, the Houses of Parliament, and, towards the end of the year, on the London Underground. In the former of these two, improvements in wages have been won by workers. The tactics of Social Movement Unionism
have been utilised, insofar as the campaign organisers have worked closely with, for example, The East London Citizens Organisation (TELCO), which has brought in members of faith groups and other trade union branches. However, there remain concerns about the T&G's commitment to rank and file workers' action, considering how the union acted during the Gate Gourmet strike.
The Irish general union SIPTU
established an Organising Unit in 2004 and its president, Jack O'Connor
, set as his objective the transformation of SIPTU - hitherto firmly committed to a servicing agenda - into an organising union. SIPTU is also seeking to learn from the experience of the SEIU. It remains to be seen how (and whether) a commitment to the organising model of trade unionism can be reconciled with the union's traditional support for national 'Social Partnership
'.
did not explicitly conceptualise the relationship between the union hierarchy and the membership in terms of "organisation" or "services." Traditional distinctions, inherited from long-term conflict, between the "Groupers" (a branch of the a Catholic
-oriented National Civic Council) on one hand and the Communist Party of Australia
on the other, have dictated the terrain of membership/leadership relationships. These relationships were fundamentally those of small unions which catered to their members by combining elements of rank-and-file organising, hierarchical organising, and gaining benefits for members through industrial
or non-industrial action. Successful unions met their members' demands for militancy, or anti-militancy, and for an internal union culture which developed a feeling of belonging. Both "right wing" and "left wing" unions could be bureaucratic, or member controlled, militant or anti-militant.
However, after a wave of massive industrial unrest and unprecedented increases in wages and conditions during the 1970s, the union movement became more restrained in their demands, and part of the official apparatus of government during the ALP
-led, neo-corporatist, Accord
period (1983–96). While unions had amalgamated
prior to the Accord, and the Australian Council of Trade Unions
had itself absorbed other lesser peak industrial councils, the accord period and the later enterprise bargaining
period encouraged mergers into super unions.
These super unions often obliterated previous small union identities and loyalties (on both the "left" and "right" of the trade union movement) and created unions with a relatively artificial internal culture. Often the largest union in the merger imposed its internal culture on the other divisions of the new union. Additionally, during the period of mergers, the traditional links between members, local organisers, industrial officers, branches and the peak leaderships of unions broke down. While the pre-1980s period of trade unionism in Australia was never characterised by deep links between leaderships and rank and file members, the structures within unions which allowed rank and file members to feel involved and this part of the union broke down. This presented a challenge to the union movement.
Another key feature of the model in Australia is the Organising Works program which was established in 1994 to recruit organisers from union members and university students. Organising works is a relatively unique program in Australia, in that it combines explicit training in trade unionism with an apprenticeship system with specific trade unions. Generally, organising works has focused recruitment on university students rather than existing trade union members, and only a limited number of unions have participated in organising works.
An example of an argument of this form can be found in the pamphlet co-written by British Labour MP John Healey and published by the TUC http://www.tuc.org.uk/newunionism/learningtoorganise.pdf, which emphasizes how unions can grow and serve the business interests of employers by taking on the role of training their members.
In addition, there are the criticisms levelled by the anti-union Right, who often associate collective action with the tyranny of 'Big labour
', contrasted to the free operation of the capitalist labour market. Characteristic examples of this type of criticism can be found in public statements of the anti-union National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation
http://www.nrtw.org/foundation-action/fa_51.htm.
Service model
The service model generally describes an approach whereby labor unions aim to satisfy members' demands for resolving grievances and securing benefits through methods other than direct grassroots-oriented pressure on employers...
, and sometimes to a 'rank-and-file' model. The organising model is strongly linked to social movement unionism and community unionism.
The prominence of the model, and the debate over its worth, is at varying stages in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. The debate is important because the model is one of the more credible contributions to the discussion of how trade unions can reverse the trend of declining membership which they are experiencing in most industrial nations, and recapture some of the political power which the labour movement has lost over the past century
Organising and the history of trade unions
Trade unions originally existed to organise their members democratically, and during their early growth, they typically put a strong emphasis on active recruitment and militant rank and file action, including strikes. By no means did they always unambiguously act in the interests of their members, but they were perceived of as organisations which existed to struggle for collective action. Particularly since the end of World War II, however, the trade unions have tended more and more to act as service providers for their members: providing legal advice, training and so on; eschewing mass-based, militant action. During the '60s, '70s and onward, this trend deepened, with union density among the workforce falling all the while, until it could be measured at between 10% and 20% in many industrialised countries. In the context of this history, the organising model is in principle not so much a new conception, as an attempt to recapture the essence of the labour movementLabour movement
The term labour movement or labor movement is a broad term for the development of a collective organization of working people, to campaign in their own interest for better treatment from their employers and governments, in particular through the implementation of specific laws governing labour...
. However, the way in which it has been recaptured has been quite particular.
Defining the organising model
It is often claimed that the principle underlying the organising model is that of giving power directly to union members. While the practical exercise of the model sometimes leaves something to be desired in this respect, its embodiment of a set of campaigning and organisational approaches is much less ambiguous. The organising model in its ideal type has these features:- Proactive recruitment drives.
- Proactive campaigning, involving a large commitment of resources and large numbers of members.
- Creative campaigning tactics - including demonstrations, street theatre, media stunts, direct actionDirect actionDirect action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
, civil disobedienceCivil disobedienceCivil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance. It is one form of civil resistance...
, music etc. - Strong emphasis on the importance of personal contact in organising. Organisers will often put in long hours talking to workers about their situation, and what they believe the union can help them achieve. Visits to workers' homes will often be a component of this.
- Acceptance of the view that workers need to take some appreciable responsibility for winning union struggles and making the union strong. Hence an attitude geared toward empowering workers.
- As a central tool of both recruitment and campaigning, the identification and recruitment of leaders from among the workforce, to spread information about the union, and encourage others to join and take action.
- These leaders working together in a campaign committee, to steer campaigns http://web.archive.org/web/20070624105841/http://www.lalabor.org/OCH.html.
- A conception of leadership in which leaders are those willing to take the initiative and contribute effort, rather than one based on authority. It will be hoped that leadership (as confidence to initiation organisation with others) will spread as broadly as possible.
- Strong relationship (especially in America) to Social Movement Unionism and Community Unionism which (respectively) seek to ally the labour movement to broader social movements and to local community organisations - including for example, campaigns such as United Students Against SweatshopsUnited Students Against SweatshopsUnited Students Against Sweatshops is a student organization with chapters at over 250 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. In April 2000, USAS founded the Worker Rights Consortium , an independent monitoring organization that investigates labor conditions in factories that...
and ACORNAcornThe acorn, or oak nut, is the nut of the oaks and their close relatives . It usually contains a single seed , enclosed in a tough, leathery shell, and borne in a cup-shaped cupule. Acorns vary from 1–6 cm long and 0.8–4 cm broad...
. - Employment of relatively large numbers of full-time staff union organizers and member organizers in order to facilitate the above.
- In order to finance this, typically a relatively high level of membership dues relative for industrial—as opposed to craft—unions.
Unions that employ the organizing model often try to apply the above tactics in "internal"/representational/bargaining campaigns, not just "external" organising/recruitment campaigns. Indeed, many unions that employ the organising model attempt to "bargain to organise" -- that is, win a greater right to organize non-union workers through pressuring an employer through using current members collective strength.
In contrast, the service model focuses on the provision of services - such as legal advice, training, or even consumer discount programmes - to members. Practitioners of this model will generally avoid industrial, or direct, action of any kind, preferring to develop a 'good relationship' with employers. Typically, but not necessarily, service model unions will be less democratic in structure.
Resurgence in America
In the mid 1980s, the SEIUService Employees International Union
Service Employees International Union is a labor union representing about 1.8 million workers in over 100 occupations in the United States , and Canada...
union found itself in a state of crisis. Dwindling membership threatened to finish it off entirely. A period of intense internal discussion gave rise to the view that a radical program was needed to rebuild the union, and make it relevant to current and potential members. The Justice for Janitors
Justice for Janitors
Justice for Janitors is a social movement organization that fights for the rights of janitors across the US and Canada. It was started in 1985 in response to the low wages and minimal health-care coverage that janitors received...
campaign was launched as the organizational spearhead of this realization; beginning in Denver, Colorado
Denver, Colorado
The City and County of Denver is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Denver is a consolidated city-county, located in the South Platte River Valley on the western edge of the High Plains just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains...
in 1985. Working along the lines described above, the SEIU experienced a huge growth in membership, and a significant number of high-profile public victories for workers. (Though some proportion of the SEIU's membership growth has resulted from mergers, such as with 1199). In 1988, an AFL-CIO
AFL-CIO
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, commonly AFL–CIO, is a national trade union center, the largest federation of unions in the United States, made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 11 million workers...
organised teleconference
Teleconference
A teleconference or teleseminar is the live exchange and mass articulation of information among several persons and machines remote from one another but linked by a telecommunications system...
of trade unionists recognised the potential of the nascent organising model, gave it its name, and resolved to spread it throughout the trade-union movement: this was an element in the model's popularisation.
The success of Justice for Janitors did not go unnoticed and other unions in America have increasingly used its tactics. In 1995, former SEIU President John Sweeney
John Sweeney (labor leader)
John Joseph Sweeney was the president of the AFL-CIO from 1995 to 2009.-Early years:Born in The Bronx, New York, Sweeney is the son of Joseph and Agnes , both Irish immigrants. The family moved to Yonkers in 1944, where Sweeney attended St. Barnabas Elementary School and graduated from Cardinal...
was elected president of the AFL-CIO on the New Voice slate, on a platform of spreading the organising model across the members of the federation. The extent of the success of this is disputed, with some suggesting that more rhetoric has changed than anything, but it did have at least some effect. The SEIU is currently the largest private-sector union in America, trailing only the public-sector NEA in active membership, and has received numerous plaudits for its victories.
It should be noted that the tactics and strategies of the SEIU and Justice for Janitors go beyond the organising model which is, as has been described, an approach to local level organising and campaigning. It applies to a drive for recruitment of members and leaders on the level of a firm or city. Other aspects of the SEIU's strategies are national or international. For instance, the drive to gain industry-wide coverage across a large geographical base - i.e. to organise janitors not only within one building, but across a whole city, state and eventually all across the USA - or the advocacy of union mergers.
Resurgence in the UK and Ireland
The British Trades Union CongressTrades Union Congress
The Trades Union Congress is a national trade union centre, a federation of trade unions in the United Kingdom, representing the majority of trade unions...
(TUC) inaugurated an Organising Academy in 1998, to fulfill a similar role to that of the AFL-CIO's Organising Institute in the USA (or ACTU's
Australian Council of Trade Unions
The Australian Council of Trade Unions is the largest peak body representing workers in Australia. It is a national trade union centre of 46 affiliated unions.-History:The ACTU was formed in 1927 as the "Australian Council of Trade Unions"...
Organising Works programme in Australia). Whilst the graduates of the Academy have produced positive results http://www.tuc.org.uk/newunionism/5yearson.pdf, in general the model has not been implemented in the UK with the same comprehensive commitment as it has been by some unions in the USA.
There are questions raised by writers on Industrial Relations about whether the transfer of the SEIU's organising model has been faithful, or whether a watered down, less radical version has been instantiated. Sarah Oxenbridge http://www.cbr.cam.ac.uk/pdf/wp160.pdf, for example, writes "community organising and organising model methods provided the means by which Californian Unionists put their 'social movement unionism' philosophies and strategies into practice, on a daily basis (see Heery 1998). However, it may be that most British Trade Unionists will instead see the organising model as - more simply - a range of recruitment tactics, and will pick and choose from amongst these tactics."
The Transport and General Workers Union (T&G) has begun to make some of the more serious moves of any of the larger British unions to learn from the SEIU's strategies - though some smaller unions (such as Community
Community (trade union)
Community is a UK trade union representing workers in the iron and steel, domestic appliance manufacturing, clothing, textiles, footwear and betting industries as well as workers in voluntary organisations, workshops for visually impaired and disabled people, community-care providers and housing...
) have been applying the organising model for some years. In 2005, the T&G launched a Justice for Cleaners campaign, which has been organising workers in Canary Wharf, the Houses of Parliament, and, towards the end of the year, on the London Underground. In the former of these two, improvements in wages have been won by workers. The tactics of Social Movement Unionism
Social Movement Unionism
Social Movement Unionism is a trend of theory and practice in contemporary trade unionism. Strongly associated with the labour movements of developing countries, Social Movement Unionism is distinct from many other models of trade unionism because it concerns itself with more than organising...
have been utilised, insofar as the campaign organisers have worked closely with, for example, The East London Citizens Organisation (TELCO), which has brought in members of faith groups and other trade union branches. However, there remain concerns about the T&G's commitment to rank and file workers' action, considering how the union acted during the Gate Gourmet strike.
The Irish general union SIPTU
SIPTU
SIPTU , or in Irish: CSTGT is Ireland's largest trade union, with around 200,000 members. Most of these members are in the Republic of Ireland, although the union does have a Northern Ireland branch...
established an Organising Unit in 2004 and its president, Jack O'Connor
Jack O'Connor (trade unionist)
Jack O'Connor is an Irish trade union leader.Born in northern County Dublin, O'Connor worked in various fields before taking full-time employment with the Federated Workers' Union of Ireland in 1980...
, set as his objective the transformation of SIPTU - hitherto firmly committed to a servicing agenda - into an organising union. SIPTU is also seeking to learn from the experience of the SEIU. It remains to be seen how (and whether) a commitment to the organising model of trade unionism can be reconciled with the union's traditional support for national 'Social Partnership
Social Partnership
Social partnership is the term used for the tripartite, triennial national pay agreements reached in Ireland.The process was initiated in 1987, following a period of high inflation and weak economic growth which led to increased emigration and unsustainable government borrowing and national debt...
'.
History in Australia
Prior to the 1980s, the Australian labour movementAustralian labour movement
The Australian labour movement has its origins in the early 19th century and includes both trade unions and political activity. At its broadest, the movement can be defined as encompassing the industrial wing, the unions in Australia, and the political wing, the Australian Labor Party and minor...
did not explicitly conceptualise the relationship between the union hierarchy and the membership in terms of "organisation" or "services." Traditional distinctions, inherited from long-term conflict, between the "Groupers" (a branch of the a Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
-oriented National Civic Council) on one hand and the Communist Party of Australia
Communist Party of Australia
The Communist Party of Australia was founded in 1920 and dissolved in 1991; it was succeeded by the Socialist Party of Australia, which then renamed itself, becoming the current Communist Party of Australia. The CPA achieved its greatest political strength in the 1940s and faced an attempted...
on the other, have dictated the terrain of membership/leadership relationships. These relationships were fundamentally those of small unions which catered to their members by combining elements of rank-and-file organising, hierarchical organising, and gaining benefits for members through industrial
Industrial action
Industrial action or job action refers collectively to any measure taken by trade unions or other organised labour meant to reduce productivity in a workplace. Quite often it is used and interpreted as a euphemism for strike, but the scope is much wider...
or non-industrial action. Successful unions met their members' demands for militancy, or anti-militancy, and for an internal union culture which developed a feeling of belonging. Both "right wing" and "left wing" unions could be bureaucratic, or member controlled, militant or anti-militant.
However, after a wave of massive industrial unrest and unprecedented increases in wages and conditions during the 1970s, the union movement became more restrained in their demands, and part of the official apparatus of government during the ALP
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...
-led, neo-corporatist, Accord
The Accord
The Prices and Incomes Accord was an agreement between the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Australian Labor Party government of Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Treasurer Paul Keating. Employers were not party to the Accord. Unions agreed to restrict wage demands and the government...
period (1983–96). While unions had amalgamated
Consolidation (business)
Consolidation or amalgamation is the act of merging many things into one. In business, it often refers to the mergers and acquisitions of many smaller companies into much larger ones. In the context of financial accounting, consolidation refers to the aggregation of financial statements of a group...
prior to the Accord, and the Australian Council of Trade Unions
Australian Council of Trade Unions
The Australian Council of Trade Unions is the largest peak body representing workers in Australia. It is a national trade union centre of 46 affiliated unions.-History:The ACTU was formed in 1927 as the "Australian Council of Trade Unions"...
had itself absorbed other lesser peak industrial councils, the accord period and the later enterprise bargaining
Enterprise bargaining agreement
Enterprise bargaining is wage and working conditions being negotiated at the level of the individual organisations. Once established, they are legally binding on employers and employees....
period encouraged mergers into super unions.
These super unions often obliterated previous small union identities and loyalties (on both the "left" and "right" of the trade union movement) and created unions with a relatively artificial internal culture. Often the largest union in the merger imposed its internal culture on the other divisions of the new union. Additionally, during the period of mergers, the traditional links between members, local organisers, industrial officers, branches and the peak leaderships of unions broke down. While the pre-1980s period of trade unionism in Australia was never characterised by deep links between leaderships and rank and file members, the structures within unions which allowed rank and file members to feel involved and this part of the union broke down. This presented a challenge to the union movement.
Another key feature of the model in Australia is the Organising Works program which was established in 1994 to recruit organisers from union members and university students. Organising works is a relatively unique program in Australia, in that it combines explicit training in trade unionism with an apprenticeship system with specific trade unions. Generally, organising works has focused recruitment on university students rather than existing trade union members, and only a limited number of unions have participated in organising works.
Criticisms
Most practical criticism of the model has emerged as a criticism of the practice of the model by the SEIU and other organising unions, especially in America. Criticisms from the left generally contrast (explicitly or not) 'organising' to a 'rank and file' model, in which the confrontational style of organising, and broad-based member involvement in campaigning is supplemented by broad-based member power. Criticisms from the Right are either arguments in favour of service model unionism, or attacks on some of the trade union practices which are often involved in strikes.Criticisms from the right
Critics argue that the organising model is inappropriate to the task of unions in the modern global economy. They say that industrial disputes of the type that organising engenders are harmful to the national economies in which they occur: by increasing uncertainty and raising wages (labour costs), they will make economies less attractive to inward investment. Hence, working people will suffer in the long term, as the less investment there is, the less jobs there will be. The conclusion of those who take this line is that unions should emphasise their service aspects, particularly those that contribute toward the well-being of the employer as well as the employee.An example of an argument of this form can be found in the pamphlet co-written by British Labour MP John Healey and published by the TUC http://www.tuc.org.uk/newunionism/learningtoorganise.pdf, which emphasizes how unions can grow and serve the business interests of employers by taking on the role of training their members.
In addition, there are the criticisms levelled by the anti-union Right, who often associate collective action with the tyranny of 'Big labour
Big labor
Big labor is a term used to describe large organized labor unions, particularly in the United States....
', contrasted to the free operation of the capitalist labour market. Characteristic examples of this type of criticism can be found in public statements of the anti-union National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation
National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a charitable organization that provides free legal assistance to employees who claim that their civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism. The Foundation was founded in 1968 and has represented 20,000 employees in over 2,200 cases,...
http://www.nrtw.org/foundation-action/fa_51.htm.
See also
- Trade Unions
- Labour MovementLabour movementThe term labour movement or labor movement is a broad term for the development of a collective organization of working people, to campaign in their own interest for better treatment from their employers and governments, in particular through the implementation of specific laws governing labour...
- Services model
- Community UnionismCommunity UnionismCommunity unionism describes the spectrum of ways in which trade unions work collaboratively with community organisations over issues of common importance to both...
- Social Movement UnionismSocial Movement UnionismSocial Movement Unionism is a trend of theory and practice in contemporary trade unionism. Strongly associated with the labour movements of developing countries, Social Movement Unionism is distinct from many other models of trade unionism because it concerns itself with more than organising...
- Union OrganizerUnion organizerA union organizer is a specific type of trade union member or an appointed union official. A majority of unions appoint rather than elect their organizers....
List of unions associated with the organising model
Note: the organising model is claimed by a very broad group of bodies, this list will be indicative only:- Service and Food Workers Union Nga Ringa TotaService & Food Workers UnionThe Service & Food Workers Union Nga Ringa Tota is a trade union in New Zealand. It is affiliated with the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions.The SFWU is organised into five industry sectors:*Age Care, Disability, Health & Community Services...
, New Zealand - Service Employees International UnionService Employees International UnionService Employees International Union is a labor union representing about 1.8 million workers in over 100 occupations in the United States , and Canada...
(SEIU), USA - Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU), Ireland
- United Voice, Australia
- Unite UnionUnite UnionThe Unite Union is a trade union in New Zealand. It is the sponsor of the campaign directed towards improving working conditions for fast food workers in the country, in addition to representing other hospitality and retail workers...
, New Zealand - UNITE-HERE, USA
External links
- The British TUC's New Unionism pages. The Resources section hosts a number of pamphlets which are useful contributions from both sides to the debate over Organising and Services.
- Article from Labor Notes summarising five books which constructively criticise the SEIU from the Left.
- Article comparing Trade Union strategies in USA and New Zealand. Includes details of the origin of Organising as a formally recognised concept in America. Sarah Oxenbridge, working paper, March 2000.
- Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Australian Union Revival. Hanley and Holland, working paper, May 2003
- Table contrasting the organising and service models in a variety of respects. A useful summary from LA Labor.
- Real Organizing: A discussion on organising from a rank and file perspective. Also hosted by LA Labor.
- Organizing Committee Handbook from LA Labor.
- The Unite To Win proposals from the New Unity Partnership. The proposals concern the national level union structures that, they argue, are necessary to facilitate the organising model.
- Argument against the NUP's Unite To Win proposals
- Articles hosted by Labor Notes on the NUP proposals
- Union Organising in Big Blue's backyard - case study by Findlay P; McKinlay A, published 2003 in the Industrial Relations Journal, on an ISTC (now CommunityCommunity (trade union)Community is a UK trade union representing workers in the iron and steel, domestic appliance manufacturing, clothing, textiles, footwear and betting industries as well as workers in voluntary organisations, workshops for visually impaired and disabled people, community-care providers and housing...
) organising campaign in Scotland. Article may only be available to those with an online subscription to the journal, such as many universities will have.