Book review: The Future of Union Organising: Building for Tomorrow;Union Revitalisation in Advanced Economies: Assessing the Contribution of Union Organising,by Gregor Gall (ed.)

These two edited volumes contain rich and varied accounts of union organising strategies and their impact, as well as seeking to locate the debates both more conceptually and also within a broader economic and political context. In doing so, Gall provides two succinct and invaluable introductions to wide ranging sets of chapters that are almost inevitably uneven and at times repetitive, but also, at their best, essential reading in an important debate. Indeed, it is a debate that Gall and some of his contributors regard as ‘pivotal’ and the ‘only game in town’ – although whether the unions are capable of playing and the potential of their strategies for winning are the key questions of the two volumes.

The books work at a number of different levels and seek to provide theoretical and conceptual arguments, alongside country overviews and case studies of sectors, industries, workplaces and individual unions. While its contributors are mainly academics, it is to be welcomed that each volume contains prescient chapters by two people actively engaged in delivering organising outcomes (Michael Crosby from the Change to Win Organising Centre, and Paul Nowak from the uk tuc). The Future of Union Organising aims to identify ‘best’ and ‘better’ practice and draws from a range of country examples (12 of its 14 chapters, including three from Ireland and two each from the USA and Australia). The ‘Revitalisation’ volume also seeks to contribute to ‘guiding successful practice’, but has a less international perspective and more of a focus on the conceptual arguments and case studies from the uk as well as three country overviews. Sectoral analyses in the two volumes take us from Irish mushroom workers via the sex industry, through both public and private sectors and into case study examples of individual union campaigns such as the rmt, and pcs as well as seiu and unite. The volumes also feature chapters characterised by both quantitative and qualitative research methods, broader literature reviews and data analysis from surveys and case studies.

Where does this all leave the reader? Certainly better informed and helpfully guided by the two excellent introductions, but still picking their way through a mass of detail and what can seem like a random collection of papers at times, rather than one organised thematically around the key areas of the two books and of the organising strategies themselves. At the conceptual level, it is good to see de Turberville represented and writing provocatively again in arguing that the organising model is a ‘flawed strategy’ rather than something the unions need to get on with implementing properly. He polemicises his piece by taking on the work of Bob Carter, and it is a pity that there is no reply from him, although inevitably much of the rest of the books constitute replies by default. Martinez Lucio and Stewart provide a broader conceptual analysis drawing from their own research, and argue that organising is a positive response to the decline of the Thatcher years and represents ‘an important moment’ in ‘reclaiming the initiative’ for trade unions.

There is a sense that this is the case with most of the chapters, although those that focus on country-based overviews cannot and do not ignore the serious and well documented declines in union membership, organisation and power. Different countries have very different industrial relations environments in which to contextualise the ‘shift to organising’, and the account from New Zealand by May and Goulter describes the opportunities for trade unions in re-emerging from what they call a ‘near death experience’. The accounts from the USA in both volumes are more familiar, given the significant influence of the approach to organising in that country on developments in the uk. It is perhaps more interesting to hear from the less well known cases of the Netherlands (a chapter by van Klaveren and Sprenger), and Canada, where Rose argues that the trade unions faced less dramatic changes at least in part because of their longer term ‘commitment to a broader and activist role for unions in society’.

Perhaps the most potentially stimulating chapters in both books are those that focus on the micro level and the opportunities that their analysis offers for contributing to the editor’s quest for ‘better’ and ‘best’. There are problems in edited volumes containing divergent chapters in that the inevitable ‘literature reviews’ or backgrounds at the outset of each can be (and are on occasion) dully repetitive, and we might end up seeing each of the case studies as unique in themselves with little to tell us in terms of generalisable strategies. Nevertheless, we have important and engaging examples of success stories which clearly support the adoption and implementation of different organising strategies, however ‘flawed’ they might be. Ralph Darlington, for example is as vigorous and engaging as ever in his account of the revitalisation of the rmt union and the significant role of militant industrial action as an organising tool that is reflected in significant membership gains; although as his own figures show, the gains from 1997 onwards still leave the union well short of the figure for 1990. Equally, McCarthy in the same volume highlights the growth in union density of pcs and notes, ‘surges in membership growth were linked to mobilisation’. Belman and Smith in the ‘Future’ volume also offer an account of growth, but, in a rare view across all the chapters, they note the significance of shared objectives and co-operation with employers.

Each of these different areas of review and analysis invariably return us to key themes in the development of organising strategies – themes and issues that are often posed dichotomously but which, explicitly or implicitly, the chapters’ authors suggest are, rather, complex and overlapping arguments about different strategies with different intended or unintended outcomes. The overworked argument of organising versus servicing recurs as does that between mobilisation/militancy and partnership. There is little doubt as to the direction in which the majority of the authors in both these collections lean, and there is a clear weight of evidence to back their judgement that active engagement of members in unions is at the centre of revitalisation strategies. There is equal argument that some varieties of organising inhibit just such engagement and become top-down, bureaucratic recruitment drives that can win in the short term but leave little on the ground for the future. Moody and Cohen alongside other contributors argue that trade unions need to look inside as well as outside, and that successful organising campaigns are predicated on the existence of a vibrant internal union democracy that opens the way for active engagement and the potential for the development of radical policies and leaderships at every level. These arguments link to what has become called a ‘social movement’ analysis of unions in general and union organising strategies in particular, and this, as Gall suggests in the introduction to ‘Revitalisation’, emphasises activism as a starting point and participation as essential. From an organiser’s perspective, this point is developed in a different direction by Nowak, who notes the difficulties in getting those already engaged as workplace activists – lay reps and stewards – yet who appear ideally placed to support organising strategies. The tuc’s research evidence also demonstrates their significance in shaping perceptions of trade unions.

The two books are permeated by the other recurring debates that characterise the union revitalisation literature. There is discussion of the importance of sectoral-based organising that develops a strategic approach that allows wages to be taken out of competition and neutralises some of the potential employer opposition to unionisation. This is linked to debates about strategies that ‘infill’ existing areas of membership as being more cost-effective than chasing after ‘hot spots’ of activity in a seemingly random collection of workplaces. Resources, limited and constrained as they are, then become a key priority not just in financial terms but also in human terms as different unions take different approaches to the deployment of ‘organisers’ as opposed to integrating the work in the (then overwhelming) workloads of existing employed union officers. The perennial question of how we might measure the outcomes of organising centres around repeated pleas for it not to be done in terms of membership numbers – figures to which so many of the authors return for want of a quantifiable figure rather than a qualitative understanding.

It is impossible to do justice to two such excellent and wide-ranging volumes in such a short review, and criticism of absence might seem churlish in response to what is included. However, there are important gaps in the more general literature of organising that need to be filled. Whilst the ‘turn to the unions’ in terms of argument and analysis is welcome, we cannot leave employers to be peripheral players, as they most commonly are in the chapters here. They are often seen as being simply a context, but that context is critical for union strategies, and not merely something to note. From union-busting to sophisticated hrm strategies, unions require adaptive approaches and the collection here illustrates that there remain outcomes that include no-strike agreements, employee advocates rather than union reps, and collective agreements that omit bargaining over pay. Changing labour markets also become contextual. We do have chapters discussing migrant and other vulnerable workers, but the shift to forms of work with non-permanent employment contracts is of major long-term significance, and new organising strategies need to take into account that workers do not always work in workplaces, or if they do, then it may not be for long periods. Where is the internet in the analyses, when many workers spend most of their days plugged in? We have collections that are significantly international but the internationalism is confined to the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ economies and the odd excursion into Continental Europe. Cross-border alliances are essential for revitalisation in a globalised economy, but discussion of them is only marginal here. Moreover, trade union movements are growing rapidly in the emerging economies and have important lessons on organising and community engagement as well as political action. Many of their success stories are also told in environments that are extremely hostile to trade unionism, yet which survive and grow and have lessons for the ‘better’ as well as the ‘best’.

Organising may well be the only game in town, but it is clear from the ‘Organising’ volume that the game is poker, and that the stakes are high. What is compelling in both volumes is the vibrancy of the debate and the engagement with ideas, as well as the divergent examples of efforts to put them into practice. The two books give us a number of fine accounts that deserve to be read by engaged academics and union officials alike, but it is activists and activism that are at the heart of organising, and in this respect the book is a little disappointing. Quite simply, it would have been good to hear more from them and, in this respect, I cannot finish without mentioning the chapter on Poland in the ‘Future’ book (Mrozowiciki, Pulignano and van Hootegem), which takes biography as its research method and gives voice to the activists. In doing so it does not draw simple conclusions but teases out the complexities and possibilities, and with all the caveats it is an enduringly optimistic argument that is embedded in the two volumes.