Renewed Activism for the Labor Movement: The Urgency of Young Worker Engagement

The Research: A Four-Country Case Study-Based Comparative Analysis

The aforementioned points are elaborated in this overview and in the four subsequent articles. Findings and analysis are based on evidence gathered from 25 in-depth case studies of young workers and the labor movement in four countries. ¹ For this project, we assembled research teams of talented colleagues in each of the four countries (see Online Appendix). In the first year, each team produced a literature review specific to their country and initially identified as many cases as possible. We then discussed how to narrow down the list so that each team would examine six cases in depth. Given the particularities of differing national contexts, we let each country research team work out a selection of cases designed to illustrate processes and possibilities. We looked for interesting, best possible practice cases that shed new light on our research questions. At the same time, we made sure that case studies ranged across industries, including services and manufacturing, private and public sectors, and were well enough aligned for cross-national comparative analysis.

Collectively, we focused in particular on cases in which unions or labor federations made concerted efforts to integrate young workers, in membership as well as active participation and leadership. We looked also for cases in which young workers pushed their way in, often from a base in a young worker group, sometimes but not always with the active support of existing union leadership. We examined obstacles, tensions, breakthroughs, and shortcomings, organized around our central, interrelated framing questions: Under what conditions, in contemporary labor markets, can unions overcome barriers to the integration of a youthful generation of workers; under what conditions do young workers actively engage in the labor movement? ²

In apparently successful cases, we looked for processes of empowerment: active participation and even leadership that indicated full engagement of young members. We distinguished empowerment from socialization, in which young workers sign up but without the opportunity to bring along creativity, change, or even transformation, without the chance to contribute to the urgent need for labor movement revitalization. ³

In September 2015, at the end of the project’s first year, we brought the teams together for a 2-day workshop in Paris, to present literature review findings and case selections and to discuss research strategy. By May 2017, the research was complete and again we assembled the teams for a 2-day workshop, this time in Amsterdam. ⁴ In addition to our own researchers, we invited union commentators from each of the four countries who joined us in actively discussing the relevance and meaning of our combined research findings. ⁵ We agreed (more or less) on a set of themes with signposts to analytical insights. Results are summarized in this special issue of Work and Occupations. ⁶

This research takes a qualitative, inductive, case study approach. The first challenge in cross-national comparative research is to find comparable cases, so that we are not comparing apples and oranges. Sometimes this is straightforward, but given differing institutional contexts often the search is for “functional equivalents.” For example, a central focus for worker interest representation in Germany is at the level of works councils. Thus, we looked for successful cases of young worker engagement in works council activities, especially in large and medium-sized firms. In the United States and the United Kingdom, where works councils do not exist, we looked at young workers in local and national unions and federations. In France, we examined young worker engagement in the confederations at a national and workplace-based level as well as in smaller independent unions or advocacy organizations created by the young workers themselves.

Although this is a field of research in which little comparative work has been done, we started without preconceived notions, adopting a “grounded theory” approach (Corbin & Strauss, 2008; Glaser & Strauss, 1967). The direction of our data collection was determined by ongoing interpretation and emerging conceptual categories and evidence rather than a priori hypotheses. We collected and analyzed the data simultaneously rather than sequentially (Suddaby, 2006). This approach allowed us to conduct “constant comparisons,” going back and forth between our findings, modifying concepts and analysis as appropriate.

Through systematic case study analysis (Yin, 2003) and process tracing (George & Bennett, 2005), we aimed to identify underlying causal processes that explain the successful integration of young workers into institutions and processes of worker interest representation. Our data analysis occurred at two levels: We combine cross-case comparisons and within-case analysis, seeking to identify causal variables through process tracing.

Young Worker Organizing in Comparative Perspective

All four countries face similar challenges with regard to young workers and the labor movement. Union membership among the young is low, ⁷ and given declining union density, young workers may be considered a problematic underrepresented group (Pedersini, 2010; Vandaele, 2018).

The changing labor market is an important structural factor that helps explain organizing difficulties (Blossfeld, Buchholz, Bukodi, & Kurz, 2008; Hodder & Kretsos, 2015; Waddington & Kerr, 2002). Young workers are disproportionately likely to be employed in workplaces or industries where unions have not successfully established collective bargaining or representation rights, for example, in low skill occupations such as catering, hospitality, sales, or the care sector. Similarly, the prevalence of nonstandard employment among young people and the emergence of new service sector jobs help account for low union density among young workers (Mirza-Davies, 2017). Youth unemployment, exacerbated by the 2008 economic crisis, is a particular challenge for trade unions because representation structures typically assume at least periodic employment (Bell & Blanchflower, 2011; Simms, 2012). At the same time, increasing numbers of young people now pursue university education that is not funneled through a vocational training system with strong union ties, especially in the case of Germany (Oliver, 2011).

Scholars have also pointed toward the attitudes or values of young workers. Research in each of our countries shows that young workers tend to be positively inclined toward collective representation but often have limited knowledge of unions (Waddington & Kerr, 2002). They do have a tendency toward political and social activism—especially in France (Becquet, 2014; Contrepois, 2015)—and are likely to be influenced by friends and family members for or against labor unions. However, there seems to be little ideological resistance to joining unions. In the United States, for example, a recent poll showed that young people (aged 18–29 years) view unions more favorably than older generations (Pew Research Center, 2015).

Each of the countries has important contextual elements that impact our case studies. In France, the role of the state has an especially important impact on union strategies (Howell, 2009). For example, despite an undeniable crisis of union membership since the late 1970s, recruiting new members has not been perceived as a priority for most unions. There was no financial emergency, as a large share of union funding is derived from the state, social security institutions, and employers. Nor was there a clear political emergency, as union influence could be measured through collective bargaining coverage, among the highest in the OECD at more than 90%, rather than union density. Union influence is often indicated by the ability to mobilize workers and use disruptive tactics such as strikes and public demonstrations (Bouneaud, 2007). Nonetheless, structural changes in the labor market as well as changes in labor law (e.g., the 2008 reform of union representativeness has put an end to guaranteed funding; Bourguignon & Yon, 2017) have threatened the capacity as well as the legitimacy of unions to represent workers. In addition, and importantly, young workers in France are prone to mobilize but less likely to unionize, as unions have often been depicted as archaic and external to forms of youth activism (Béroud, Dupuy, Kahmann, & Yon, 2015; Contrepois, 2015). As a consequence, and as we will show, young workers may well create their own structures.

For the United Kingdom and the United States, industrial relations scholars often point to similarities such as low interference from the state, strong employer resistance, and a focus on campaigning and member mobilization as a way to revitalize the movement. In fact, some recent U.K. campaigns—in the fast-food sector, for example—are modeled after specific U.S. campaigns such as the Fight for $15 movement that started in New York City in 2012. That said, the United States can be uniquely characterized by the emergence of a distinct “alt-labor” movement, contributing to the development of a broader new labor movement, one that goes beyond traditional unions to include over 200 worker centers and other community-based organizations and social movements that advocate for labor, social, and racial justice issues across the country (see also Bernhardt & Osterman, 2017 on different types of movements organizing low-wage workers in the United States). Many young workers in the United States have been active in organizations and movements outside or in coalition with traditional unions (Milkman, 2014a; Sapre, 2015).

Our research has also highlighted the widespread use of zero-hour contracts in the United Kingdom, in which employers demand workforce flexibility based on hours. It has become common to reduce contracted hours for jobs in retail, hospitality, and catering (sometimes even to zero hours) with an expectation that workers make themselves available for longer periods (Holgate & Simms, 2015). In addition, over the last 30 years, many unions in the United Kingdom have developed self-organized structures for women, ethnic minorities, disabled, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT), and young members. The purpose is not only to provide space for discussion but also to ensure the issues these members wish to raise are not marginalized. Self-organized groups are in some unions formal decision-making bodies that feed into wider union committees and structures—in other places they are advisory bodies—reminding unions that their issues should be integral to the agenda of unions. As an example, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) decided to “mainstream” their approach to young workers: Recognizing the need for self-organization, PCS created a young members network where contact in each branch is supported by a full-time youth organizer (Hodder, 2014). ⁸

Finally, our German case studies demonstrate the embeddedness of institutions and the emphasis that is put on the role of works councils at the workplace. Although this is not surprising, it does contrast with the emphasis on the mobilization of young workers outside the workplace and often in alliance with other groups that we found across our other country case studies (Hipp, 2015).

The articles in this special issue, however, do not focus on the structural weaknesses of the labor market in each country, the attitudes of young workers, or the specifics of each country’s industrial relations system. Rather, we highlight best practices and instances of democratic renewal that unions, their allies, and young workers themselves are engaged in, not just to reverse membership decline but more broadly to allow for transformative innovation within and outside the labor movement. Similar to Simms (2017), we argue that unions and young workers are important actors that have a capacity to influence the institutional structures, even if that influence is constrained. Specifically, our case studies shed light on four main conditions under which unions are able to actively engage young workers: finding innovative organizing strategies in precarious employment contexts, building coalitions between traditional unions and civil society groups, finding a balance between autonomy and support, and offering leadership training. Although the first two provide the contexts in which unions can find a new generation of members and leaders, the latter two point toward the ways in which unions relate to young workers and especially aspiring organizers and activists. Each of these themes is discussed in depth in the subsequent articles of this special issue.

Innovative Organizing Strategies in Precarious Labor Markets

Large numbers of young people today find themselves in precarious employment as labor markets that were once stable fragmented. This reality is common knowledge and the details need not be elaborated here (Standing, 2011). Less well known is a clear lesson from many of our case studies: Although precarious conditions make collective organization difficult, precarity also breeds innovative organizing on the part of young workers and unions seeking to improve employment conditions. Such cases may not be widespread but we find them in all four countries. They demonstrate that promoting or finding innovative strategies in precarious contexts offer a path for young workers to actively engage with the labor movement.

As examples, we consider the following cases (spelled out later): ASSO/Solidaires in France, IG Metall at an auto supplier in eastern Germany, RAP in Manhattan, and the Bakers Union in the United Kingdom.

ASSO stands for Action des salarié-e-s du secteur associatif (Dupuy, 2016). In this case, employees of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the Paris region came together in 2010 to form a new union, independent of any existing labor organization. Only once they were established as a credible group did they seek existing union affiliation. After interviewing several French labor confederations they settled on Solidaires, a small but activist-minded confederation that offered both support and autonomy for their new independent union.

Precarity breeds innovation. NGO workers typically work for low wages and in challenging circumstances for causes in which they believe. The moral compass can make them targets for exploitation by NGO employers operating on tight budgets. About 30 such workers came together at an initial meeting in Paris in 2011 to discuss problems and contradictions and consider some kind of collective representation. They decided on an independent union and set about organizing fellow workers. Unusual in this case is that they came from a wide range of NGOs focused on different issues, ranging across occupations not usually found in the same union.

This case of successful institution building is nonetheless marked by limited impact. Even with the support of Solidaires, it has so far proven impossible to bring together widely diverse NGOs in a collectively bargained contract. In the meantime, ASSO has concentrated on defending the interests of individual members but hopes to expand its capacity and goals in the future.

By contrast, the Retail Action Project (RAP) was launched in New York City in 2005 by a group of young workers under the umbrella of the well-established Retail, Wholesale, Department Store Union (RWDSU/UFCW; Fullin & Ikeler, 2016). RWDSU’s progressive-minded leadership was interested in organizing young retail workers. In Manhattan, they found a diverse and growing group of young workers eager to organize.

Again, precarity breeds innovation. Young activists came up with a range of proactive, youth-appealing strategies. They put pressure on stores, produced organizing breakthroughs, moved increasingly toward independence from the union. Over time, however, pressures of employer opposition pushed RAP back into closer affiliation with RWDSU. For the union, RAP has become a forum for innovation, a “cool” group young workers want to join. Still small in the overall Manhattan retail picture, RAP and its RWDSU partnership offer lessons for the future.

A case study at an auto parts supplier in eastern Germany demonstrates a new generational dynamic (Thiel & Eversberg, 2015). Young workers who know only precarious working conditions have in some cases shed the fear of workplace activism that held back previous generations. Knowing that if they lost one precarious job they could find another, a cohort of young leaders sought support from the IG Metall. They successfully organized the workplace, raising union membership and pushing through the establishment of an independent-minded works council. In so doing, they offered a model for a generational expansion of workplace representation where it has been weakest in modern Germany.

In the United Kingdom, the Bakers Union (Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union, BFAWU) has taken inspiration from SEIU (Service Employees International Union) in the United States to launch a Fast Food Rights campaign (Holgate, Simms, & Hodder, 2016). At least for frontline workers, jobs in the fast-food industry are precarious almost by definition: low pay, meager benefits, irregular hours, absence of union representation. Campaign demands for Fast Food Rights include a starting wage of £10/hour, an end to zero-hour contracts, and the right to join a union. The campaign has brought young workers into the Bakers Union as active participants. These workers have insisted on a bottom-up, campaigning approach that has brought innovations to a once rather traditional older male union and by extension to the British labor movement.

As with Fight for $15 in the United States, the campaign was launched from union headquarters (SEIU in the United States, Bakers in the United Kingdom), thus originating as a top-down project. But the precariousness of working conditions made workers ripe for mobilization, and in both cases, young activists drove the campaign and made it their own. Well-funded by SEIU, Fight for $15 has had a significant impact in the United States, inspiring state- and city-level minimum wage campaigns since its inception in 2012. The smaller Bakers Union (30,000 members) campaign has had a more modest impact but offers an enticing model for young worker engagement in the labor movement. Union structure itself is being transformed as young worker activists have established town centers that fast-food employees from any company can join.

Within the labor movements of France, the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom, all of these cases are relatively small. But, all of them include key innovations that offer learning possibilities for the integration of young workers into processes of workplace representation. In every case, workers faced both precarious working conditions and employers resistant to collective representation. And while precarity breeds innovation, breakthroughs were possible in each case for two additional reasons. Activist-minded young workers organized collectively to push back against precarious conditions. And, they found support from an existing union willing to embrace innovation, willing to risk empowering a new cohort of free-thinking leaders.

Engagement With Civil Society

Campaigns involving young workers can provide inspiration and new directions for the labor movement. Especially in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, our case studies showed that while union membership among young workers is relatively low, they do often engage in labor causes outside the unions. Building these linkages becomes therefore an important context in which unions can find and integrate young workers. And as a result, such alliances serve as catalysts for consideration of wider issues, including framing, tactics, strategies, and even organizational structure.

In the United States, each of our case studies showed clear links between the labor movement and civil society. This result is not surprising given the expansive growth of the alt-labor movement (Fine, 2006; Milkman, 2014a).

SEIU Millennials, ⁹ for example, has demonstrated the importance of connections between the labor movement and civil society at large (Cha, 2016). Internal to the SEIU, the goal was to attract young, diverse leaders. SEIU Millennials focuses on building youth engagement through internal mentorship and leadership development as well as with external social movements such as United We Dream and Black Lives Matter. One of the founding leaders of SEIU Millennials, for example, was Austin Thompson, a young African American activist previously involved with Occupy Milwaukee. Thompson and others formed Millennial chapters throughout the country; focused on a wide range of issues including climate change, student debt, and retirement security; and found creative ways to frame the issues for campaign purposes. In some chapters, young members ran for local office and changed the composition of leadership. Others were involved in local protest movements, for example, after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. SEIU has thus been able to engage young workers by making clear connections between the shared purpose of the labor movement and other civil society groups. Challenges lie in how best to integrate looser young worker structures into the more bureaucratic layers of an established union.

France has a rich history of active youth movements (Béroud et al., 2015). Historically, such movements played an important role in channeling young people toward labor unions. From the 1930s to the 1960s, the Catholic Church, socialist and communist youth organizations provided channels to connect young workers to the labor movement. Since then, however, youth movements have become much more diverse, expressing the characteristics of heterogeneous social groups, and while many young people in France are still active in voluntary organizations, union engagement is often seen as an “old” type of activism. At the same time, however, commitment to youth movements can dispose young people to engage in unions, especially given that issues of employment and precariousness have often been central in their mobilization efforts. The 2016 mass demonstrations against the “Loi Travail” provided a recent example, as the first wave of protest emerged during the spring from high schools and university students.

Our ReAct case study demonstrates opportunities as well as challenges in connecting civil society organizations with the labor movement (Yon, 2016). ¹⁰ ReAct was founded not as a union but as a network to combat the power of multinational companies. These activists have international experience in common and, importantly, they all come from a leftist yet nonunion background. Most of them became politicized in high school and college in student protests. Similar to some worker centers in the United States, ReAct was formed outside of the labor movement: aimed at defending workers’ rights but in uncertain relationships with unions. Given differences in organizational structure and culture, there was significant distrust from both sides. It was initially through the mediation of U.S. unions and community organizations that ReAct activists redefined their relationship with unionism and started to provide militant organizing strategies as a service to French unions.

Since the 1990s, British unions have often taken lessons from the U.S. labor movement in both organizing the unorganized and reaching workers beyond the workplace. For some unions, there is a new emphasis on building relationships with the broader community, either through labor-community campaigns or expanding union membership to community (nonunion) members. As we have seen, the Bakers Union, inspired by Fight for $15, developed a Fast Food Rights campaign with financial and training support from the SEIU (Holgate et al., 2016). By linking up with unions from other countries (SEIU from the United States and Unite from Australia), members could feel part of a global movement fighting low pay and precarious working conditions. Along similar lines, PCS branches have worked with organizations such as Youth Fight for Jobs, UK Uncut, and the Workers Beer Company as a way to increase activism among members as well as raise the profile of the PCS and their Young Members Network (Hodder, Holgate, & Simms, 2017). The Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph, and Technicians Union (BECTU) has worked closely with the Living Wage Foundation (an offshoot of the community-based organization Citizens UK) for its campaign at the cinemas (Simms, Holgate, & Hodder, 2017). Importantly, the union decided to change some of its branch structure to accommodate the needs of young workers and be more closely in touch with the community. In other words, by reaching workers beyond the workplace and building alliances with community-based groups, U.K. unions have to a certain extent reached some of the most precarious young workers and have succeeded, albeit still on a small scale, in improving working conditions.

To conclude, many of our case studies in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom show the importance of unions connecting with young worker groups outside the workplace or the traditional collective bargaining realm. Creating linkages in a context in which young activists are already mobilizing is therefore another condition under which unions are likely to engage young workers in the labor movement. Through alliance building, young workers have been able to inspire campaigns with creative modes of action, emphasize a different framing of the issues at stake, and show a more diverse leadership. Unions have in some cases responded by altering their own structures or creating new programs to promote and potentially institutionalize the strategies of young worker groups. These alliances do not come without challenges, however, either for sustainability as an organizational form or for attainable workplace improvements.

Finding a Balance Between Union Support and Local Autonomy

Many of our case studies demonstrated tensions and contradictions between autonomy and support. Young worker groups were more likely to succeed when they pushed independent initiatives and had the backing of an established union. Labor movement resources and institutional knowledge are especially important when this support encourages a large measure of autonomy for young worker activities. But at the same time, our cases show different challenges that arise when workers try to set up autonomous groups or take on new initiatives.

Several U.K. unions in our study created specific structures to involve young workers. These Young Workers Networks, Forums, or Conferences are aimed at addressing the generational gap among union members, understanding the issues young workers face, increasing the number of young activists within the union, and drawing from the energy and creativity of young workers. Given British union history, these networks are not that surprising. Many unions have established equality networks, or self-organized groups, for black workers (or “black and minority ethnic”), women, LGBT, and workers with disabilities. These equality networks have been set up to ensure that the rights of marginalized groups are being addressed within the union. Young member networks, however, are transitional, with age limits, making it challenging to maintain key leaders.

As we have noted, PCS created a young members network for any member up to 27 years old, focused on recruiting, representing, and organizing young workers across the civil service sector (Hodder et al., 2017). Along similar lines, the Trades Union Congress set up a Young Workers Forum and a Young Members Conference (Simms, Holgate, & Hodder, 2016). BECTU created a Young Members Forum (Simms et al., 2017) and the Bakers Union has a Young Members Conference. The Bakers made procedural amendments to their constitution to change branch structure. Rather than trying to impose structures or outdated practices, some British unions have thus allowed young workers to create their own energy and express their own voice (Holgate et al., 2016).

These U.K. cases show the importance of having an initial union workplace structure in place, for example, a collective bargaining agreement or shop steward presence. It is through these structures that young member groups can push campaign issues, mobilize fellow (young) workers, develop recruiting strategies, or get issues on the workplace bargaining agenda. By contrast, where a union is not present in the workplace, often in sectors such as retail, hospitality, or catering—notably sectors where many young workers are located—young worker initiatives are absent or less likely to succeed.

In Germany, unions have committed funds to specific training programs geared toward young people. For example, ver.di initiated a vocational training program, Praktisch. Besser. Jetzt., specifically targeted at young workers in the growing health and elder care sector (Behrend & Hipp, 2017a). This program seeks to establish new strategic approaches for reaching out to young adults and apprentices, to improve the quality of the training and hence the quality of care work. In the first 2 years of the program, ver.di supported around 10,000 young people in vocational training in a total of 30 employer organizations. Success has depended on institutional support from ver.di, including the prior existence of youth representatives (“Jugendauszubildendenvertetung”/JAV) at the workplace level. Along similar lines, the IG Metall and Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund have put resources into Students@Work and campus information offices. These projects that provide union services to college students (Behrend & Hipp, 2017b; Müller & Eversberg, 2016) are important for the unions given that Germany now has more university students than apprentices in vocational training. Campus offices raise awareness about employment rights and the role of unions and provide legal support and counseling for students in jobs and internships. These offices provide them with first-hand information from the world of work and support student protests and political activism. And again, success depends on the financial and personnel commitment from the unions.

Two important young worker structures stand out in the French case studies. In both cases, the initiative came from young people themselves, and in both cases, these workers were dissatisfied with the traditional structures of the French trade unions and created something new. As we have seen, in 2010, a group of graduate students created ReAct (Yon, 2016). Set up as a type of “alt-labor” organization—quite rare in France—this association engages in creative social and environmental justice campaigns against multinational companies, building transnational alliances. Although initial distrust between the unions and ReAct had to be overcome, the association engages now in a contractual relationship with unions, offering useful services such as collaboration on community organizing. Again, the success of ReAct depends partly on the support of established unions.

In addition, young workers from nonprofit organizations created a new group to represent them: ASSO, described earlier (Dupuy, 2016). Although ASSO is a union, it has a particular structure and process and does not operate in the same away as a traditional union in France does. Members, for example, build consensus rather than vote. ASSO members decided to affiliate with Solidaires, with the promise that their issues would receive attention even as they remained autonomous within the federation. Solidaires has offered the new union important legal support as well as training courses for ASSO members. The union federation has provided crucial resources to help ASSO set up while giving them the autonomy to operate in their own mode.

In the United States, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) launched Next Up to provide young people a space to develop new leadership within the labor movement (Sapre, 2016b). Next Up includes national summit meetings at which a thousand or more young people from across the United States come together to discuss issues from common sense economics to freedom of sexual expression. At a local level, young worker groups are launched that can experiment with different models (see, e.g., Barnes, 2016 on the Greater Boston Labor Council). The AFL-CIO’s Union Summer Program has been another avenue to recruit young people for the labor movement (Sapre, 2016a). In this case, college students are assigned as interns to assist local unions and community groups in their organizing efforts. Some union locals, however, lack the infrastructure to accommodate these novice organizers or are not ready for the new ideas of interns, and training efforts are less successful. The union support system in place has a significant impact on the success of the program.

The RAP was launched in 2005 and started off as a hot-shop campaign project under the RWDSU, then moved toward greater independence, and since 2015 has returned to a closer cooperation with the union. Although innovative tactics for organizing retail workers attracted many millennials, RAP needed the support of the union to remain financially sustainable as well as to empower workers with real collective bargaining gains. Back and forth relations reflect the ongoing contradictions and difficulties experienced by innovative youth groups and established unions in working out the terms of collaboration and mutual support.

Across our country studies, many traditional unions have been open to creating new structures or programs specifically for young workers and have shown a willingness to embrace new initiatives. By throwing out the rulebook on traditional organizing and embracing innovative or alternative strategies, unions in these cases have signaled their willingness to be rejuvenated—in organization, operation, forms of action, or relationships with employers. And, the success of young worker initiatives typically depends on the support they receive from the unions. Rather than reinventing the wheel, young worker groups that may lack institutional knowledge can rely on significant training or education from an established union. When this support still allows for the autonomy of the group—without immediate cooptation—the young groups are most likely to succeed.

Leadership Training

In many of our case studies, the need for leadership training for young activists emerged as a prominent issue. The willingness and capacity of unions to train young workers can make a significant contribution to encouraging their participation. In some cases, unions were training young workers for active representation or leadership roles. In other cases, young workers sought more than they were getting or complained that the issues covered were not always relevant. Conflict or dissatisfaction often arose between existing union leadership and young activists: union leaders who saw training as a vehicle for reproducing existing practices versus young workers promoting a more bottom-up, campaign-oriented approach. Thus another version of the question: Is union training for young workers primarily about socialization, or is it also about empowerment in the interest of revitalizing and even transforming the labor movement?

One of our project researchers, Sophie Béroud, had studied a youth group at the CGT in the early 2000s. For the current project, she tracked down several of the rising activists earlier interviewed (Béroud, 2016). She found that for those who had risen in union leadership in the intervening years considerations of internal union reform and new campaigning approaches had fallen by the wayside. Those who stayed with the union were for the most part trained and socialized in traditional union ways. Those committed to innovation had left the union.

We also observed training programs that were comprehensive and quite successful on their own terms. Ver.di, for example, has offered training for workplace-level youth representatives who are union members in the health and elder care industry, in order to pressure employers for better apprenticeship training (Behrend & Hipp, 2017a). Since its beginnings in 2014, the project Praktisch. Besser. Jetzt. has trained enough JAV “guides” to support 3,500 young workers. The idea is to leverage apprenticeship advocacy into a stronger union presence in an industry where pay is low, conditions are poor, and union representation is weak, and in the process to develop a new cohort group of young union leaders.

We found an especially innovative approach to leadership training in the United States, at the New York State AFL-CIO/Cornell Union Leadership Institute. For this special issue, project researchers Sally and Joe Alvarez have told the story from an insider perspective. We have included this article because the topic is so important and because Urban Land Institute (ULI) has a 17-year history as a comprehensive, multiunion, transformation-oriented leadership program. The curriculum has been especially relevant for rising young leaders, and we believe that ULI has lessons to offer for young worker leadership training everywhere. Over 300 unionists, most of them young, have been through the year-long ULI program. Many of these participants are now union leaders in the New York and surrounding area labor movements.

Of particular relevance is the program’s focus: much less on traditional leadership skills training and socialization into the labor movement and much more on encouraging diversity and innovation. For rising leaders from across unions and sectors, ULI is a bonding experience that promotes a willingness to tackle difficult challenges in new ways, including contributions to internal union transformation and movement building. Trainees develop specific projects relevant to their own local unions, to take back and implement with the support of an active network of ULI graduates.

Although adaptation potential varies across countries and unions, the ULI example demonstrates promising possibilities, with specific lessons for empowerment and innovation where unions are truly open to the engagement of young leaders.

Implications for Theory

Our research offers theoretical insights in four areas: institutions and agency, labor movement revitalization, civic engagement, and intersectionality and leadership. For the first, comparative political economists tend to counterpose institutional stability to convergence. This now rather tired debate has dominated much comparative social science discourse since the emergence of a significant body of institutional literature in the 1990s (Hall & Soskice, 2001). The varieties of capitalism literature and its many spinoffs emphasize enduring national (and sometimes subnational) institutional differences. The counterargument sees global liberalization driving similar patterns of institutional revision or even breakdown everywhere (cf. Baccaro & Howell, 2017; Streeck, 2009).

Our research shows some merit in each of these views, yet we also see a common determinist flaw. Of course, institutions matter, and when change comes, it builds on or modifies existing institutional foundations. In our German cases, for example, young worker activism takes place mainly within well-established channels of codetermination and union representation: the young worker-led establishment of a works council in our auto supplier case in eastern Germany; ver.di youth training in conjunction with existing workplace youth groups. As the varieties of capitalism literature might suggest, the U.S. context is more likely to produce “radical innovation”: the RAP; Fight for $15.

Nonetheless, while institutional and market incentives matter, there is much scope in modern democratic society for often surprising actor choice. Our 25 case studies and the many more background cases we have considered show rich creativity on the part of young workers in their potential contributions to labor movement renewal across a range of industries and national contexts.

We also know that democratic institutions, including labor unions, tend to stagnate and need periods of renewal (Greer & Doellgast, 2017; Streeck & Thelen, 2005). Revitalization arguably requires periods of popular mobilization and active participation (Turner, 2003). Young workers are especially important in bringing new ideas and innovative strategies or modes of action to the labor movement—and this is obvious from our case studies in all four countries.

Building on these debates, we engage with the scholarship on civic engagement. Active young worker participation in unions often plays out in a broader context of engagement with other institutions and social movements anchored in civil society. Scholars have long argued that active civic engagement is a precondition for a well-functioning democracy. Colin Crouch (2011), for example, has argued that the only hope of keeping the market, state, and powerful corporations in check is the “fourth force,” or “the busy but small voices of civil society.” Concerns regarding the decline of civic engagement have prompted intense scholarly debates. Many have highlighted a decline in society’s contribution to democratic governance (Putnam, 1995; Skocpol, 1999). In this light, traditional anchor institutions such as trade unions have suffered from a weakened grassroots base (Visser, 2006). Such institutions, once perceived as backbones of society in addressing and articulating the interests of workers, have in some cases become ossified structures unable to mobilize their constituents (Turner, 1996).

The active participation of young workers is thus an essential element in the revitalization not only of collective representation but for workplace democracy and civic engagement more broadly as well. Although some research has shown that young people are opting out of participation in the labor movement (Booth, Budd, & Munday, 2010; Budd, 2010; Waddington & Kerr, 2002), others have highlighted the emergence of millennial-based movements, such as Occupy and the “Dreamers” (Milkman, 2014b).

Unions respond in various ways to an influx of new ideas and young workers. They can be open to these waves of modernization, empowering young workers to promote labor movement transformation. Or they can try to reproduce the same institutions by socializing—rather than empowering—young workers, failing to allow for much in the way of innovation and renewal.

According to Van Maanen and Schein (1979), organizational socialization is a ‘process by which an individual acquires the social knowledge and skills necessary to assume an organizational role’ p.3. In other words, it is a process of making new members familiar with the communally approved meanings, norms, and practices of an organization. For unions and young workers, scholars have examined the importance of processes of socialization through union education, training, or setting up explicit young member committees (Hodder & Kretsos, 2015; Laroche & Dufour-Poirier, 2015). At the same time, however, they have highlighted the challenge for unions to allow these committees to become drivers for transformative institutional change rather than institutional reproduction. In other words, while socialization might be an important first step in connecting a younger generation to the labor movement, it is not enough by itself. To revitalize existing structures, if this is the goal, established union leaders need to be open to challenges to the norms, rules, or policies that young workers bring forward. Evidence from our case studies concurs: to make a difference young workers require empowerment with scope for innovative leadership development.

Finally, it is important to highlight the different identities of the young workers themselves and how this relates to their mobilization and organizing capacity. We take into account not just age but also gender, race, ethnicity, and biography to understand the strategic choices that are made. We draw from literature on intersectionality and leadership to examine the strategic choices of these young workers (Crenshaw, 1989; Ganz, 2000). It is important to keep in mind that the young workers in today’s workforce are more diverse than in recent decades. As a consequence, they also experience the labor market differently and might have different experiences with trade unions. When, for example, a group of graduate students set up the nonprofit organization ReAct in France, their international experience, personal backgrounds, and organizational networks help explain why these young activists decided to set up their own independent group and why this stand-alone structure was relatively successful. Similarly, and as mentioned earlier, one of the key founders and leaders of the SEIU Millennial groups was an African American activist who previously had ties to the Occupy movement and worked as a canvasser in Wisconsin. By helping to found the SEIU Millennial groups, he acted as an important bridge builder between a millennial movement such as Occupy and the labor movement. Our cases show that it is important to acknowledge the identity and background experiences of these leaders in order to understand the strategies as well as mobilizing or organizing capacity of the young workers.

Implications for Union Leaders and Young Activists

Despite common complaints about the young generation and its lack of interest in the labor movement, we find case after case where young workers have brought new vitality to traditional unions, diversity to union membership, and innovations to processes of collective representation. Our basic recommendation to union leaders is to open the doors. Our recommendation to groups of young workers promoting interests in the workplace and pushing for union engagement is to persist—and to insist on forward-looking leadership training and mentorships.

We urge union leaders to show courage, opening the door not only to socialization but to empowerment as well. The former case, accepting young workers but only on the organization’s terms, may help keep unions alive but is a recipe for stagnation, a missed opportunity. Young workers will bring creativity and new vitality to the labor movement when, in addition to traditional pathways, they can promote alternative approaches from the bottom up. Young activists are well placed to know what will motivate their own generation and where to look for new ideas.

Furthermore, unions can benefit from new ways of operating and new arenas for collective representation. Our case studies have in particular identified precarious employment, increasingly diverse workforces, and linkages with civil society as rich fields for young worker-driven innovation. Activist-minded young workers often have experience in social movement campaigns, from immigrant rights and climate justice to university-based efforts. The more open unions are to alliances with such groups the better, both for the recruitment of activists and the reputation of the labor movement with a new generation. Young workers who promote social justice issues are demonstrating leadership potential for a future labor movement. Union leaders would do well to be open to the organizations, campaigns, and coalitions advocated by young worker members and potential members.

A final recommendation: We have seen problems in the United Kingdom and Germany where in some cases workers “age out” of youth groups in their mid-20s. If the emphasis is on the vitality that a new generation can bring to the labor movement and the leadership that young workers can develop, any cut-off point for youth groups should be much higher—such as 35, as it is for ver.di’s P U35 and the AFL-CIO’s Next Up.

Conclusion

Through an inductive, qualitative case study approach, our cross-national study of the labor movement and young workers has highlighted four strategic approaches, or conditions under which unions are likely to encourage young worker participation: finding innovative organizing strategies in a precarious context, building linkages between traditional unions and civil society groups, finding a balance between autonomy and support, and offering innovative leadership training. Although many young workers find themselves in precarious employment, we show that precarity can breed innovation. Many of our cases highlight the links between young worker groups, the labor movement and civil society. We highlight the challenge for unions to grant young workers enough autonomy as well as support to encourage innovation and experimentation. Effective leadership training can encourage the diversity and innovation needed to rebuild a strong labor movement within as well as outside the workplace.

We find in numerous cases young workers eager for active engagement in collective representation campaigns. The problem is not so much young workers, as it is that unions do not always open the doors. When they do, when they reach out via social movement connections, when they offer empowered participation, young workers are often there. Young workers have plenty of new ideas when they are given a chance to contribute, not only along well-trodden institutional paths but also in innovations of substance. We highlight the importance of empowerment rather than mere socialization of young workers for contributions to labor movement revitalization, civic engagement, and democratic renewal. Union leaders need to offer mentoring to young activists: to bring them in, teach them the ropes, while at the same time opening up to their ideas.

For the future of the labor movement, union leaders would do well to consider not just recruiting young members but also winning over a generation. As Kashana Cauley (2017) has suggested, millennials could be “the perfect leaders of the next labor union renaissance.” Polling shows that the Millennial generation, loosely identified as those born between 1980 and 2000, is the most socially tolerant of generations. And social tolerance is less a fertile ground for scapegoat-seeking demagogues than it is for solution-based approaches such as those offered by forward-looking labor movements.

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