Is this the future of unions?
- March 19, 2014
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There is a tide starting to rise in the world of progressive activism, and
unions in Australia and globally may get caught in it.
The tide is comprised of decentralised, leaderless, temporary movements,
empowered by online organising platforms like MoveOn, Change.org, Avaaz,
Twitter and Facebook. These platforms have given everyday people
unprecedented power to come together quickly and in large numbers over a
very short period of time to achieve a common goal, and then disperse.
In my view, these changes are largely being driven by generational
attitudes and the rapid deployment of “disruptive technology”.
For progressive institutions, like unions or non-profits like Amnesty
International, Oxfam, Greenpeace or the Sierra Club, there are both great
opportunities and significant risks.
As a case study, I’d like to look at a campaign run by United Voice in
Queensland. United Voice is a progressive union that represents
minimum-wage workers like cleaners, childcare professionals, security
guards, bakers and the like.
For many years, United Voice has been organising at the Brisbane Airport.
The airport, despite being majority owned by industry superannuation funds,
including Australian Super (the fund for cleaners), used contract cleaning.
This form of employment is particularly exploitative of international
students, whose Visa conditions make it unlawful to work more than a
certain number of hours per week. However, the contractor would often
ignore this and employ the international students for more hours.
As was reported in the Brisbane
Times<http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/brisbane-airport-rocked-by-sexual-abuse-allegations-20131114-2xj4t.html>,
this resulted in an unethical cleaning supervisor at the Brisbane airport
blackmailing women international students for sexual favours. United Voice
raised this and other unlawful employment practices with the management of
the Brisbane Airport but were told it was a contractor issue, and thus not
the responsibility of the Airport.
United Voice decided to run a petition on the site
CoWorker<http://www.coworker.org/petitions/brisbane-airport-stop-deportation-of-women-workers>about
the sexual abuse taking place, and in a very short space of time,
over 2,800 people signed the petition. The person fronting the petition was
one of the young international student cleaners who worked at the Airport
and had witnessed the supervisor’s sexual abuse and was speaking out.
Within a few days, the Airport was forced to act. The supervisor was fired
and investigated by the police, and the Airport management agreed to
negotiate with the union over various employment matters for the cleaners.
This on the one hand was a great result of the union and the workers.
But it highlights an underlying fundamental. Although it was the union who
had done most of the organisation behind the scene, there was nothing
union-specific about the tactic which had resulted in the win. Anyone could
have set up that petition.
In fact, the CoWorker site is filled with
examples<http://www.coworker.org/categories>of everyday people
organising actions in the workplace where there is a
union vacuum. People within and outside a workplace are coming together
very quickly to take action on a specific issue. Union campaigners should
be both heartened and worried at this.
If workers don’t need a union institution to win change in their workplace,
what will cause them to join in the future?
Another example of the rise of these decentralised, leaderless movements,
is the Occupy movement that sprung up in 2011 and quickly spread throughout
the industrialised world. People came together in a decentralised,
disorganised, leaderless way, empowered by social networks and the
Internet, and then dispersed leaving no institution behind.
A more recent Australian version is the “March in March” Facebook
movement<https://www.facebook.com/marchinmarch>,
which saw over 50,000 people take to the streets on Sunday 16th of March.
While it remains to be seen whether this movement turns into anything, the
reality is that thinking about permanence or “demands” utterly
misunderstands what these groups are.
Rather than express their dissatisfaction and frustration through formal
institutions, 30,000 people march in Melbourne and tens of thousands in
Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide, Hobart, Perth, Brisbane and Alice Springs,
simply through a Facebook page. This is a fundamental shift in how civic
protests organise themselves. They come together quickly, then disperse.
Are traditional advocacy institutions relevant in these circumstances?
For other non-profits, you just need to look at platforms like Avaaz and
Change.org which regularly campaign on environmental or human rights
issues, putting similar pressure on the Sierra Club or Amnesty.
In response to crisis-levels of membership density in the USA and New
Zealand, the peak union bodies have decided to adopt a new organisational
model to promote unionism and collective action. The response is (in my
view) largely due to very hostile anti-worker laws, which place severe
restrictions on what registered unions can do.
In the USA, the AFL-CIO has created Working
America<http://www.workingamerica.org/>,
a “community affiliate”. Working America campaigns outside the workplace
for the various social and economic objectives of unions, and works to
build a membership from non-unionised working people who traditionally are
viewed as Republicans or “Fox News viewers”.
Membership of Working America is free, although members are encouraged to
become regular donors, in place of membership dues.
By all accounts, the Working America experiment is very successful. Free of
the legal straightjackets imposed by the US Labor laws, Working America is
more agile and responsive than many traditional unions. Additionally,
models like Working America facilitate working people to organise in
hostile anti-union workplaces like Walmart.
People who have never had a union experience can learn what it is like to
act collectively and win dignity at work. Without the requirement to
formally register a union, workers can organise and take action without the
legal strictures of a union ballot and the risks of union-busting campaigns
by employers.
Similarly, there is an interesting experiment in New Zealand that is
similar to Working America. Called Together <http://www.together.org.nz/>,
the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions is attempting to organise a very
dangerous, un-unionised workforce in the forestry industry.
The forestry industry in NZ is rife with unethical contracting and
subcontracting, which has resulted in low safety standards and an
unprecedented level of workplace deaths. It is also un-unionised and New
Zealand’s workplace laws place very onerous restrictions on unions and
workers to organise an employer or workplace.
The NZCTU in response has created a community model of unionism in
Together, where the cost of entry is just a dollar and members are
encouraged to donate in lieu of regular membership dues.
Members of Together get the full benefits of union membership, including
workplace advice and assistance, and advocacy, although (as far as I’m
aware) distinct from the formal legal structures that a union would have.
Together is New Zealand-wide effort, with something particularly
interesting happening in the forestry sector. The NZCTU and the First
Union, which has formal coverage over forestry, have created First Forestry
Together. Because the largest traditional barrier to entry (membership
dues) has been removed, Together is finding that their organising
conversations with forestry workers and their families has become much
easier. Together has Family membership options (so parents can join up
their kids who may work in forestry), and also Whanau membership (Whanau
are Maori extended families). Remember, the objective in this case is to
organise the forestry industry, rather than to grow a union’s financial
membership on paper.
Together is also able to be more agile and responsive than a traditional
union, and explore more innovative methods of organising and fundraising.
They’ll soon be exploring widening their coverage and making membership
completely free, with the objective of unionising the un-unionised.
I’m very excited about both Together and Working America.
I hope these kinds of organisational models straddle the generational and
technical divides that I referred to at the start of this article. Unions
and progressive organisations need to experiment with different
organisation models which are leaner, more adaptive and more responsive,
and willing to make mistakes or change direction. Ironically, one of the
union movement’s greatest strengths – their organisation itself – can also
be a weakness.
Tim Lyons, from the ACTU, talked about this challenge in his speech at the
recent ACTU organising
conference<http://actu.org.au/Media/Speechesandopinion/TimLyonsclosingaddresstotheAustralianUnionsOrganisingConferenceMelbourne28February2014.aspx>
.
We need to change.
We need to bust open our structures in way that makes our organising more
sustainable in more places. The traditional model of trade union
organisation – a union shop with a collective agreement, remains a powerful
force for good. It has changed millions of workers lives for the better and
it still can. We need to make that work everywhere we can, and break down
barriers – within unions and between unions – to making it work
But we also need to recognise that we need different models as well – that
we can’t make that traditional model work everywhere. We need to have
different models of membership and organisation.
The ACTU is thinking and talking with union leaders about how we move a
program of change: in traditional organising, in alternative membership and
organising models, in how we do politics and influence public policy, and
in how we influence capital markets and be better stewards of workers’
capital. Your thinking and talking at this conference is an important
contribution to that.
I’m heartened to hear the likes of Tim Lyons, as well as union leaders in
the USA and New Zealand, willing to think differently about the future of
unions. The great risk for unions, not to mention other progressive
institutions, is that they will become irrelevant to everyday people.
Especially in geographic or industry areas with low or no union presence,
adopting these kinds of new models of activism and membership are essential
to remaining relevant, and assisting working people to win dignity at work.
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------------------------------
(Possibly) Related posts:
- Who are the real competition for
unions?<http://alexwhite.org/2013/05/who-are-the-real-competition-for-unions/>
- Retaining members in public sector
unions<http://alexwhite.org/2011/12/retaining-members-in-public-sector-unions/>
- Five essential elements of strategy for unions to
win<http://alexwhite.org/2012/11/five-essential-elements-of-strategy-for-unions-to-win/>
- Using Facebook as an organising
tool<http://alexwhite.org/2009/08/using-facebook-as-an-organising-tool/>
- NZ Presentation: Engaging young
workers<http://alexwhite.org/2013/07/nz-presentation-engaging-young-workers/>
Tags: #marchinmarch <http://alexwhite.org/tag/marchinmarch/>,
ACTU<http://alexwhite.org/tag/actu/>,
AFL-CIO <http://alexwhite.org/tag/afl-cio/>,
Avaaz<http://alexwhite.org/tag/avaaz/>,
Campaigning <http://alexwhite.org/tag/campaign/>,
change.org<http://alexwhite.org/tag/change-org/>,
civic protest <http://alexwhite.org/tag/civic-protest/>,
facebook<http://alexwhite.org/tag/facebook/>,
Get Up <http://alexwhite.org/tag/get-up/>,
NZCTU<http://alexwhite.org/tag/nzctu/>,
Tim Lyons <http://alexwhite.org/tag/tim-lyons/>, Together
NZ<http://alexwhite.org/tag/together-nz/>,
union leadership <http://alexwhite.org/tag/union-leadership/>, Working
America <http://alexwhite.org/tag/working-america/>
About Alexander White Alex White is a national marketing advisor working in
the labour movement with a decade of policy, campaigns and public relations
experience. His background is complemented by professional and leadership
roles in the trade union movement, charities, environmental and political
organisations.
View all posts by Alexander White → <http://alexwhite.org/author/admin/>
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1. *EBook, November 2012: Recovering Internationalism
<http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/recovering_internationalism/>. [A
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formats] <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/world_social_forum/>
<http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/world_social_forum/>*
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*EBook (co-editor), February 2013: World Social Forum: Critical
Explorations http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/world_social_forum/
<http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/world_social_forum/> *
3. *Interface Journal Special (co-editor), November 2012: For the Global
Emancipation of Labour <http://www.interfacejournal.net/current/>*
4. *Blog: http://www.unionbook.org/profile/peterwaterman.
<http://www.unionbook.org/profile/peterwaterman.> *
5. *Interface Journal Special (Co-Editor) Social Movement
Internationalisms. See Call for Papers <http://www.interfacejournal.net/>,
(Deadline: May 1, 2014). *
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*Needed: a Global Labour Charter Movement (2005-Now!)
<http://interfacejournal.nuim.ie/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Interface-1-2-pp255-262-Waterman.pdf>*
7. *Under, Against, Beyond: Labour and Social Movements Confront a
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<http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/under-against-beyond/>(2011) Almost 1,000
pages of Working Papers, free, from the 1980's-90's.*
8. *Google Scholar Citation Index:*
*http://scholar.google.com.pe/citations?user=e0e6Qa4AAAAJ
<http://scholar.google.com.pe/citations?user=e0e6Qa4AAAAJ> *
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