Abstract
Since the 1980s, trade unions have been weakened all over the advanced capitalist world (Phelan 2006). This review deals with reports from two of the most emblematic cases of trade union weakening: the United States and the United Kingdom. Both books focus in different ways on the possible revitalisation of unions; but beyond this thematic overlap, they are quite different books. Union Voices: Tactics and Tensions in UK Organizing, by Melanie Simms, Jane Holgate and Edmund Heery, is a report arising from a research collaboration that, in different projects, has been going on for thirteen years, on the renewal of working methods within UK trade unions since the 1990s. Wisconsin Uprising: Labor Fights Back is, on the other hand, a more rapidly put-together anthology on the 2011 labour conflict in Wisconsin between the Republican governor Scott Walker and the trade unions of the ‘Badger State’.
Melanie Simms, Jane Holgate and Edmund Heery are the leading scholars of British unions’ renewal, especially of organising methods. This process can conveniently be dated to the start of the Organising Academy of the Trade Union Congress, the British trade union confederation, in 1998, and Simms et al. have studied the process since the outset. Union Voices is a reflective summary of their research up to now. ‘Organizing’ in this context connotes an entire programme of union renewal that is applied differently in different countries, but typically is in opposition to a ‘servicing’ model wherein union members are expected to join for certain membership benefits, rather than to be active in a fighting union. Simms et al., in their definition of organising, focus on it as a philosophy for local empowerment within the unions: to strengthen the rank and file rather than union employees, as well as a broadening of union activity to collaborate with other types of civil society organisations and to become involved in the social and political life of employees in a wider sense – so-called ‘social movement unionism’ (p. 7f).
In reading Union Voices, it’s easy to tell that the authors have worked on the topic for a long time, interviewing people, partaking in campaigns as participatory observants, carrying out surveys, and writing articles. They are at ease when writing the book, deeply knowledgeable, and have obviously considered the topics they discuss many, many times. The result is somehow a harmonious and reflective book of research, rather than dense accounting of data. They themselves write that compared to their previous research output on the topic, in this book they aim to give voice to the organisers themselves, whom they have interviewed and worked with since the late 1990s (p. 1).
The results are interesting, too. The book will work as an introduction for anyone who has not read the literature on organising before, since it provides the definitions and context that reader would need. But it is also, in its thoughtfulness, essential reading for experts in the field. It gives an interesting insight into what it’s like to be an organiser on the personal level. Simms et al. explain that among their interviewees, ‘many saw the role of organizing more as a vocation rather than a job and spoke almost evangelically about union organizing’ (p. 92, cf. p. 53). This high level of engagement is a resource for unions, but can also be problematic, as the discussion about leavers shows: people who left the job of organiser explained their choices as being concerned with no longer wanting to live out of a suitcase, and the difficulties of combining this high-commitment job with a private life (pp. 106ff). Here and elsewhere, Simms et al. also discuss the complex motives of unions which attempt renewal through organising. Is this in reality lip service, and just a strategy to ‘get the numbers up’ – to recruit more members, rather than transforming the way the union works, with local empowerment and a broader social approach (p. 102)? This tension is a recurring theme of the book. As mentioned, ‘organizing’ can mean different things in different contexts, and the authors are critical of the view of organising as a ‘toolbox’, as a set of strategies with which to organise union members, rather than as something with a political content (pp. 41f, 57f). They find that UK unions have to a larger extent than US unions, which pioneered ‘organising’ in this sense, focused on increasing union membership where there already is a union present (brownfield organising), rather than organising previously unorganised workplaces (greenfield organising) (pp. 57f, 123–125). Simms, Holgate and Heery are critical of this choice, as well as of the fact that ‘worker self-organisation has never been as central to the political objectives of organising in the UK as it has been in the US’ (p. 137). At the same time, they also find that the organising project has increased gender and ethnic diversity within the unions (ch. 4); that it has awoken much enthusiasm, as we have seen; that it has to some degree changed the culture within the unions to the better; and that probably without the projects, union density would have fallen even lower than it already has (p. 163). It is not easy to summarise Union Voices: here, I have attempted, rather, to exemplify the content. It remains, however, a book best read in full.
Comparing it with Wisconsin Uprising is slightly unfair: the latter, focusing on events in the winter and spring of 2011, came out in 2012, which itself gives away the fact that it is not a work of reflection in the way that Union Voices is. It is rather a rushed comment on, and analysis of, the Wisconsin events of 2011. Republican governor Scott Walker, elected in the Republican advances of 2010, used the fiscal problems of the state to motivate not only effective pay cuts of 7 to 10 per cent for most state employees, but also an end to their right to collective bargaining, as well as measures to make union organising harder. This caused an uproar among public sector unions and also groups of non-union workers and private sector unionists, expressed in large demonstrations in the state capital Madison, sit-ins at state capitol, short strikes, and strong Democratic opposition in the state senate. In the end, however, Walker got his way, and an attempt in 2012 to replace him as governor also failed.
Wisconsin Uprising is not a very good book. The chapters describing what happened in Wisconsin have not aged well: in the left’s classical balancing between the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will, they lean too much towards the latter, interpreting the indeed impressive turnout on the streets of Madison in early 2011 with, ‘a new American workers’ movement has begun’ (p. 85); and later writing, ‘During that first week, we saw and felt the power of the working people. Workers had slowed the machine and for a moment disabled it’ (p. 109). The writers repeatedly draw parallels with the uprising against Egyptian president Mubarak that happened at the same time, which when reading the book today seems both out of place – Walker’s anti-union policy was and is horrible, but he is no dictator like Mubarak – and, given what we know about what happened in Egypt, where today a military strong-man rules with brutal repression against dissidents, sadly ironic. We know now that labour lost the fight against Walker’s pay cuts and anti-union policies, and the optimism of some of the writers in Wisconsin Uprising seems like leftist voluntarism without analytical foundations. Furthermore, the book is full of vacuous clichés like, ‘We live in one of those historic moments that cry out for rallying the working class to build new capacities, new solidarities, and concrete hope’ (p. 185). What does this mean? Are there any epochs in capitalism that do not call out for organisation and solidarity from the working class? From a Marxist standpoint, surely not. These breathless formulations betray the lack of afterthought and analysis in the book; the result is writing that has aged badly already, after three years.
There are parts of the book that are much better, however. The union organisers Rand Wilson and Steve Early discuss the experiences of unions in open shop states, to contribute to understanding of the conditions for Wisconsin unions ahead. And Fernando Gaspasin, a union organiser and former professor, contributes with a very interesting paper on his experiences in union organising in conservative central Oregon since the mid-1990s. This chapter has what the book in most cases lacks: history, contextualisation, reflection. That it concerns events dating back to the mid-1990s illustrates the simple fact that it is easier to write good analyses of what happened ten years ago than of what happened yesterday. However, even of the chapters on very recent events, I would expect more. Especially, I believe that the discussion on unions and class struggle in the US today would be much strengthened by more contextualisation and comparison with unions in other parts of the country: for example, it is surprising that Ruth Milkman’s research on Los Angeles is not referenced (Milkman 2008). With more comparisons to other parts of the country, the book could have come further in providing an intelligible analysis of the struggle in Wisconsin. Such a discussion would have necessitated questions like, What kind of economic structure is there in Wisconsin, and what kind of workers? What kind of union, social and political traditions? What kind of political power balance? And so on. Wisconsin Uprising shies away from such structural questions, and the result is more a political pamphlet than anything else. In the Introduction, it says that the book is not a ‘quickie’ (p. 12). But mostly, it is.