Unions and the organising turn: Reflections after 20 years of Organising Works

Introduction

The launch of Organising Works in 1994 was a key event, not just for Australian trade unionism but on a global scale. It provided a model for organising policy in other countries and also signalled what is sometimes referred to as the ‘organising turn’, a switch within the international trade union movement towards greater engagement with the task of organising. In the period since the foundation of Organising Works, national trade union centres have launched organising policies and many individual unions have done the same, while international union actors have sought to diffuse organising practice from country to country. More recently, what is sometimes described as the ‘alt-labor movement’, comprising proto-unions, worker-centres and community organisations, has played an increasingly visible role in attempts to organise workers, particularly those in precarious employment. The constituent elements of this turn towards organising include the adoption of formal organising policies, the commitment of increased resources to organising, the development or strengthening of a dedicated organising function, training of specialist organisers and activists, experimentation with new organising methods and the launching of organising campaigns. A particular focus of the latter has been the attempt to spread trade unionism to poorly unionised industries in the expanding private service sector. Industrial relations scholarship has reacted to this development, and over the past 20 years union the organising turn has become a major focus of research (Milkman, 2006; Simms et al., 2013). It has also become a focus of intense debate, attracting adherents and critics, supporters and opponents within trade union and academic communities alike.

The purpose of this article is to examine and reflect upon three features of the organising turn, all of which have been the subject of research and stimulated controversy. The first concerns the place of origin of much organising activity and the fact that it has been initiated by union officialdom, often at the very peak of national trade union movements. The launch of Organising Works by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and the creation of the Organising Institute by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organisations (AFL-CIO) under John Sweeney’s leadership are cases in point. This feature of the organising turn, which can be labelled ‘strategic organising’, has shaped the nature and experience of organising activity in Australia, the USA and other countries where the official trade union movement has played a lead role. It has also excited controversy, particularly among commentators from the left, for many of whom it is axiomatic that progressive change in trade unions must originate in a challenge from below.

The second feature of the organising turn that is addressed is the attempt to ‘organise diversity’, which has also been a notable aspect of much organising activity. Researchers have examined union attempts to organise women workers, members of ethnic and other minorities, migrant workers and workers in precarious employment. It has been suggested by those who are sympathetic to organising diversity both that activity of this kind is essential if unions are to adapt to a rapidly changing world of work and that it requires particular methods such as reliance on ‘community organising’. Criticism of this aspect of the organising turn is much less apparent but there has been a sceptical response to some aspects of the diversity argument, casting doubt on the scale of achievements to date and the effectiveness of the methods advocated.

The third feature of the organising turn can be labelled ‘neo-syndicalism’. There has been a focus within organising initiatives on building up the internal power resources of trade unions in an environment characterised by militant employers and more hostile governments. The notion of an ‘organising model’, which originated in the USA but which has shaped organiser training within Organising Works and elsewhere, exemplifies this neo-syndicalist element with its focus on strengthening workplace organisation and fostering a capacity among members to act collectively. The sceptical response in this case has tended to come from more conservative union commentators, who have advocated a ‘neo-pluralism’ at the heart of which is a search for more cooperative relations with employers, expressed through the notion of ‘workplace partnership’.

In what follows, each of these three features of the organising turn will be described and illustrated with reference to key pieces of academic research, drawn largely, though not exclusively, from the Anglophone world. The debate that surrounds each will also be summarised, with key protagonists and their underlying assumptions identified. The article concludes with an attempt to answer the question ‘what is organising for?’ posed by Simms and Holgate (2010) in a rather sceptical reflection on the organising turn within UK unions. The answer is that organising seeks to create a countervailing power to that of employers and government and has as its substantive purpose halting the drift towards ever-widening economic inequality, the primary social problem of the 21st century.

Strategic organising

A notable feature of much organising activity over the past 20 years is that it has originated in the official trade union movement, with peak organisations such as the ACTU, AFL-CIO, Change to Win and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) playing a lead role (Cooper, 2003; Milkman, 2006). There has been a top-down aspect to the process, which has been conceived of and often presented as a change of strategic direction for the labour movement. In the UK, some of the earliest developments, such as the founding of the Organising Academy to train a new generation of organisers, emerged from a New Unionism Task Group, a deliberate attempt by the TUC to initiate a programme of renewal (Heery et al., 2000a). In other contexts, newly incumbent or charismatic union leaders played a critical part, as was the case with John Sweeney at the AFL-CIO and Andy Stern at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

A number of features of recent organising activity have flown from this point of origin. First, there has been an emphasis on formal planning, inscribed in written policy statements, set goals and objectives, research and review. This emphasis on ‘strategising’, moreover, has been visible across the different scales of organising activity. It can be seen in the organising policies, plans and budgets developed by national confederations and unions and also in particular campaigns, directed at individual companies or workplaces, which are often based on a mapping exercise and guided by target-setting (Waddington and Kerr, 2009). Second, organising has been accompanied by formal specialisation within trade unions, seen in the creation or expansion of organising departments and the elaboration of organising roles among both paid officials and lay representatives (Aleks, 2015; Heery et al., 2003).Third, formal management systems have been implemented to support and guide organising activity. This can be seen most visibly in the kinds of training programme instituted through Organising Works. It can also be seen, however, in the application of performance management techniques to paid organisers and to others in unions who have been encouraged to invest more time in organising activity (Cooper, 2001). Finally, there has been a stress on ‘strategic targeting’, with unions identifying key industries and employers for organising activity and then investing substantial resources in break-through campaigns. Campaigns initiated by Change to Win in the USA, targeted at bus drivers, warehouse workers and Walmart, are cases in point (Aleks, 2015). Strategic targeting of this kind, with its identification of targets by a national organising department, contrasts sharply with bottom-up approaches based on responding to ‘hot shops’, to groups of workers seeking union representation to resolve immediate grievances.

Research on ‘official’ union organising strategy has often drawn attention to the internal constraints and barriers encountered in trying to promote the turn towards organising. Studies have highlighted the tensions and conflicts that have surrounded official organising strategies and have provided examples of initiatives being blocked or deflected through internal opposition (Cooper, 2001; Heery and Simms, 2008; Milkman and Voss, 2004; Peetz et al., 2007). Studies of this kind often resemble labour process accounts of management strategy with their enduring themes of contradiction and resistance. They have identified a range of internal constraints, including a lack of skills, experience or commitment to organising among incumbent officials and representatives; resistance from local office-holders motivated by a concern that an incursion of new members will weaken their hold on office; resistance to performance management systems designed to redirect officials towards organising activity; time and workload constraints on the involvement of officials and local representatives in organising campaigns, which are exacerbated through the dependence of newly organised workers on external support; poor integration of specialist organiser and other union functions; and management systems that fail to develop or retain organiser expertise. The sheer cost of mounting strategic organising campaigns has also been an important constraint, leading to the redirection of effort towards ‘internal’ or ‘in-fill’ organising. Underpinning many of these problems, there is arguably a division of interest within unions, between national leaders anxious to halt union decline and who therefore wish to invest in organising, and many existing members and their representatives for whom such investment constitutes a tax from which they will incur little or uncertain benefit. In resource-constrained unions, the reallocation of resources to organising has inevitably generated conflict: exemplified in the USA by the split in the movement over organising strategy and the creation of the breakaway federation, Change to Win (Aleks, 2015).

While one response to the organising turn has focused on researching the travails of organising strategy, another has focused on critique. The protagonists in this case have been writers in the tradition of critical labour studies (CLS), for whom the point of origin of much organising activity in the official labour movement has rendered it deeply flawed. CLS critics in Australia, the USA and UK have advanced a series of criticisms of the organising turn, which conform to a long tradition of left critique of trade unionism. The organising turn has been said to be of insufficient scale, reflecting limited union commitment to organising and a failure to break with established patterns of ‘business unionism’. Official organising activity has been portrayed as tending to emphasise recruitment of members over the development of workplace organisation and as being cautious and wary of losing control of newly organised workers and activists. A centralising impulse in organising strategy has been said to adversely affect trade union democracy, seen most visibly in the suspension of recalcitrant branches and locals. Finally, organising has been seen as repeatedly compromised by leaders seeking partnership with employers or supporting reformist politicians (Carter, 2000; Cohen, 2009; Moody, 2009). Bramble (2008), commenting on Australian experience, notes that

recruitment was not the same as rebuilding activism, the only guarantee of sustained union recovery … The union leaders were uninterested in reviving unions on the basis of struggle as this ran counter to their desire for partnership with business and to their general timidity. (p. 209)

This critique rests on two core assumptions about trade unionism, both of which are questionable. The first is that trade unions are invariably subject to a process of bureaucratisation, which pits the interests of union officialdom against those of rank-and-file members and renders the former incapable of initiating union renewal: the structural conditions under which union leadership is exercised and its dependence on employers and state nullify any radical potential. The second is that change in trade unions is always driven from below, through a cyclical process in which rank-and-file members become mobilised in protest and challenge incumbent leaders, only for the process of bureaucratisation once more to begin. Because of this assumption of bottom-up change, CLS writers often express a strong preference for decentralised systems of union government and collective bargaining, which maximise scope for member participation, and believe that ‘real organising’ will be triggered by worker discontent at the point of production (Daniels, 2009).

The first of these assumptions is questionable because it is excessively determinist. Union officialdom is not universally and inevitably marked by the stain of oligarchy, but retains the power of agency, such that roles are interpreted in accordance with values, ideology and experience. It is notable in this regard that the turn towards organising has depended on generational change within union officialdom and, in some cases, on the infusion of new cadres of leadership with experience of social movements beyond labour (Voss and Sherman, 2000). Renewal of union leadership has facilitated renewal of union strategy. The second assumption is also questionable, essentially on the grounds that it is ahistorical. Union renewal through a challenge from below may occur in certain contexts – for example, the challenge to conservative collective bargaining policies in the 1960s under conditions of tight labour markets – but in other contexts when other issues are at stake, the process of renewal may assume another form. Organising has often been initiated at the centre of the union movement because it is precisely at this point, and not among existing members, that union interests in membership growth and organisational revitalisation are most keenly experienced.

A final response to the CLS critique concerns the claim that the organising turn has eschewed militancy and sought to recruit a passive membership, incapable of challenging incumbent officials – it has fallen short of ‘real organising’. Research has indicated that organising practice has varied quite widely, depending on the groups targeted (Simms et al., 2013), but what is notable about much activity is that it has combined what Milkman (2006) describes as ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ processes. It has frequently been concerned with union-building, not simply with recruitment. For the British case, the paradoxical term ‘managed activism’ was coined to capture this quality of the organising turn (Heery et al., 2000b; Hickey et al., 2010). It refers neither to attempts to manipulate member-activists nor to the inauthentic nature of activism generated by union-initiated campaigns. More prosaically, it refers to the fact that contemporary training, communication and planning practices have been applied to organising campaigns by professional organisers to fulfil the age-old task of identifying, developing and supporting workplace activists. To my mind, this application of management technique to organising embodies good practice.

Organising diversity

A second theme in the organising turn has been a concern to organise across the full diversity of the contemporary workforce. In the past decade, a particular focus has been on organising migrant workers (Adler et al., 2014; Milkman and Ott, 2014), while other foci of attention have been women workers, direct-service workers, workers employed by sub-contractors, self-employed workers and vulnerable workers such as domestic and illegal workers. For all of these groups, researchers have provided accounts of the triggers, processes and outcomes of organising, most typically through detailed case studies that provide voice to worker-participants and which seek explicitly to extract lessons for practice that can be followed elsewhere.

One of the most striking cases to emerge from this literature deals with the unionisation of home care assistants in the USA (Delp and Quan, 2002; Mareschal, 2007). This workforce is more than a million strong, is low-paid and largely female, and includes a high proportion of ethnic minority and migrant workers. It provides home care to elderly and disabled clients, who often function as the formal employers of their carers through grants made available from local government. Beginning in California, the SEIU and other unions have targeted the home care workforce in a series of campaigns, which have resulted in tens of thousands being unionised across the USA and a form of collective bargaining being established, whereby the union negotiates basic terms and conditions with state-level boards representing clients. The methods used by the union embody the ‘union-building’ approach referred to above and include the following: (1) the use of organising methods, such as housecalls, to recruit workers, identify leaders and build organisation and mobilising capacity; (2) a focus on organising at the level of the labour market rather than the workplace, given the extreme dispersion of home care aides both geographically and in terms of their multiple client/employers; (3) the development of coalitions with user organisations and community groups; (4) the framing of campaigns in terms of promoting a wider public good and improving the quality of care; and (5) targeting of politicians and the political process rather than employers, reflecting the quasi-public nature of the service in which home care aides work, and the need for legislation to create a ‘public authority’ with which the union can bargain to improve pay and conditions. Although not without internal tension and difficulties, campaigns run on these lines have produced increases in pay and secured minimum employment benefits for workers. They have also encouraged greater training, accreditation and licensing of home care workers and have reduced labour turnover, reflecting the objective of improving service provision.

Research accounts of cases such as these are intended very directly as guides to practice, and a series of clear prescriptions have emerged from the literature on organising low-wage minority workers. One such prescription is that campaigns should be mobilising, drawing workers and their allies into protest action, which can serve directly to attract workers to trade unionism and exert pressure on employers and government to concede recognition. The term ‘social movement unionism’ has been defined in a number of ways, but central to much of the literature on organising diversity is the notion of recreating unions as social movements – organisations that mobilise workers in a fight for justice and which are more than just another component of the service economy. The classic Justice for Janitors campaigns in the USA exemplify this approach, as does the more recent Fight-for-Fifteen campaign. Mobilisation of workers in protest action is intended to serve three broad purposes. It provides a channel through which workers can pass towards sustained collective organisation and is a means through which leaders are identified and activist networks developed. It is also directed at employers and in many cases has taken the form of employer-shaming, publicly identifying employers who are exploitative or which tolerate poor employment practice among their sub-contractors. Finally, much protest action has been directed at the state – in the USA particularly at the local state – with the aim of securing regulation of low-wage labour markets through ordinance or procurement policy. State governments, notably, have been the main target of protest in the campaigns to organise home care workers.

Another prescription is that unions should act in alliance with other movements and organisations in seeking to organise low-wage and minority workers. Again, this has been a notable feature of the home care campaign as well as of other attempts to unionise low-wage workers, such as campaigns to unionise cleaners in the UK and Australia (Crosby, 2009). There is now an elaborate literature on union–community coalitions, with researchers identifying different forms of coalition and the conditions under which they are most likely to prove successful (Tattersall, 2010). The theme of coalition has also featured prominently in more recent work on ‘community unionism’ (Holgate, 2015). In the context of union organising, coalition with community, faith and social movement organisations can perform a number of different functions. Coalition partners, such as churches or ethnic organisations, can provide a means of contacting minority workers and may also play an important part in legitimating union activity, thereby facilitating recruitment. Coalition partners can also add to the organising and mobilising capacity of unions, providing additional organisers and leaders and drawing upon their own networks to build support for organising campaigns. In this sense, non-union organisations can add to the internal resources that unions bring to the task of organising. Third, coalition partners can provide leverage over employers and government, helping unions secure recognition or other concessions. This contribution may be particularly valuable when coalition partners enjoy high public legitimacy, as many faith organisations do, particularly in the USA.

A third theme in the prescriptive literature on organising low-wage workers relates to the framing of organising activity, in the sense of the discourse used to articulate the call for unionisation and the reasons presented to workers for joining campaigns and becoming union members. One pronounced theme here is that unionisation is often framed in moral rather than instrumental terms, as a means of righting social wrong rather than simply a process for improving pay and conditions. Thus, Bronfenbrenner’s influential research on the characteristics of successful union organising campaigns noted both that they were more likely to be targeted at women and minority workers and to focus on ‘issues such as dignity, justice, discrimination, fairness or service quality’ (Bronfenbrenner and Juravich, 1998: 24). The expression of moral purpose through organising is particularly apparent in campaigns directed at low-wage and migrant workers. In the Fight-for-Fifteen campaign, the object of unionisation is presented as securing decent conditions of work which preserve human dignity, while workers themselves are presented as deserving of these conditions, for example, by demonstrating that low-wage workers are heads of households and caregivers in long-term employment. The linking of unionisation to the legitimate needs of ‘hard-working families’ has become ubiquitous across the English-speaking world.

As the quotation from Bronfenbrenner and Juravich (1998) makes clear, unionisation has often been presented as a means to improve service quality by raising wages, reducing turnover and increasing training. Framing union organising in this way arises from a number of motives. One is simply a desire to legitimate campaigns by demonstrating that they serve a general and not merely a sectional interest. A second motive is the desire to draw community and service-user organisations into alliance with unions around a shared set of goals. This was a notable aspect of the home care campaigns in the USA, with their dual focus on raising employment conditions in order to raise quality of service for highly dependent clients. Finally, framing organising in terms of improvements to service is attractive to many direct-service workers who identify closely with clients and indeed with their employing organisations. Where work identities of this kind are prevalent, there is strong pressure to present unionisation as a vehicle for the combined interests of workers and service-users.

Another aspect of the framing of organising can be seen in the literature on community unionism and relates to the broadening of union purpose to encompass non-work issues. Central to the notion of community unionism is the belief that unions should reposition themselves as community organisations that become engaged in local activities, campaigns and struggles and which articulate more than just the workaday interests of those they represent (Holgate, 2015). Of course, unions have always been involved in political activity and have frequently been participants in other social movements, but this impulse to extend the terrain of union activity has been given fresh and specifically localist impetus through the ‘community turn’. For authors sympathetic to this position, it is important that union organising engages with the interests of the ‘whole-person’ who is the focus of a campaign such that, for example, the unionisation of migrants is linked to broader demands for citizenship and integration into the host society (Fitzgerald, 2009).

A final theme in the prescriptive literature on organising diversity relates to the scale at which activity should take place. In much of this literature, there is an emphasis on the need to organise low-wage minority workers ‘beyond the workplace’ in campaigns that are directed at local or occupational labour markets or which encompass multiple employers in complex supply-chains (Milkman, 2006). Again, this has been a feature of the home care campaigns in the USA. In this and other campaigns directed at low-wage workers, the objective has been to unionise workers in a single industry or occupation who are employed by multiple businesses, often in a particular geographical region. Organising at this scale is deemed to be necessary because of the fragmented nature of many low-wage labour markets and the precarious form of much employment, with workers circulating among employers on various forms of contingent contract. Organising at an industry or occupational scale can also serve the classic union purpose of taking wages out of competition. Campaigns of this type have often targeted client firms at the top of supply-chains which are in a position to influence the employment practices of their sub-contractors. Alternatively they have targeted politicians, with the aim of securing some form of legal or quasi-legal regulation of low-wage labour. Campaigns beyond the workplace have frequently mobilised workers in public protest, featured coalitions with users and community groups and have used a strongly articulated social justice frame. Their endpoint, when successful, has been the creation of multi-employer bargaining arrangements and the creation of a union service-package for mobile workers, comprising portable benefits, skills accreditation and job placement.

The focus on organising low-wage, minority and migrant workers has been one of the most pronounced and most welcome features of the organising turn. Nevertheless, there are some problematic features of the drive to organise low-wage, minority workers. First, the scale of many of the campaigns described in the literature is modest; outcomes, whether in terms of union membership, the establishment of bargaining relationships or substantive improvements to workers’ conditions, are often mixed. Recent collections of case studies of the drive to organise migrant workers point as much to limitations as to a record of success (Adler et al., 2014; Milkman and Ott, 2014). Second, what is most attractive about many of these campaigns – their focus on low-wage workers in precarious employment – is also problematic. The structural position these workers occupy in the labour market renders them difficult to organise, requiring heavy investment of scarce resource to launch and sustain campaigns. Moreover, once organised, they are often heavily dependent on professional support. Finally, the focus on organising ‘beyond the workplace’ is problematic. It works against the historic grain of a drift towards enterprise-based systems of workforce management, which has been particularly apparent in the main Anglophone economies. Unions have traditionally adapted to structures of management decision, and over the past three decades these structures have drifted away from the industry to the enterprise level.

Recognition of these problematic features of attempts to organise diversity does not imply that they should cease: they are both necessary and desirable features of the organising turn. What the problematic features do imply, however, is that attempts of this type are not sufficient and that they should be pursued alongside other forms of organising. The historic strength of the trade union movement has often rested on the ‘median’ worker in core industries and occupations. It follows that groups of this kind should continue to be the target of organising alongside those who are precarious. An effective organising strategy requires cross-subsidy within the trade union movement, which in turn implies dual targeting of both core and precarious workers. Releasing resources to organise migrant workers also implies a combination of in-fill or internal organising alongside attempts to expand into new personal service industries, where migrant and minority workers are often found. Increasing union density where there is already a union presence and increasing the capacity of organised workers to represent and service their needs through replenished workplace organisation are means to raise income and reduce costs thereby providing a surplus for investment in greenfield campaigns. Finally, organising must continue to focus on the enterprise, alongside the industry, occupation or region. The union presence within key enterprises can provide a means to extend unionisation to supplier businesses, newly opened sites and subsidiaries, often operating across national boundaries, as when unions in European businesses have provided leverage for organising campaigns in North America (Early, 2013). The giant, global firm is a concentration of immense economic power, and the union presence within such firms can provide access to resources that support organising.

Neo-syndicalism

A third feature of the organising turn is its pronounced ‘neo-syndicalism’. There is an emphasis in union organising strategy, and in much academic commentary, on unions renewing themselves from within and reducing their one-time dependence on government, employer and institutional support. This feature of the organising turn was displayed most graphically in the breakaway of Change to Win from the AFL-CIO on the grounds that the latter was investing too much in support for the Democrats at the expense of investment in organising (Aleks, 2015). The latter, the breakaway declared, must become the single, overriding priority of unions and the new federation was conceptualised from the outset as a ‘strategic organising centre’. In a harsher context, in which many unions have experienced political exclusion and employer militancy, there has been pressure to seek internal renewal.

There are several manifestations of neo-syndicalism in the organising turn. One is seen in attempts to develop forms of trade unionism that operate independently of employers and conventional collective bargaining. In a number of countries, there have been experiments with ‘open-source’ trade unionism, in which recruitment is targeted at retirees, the families of existing members and union supporters rather than workers as such (Holgate, 2015). In addition, unions and union-like organisations, such as the Freelancers Union in the USA, have developed labour market services as a basis for membership, providing insurance, benefits and a job placement service to those who are self-employed or engaged in casual work. For migrant workers, English language classes and other supports for integration have formed the basis of union recruitment. Developments of this kind have further been associated with attempts to secure unilateral, not joint, regulation of the labour market – for example, by issuing schedules of wages and conditions to be followed by members in occupational or casual labour markets. The attempt to regulate the labour market in this way is a feature of many of the worker-centres which have emerged in the USA and have often operated in conjunction with active enforcement of statutory employment conditions, via employer-shaming and legal advocacy to secure unpaid wages (Fine, 2006; Milkman, 2014).

Another manifestation of neo-syndicalism is the emphasis on ‘union-building’ approaches to organising. Bronfenbrenner and Juravich (1998) used their influential research on US organising campaigns to argue for the adoption of ‘rank-and-file grassroots organising strategies’ (p. 36) and, most significantly, reported that use of a campaign of this type could overcome even the most concerted employer opposition. Such evidence supported the embrace on an international scale of the ‘organising model’, which has come to be regarded as best practice, informing organiser training at Organising Works and shaping the methods of many unions (Arnholtz et al., 2014; Heery et al., 2000b; Oxenbridge, 1997). The broad purpose of the organising model is to generate self-reliant trade union organisation at workplace level. The methods that comprise the model include the following: the involvement of activists from the targeted workplace in a representative organising committee which plans the campaign; the use of mapping techniques to identify all workers and rank them in terms of their propensity to join and become active in the union; the identification of frictional issues that can form the basis of union joining; the use of ‘actions’ to mobilise workers at key points in the campaign and demonstrate growing union support; one-to-one or person-to-person recruitment, if necessary through housecalls; and use of social justice discourse to frame the case for unionisation in moral terms. These and other techniques are designed explicitly to build the ‘organisational power’ of unions as a means to secure leverage over employers. They are expressive of neo-syndicalism to the extent that they seek to create union strength from within, independently of employer and government support.

A third manifestation of neo-syndicalism is the explicit rejection by supporters of organising of other methods of union revitalisation which do not rest on building internal power resources. This rejection can be seen in the case of Change to Win’s ostensible rejection of party politics referred to above. It can also be seen in the rejection by pro-organising researchers of labour–management partnership. Attempts to revive union fortunes through partnership privilege the relationship with the employer and seek enhanced union security and greater influence over both business strategy and employment conditions by rebooting collective industrial relations on a more cooperative basis. Arrangements of this kind have been attacked by advocates of organising on a number of grounds. Badigannavar and Kelly (2011) have presented research findings from the UK public sector that indicate that organising is more effective than partnership at both raising membership and improving workers’ terms and conditions and conclude that the search for partnership is an inherently flawed approach to revitalisation. Simms (2015), in contrast, is more accepting of partnership but argues that under conditions of ‘disconnected capitalism’, in which short-term financial pressures make it difficult for businesses to make credible commitments to unions, it can at best play a marginal role. Organising, she concludes, must remain central to revitalisation in a constraining, neo-liberal context.

The main critical response to the syndicalism of the organising turn has come from mainstream pluralist writers who are favourable towards unions but sceptical of their capacity to renew themselves through organising (Katz, 2001). One notable contribution in this vein is that of Hickey et al. (2010) who conducted a review of published research on organising campaigns to identify whether successful outcomes were dependent on the kind of worker-activism envisaged in the organising model. They conclude that ‘significant member activism’ is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for organising success and attribute more significance to the level of investment of the external union and contextual factors, such as the receptiveness of the employer. A more thoroughgoing critique has been offered by Johnstone (2015) and Ackers (2015) who are dismissive of organising, seeing it as the latest expression of a failed tradition of union militancy. They argue that because organising on the syndicalist model is adversarial, it will alienate employers, government and public opinion, rendering it ineffectual; that workers exhibit a strong preference for non-adversarial partnership relations at work; and that partnership arrangements can deliver increases in union membership that exceed those secured through the organising model. Their arguments essentially are the exact reverse of the syndicalist case for organising. Whereas the latter identifies an ever narrowing zone of shared interests between workers and employers, which renders partnership implausible and organising a necessity, Johnstone and Ackers see broad scope for joint work and an essentially cooperative employment relationship upon which labour–management partnership can flourish.

While these positions are starkly opposed, it is nevertheless possible to find some common ground between them. This is because both positions have weak points in their arguments as well as strengths. The weaknesses of the syndicalist position are twofold: its adherents tend to exaggerate the degree and universality of conflict within the employment relationship and, as a consequence, focus single-mindedly on internal processes of union renewal. In response to this focus, it can be noted that even militant and highly effective unions must reach an accommodation with employers if the gains of organising are to be embodied in and sustained through union recognition. In the absence of the latter, union gains are likely to prove fleeting and it thereby follows that unions seeking to grow must have a strategy for ‘organising the employer’ as well as a strategy for organising workers. Moreover, the role of the state is often critical in facilitating or requiring recognition, implying that organising unions must frequently also resort to political strategy. The latter, as we have seen, was critical in securing advances for American home care aides. The creation of multi-employer bargaining, which many pro-organising commentators identify as essential for the unionisation of low-wage labour markets, is only likely to occur through political intervention.

In response to the assumption about conflicting interests, it can be noted that employers are not universally hostile to union organising activity and on occasion may welcome and support it (Hickey et al., 2010). Indeed, while the record of labour–management partnership is decidedly mixed, there is good evidence of arrangements of this kind on occasion facilitating organising. In the UK, the shopworkers’ union, Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW), has relied upon a partnership with Tesco to expand its membership in the company (Johnstone, 2015), while in the USA, the labour–management partnership at healthcare provider, Kaiser Permanente, contributed to a 20,000 growth in union membership over 10 years and allowed the unions to expand into new sites through a formal neutrality agreement (Kochan et al., 2009). In these and other cases, a relatively non-adversarial relationship with the employer has supported union revitalisation.

The neo-pluralist position expounded by Johnstone (2015) and Ackers (2015) also suffers from two weaknesses. There is a pronounced tendency, in this case, to assume shared interests within the employment relationship, which can support a relationship of partnership if only unions would eschew militancy. There is also a neglect of questions of power: it is assumed that because interests are shared, unions need not be militant or have regard to cultivating the kind of internal resources which preoccupy advocates of organising. Both of these assumptions are questionable. Simms (2015) is surely correct to point out that in many contexts employers have little incentive to deal with unions, and it is irrefutable that many are highly resistant to unionisation because they wish to maintain cost advantages. Low-wage, precarious employment has been created by employers and serves their economic interest; any union attempt to challenge it is likely to be resisted. Moreover, when cooperative relations have emerged they have often arisen from conflict and the imposition of ‘beneficial constraints’ on employers. Without strong unions and obligations imposed through regulation, employers may choose the path of union avoidance, regardless of any putative benefits to be secured through labour–management partnership.

How then can these two opposed positions be reconciled? Reconciliation can occur by combining the favoured revitalisation strategies of each: organising and partnership. This combination might occur in two ways. The strategies may be combined ‘in parallel’, with organising directed at low-wage workers and employers who are resistant to unionisation, while cultivation of partnership is directed at high-wage employers where unions are already recognised and established. A combination of this kind has been recommended by Katz (2001), who notes that there is increasing divergence in employment systems within national economies, which in turn implies divergence in union strategy. Organising and partnership strategies might also be combined ‘in series’. In this case, organising workers through union-building techniques precedes the emergence of a more cooperative partnership with the employer. In the literature on labour–management partnership, it is recognised that there are differences between what Kelly (2004) terms ‘labor parity’ and ‘employer dominant’ partnerships. Labour parity partnership rests on high levels of associational and organisational power and is effective in ensuring substantive gains for workers from partnership arrangements. Employer-dominant partnership, in contrast, is characterised by weak, compliant unions and an absence of substantive benefits for workers. In this second form of combination, the emphasis on the need to recreate collective power, which features so strongly in the current of syndicalist writing on organising, is fused with recognition of common interests and potential for mutual gains that features so prominently in the neo-pluralism advanced by Johnstone, Ackers and others. Strong unions, it suggests, are the necessary condition for a genuine partnership at work.

Conclusion

In a rather sceptical commentary on the organising turn in the UK, Simms and Holgate (2010) pose the question ‘what is organising for’? To my mind, the purpose of the organising turn has been to advance a series of overlapping and reinforcing interests. Most obviously, it has sought to advance the institutional interests of trade unions by attracting a fresh wave of dues-paying members and renewing the sinews of activism and collective organisation on which unions depend. The institutional interests of the latter, however, overlap with the substantive interests of union members, and a more fundamental purpose of organising has been to renew trade unions as vehicles for advancing the collective interests of people at work. Drives to unionise home care aides and others in low-wage and precarious work demonstrate this purpose most clearly: they have been launched to raise wages, improve conditions, confer greater opportunity, provide voice and secure justice. The launch of Organising Works and the many other initiatives referenced above share this common end of improving the conditions under which labour is sold and work performed. A final set of interests that are addressed through the organising turn are those of the wider society. The historic function of trade unions has been to civilise the capitalist economy by regulating the workplace, so moderating the authority that is expressed there, and by raising the condition of working people, so narrowing inequality. This wider societal function of organising is deeply political, but is also more than ever required in a situation in which economic inequality is growing across the developed world and the power of employers is becoming less subject to reasonable constraint.

The founding of Organising Works initiated a global effort to attract more workers to trade unionism and to rebuild trade unions as social movement, activist-based organisations. The purpose of this article has been to isolate three core themes of this effort, each of which has been the subject of debate and controversy. These themes are the top-down nature of the organising turn, its focus on seeking to organise across the diversity of the workforce and its neo-syndicalism, its emphasis on rebuilding union power from within. It has been suggested that ‘strategic organising’ has not fatally compromised the organising effort, that ‘organising diversity’ is a necessary but not sufficient basis on which to renew trade unions and that internal renewal of a quasi-syndicalist bent can and must be connected to other modes of revitalisation. To date, the hopes invested in initiatives like Organising Works have not been fully realised. The position of unions in most developed countries is weak and their future is uncertain. The organising turn, however, has registered major successes and in the cases of the UK and USA has seemingly applied a brake to the process of union decline. Even in their reduced state, moreover, unions remain a major countervailing power in capitalist societies and continue to improve conditions of work for millions of working people. Continuing the effort, begun 20 years ago, must be a priority if we are to civilise the societies in which we live and work.