Innovative trade union strategies

Innovative trade union strategies

Innovative trade union

strategies
Dirk Kloosterboer
 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies

Foreword
The world is changing fast, and these changes affect the position of workers and the
unemployed. Globalisation, outsourcing, privatisation, capital mobility and
restructuring of the welfare state cause employment and income insecurity.
Historically, the trade union movement has played a crucial role fighting for decent
wages, workplace health and safety, working hours, equal rights and a safety net for
those who cannot work. As leaders of the trade union movement, we inherit this
Publisher tradition. We have a responsibility to do all we can to make sure that our organisations
Stichting FNV Pers will continue to help bring about social justice.
Author We must make sure that our organisations are ready to organise workers in the
Dirk Kloosterboer (dirk.kloosterboer@vc.fnv.nl) expanding services sectors; to take on multinational corporations; to create solidarity
Photography among people with diverse backgrounds; to forge coalitions with other organisations
Paul van Riel / Hollandse Hoogte and to engage young people in the trade union movement.
Design These are not easy times for the trade union movement. We cannot just sit back and
B5 / Boudewijn Boer blame globalisation, or structural economic changes, or hostile governments, or the
Print supposed reluctance of young people to be part of trade unions. We must focus on
ZuidamUithof, Utrecht what we can do to adapt our organisations to the changing circumstances.
Production In a way, the trade union movement must reinvent itself in order to deal with the
FNV Marketing & Communicatie challenges of the 21st century. It is tempting to think of trade union renewal in terms of
pilots and experiments, but that is not enough. We need to make real decisions on
resource allocation, staff recruitment and training policies, strategic alliances. These will
Price not be easy decisions.
15 euro (excluding p&p). Copies can be ordered from the FNV, info@vc.fnv.nl. Fortunately, we can learn and draw inspiration from a number of unions that have
pioneered innovative approaches. Some of these have been surprisingly successful.
Some unions have achieved substantial membership growth. More importantly, unions
May 2007 have built a position of power and have used that power to improve the situation of
 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies

workers, often vulnerable workers at the lower end of the labour market.
The future of the trade union movement is not just a matter of national organisations; it
is something that we have to deal with at the international level. In May, we will discuss
organising and trade union renewal at the Congress of the European Trade Union
Confederation (ETUC). This will be a crucial opportunity for the European trade union
movement to adopt an agenda of change.
The present report describes successful examples of how trade unions across the world
have taken on today’s challenges. I hope these examples may serve as a source of
inspiration.

Agnes Jongerius
President, Netherlands Trade Union Confederation (FNV)
Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies

Contents
1 Summary 11

2 Introduction 2

2.1 Developments in the Netherlands 4

2.2 About this report 5

3 Why trade union renewal 5

3.1 Crisis in the trade union movement 6

3.2 New ambitions 8
3.3 Barriers and opportunities 9

4 Themes 10

4.1 Ethnic minorities and migrant workers 10

4.2 Youth 13
 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies

4.3 Unemployed 15 7 Appendices 52

4.4 Service industry and non-standard work 16
4.5 Activists and internal democracy 18 7.1 Literature 52
4.6 Recruitment, organising and marketing 19 7.2 Abbreviations 66
4.7 Organising 21 7.3 A framework of union-community coalitions 68
4.8 Corporate campaigns 22 7.4 Endnotes 70
4.9 Local initiatives 23
4.10 Local economic policies 24
4.11 International 26
4.12 Coalitions 28
4.13 Politics 32
4.14 Think tanks and research 34
4.15 Partnership 36
4.16 Strategy and organisational change 37

5 Examples 38

5.1 Justice for Janitors 38

5.2 Wal-Mart 39
5.3 Living Wage 41
5.4 Community benefits agreements 43
5.5 Union Cities and Street Heat 44
5.6 Union Summer 44
5.7 Steelworkers 45
5.8 Worker centres 46
5.9 Organising Academy 47
5.10 Autonomous unions in France 48
5.11 Euromayday and flexworkers 49
5.12 Learning reps 49
5.13 Community unionism in London 50

6 Conclusions 51
10 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies 11

1 1 Summary
Unions in many countries have seen their memberships decline during the past years. In
addition, their position has weakened as a result of factors including a globalising
economy, erosion of workers rights and increasing labour market flexibility.

Some unions, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, have responded to this situation by

running assertive organising campaigns at the workplace, engaging in strategic
research, strengthening their position in local communities and launching
internationally coordinated campaigns. Increasingly, such approaches are also
providing inspiration for unions in Europe.

The new strategies have as yet not solved the problems of the trade union movement.
In most countries, union density is still declining. However, some unions and some local
coalitions have been surprisingly successful, gaining tens or even hundreds of
thousands of new members and improving the conditions of millions of workers, often
low-paid workers in the growing service sector.

The present report describes some examples of innovative trade unionism. At the
moment, it is difficult to say what kind of approach will work under what
circumstances: this is still very much a matter of trial and error. That said, there do seem
to be some general characteristics that can be identified in many successful initiatives.
 12 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies 13

Organising new groups Long-term commitment

Many initiatives focus on organising new groups, which are underrepresented among
the unions’ membership: young people, ethnic minorities, and workers in the growing
services sectors. Organising these groups is essential if the trade union movement is to
remain a relevant social actor in the future.
Unions have developed systematic approaches to workplace organising and have set up
institutes to train new organisers. Although organising campaigns generally do not
specifically target groups such as ethnic minorities; some of the most successful
campaigns have been in sectors with high shares of minority workers.
Bottom up and top down
Initiatives need to be bottom up in order to have real grassroots support and to reflect
the issues that are of concern to the population. However, they also need a strong
commitment from the top, in order to overcome resistance to change and to have the
level of coordination that is needed to be able to take on large corporations and to
influence government policies.
Some crucial campaigns have taken as long as twelve years before bearing fruit. It is
important to convince union members (and staff) of the importance of investing time
and resources in long-term objectives.
Partnership not without strength
Collaboration with employers and with governments can yield important results,
provided that unions do so from a position of strength and actively involve their
membership in what they do.
Battle of ideas
In many countries, unions have to cope with a political climate that is hostile to workers
and their organisations. Some unions have successfully set up think tanks and worked
with research institutes to regain the initiative and gather support for alternative
economic and social visions.

Local and international

At the local level, unions build community support and test innovative approaches. At
the same time, international networks are crucial to be able to cope with the
consequences of a globalising economy.

At the local level, unions have launched living wage campaigns, set up workers’
centres, created think tanks, campaigned for worker-friendly economic development
policies and launched political campaigns, often mobilising low-income voters.
Increasingly, campaigns are also being coordinated internationally.

Social justice
Opponents often try to depict unions as outsiders who are fighting for narrow self
interests. In order to counter this, unions frame their objectives as social justice issues.
For example, American unions have been able to win the support of Republican voters
for initiatives that aim to ensure that every worker receives a decent wage.

Coalitions
Coalitions with community organisations strengthen the support for political
campaigns, help unions get in touch with ‘hard to reach’ workers and help counter the
image of unions pursuing narrow self-interests.
14 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies 15

2 2 Introduction
In the Netherlands, as in most other Western countries, the trade union movement is
trying to find out how to cope with changing circumstances.

2.1 Developments in the Netherlands

The Netherlands has had a reputation for its polder model, in which social partners are
actively involved in all kinds of consultative bodies, decisions are based on
compromises, collective agreements are binding for entire sectors and strike action is
rare. The trade union movement had a rather strong institutional position, which
means that there was no strong necessity to organise and mobilise workers.

The social climate changed as a result of the 11 September 2001 attacks, and the
murders of right-wing populist Pim Fortuyn (6 May 2002) and film maker Theo van
Gogh (2 November 2004). After eight years of government by a broad ‘purple’
coalition consisting of Social-Democrats, Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats, a series
of centre-right governments was in power from 2002 onward, headed by the
Christian-Democrat Jan Peter Balkenende. The Balkenende governments cut social
benefits and tried to introduce labour market reforms. They also discussed abolishing
the automatic extension of sectoral collective agreements.

The trade union movement launched campaigns against government policies, first in
2003 and then in 2004. The level of contention was unusual for the Netherlands, as
evidenced by a headline on the front page of the International Herald Tribune: ‘Hey,
look! A strike in Holland!’ On 2 October 2004, a demonstration was organised against
 16 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies 17

a number of policy initiatives, most notably the plans to cut early retirement provisions.
With over 300,000 protestors flooding the Amsterdam Museumplein, this was one of
the largest political manifestations the country had ever seen.
Meanwhile, there have been some experiments with the adoption of methods
developed abroad, especially among trade unions affiliated to the FNV Confederation.
Most notably, Eddy Stam, the official at FNV Bondgenoten responsible for the cleaning
sector, worked with the innovative American services union SEIU to introduce the
organising approach, prioritising membership growth and member engagement. SEIU
organisers have given training courses to FNV Bondgenoten officials active in cleaning,
agriculture and other sectors. The SEIU also seconded one of its organisers to a project
that aims to organise cleaners in The Hague.
across Europe are considering how to adapt to societal changes. In this context, it was
decided to make an updated, English-language version of the report, in order to
facilitate the exchange of information. A request for information was sent to
researchers. Both the TUC’s Union Ideas Network (UIN) and the list serve of the ILO’s
Global Union Research Network (GURN) proved very helpful in identifying relevant
literature. In addition, information was collected through a series of interviews with
officials of FNV-affiliated unions, carried out by Tonny Groen (policy advisor, FNV).
We would like to thank the many people who provided input for the report and who
commented on draft versions. Special thanks are due to Paul Nowak (TUC), Amanda
Tattersall (University of Sydney), Gabriela Portela (ETUC), Jana Fromm (TCO), Eddy Stam
(FNV Bondgenoten), Annie van Wezel and Tonny Groen (both FNV Vakcentrale).

Meanwhile, the FNV confederation made a number of visits to Britain to learn from the
TUC confederation’s experience. Public sector union ABVAKABO FNV invited experts
from the British TUC and affiliated union T&G, and sent a high-profile delegation to
America to meet with SEIU organisers. Unions have started to introduce elements of
the organising approach in the Netherlands, although these efforts are still limited to
small-scale pilot projects. FNV Bondgenoten has further set up a training programme
on organising for its own staff. ABVAKABO FNV is planning to introduce organising at a
rather substantial scale. A pilot in the health care sector will start soon.
The present report does not pretend to give a complete or even a balanced overview of
developments in the global trade union movement. Its objective is rather more
pragmatic: to stimulate the exchange of ideas and experiences that may be helpful for
unions and confederations that are trying to figure out ways to adapt to changing
circumstances and to regain the initiative. The main focus is on material from Britain
and especially America.

At confederation level, there has been a renewed emphasis on reaching groups that are
underrepresented among the affiliated unions’ membership, such as young people and
ethnic minorities. One initiative has been the creation of FNV Jong, a network of young
activists that has had some success in putting issues on the political agenda, most
notably unemployment among ethnic minority youth (§ 4.2). Another challenge is the
increasing decentralisation of government policies. The FNV is in the process of forming
local groups of activists who will be charged with forging coalitions with community
organisations and influencing municipal policy (§ 4.9).

2.2 About this report

In April 2005, the FNV published the results of a desk study on trade union innovations
in a report De vakbeweging van de toekomst: Lessen uit het buitenland (The Trade
Union Movement of the Future: Lessons from Abroad). This report provided input to
unions in the Netherlands that are trying to redefine themselves. Presently, unions
18 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies 19

3 3 Why trade union

renewal
Membership of a trade union may bring along practical benefits, but unions are not
only important for members: how they operate shapes the entire society. For example,
countries with high union density tend to have a more equal income distribution and a
smaller share of low-paid workers. Trade unions also contribute to a properly
functioning democracy, boosting voter turnout in elections and giving workers a voice
at work. Further, how trade unions operate has an impact on employment – this impact
may be positive as well as negative.1

Trade unions can thus have an important impact on society. Much depends on the
choices they make. Do they act only on behalf of a privileged group of workers who are
already members, or do they try to involve new groups of workers? Do they prioritise
job growth over environmental concerns, or do they advocate sustainable growth? Do
they have transparent and democratic decision-making structures, or are decisions
made in back rooms? Do they fight for equal rights, or do they leave it at symbolic good
intentions? Do they actively involve their membership, or do they treat them as passive
consumers?

Now that the future of the trade union movement is insecure, these questions gain
added urgency. All the more so, because they are connected to developments such as
the globalisation of the economy and the increasingly flexible nature of work. In many
countries, therefore, a debate is raging about the role and the future of the trade union
movement. This debate is fuelled by the innovations that some unions have carried out.
 20 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies 21

3.1 Crisis in the trade union movement An important indicator of union strength is union density, that is, the percentage of the
workforce who are union members. In the 1990-2003 period, union density has declined
Recently, a German commentator declared the death of the unions (even though ‘the from 15.5 to 12.4% in the USA and from 33.1 to 26.3% in the European Union.4
closest relatives are keeping it a secret’).2 While this is an exaggeration, there is no
denying that trade unions in many countries are coping with serious problems. Union Union Density in EU countries, 1985-2004 5
density is declining and the unions have difficulties organising young workers.
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 %
Meanwhile, unions have a negative image. They get the reproach that they are too
much on the defensive, obstructing the vitalisation of the economy and the creation of Netherlands
new jobs. Belgium

Luxembourg
Unions further cope with the growing elusiveness of employers, who can transfer jobs
France
abroad, outsource work, exploit vulnerable workers such as undocumented
immigrants, and erode job security. These factors make it easier for them to play out Germany
groups of workers against each other. The position of workers is further undermined by Italy
cutting safety nets such as social benefits.
Denmark

Ireland
Meanwhile, many governments have become increasingly hostile to unions. In the
1980s, Ronald Reagan took on the air traffic controllers and Margaret Thatcher the UK
miners. More importantly, they introduced legislation that weakened the position of Greece
unions. Examples include regulations that make it more difficult to strike, to influence Spain
political decision-making and to carry out solidarity actions to support workers at other
Portugal
companies. In Australia, an economy previously marked by its European-like level of
wage centralisation, enterprise bargaining and individual contracts are now legal, and Austria

can be offered to workers covered by a collective agreement, undermining collective Sweden

bargaining. Even in Sweden, where the trade union movement has a very strong Finland
institutional position, it is feared that the new right-wing government may take
Cyprus
measures to undermine union power.
Malta

Because of these developments, it has become easier for companies to take a tough Estonia
stance towards unions. The most important symbol is the Wal-Mart Corporation (5.2), Latvia
but the phenomenon is becoming ever more widespread. American companies hire
Lithuania
union busting consultants to keep the union out. One of the most popular techniques is
Poland
the one-on-one, during which an individual worker is subjected to a cross examination.
Other techniques include showing anti-union videos and threatening to close a plant. Slovakia
Companies routinely fire union activists (this happens in a quarter of all formal Czech Rep
recognition elections; every 23 minutes a worker is said to be fired or discriminated 1985
Hungaria
against for supporting a union). This is illegal, but the sanctions are minimal. Some 1995
Slovenia 2004
British companies have started hiring American union busting consultants as well.3
 22 Innovative trade union strategies
3.2 New ambitions
At the end of the 1980s, a counter movement began. A famous example is the Justice
for Janitors campaign of the American services union SEIU, which managed to secure
an important victory under circumstances that seemed very hostile to union success.
The president of the SEIU, John Sweeney, was in 1995 elected president of the AFL-CIO
confederation. His ‘New Voice leadership’ tried to get the new approach adopted by
the entire trade union movement. This new approach consisted of multifaceted,
strategic and assertive campaigns, in which publicity was actively sought after.
American researchers have called the approach comprehensive campaigning.6
Campaigns emphasised not just workers’ direct material interests, but also issues such
as human rights and social justice. Other important aspects include coalitions with
community organisations, corporate campaigning, a strong presence at the local level;
and organising the low wage service economy, with its high share of ethnic minority
workers.
In 2005, a heated debate erupted on the course of the AFL-CIO. A group of unions
headed by SEIU’s Andy Stern said that the federation was not doing enough to promote
the new organising approach. Eventually, a number of large unions left the AFL-CIO to
form the Change to Win federation. The impact this move will have on the American
(and foreign) trade union movement is still hard to gauge. While there are definite signs
of crisis, the split might also trigger necessary changes. In any case, the two federations
closely collaborated in the 2006 Midterm Election campaign and are planning a joint
lobbying effort to push for universal health insurance. Despite the split, the American
union movement ‘had its best year ever’, the Change to Win chairwoman commented.7
The American shift to union renewal has inspired innovations in Britain and Australia,
where unions have also faced falling density and weakening social and political
influence. In Australia, renewal strategies began in the mid-1990s after density levels
had collapsed from 50% in the early 70s to 25% by 1995. Changes in Britain occurred
later, given the higher and more stable density levels. Increasingly, continental
European unions are also experimenting innovative approaches. At the European level,
the ETUC will put the new organising approach on the agenda of its 2007 Congress.
While the trade union movement’s problems are in no way over yet, there have been
some inspiring successes. In the UK, union density seems to have stabilised and even to
have risen slightly, after having dropped from almost forty to less than thirty percent
between 1990 and 2003. However, most commentators say that this is far from
Innovative trade union strategies 23
enough to regain union strength. More impressive is the performance of individual
unions that have adopted an organising agenda. Through campaigns targeting
companies such as Sainsbury’s and easyJet, as well as other recruitment efforts, T&G
has organised 500 new activists and 11,500 new members.8
An international campaign coordinated by the IUF organised 45,000 workers in Russia
between 1997 and 2005. Before the campaign, IUF-affiliated unions did not have a
presence in that region (§ 4.11). The most successful example of membership growth is
the American services union SEIU. Ten years ago, it had 1.1 million members; today, the
number is close to two million. While some of this growth is the result of other unions
joining the SEIU, even more members joined as a result of organising campaigns. An
example is a campaign organising 450,000 home care workers.9
Membership growth is of course not a goal in itself. The real test of success is whether
unions have been able to improve the situation of workers and achieve social justice.
The T&G campaign at Sainsbury’s for instance won 70,000 workers a wage increase as
well as four years back pay of unpaid holiday pay. American living wage campaigns are
estimated to have increased the wages of 100,000 to 250,000 working poor, while
recent campaigns to increase the minimum wage at state level are estimated to have
benefited at least 1.5 million workers (§ 5.3). Another success was recently achieved by
a coalition of French trade unions, students’ unions and other organisations, who
managed to turn back legislation that would have worsened employment protection
for young workers.
3.3 Barriers and opportunities
Proponents of change often try to create a sense of urgency by use of ‘scary graphs’:
simple graphs that show that the trade union movement is doomed unless it manages
to organise young members in growth sectors.10 However, an awareness of
membership trends may not be enough.
It is no coincidence that many innovative approaches have started in the Anglo-Saxon
countries: here anti-union government policies have been most severe. According to an
international comparison, unions will only change if they feel a strong need to do so.
Membership loss in itself may not be enough to create a sense of urgency, as long as
the union movement still has an institutional position to cling to. Only when that is
taken away is it likely that real change will occur.11
 24 Innovative trade union strategies
Additionally, researchers have found it takes a certain type of leaders who are prepared
to change and embrace new strategies. In the US, researchers have found that union
leaders with social movement experience are valuable. In the UK and Australia, union
leaders have similarly been found to be a critical component of organisational change
in unions. But, others have also found that while leadership is critical, it is not sufficient
– member support, participation and interest in the change process are vital for long
term success.12
An interesting example is Britain, where there has been an anti-union atmosphere ever
since the days of Margaret Thatcher. Inspired by the American example, the trade union
movement started to take initiatives to strengthen its position, among other things
through a stronger emphasis on organising workers.13 The Austrian ÖGB cites
government attempts to weaken workers’ organisations as the reason to introduce a
more militant, campaign-oriented approach. This new approach was inspired by the
American AFL-CIO.14
During the 1960s and 1970s, the German trade union movement formed a successful
alliance with protest movements and secured itself a strong institutional position.
According to critics, it has since been ‘resting on its institutional laurels’ too much. It
has been argued that German trade union movement was not desperate enough to
introduce real change, and that it would not do so until a crisis erupts.15 However,
promising new initiatives are now being taken, for example by services union Ver.di.
Social change often does not happen gradually. History knows short periods during
which society goes through rapid changes. Often this brings along institutional
changes that may have a long term impact on the organisations involved. As noted
above, the German trade union movement strengthened its institutional position
during the protest movement of the 1960s. For the American trade union movement,
the social mobilisations in support of the new deal in the 1930s were crucial.
Interestingly, in between such periods, the trade union movement is often written off,
also by people who are sympathetic to it.16
While external developments may exert a strong influence on trade union renewal,
internal factors play an important role too. Successful innovations often result from a
combination of grassroots mobilisation and top-down support. Mobilising workers is
indispensable to build a position of power, but the romantic idea that innovations flow
spontaneously from below does not seem to apply to trade unions. As in most other
large organisations, there is usually resistance to change. It takes top-down support to
Innovative trade union strategies 25
break that resistance. A good example is the Justice for Janitors campaign, which was
forced on some locals by the national union (§ 5.1).17
Organising campaigns may sometimes take as long as twelve years before paying off in
terms of increased strategic leverage. This ‘lag time’ may leave union leaders in a
vulnerable position. They have to convince union staff and members to invest in
changes, even though the fruits may be slow in coming.18
Holders of key positions do not always have an interest in changing the way in which
the union operates and in organising new groups of workers: this might erode their
own power base within the organisation. A study of American local trade union
branches showed that innovations often did not occur until after an internal crisis,
which put new people in key positions. Importantly, these were often people from
outside the trade union movement, who had gained experience in other social
movements, and who were therefore able to look at the way the union operates in a
fresh manner.19
Trade union innovations are often spurred by lessons from outside the organisation.
These lessons may come either from other social movements, or from trade unions
abroad. For example, the British trade union movement actively used expertise
developed by the American trade union movement, and, like the AFL-CIO, decided to
recruit staff with no union background. Southern European unions have benefited
from the experience of their Northern European colleagues when it regards social pacts
with employers and the government.20
Innovations may also be spurred by outside pressure. At the end of the 1980s, the large
Italian federations were criticised by ‘comitati di base’ (grassroots committees) for
being too bureaucratic and not democratic enough. While it was unclear how many
people these committees represented, they did show their mobilising capacities in a
series of strikes. In a response to these actions, the federations decided to hold
referendums on all important agreements they would reach from now on (§ 4.5).
Incidentally, the competition of the comitati di base also urged the federations to set up
unions of self-employed workers. In America, the Jobs with Justice coalitions
sometimes are a catalyst of change.21
26 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies 27

4 4 Themes
4.1 Ethnic minorities and migrant workers
Since ethnic minorities make up a growing share of the population, it is important for
unions to organise these groups. In addition, there is a strategic interest. A classic
means of undermining union power is by playing groups of workers against each other,
something which is often done along ethnic lines. Unions can only counter this by
actively organising solidarity on the basis of shared interests.

Some union members see immigrant workers as competitors on the labour market.
There may be resistance to organising these workers, especially if they are
undocumented. The British CWU has run an internal education campaign to convince
branches that all workers have a right to be organised in a trade union. The T&G and
GMB launched the Respect is a Right campaign, arguing that economic migrants
should be welcomed.22

Among many European unions, minorities, as well as women, have separate

committees and secretariats. However, many experts say that such bodies primarily play
a symbolic role and do not yield sufficient concrete results.

Most European unions have a rather strong institutional position, which does not rely
on their capacity to mobilise workers. As a result, the incentive to organise new groups
of workers is relatively weak. An interesting example is the British case, where racism
amongst union members was not uncommon until the 1970s. When Thatcher
introduced a union-hostile climate, there was a stronger incentive for British unions to
 28 Innovative trade union strategies
involve minority workers. Today, according to one study, the TUC is much more active
when it regards equal rights than for example the Danish trade union movement,
which still has a relatively strong institutional position.23
It is generally assumed that working with immigrants’ or minority organisations is an
important means for trade unions to get in touch with ethnic minority communities. A
British study among such organisations found that a large majority favour collaboration
with unions, but that most are unaware of union efforts regarding minorities. “They are
either doing nothing, or they are doing something and not telling anyone about it”,
one respondent commented.
It was found that ethnic minority organisations did not perceive trade unions as being
in competition for funds, which should make it easier to forge alliances with unions.
The study further found that employees of ethnic minority organisations often are not
members of trade unions. Respondents said that unions should more actively
communicate with minority organisations and communities.24
Southern European countries receive large numbers of immigrants, including a
considerable number of undocumented immigrants. In Southern Spain, unions have
created centres that immigrants can turn to for support. They also support
undocumented workers, because it is in the interest of documented workers to prevent
groups of workers being played out against each other. In the agricultural sector in
Murcia and Almería, eighty percent of members of the CC.OO confederation are of
Moroccan descent.
Even though unions try their best to organise immigrants, there is criticism as well. For
example, racist attacks on immigrants in El Ejido were condemned by national unions,
but local branches kept rather quiet. Immigrants also felt let down by the large union
federations when they tried to improve the position of agriculture workers through a
successful strike. 25
At present, there is a growing number of workers from Middle and Eastern European
countries entering European labour markets. Union responses are sometimes
protectionist, but there are also efforts to organise these workers, for example among
unions in Britain. The TUC is collaborating with the Polish Solidarnosc union. North
West TUC employed a Solidarnosc organiser in late 2005 and TUC-affiliated union T&G
now employs six Polish organisers. The TUC has also sent a delegation to a jobs fair in
Warsaw where UK employers were recruiting, in order to inform potential migrants
Innovative trade union strategies 29
about issues such as the minimum wage, working time regulations and the right to join
a union. It is working with Solidarnosc to provide such information online as well.26
Labour migrants are often highly mobile. For this reason, they need quick solutions to
problems such as underpayment, which implies that legal procedures are unpractical. In
the Netherlands, there have been a number of wildcat strikes among Polish workers,
after which unions have successfully intervened to negotiate a settlement between
workers and the employer. In the agricultural sector, a project involving information
meetings and approaching workers when they go home at the end of the workday has
resulted in new members and activists.27 In Germany, the Europäischer Verband der
Wanderarbeiter (European Migrant Workers’ Union, EVW) has been created. This
organisation tries to defend the interests of Polish and other migrant workers by
directly approaching the employer, using the fact that many employers want to avoid
negative publicity.
British unions have found that immigrant workers not only seek advice on work issues,
but also on housing and finance. Unions seek collaboration with local agencies to be
able to provide wider support.28
In London, GMB organised 10,000 Asian workers through a community unionism
approach. A study of a number of campaigns found that organisers with an Asian
background played a crucial role, using methods that differ from common union
practice. For example, “Zaheer will sometimes disappear for a couple of months and
come back with 200 membership forms in his hand from some firm that we have never
heard of. When you ask him how did it go – he said it was all done in front rooms,
which is a different way of organising. We would never dream of knocking on people’s
doors”.
Events in mosques and community centres were organised to create community
support. The union also used trained activists who had been involved in a successful
campaign in their own company to talk to workers in another company, to tell them
what can be achieved.29
In America, organising campaigns among immigrant workers date back at least to the
1930s. Assertive union campaigns helped immigrants secure a position in society, while
immigrants in turn helped revitalise the trade union movement.30 However, after the
Second World War, the American trade union movement found itself in a stronger
position and became increasingly defensive. In the 1960s, some unions such as the
 30 Innovative trade union strategies
United Auto Workers supported the civil rights movement, while Martin Luther King
helped organise a sanitation workers’ strike, but in general there was a conservative
attitude among unions. Immigrants were often seen as competitors in the labour
market.
In 2001, the AFL-CIO issued a statement that underlined the shared interests of
workers: “Too often, employers have attempted to divide workers by race, ethnicity
and immigration status, playing one group against the other to undermine solidarity
and preclude workers from achieving progress together. History has proven that
mistreatment of one group in a workplace will ultimately lead to the mistreatment of all
workers”.31
Progressive unions such as SEIU and HERE had already achieved successes organising
workers at the lower end of the labour market, such as cleaners and hotel workers (§
5.1). In general, such campaigns do not explicitly target immigrants, but in practice
these make up a large share of the workers in those sectors. Incidentally, unions need
to be careful not to be perceived as the advocates of one specific ethnic group. In Los
Angeles for example, relations with the black community where actively developed, in
order to prevent the union being associated exclusively with Latinos.32
Among unions, it is sometimes believed that immigrants are hard to organise, but that
seems to be incorrect. In America, the most important successes have been achieved in
sectors where many immigrants work. Interestingly, campaigns for formal union
recognition are most successful at workplaces with large shares of immigrant and
women workers. One extreme is a success rate of 35% at workplaces where the
majority of workers are white males; the other extreme being a rate of 82% at
workplaces where the majority of workers are non-white women. Researchers comment
that immigrants are not passive victims, but form the core of worker activism. 33
Organising becomes rather more difficult when workers are undocumented. In half the
American recognition campaigns, employers threaten to report undocumented
workers to the immigration service. The success rate drops to 35% in campaigns that
involve undocumented workers.34
In a number of ways, trade unions try to improve the situation of undocumented
workers. For example, an Immigrant Worker Freedom Ride was organised in the fall of
2004. Its objective was regularisation, but it was also a means to strengthen the ties
with the Latino community. Since the Freedom Ride was inspired by a famous campaign
Innovative trade union strategies 31
of the 1960s civil rights movement, it was also a means to stimulate cooperation
between the black and Latino communities.35
Meanwhile, several unions try to include stipulations in collective agreements to make
undocumented workers less vulnerable. In the cleaning sector, SEIU reached an
agreement that states that employers must notify the union when they know the
immigration service is planning an investigation. It was also agreed that employers will
only provide the immigration service with information if they are legally obliged to do
so. Hotel and restaurant union HERE reached an agreement that states that hotels must
re-employ workers who have been deported and who manage to return within two
years. If they do so within one year, their seniority will remain intact as well.36
The European organisation PICUM has done an extensive study of how unions and
other organisations in Europe and the USA protect undocumented workers. The
researchers find that unions can play a crucial role in preventing the exploitation of
undocumented workers. At the same time, organising undocumented workers is also
in the interest of other workers. It is argued that unions should convince their members
that “the only way to fight the tendency of worsening conditions and wage decreases
is by working together and building strength as a workers’ movement”.37
An illustration of how the interests of documented and undocumented workers are
connected is a study among agricultural workers in The Netherlands. During the past
ten years, the position of undocumented workers has weakened considerably, which
eventually led to more flexible jobs and income insecurity for other workers as well.38
4.2 Youth
Many unions have an ageing membership and have difficulties organising young
workers. Young workers often have no standard jobs but have flexible contracts, or are
self-employed. The kind of jobs they have might well reflect what the labour market of
the future will look like. As long as unions are unable to organise young people, they
must seriously ask themselves whether they are prepared for the future.39
In Canada, teachers at a business school tried a rather unusual approach to get
students to understand the value of organising. A substitute teacher told them that
their bonus marks were cancelled and that their final exam would include all materials
studied during the entire year, rather than only the second half of the year.
 32 Innovative trade union strategies
Subsequently, the students were presented with an opportunity to organise to fight the
injustice done to them, which they eagerly did. Most students responded
enthusiastically to the experiment. Although the initiators assert it was the ‘most
effective classroom technique we ever used’ and suggest that the approach is ethically
defensible, it will probably not be used again because of practical constraints.40
In France, where density is low to begin with, only one percent of 18 to 29 year olds are
members of a trade union. The person responsible for youth issues at the CFDT sees the
problem as follows: “The relation between young people and the world of work has
developed faster than trade unionism. Workers used to be anchored to their jobs, they
made a career. Nowadays, youth have one insecure job after another, they struggle to
get a fixed contract and when the contract has been signed, they are less than eager to
join a union, because they are afraid to compromise their career perspectives. And
apart from that, the union has an image problem”.41
Nevertheless, the CFDT has managed to stop the decline. One means to achieve this are
campaigns in which the union goes to workplaces to inform seasonal workers of their
rights. Further, the CFDT has introduced a joint membership for working students in
both CFDT and students’ union Confédération étudiante (CE) at a reduced price.42
Young people are not lacking in social engagement, contrary to what is sometimes
thought. In France, they were involved in mass protests against Le Pen’s Front National
in 2002, in protests against the war in Iraq and in the Ni putes ni soumises organisation,
which works for women in the banlieues. Further, young people are involved in
campaigns at companies such as the Ibis hotel chain; the Monoprix supermarkets, Pizza
Hut and McDonalds (§ 5.10). More recently, students, social movement organisations
and trade unions jointly forced the government to withdraw plans to abolish
employment protection for young workers.
Various unions are looking for new ways to involve young people. In Sweden, three
TCO-affiliated unions have created the Tria programme, offering a joint membership
for students at a one-off price of about ten euro for the whole student career. Services
offered to this group focus on the transition from education to work. They are provided
with information, job interview courses, a mentor programme, statistics for salaries in
different professions and a resume review service. After graduation, they are contacted
by the local union organisation to ask them to become regular members of the union
connected to the profession they have chosen.
Innovative trade union strategies 33
The programme is run by student activists at the campuses, who may receive financial
compensation. At its start in August 2005, Tria had 13,500 members; within a year this
has risen to 18,000. The aim is to have 26,000 members by the end of 2007. Initially,
the share of Tria members joining a regular union after graduation was 30%, by now,
this has risen to 55%.
Five times a year, TCO publishes a students’ newspaper, produced by an independent
editorial board and sent to all students who receive a government grant. The
newspaper, which has a good reputation among students, combines articles on student
life with articles on the transition from education to work.
The TCO has also developed materials that teachers can use, aimed at 15-18 year old
students. These materials include a website, a teacher’s guide and a negotiating game.
The materials have been designed in such a way as to be attractive to young people. As
a result, at fairs, youth are drawn to the TCO-stand.43
In the Netherlands, young members of the FNV held a manifestation at the 2005
Congress, resulting in the creation of FNV Jong. FNV Jong is a network of young (under
35 year old) trade union members that can express views independently of the FNV. Its
chair, Judith Ploegman, has gained a rather high profile in the media. The aim of FNV
Jong is to get youth issues higher on the agenda both within and outside the FNV, as
well as to increase the visibility of the FNV among young workers. FNV further wants to
get the 235,000 young trade union members more actively involved in the
organisation. Ploegman has a seat on the Socio-Economic Council (SER), an official
advisory body. At her initiative, the SER has published a high-profile advice on
unemployment among ethnic minority youth.
The FNV-affiliated teachers’ union AOb has specific publications and a website with
practical information on teachers’ issues, as well as volunteer teachers giving guest
classes to students. It also offers a student membership of one euro per month. Since
the introduction of this approach three years ago, the number of student members has
risen from 300 to 1,800.44
The American trade union movement has been organising Union Summer programmes
since 1996, offering students an opportunity to gain experience with trade unionism.
Students who participated have created new organisations, such as Students Against
Sweatshops. In addition, some end up at key positions within the trade union
movement (§ 5.6). As the union movement is spending less time in back rooms and
 34 Innovative trade union strategies
more time campaigning on the streets, it becomes more attractive to young people. For
example, the creation of local Street Heat teams is a means to engage youth in the
trade union movement (§ 5.5). An SEIU organiser commented: “... I think the labour
movement is becoming a little more dynamic, so young, progressive activists think
that’s a cooler thing to do than maybe was true at another time”.45
Union Summer has been successfully adopted by other union movements. From 2001,
the Australian union movement has run a union summer program. Since 2003, that
program has been combined with the Working Students Union Network (WSUN), a
network of student activists committed to union issues that seeks to work on university
campuses to promote unionism and organise pathways to unions for students. These two
programs provide training and an environment where young union organisers and future
union stewards can test and develop their skills. Unions such as the Teachers union in
NSW have also developed programs targeting students as future union stewards while
still in university training, to reverse the trends of an ageing shop steward network.
It is sometimes said that declining density among young people would be a result of
individualisation. Organisations, in this view, should treat young people more as
consumers, for example by offering financial services to members. This type of
approach has been tested by various unions in Britain in the 1980s, but had little effect.
The underlying assumption that youth lack social engagement also seems to be
incorrect. What is correct is that because of individualisation young people have other
expectations of organisations. They want to be able to express themselves and they
want to take responsibility.46
4.3 Unemployed
American unions have little involvement with the unemployed, among other things
because union membership is often tied to the company where people work. It has
been argued that new forms of membership should be introduced that are not
dependent on working at a specific company, which would make it easier for the
unemployed to join as well. In Baltimore, the Solidarity Sponsoring Committee aims to
organise the unemployed. It managed to block a plan to force young unemployed
people to quit their education in order to accept a poverty job. After workfare
participants had been used to replace cleaners at a large hotel who had a wage dispute
with their employer, the Committee got the governor to sign an executive order
banning such practices.47
Innovative trade union strategies 35
In Canada, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) is critical of relying on legal
procedures, because these force people to assume a passive role. Therefore, legal
procedures are combined with direct action. For example, groups of activists may go to
a social assistance (welfare) office to get staff members to consider an application. If
this does not help, pressure is increased. This method has the advantage that people do
not have to wait endlessly for their application to be processed, which is very important
for people with low incomes. The methods seem to have been inspired by the American
Welfare Rights Movement of the 1960s.48
In Sweden, Denmark, Finland and to a lesser extent Belgium, union membership
among the unemployed is relatively high. This is because social security is administered
by trade unions. In countries that do not have this ‘Ghent system’, the unemployed
tend not to be trade union members. The membership fee is certainly not the only
problem. In Britain and Germany, membership is almost free for the unemployed (one
euro per month or less), yet density among the unemployed is significantly lower than
among those with jobs, and this applies to an even higher degree for the long-term
unemployed. Apparently, the unemployed are not convinced that unions have
something to offer them.49
In Britain, the TUC has supported the development of Unemployed Workers’ Centres in
the 1980s and early 1990s. These centres “give the movement an answer to those who
claim that unions are only interested in helping people who already have jobs”, the
TUC says. However, unemployment no longer being the key issue it was before, many
centres are now finding it difficult to secure funding and are redefining their role, for
example by providing advice and a venue for language courses for migrant workers.
In France, Germany, the Netherlands and other countries, Euro Marches have been
organised by people who think that the trade union movement is not doing enough for
the unemployed. This organisation campaigns among other things for a European
social income. France further has autonomous unions that, like OCAP, engage in direct
action, for example by occupying social assistance offices (§ 5.10). In Ireland, the
government has chosen to include organisations of the unemployed and anti-poverty
organisations in social pacts. These pacts have dealt with the indexation of benefits,
among other things.50
In America and Canada, and increasingly in European countries as well, social
assistance recipients are forced to work in so-called work first or workfare programmes.
For example, in the Netherlands, over ninety percent of municipalities claim to have
 36 Innovative trade union strategies
such programmes. Often, the unemployed have to do unattractive work that provides
little relevant work experience, while still receiving social assistance instead of a salary.
The programmes seem intended to push the employed out of social assistance rather
than to offer them better opportunities at the labour market. It is feared that this will
force them to accept bad jobs at poverty wages.
There have been attempts in America, Canada and European countries to campaign
against work first and to organise the participants in such programmes. These
initiatives have generally been coalitions of trade unions, anti-poverty organisations,
and community organisations. Most of these efforts have started at the local level, and
it has been difficult to connect them into wider struggles.51
4.4 Service industry and non-standard work
In the Western world, job growth occurs mainly in the services sector. However,
especially in commercial services, unions have difficulties gaining a foothold. The cause
is not necessarily that workers are uninterested in trade unions, but work characteristics
make it difficult for unions to organise them.
Workers are often scattered over many small workplaces, where they tend to be
working closely with their bosses and are sometimes confronted with paternalistic
labour relations. Many jobs are part-time and flexible, and turnover tends to be high,
making contact among workers rather ad hoc. For unions, it is very time consuming to
remain in contact with a large number of small workplaces, while workers are often in a
vulnerable position. Many workers, for example in call centres, fast food chains or in
supermarkets, work under strict control. For example, cashiers at the German Lidl
supermarket have to scan forty products per minute.52
One might expect that workers with non-standard contracts might be less inclined to
join a union because they have weaker connections to the workplace. However,
research in Spain has found that nonstandard workers are in fact more critical of the
economic system and more inclined to become active in a trade union than workers
with standard contracts. “Rather than asserting that outsiders are less likely to join a
union, it is more accurate to say that unions are less likely to reach and organise
outsiders as long as union organisational efforts are ineffective in the face of new
challenges, including enhanced employers’ resistance to unionisation”.53
Innovative trade union strategies 37
In some sectors, trade unions traditionally have high density, for example in
telecomunications and in banking. However, privatisation, outsourcing and
restructuring may cause membership levels to drop very fast. For example, a Norwegian
union lost half its members in Telenor within a couple of years. In banking, the blurring
of the boundaries with other forms of financial services may lead to a decline in
membership.54 Even faster membership decline than in Norway occured in Central and
Eastern European countries when companies were privatised after 1989.55
It has been argued that modern employees are very different from the traditional
manufacturing workers, whom unions are used to organising, and much more similar
to the workers who were organised by the predecessors of the trade unions in the 19th
and early 20th centuries. These were guild-like organisations, which organised not only
employees, but also the unemployed, the self-employed and foremen. These trades
associations offered their members opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills;
and also sometimes set up collective insurances. In addition, they performed a number
of tasks that would today be considered those of employers. For example, they
developed quality standards and sometimes acted as temp agencies. A negative aspect
of these organisations is that they often advocated the interests of their members at
the expense of outsiders.56
Some aspects of how these trade associations operated are today being used to
organise service sector workers. Examples include ‘guild-like clubs for dot.com
workers’ and organisations of the self-employed. Increasingly, the internet is used to
stay in touch with members. The German Ver.di uses text messaging to stay in touch
with nurses who provide home care. This type of organisations seem especially
successful at organising higher educated employees in the services sector.57
In the Netherlands, two unions have been created specifically to organise the self-
employed (these are the only unions with substantial membership growth). Sectoral
unions such as the journalists’ union and the haircutters’ union also have a considerable
number of self-employed members. In total, FNV-affiliated unions now have about
25,000 self-employed members. As substantial further growth is expected, it is likely
that the preferences of the self-employed will increasingly affect how the entire FNV
operates.
Self-employed workers join the union because of legal services provided (for example
debt collection) but increasingly the new unions are also providing a community, in
which members exchange information and help each other obtain contracts. In the
 38 Innovative trade union strategies
near future, officials of other unions who are dealing with restructuring will be
provided with names of affiliated self-employed career counsellors who can advice
workers who are in danger of losing their jobs. There are plans to develop other similar
forms of member to member services in the future. The self-employed unions also try to
influence government policies. Important achievements include maternity leave and
retirement provisions for the self-employed.58
While these organisations tend to focus on high-educated flex workers, there are also
many jobs in supermarkets, call centres, hotels, restaurants and cleaning. In these
sectors, unions have successfully set up local campaigns (§ 4.9), formed coalitions with
other social organisations (§ 4.12) and used combinations of methods to increase
pressure on employers (§ 4.8).
Unions have not always been open to the idea of organising the self-employed and
agency workers. With regard to the latter group, a delegate at the 1974 TUC
conference reportedly said: “The only way to organise them is to kick them out”. While
this attitude has clearly changed, there are still union officials who do not see it as their
task to represent people with non-standard work.59
In America, it was found that ‘quasi unions’ – the term is used to designate both
initiatives targeting high-educated flex workers and initiatives for contingent workers
at the lower end of the labour market – can be successful in pockets of the labour
market where conventional unions have little reach. However, they seem to have
difficulty moving from successful local campaigns to broader and more structural
power. Quasi-unions often have an insecure financial base and their life-span tends to
be rather short: out of 30 initiatives identified in 2001, 26 were no longer operating
five years later.60
Agencies that provide legal advice to citizens can be an ally when it regards improving
the situation of contingent workers and the unemployed. For example, the British
Citizen Advice Bureaux worked with the TUC to promote greater awareness of part-
time workers’ rights.61 In the Netherlands, a newly formed legal advice agency (Het
Juridisch Loket) exchanges information with community organisations on
undocumented workers’ rights, while social counsellors provided valuable information
for an FNV study into the effects of stricter social assistance eligibility rules.
Innovative trade union strategies 39
4.5 Activists and internal democracy
Some American unions spend significant parts of their budgets on organising new
members, which leaves them with limited means to service existing members.
Therefore, they aim to make organising committees self-supporting as quickly as
possible. The support these activists receive is largely limited to training courses and
specialist advice.62 In union recognition campaigns, the win rate increases by half if the
rank and file are actively involved. An example is the Justice for Janitors campaign (§
5.1), in which members where trained for active involvement in the campaign.63
Besides practical reasons for actively involving members, this also contributes to the
emancipatory power of the trade union. A union that focuses on providing professional
services, by contrast, can achieve the opposite: this can create a feeling of dependence
and powerlessness among members. This risk increases when all problems are
interpreted as individual problems, and when they are dealt with through lengthy legal
procedures.64
Among trade union officials, there is sometimes reluctance to actively involve members.
An SEIU organiser said about his colleagues: “They want to help people... It’s a lot
easier to take care of someone’s problem than it is to train them to take care of their
own problem”. A similar attitude may lead to a preference for the back rooms. An
example is a local trade union leader who finds that he achieves more by making one
telephone call with the right person, than by mobilising three hundred people to
participate in a protest.65
However, American unions that focus on organising cannot do without the active
participation of members and also of activists who are outside the trade union
movement. Often, people are explicitly asked to commit themselves. People who turn
to worker centres for help are often asked to engage in volunteer work (§ 5.8). Jobs
with Justice activists are asked for a commitment to engage in activities on behalf of
other people at least five times per year (§ 4.12). Members of a HERE local agreed to
engage in activities outside their own workplace for at least two hours per month. A
similar commitment is sometimes asked of organisations. A Chicago living wage
coalition allowed organisations to participate in decision-making only if they managed
to contribute a bus-load of activists to protests.66
In Spain, works council elections are an important means for trade unions to show how
much support they have. These elections further have a practical interest: the outcome
 40 Innovative trade union strategies
decides how much money unions receive from the government. In addition, members
of works councils get paid leave; sometimes this is used to strengthen the union’s
position at other workplaces. Because so much is at stake at the works council
elections, unions launch workplace campaigns every four years, for which activists
receive specific training. Even though this model leads to periods of increased contact
between the union and workers, this tends to evaporate during periods between
elections.67
The Dutch FNV has successfully organised referendum-like member surveys on whether
or not to sign social pacts. This method was shown to be more effective at involving a
representative share of the membership in decision-making than traditional meetings,
which tend to be attended mainly by men.
Referendums had earlier been used by the Italian trade union movement. The large
confederations, pressurised by grassroots committees (comitati di base) that criticised
their lack of democracy, started to consider using referendums in the 1980s. In 1993, a
binding referendum was organised on a social pact with the government on income
policies. A million and a half workers cast a vote and two-thirds approved the pact. The
referendum increased the legitimacy of the union leadership, and contributed to the
absence of protests against the pact.
In 1995, another referendum was organised about a pact on pensions. This time, tens
of thousands of workplace meetings were organised to discuss the pact. Subsequently,
four and a half million workers participated in the referendum, again resulting in two-
thirds approving the pact. Since then, the method has been applied repeatedly. By now,
the enthusiasm has dwindled. Due to increased rivalry between confederations, there is
growing reluctance to organise referendums.68
Whereas Italian confederations have strengthened their position through referenda
among the membership, the French CFDT has experienced the opposite. On 15 May
2003, two days after a large demonstration involving a million protestors, the
confederation reached an agreement with the government on pensions, even though
the CGT confederation would have preferred to carry on the protests. For members,
the agreement came as a total surprise. There was a lot of indignation and the CFDT
found itself in an internal crisis. Within months, 35,000 to 50,000 members left the
CFDT, some of them joining CGT or autonomous unions.69
Referenda have also been used to decide on increases in membership fees. A number
Innovative trade union strategies 41
of Australian and New Zealand unions have raised membership fees by forty percent or
more, to cope with diminished institutional support. Of course, when doing so, they
must be able to convince members that the money will be well-spent. They have used
extensive consultations to win their members’ support. This has been particularly
successful when the membership fee rise has been part of a strategic response to a
crisis.70
A branch of the Australian TWU first carried out a survey among members on how they
felt about the union. When it became clear that the union had their support, members
were consulted under the slogan ‘it’s in your hands’, on the need to raise fees in order
to be able to wage a number of crucial campaigns. A majority of members did support
the measure. A union ombudsman was set up to deal with complaints about the fee
raise and other issues. The New Zealand Finsec union held a referendum among the
entire membership about a proposal to raise membership fees. Local meetings were
organised to discuss the issue. It managed to get over forty percent of the members to
participate in these meetings.71
4.6 Recruitment, organising and marketing
In many countries, unions are concerned about membership developments: even if
membership is not declining, growth is often insufficient to match employment growth
so as to keep density stable, let alone increase density. In America and Britain, some
unions that have focused on organising new groups of workers have been surprisingly
successful (§ 3.2). The choice to focus on organising may be met with resistance,
because it means that fewer means are available for servicing the existing membership.
There are important differences in how unions try to recruit new members. Many
campaigns target workplaces where the union already has a strong position; such
campaigns are referred to as ‘infill’. On the short term, this is more cost-effective than
organising new workplaces (‘greenfield’), but such a strategy will eventually limit union
presence to declining sectors.72 There is also a distinction between campaigns that use
marketing techniques in order to better sell the ‘product’ trade union; and, at the other
extreme, organising campaigns that aim to build a position of power in a specific
company or sector (§ 4.7).
While organising is still largely limited to Anglo-Saxon unions, the French CFDT recently
started training 500 ‘développeurs’ (at a smaller scale, it has been doing so since 1988).
 42 Innovative trade union strategies
Over a one-year period, activists meet three times for one or more days to be trained in
communication skills and in planning workplace campaigns. The développeurs are
further to contribute to a less ‘sombre’ atmosphere within the trade union movement.
The CFDT has been coping with substantial membership decline as a result of a social
pact that was badly received by the members (§ 4.5). The développeurs are instructed
to respect workers’ decision to leave the CFDT, but they are to try to find out the
motives: has it to do with the union’s national policies, or with how it operates at the
workplace? The développeurs have reportedly been successful, especially in service
sectors ‘en plein boom’. For example, thousands of home-based child care workers
(assistantes maternelles) have been organised.
The colleagues of the formerly communist CGT also want to focus on recruitment.
However, it chooses not to train specialised développeurs, because it finds that all
activists must be involved in recruitment.73
Within the German trade union movement, the accent in recruitment efforts is still very
much on marketing campaigns. In addition, Ver.di and IG Metall have started to
negotiate financial benefits for trade union members in collective agreements.74
Experience in Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Sweden and Britain teaches that offering
financial services such a credit cards or insurances has almost no effect in terms of
gaining new members. Services that are more clearly work-related do sometimes prove
successful, especially with higher educated professionals and the self-employed. Such
services may include career advice, training and support for job seekers. The Norwegian
Grafisk Forbund even set up its own temp agency.75
In many countries, recruitment campaigns are hindered by the fact that unions use
different names and that workers often do not know which union they should join. In a
number of countries, confederations have tried to convince unions to use similar names
and logos. For example, in the 1990s, local SEIU unions used no fewer than 143
different names. SEIU decided to adopt a new logo and to provide free stationery, T-
shirts and redesign services to locals that decided to use it. By now all local unions are
part of the ‘purple army’. Merchandise including bowling balls, megaphones and
clothing yields $ 2 million per year.76
The Australian ACTU has recently created Unions Australia, a centre that aims to make
union membership more accessible. People who want to join a union but do not know
Innovative trade union strategies 43
which union is active in their sector, can join through Unions Australia. For the first six
months, they will pay a standard membership fee, which will be used to fund the
centre. The centre makes sure that membership details are transferred to the relevant
union. The unions will also receive organising and recruitment leads and suggestions as
to potential activists.77
The extent to which unions engage in organising and recruitment is partly related to
government policies. In countries where the trade union movement has a relatively
strong institutional position, the need to organise new groups of workers is felt less
strongly. Of course, there are risks involved in being dependent on government
recognition as a trade union movement. Such a position can easily be lost when a new
government is formed.78
While many unions at least in theory attach importance to organising and recruiting,
the retention of members is often less prominent on the agenda. Research in Britain
suggests that a stronger union presence at the workplace may be crucial for retention.
A significant part of union leavers did so because they were dissatisfied with some
aspect of union organisation.79
While the British study found that insufficient help for members with problems was an
important reason why people say they leave a union, this does not necessarily imply
that improving individual services and handling of grievances is necessarily the key to
better retention. In Australia, it has been observed that only a tiny minority of members
have individual grievances. The key motivator for membership is thought to be power:
“Could members be seen to work together and achieve the improvement in what they
wanted?”80
4.7 Organising
Some unions in America, Britain and Australia have been very successful at organising
new groups of workers. Efforts are made to introduce the method in other countries as
well, including the Netherlands, Germany, Poland and Russia. Some hold that
organising is nothing but a return to workplace trade unionism. Others point out that
today’s organising approach is different because of its highly systematic nature and its
emphasis on empowerment.
There is no doubt that organising is indeed a systematic approach. Key elements
 44 Innovative trade union strategies
include identifying campaign issues; identifying and developing leaders and mapping
the workplace. Confederations in America, Britain and Australia have created institutes
where the organising approach is taught (§ 5.9).
Campaign issues, according to the TUC’s approach, must meet four criteria. They must
be widely felt (not just an individual problem); deeply felt (no use in starting a campaign
around an issue unless it is something that really makes people angry); winnable (for
example, job losses are an issue that people feel deeply about, but it is generally not a
good issue for an organising campaign) and visible (workers must be aware of what has
been achieved through the union). Effective one to one communication is taught, and a
lot of emphasis is placed on asking questions so campaign issues can be identified (‘so
what is it like to work here?’).
The period prior to negotiating a collective agreement may offer opportunities for
mobilising workers. However, organising campaigns need not be limited to periods of
collective bargaining.
Since organising campaigns largely rely on lay activists, leaders who can run the
campaign at the workplace have to be identified. Leaders need not be the workers with
the biggest mouth; they are the persons who are trusted by their colleagues. One to
one conversations are used to get potential leaders involved. In the SEIU approach,
such conversations are highly scripted and may involve mild psychological pressure
(‘But you just said that it is unacceptable how they treat you. So what are you going to
do about it?’). Potential leaders will be tested by giving them small tasks, for example to
contact a colleague about the campaign, and seeing whether they can be relied upon
to do as they have promised. Groups of leaders will make up organising committees,
which are to become more or less self-supporting.
An important task of the organising committee will be to collect detailed information
about the workplace. Mapping is a continuous process that helps to identify
opportunities and leverage points for campaigns. The information to be collected
includes who works at the company, what kind of work they do, where they meet, how
they feel about their work and about the union, who are potential activists, etcetera.81
Organising is of course not an end in itself, but a means to build power and obtain
results from employers. One way of putting pressure on employers is the strike, but
other instruments are used as well, often in combination (§ 4.8).
Innovative trade union strategies 45
An issue that unions have not yet completely resolved is how to maintain workplace
organisation after or in between organising campaigns. Some think more or less
permanent campaigning is the answer, others prefer setting up structures such as
union learning centres (§ 5.12).
4.8 Corporate campaigns
While corporate campaigns may require substantial means and perseverance, they can
be an effective means to take on powerful opponents. According to the Troublemaker’s
Handbook, requirements for success include a focus on solidarity issues; mobilising
members; research to identify targets; coalitions with community organisations and
creative and daring actions.82
It is important to understand the company, the sector in which it operates, and the
network of investors, suppliers and customers. It is also important to know in what
ways the company is subject to government regulations and whether there are options
for legal action against the company. Further, foreign subsidiaries and relations should
be included in this analysis. All this information helps to understand the company’s
weak spots, which may provide the union with leverage. For this reason, the AFL-CIO
and many American unions have created strategic research departments.83
The SEIU invests heavily in training its staff, and it has contracted with the American
Management Institute to provide it. It may seem odd to have the ‘opponent’ train your
staff, but the idea behind it is that a union must learn to look at a sector from a business
perspective. Of SEIU staff, it has been said that the Harvard Business Review was
probably their single most important source of information.84
Besides conducting research, a position of power must be built. This approach has been
summarised as follows: “we issued reports that documented the disparity between the
lives of the workers and the CEOs who managed the companies where they worked.
We publicized company failures to meet product- or worker-safety regulations. We
talked with members of the companies’ boards of directors. We submitted
shareholders’ resolutions and mobilized community supporters. We asked elected
leaders to intervene. And, of course, we also used effective old-school tactics: We
demonstrated, picketed, and led strikes when necessary”.85
The SEIU has developed a systematic approach to campaign design. Elements include
 46 Innovative trade union strategies
making conscious decisions regarding goals, targets, strategic approaches, tactics,
timelines and work plans; identifying who potential settlers are (the persons at the
negotiating table need not be the ones who make the decisions), what their interests
are, and what will move them; identifying who the audiences are; and escalating the
conflict step by step to increase pressure on the target.
In order to be able to create pressure, a ‘power web’ analysis must be made of the
target and its relations with the outer world. Such an analysis can help to identify
multiple points of leverage that may be used to get the target to move. The analysis
should consider in what ways the target depends on:
• Financiers/investors
• Owners
• Suppliers
• Media
• Other business interests
• Workers
• Customers / clients
• Government / regulatory agencies
• The community
Examples of corporate campaigns include the Justice for Janitors campaign (§ 5.1) and
the Steelworkers’ campaign (§ 5.7). Elements of this approach are beginning to be used
in Europe as well. In Norway, the Hotell og Restaurantarbeiderforbundet managed to
organise a number of companies through a combination of pickets, publicity, strikes
and boycott threats by other unions. In France, cleaners and activists targeted the Accor
hotel chain with a campaign involving an eleven month strike, protests at a
shareholders’ meeting and handing out protest cards in the lobby of a number of
expensive hotels. Among other things, they got the company to pay cleaners by the
hour rather than by the room, which is important from a perspective of work
pressure.86
In Sweden, the commercial workers’ union Handels successfully forced the Toys ‘R’ Us
company to sign its first collective agreement anywhere, after it had opened
megastores in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö in 1994. Handels had little
experience with this type of industrial conflict, but the Transport Workers Union
advised a strategy of gradual escalation. Handels launched a strike and called for a
consumer boycott. Sympathetic unions targeted the company by refusing to make
store deliveries, to repair their buildings, to provide financial services and finally to
Innovative trade union strategies 47
accept press advertisements. Eventually, an international union body endorsed an
international boycott and the value of the company’s shares dropped.
Toys ‘R’ Us tried to depict Handels as a third party that interfered with other people out
of organisational interests, but this approach failed. Handels’ campaign found
resonance with the general public, partly because of a concern about the presumed
loss of ‘Swedish values’ as a result of joining the EU. Toys ‘R’ Us was further at a
disadvantage because it had failed to study Swedish labour relations. Senior managers
had little idea of how a collective agreement might work. The personnel handbook
gave managers considerable power to change labour conditions as they saw fit, while
limiting employees’ right of free speech and requiring them to inform on colleagues,
who could be fired on the basis of a mere suspicion of theft (in contravention of
Swedish labour law). The company’s lawyers had translated the personnel handbook,
but had not bothered to adapt it to Swedish law and culture. Also, they had not
anticipated solidarity strikes, because these are illegal in the USA.87
4.9 Local initiatives
Until the 1930s, trade unions in many countries had a strong presence at the local level.
Since that time, many unions have more or less neglected the local level, but recently
there has been a renewed interest in local trade union initiatives. For example, the
American AFL-CIO set up the Union Cities programme to revive local labour councils (§
5.5). The French autonomous Union Syndicale Solidaires (§ 5.10) has decided to create
local branches in which different sectors are represented and to make funds available
for these branches.
In Norway, the confederation has gained success with local centres that support unions
and engage in joint political campaigns. In Germany, several unions merged into IG
BCE. The miners’ union contributed a strong local structure at places where members
live. This local structure proved valuable as a means to remain in touch with members
who change jobs more and more frequently.
The Dutch FNV is in the process of creating one hundred local groups of activists who
are to form coalitions and influence municipal policies. An effort is made to include
women, young people and ethnic minorities in these teams. One of the instruments to
influence local government policies is the bi-annual FNV Local Work and Income
Monitor, which compares the social policies of over two hundred municipalities. The
 48 Innovative trade union strategies
report always yields considerable publicity and city councils use the outcomes to debate
social policies with the administration. Past evaluations have shown the monitor to be
an effective instrument to influence municipal policies, especially if local activists are
persistent and form coalitions.88
Coalition research in North America and Australia suggests that coalitions are most
powerful if they can operate simultaneously at the local level and at the state or
national levels. Local organisation is effective for political influence as well as for
sustaining and building member engagement.89 A combination of top-down and
bottom-up approaches is required because unions need to deal with increasingly
diverse small workplaces, but also with large multinational corporations. “The key,
therefore, seems to be the ability to develop campaigns and structures which provide
sufficient flexibility to incorporate local specificity, yet which also provide enough
collective mass and centralized coordination as to allow workers to stand up to their
employers”.90
Developments at the workplace are indeed one of the reasons for the renewed interest
in local structures among trade unions. Flexible contracts and outsourcing cause
workers to be increasingly scattered over a multitude of small workplaces. Workers
frequently change jobs, often moving from one sector to another. These developments
make it increasingly difficult for unions to organise workers at the workplace. This
explains why some unions not only try to organise at the workplace, but also in the
neighbourhoods where workers live (often this approach is referred to as community
unionism).
An additional reason for local trade union structures is the fact that many governments
decentralise responsibilities to the local level.91 An example is the Dutch government,
which has in 2004 transferred responsibility for social assistance and labour market
policies to the municipalities, and is currently decentralising home care and social
welfare.
Important instances of trade union revitalisation can be found at the local level. In
America, coalitions of trade unions and other organisations have launched successful
living wage campaigns (§ 5.3). In over one hundred cities, worker centres have been set
up that support groups of workers who are difficult to organise; similar initiatives can
be found in Europe as well (§ 5.8). In some cities, unions wage campaigns for worker-
friendly economic policies, sometimes in coalitions with renters’ organisations (§ 4.12).
Local branches are involved in political campaigns (§ 4.13) and some have created their
Innovative trade union strategies 49
own research institutes (§ 4.14). The Labour Studies Centre at Wayne State University
has created a website containing valuable case studies of local trade union innovations
in America.92
Many local initiatives try to create coalitions of different unions. There are several
reasons to do so. As was just mentioned, flex workers frequently change sectors,
making it important to have trade union initiatives that bridge these sectors. On the
other hand, the issues involved often require joint initiatives. Whether it regards living
wage campaigns or negotiations on local economic policies, different sectors are
involved and there would be no sense in unions acting on their own. This does not
mean that local inter-union collaboration is always easy; often unions have their own
agendas. On the other hand, successful initiatives often involve a joint union strategy at
the local level, as for instance in Los Angeles.93
4.10 Local economic policies
In Europe, all kinds of local or regional bodies have been created to stimulate the
economy. Many of these initiatives aim to create new jobs in regions that suffer job
losses because traditional manufacturing sectors are disappearing. Programmes are
often subsidised by the EU and national governments. They can be rather substantial,
for example, a programme in Dortmund has been awarded over 50 million euro for the
next ten years, and 70 to 100 people are involved in the execution of the programme.
The aim is to create 70,000 new jobs.94
Not much is known about the effects of this type of programmes. There are positive
evaluations, but the criteria are sometimes rather misguided. For example, the EU
proclaimed a number of Italian programmes to be successful because they had
succeeded in spending the money quickly and in a correct manner.95 By now, there are
more and more independent evaluations, which are sometimes critical of how the
programme operates.
The reason to involve social partners and sometimes other social organisations in the
programmes is that they are supposed to be knowledgeable of what goes on in the
local community. Critics say this view amounts to ‘community fetishism’. For example,
various German programmes are very similar: they all aim to create some sort of Silicon
Valley, regardless of specific local circumstances. A partial explanation for this
uniformity is that all programmes used the same consultancy firm, McKinsey. Another
 50 Innovative trade union strategies
reason why local needs often play a secondary role is that programmes are often
designed according to the preferences of the funding agency.96
Meanwhile, democratic procedures and transparency are not always what they should
be. Often, the initiative is in the hands of a small group of ‘social entrepreneurs’ who
know each other well and who know where funding is to be found. Among them, they
take all the important decisions, without consulting the people they are supposed to
represent.97
A study of large-scale urban economic development programmes found a conspicuous
feature to be the ‘relatively low resistance and conflict they raise’. This was thought to
be a result of “the establishment of (quasi) non-governmental and non-accountable
institutions, the formation of ‘stake-holder’ interest networks, and the emergence of
compensating – but unfortunately often low budget – social economy measures”. Key
players in such networks are “Chambers of Commerce, associations of leading
economic groups, real estate developers, pension and other large fund holders, and/or
large international businesses”. These urban development programmes drain public
resources from programmes that benefit all citizens.98
While the programmes seem to be lacking in transparency, another question is what
results they yield for trade unions. Unions often cope with membership decline in the
regions where the programmes are carried out. Jobs are disappearing in sectors where
unions have a strong position, are disappearing. In its place, service jobs are created,
which are more difficult to organise. In Germany, there are ideas about how unions
might gain a position in these sectors, but these fail to be realised because service
sector union Ver.di is not involved in the regional economic programmes.99
Another issue is that the trade union movement has failed to properly analyse its own
position in the regional collaborations. The involvement in national social pacts has an
economic logic to it: unions offer wage restraint in exchange for jobs. At the local or
regional level, it is unclear what unions have to offer. The general impression is that
unions and other social organisations get to participate in discussions but have no real
influence.100
To the extent that European unions have insufficiently thought about how they can
built a position of power to influence the local and regional economy, they can learn
from their American colleagues. Of American union locals it has been said that they
traditionally “focused on banquets, golf outings, breakfasts with local business leaders,
Innovative trade union strategies 51
and photo opportunities with politicians collecting a campaign check”, but in some
cities this has radically changed.101 The way in which unions operate in these cities
differs from European collaborations in that the union movement has created a
position of power for itself. They have done so partly through public campaigns, thus
solving the problem of the lack of transparency as well.
Unions have built local power through protests, coalitions with community
organisations, research, and political campaigns. They use their power to get living
wage ordinances passed, forcing companies using government funds to pay decent
wages (§ 5.3), and to regulate minimum wages and conditions and standards for retail
workers, including Wal-Mart (§ 5.2). In Maryland, unions succeeded in having twenty
percent of the budget surplus invested in a fund to be used for job creation and training
in times of economic downturn. In a number of cities, unions have campaigned
successfully for community benefits agreements (§ 5.4).
4.11 International
One reason for unions to operate internationally is that the companies that they have
to deal with often also have an international orientation. Unions in Europe find that it is
difficult to get such companies to take responsibility for their role in the local and
regional economy. In America, recognition campaigns have a lower success rate in
companies that are active in more than one country. This is especially the case with
multinationals that have their headquarters abroad. In such companies, unions win
29% of their campaigns, as opposed to 46% in other companies.102
Until recently, international collaboration among unions used to consist mainly of
supporting trade unions in non-Western countries. However, this situation seems to be
changing. Increasingly, unions are aware of the importance of international trade
unionism in an environment of globalisation of capital, not just out of solidarity with
workers in other countries, but also as a strategic necessity.
Sometimes in coalitions with the globalisation movement, unions try to get social
standards included in international trade agreements. An important milestone of this
approach was the involvement of the trade union movement in the anti-WTO protests
in Seattle, in 1999.
According to some critics, trade unions pretend to stand up for workers in the South,
 52 Innovative trade union strategies
but are actually motivated by protectionism. By forcing foreign producers to pay higher
wages, they would deny third world countries access to the international market. The
real objective would be to protect jobs in the West, at the expense of the South.103
However, this argument does not apply to the core labour standards, as agreed upon in
the ILO and ratified by many countries. These standards guarantee the freedom to
organise and to create unions, and prohibit forced labour, discrimination and child
labour. They do not impose wage levels on countries that accept the standards, but
they do give workers instruments to negotiate their labour conditions. Among trade
unionists, both in the West and in the South, there is overwhelming support for using
international trade agreements to force countries to abide by these core labour
standards.104
A country that is of increasing strategic interest to the trade union movement is China.
The huge supply of low-paid workers, who have virtually no right to organise, is seen as
a serious threat to the negotiating position of workers in Western countries. However,
there are some indications that Chinese labour relations are changing, presumably
because the government is concerned that the widening income gap may lead to social
unrest.
For example, the government forced Wal-Mart to accept unions in its Chinese outlets –
which is at odds with everything the company stands for (§ 5.2). At present, China is
preparing new legislation that would improve workers’ rights, for example by making it
more difficult to lay off workers. While it is unclear how effectively such legislation
could be implemented, the fierce opposition from corporate lobby groups such as the
American Chamber of Commerce and companies including Philips China suggests they
take the new law very seriously.105
Unions in the West have always refused to recognise the All China Federation of Trade
Unions (ACFTU), because it is not an independent union, but controlled by the state.
However, union leaders increasingly acknowledge the strategic necessity of having
some kind of collaboration with workers in China. Unions from Germany, Norway, the
USA and the Netherlands have visited the country.106
There is a growing tendency of unions trying to forge international coalitions, even
though this is often not easy. For example, changing ownership structures make it
difficult to create solidarity among workers who are employed by the same company in
different countries. The sale of a subsidiary may mean that workers stop being
Innovative trade union strategies 53
colleagues overnight. Under such circumstances, solidarity often remains limited to
symbolic support.107
Nevertheless, there are examples of successful campaigns that mobilise workers in
different countries. An example are the international corporate campaigns, such as
those of the American steelworkers, who enlisted the support of unions in other
countries to be able to exert pressure on the financiers of their employer (§ 5.7).
A first step towards international collaboration is the exchange of information. Dutch
union FNV Bondgenoten sponsors the Company Monitor, an international research
project into the treatment of workers by subsidiaries of multinational corporations ABN
AMRO, Ahold, Akzo Nobel, Heineken, Philips and Unilever. The research is carried out
in collaboration with local unions.108
At its 2004 Convention, the SEIU launched its strategy to form sustained, international
coalitions in the service sector, building on previous campaigns with British and Danish
unions against firms such as Group 4 Securicor and FirstGroup. The strategy involves
dedicated partnerships with hand-picked unions, most notably T&G in Britain and
LHMU in Australia. Exploratory visits are made to other countries in order to select
unions that can be worked with on the basis of common purpose.
In order to build strong ties with partner unions, SEIU employs local union officials who
act as bridge builders between the SEIU and the local partner unions. It invests
significant resources in regional offices and organisers in Australia, Britain, South
Africa, India and Poland. In addition, membership and leadership exchanges are
organised, in order to connect campaigns to the rank and file.
Through the international services union UNI, SEIU has set up an international initiative
to organise cleaners and security staff. SEIU has invested several million dollars in
organising campaigns that target international food-service, cleaning and security
employers, and has assigned staff to Australia, Poland, Britain, India, France,
Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, South America, and South Africa. Following
the example of the SEIU’s Justice for Janitors campaign (§ 5.1), T&G has launched a
Justice for Cleaners campaign, and LHMU a Clean Start campaign.
The partnerships that grew out of the UNI initiative have helped mobilise international
support for striking cleaners in Houston. Plans are being considered to set up a similar
project in the catering industry in collaboration with the IUF.
 54 Innovative trade union strategies
The IUF itself has launched a global organising campaign, targeting specifically Nestlé
and Coca Cola workers. An office in Moscow provides training seminars to local trade
unionists at plant, district and national levels. The training programmes intend to help
them organise and develop union structures. While IUF-affiliated unions had no
members in the region in 1997, there were over 30,000 by 2003 and 45,000 by 2005.
However, unions in the region still depend on foreign assistance and they are not
expected to become financially self-sustaining in the foreseeable future.
Besides IUF and UNI, other global unions have initiatives to cope with international
production structures as well.
International coalition always has its challenges, as it requires a mutuality of interest
from unions in different countries. Mutuality may include a shared commitment to
organise, or a shared commitment to building industry power. For the future, SEIU-
president Andy Stern is contemplating new forms of international collaboration. For
example, rich unions might pay strike benefits to low-wage colleagues in countries with
poor unions. Also, strikes might be ‘outsourced’ to countries where strikes are legal and
will not provoke government retaliation.109
According to a report in The Times, British and American unions are planning to merge
into an international union. Unite, a British two million member union to be formed
from a merger of Amicus and T&G, is preparing for talks with the United Steelworkers
of America (1.2 million members) about such a move. Amicus and T&G already
collaborate with the SEIU, German union IG Metall and Polish union Solidarnosc.110
Workers in the West fear that international competition might cause them to lose their
jobs. One way of helping workers cope with globalisation is to offer them opportunities
to develop their skills. This is done for example through a successful union learning
project (§ 5.12) in the British banking sector. “Individuals and groups see themselves as
passive recipients of social and industrial change, see themselves as unable to resist
‘globalisation’, do not think that their voices are heard. This feeling of powerlessness is
reinforced when the union is seen as the ‘insurance policy’ that is called upon when
things get tough, a force external to the workplace. Learning is in, of and from the
workplace”, a spokesperson said.111
More in general, workers may benefit from dealing with outsourcing initiatives in a
proactive way. UNI has developed a handbook that helps workers and unions anticipate
outsourcing plans, collect information and develop a strategy.112
Innovative trade union strategies 55
Multinational corporations sometimes try to impose American labour relations on
workers at their European subsidiaries, but these attempts are not always successful.
For example, Toys ‘R’ Us was forced to sign a collective agreement with the Handels
union (§ 4.8). Wal-Mart pulled out of Germany, where it had problems coping with
strong unions.113
The trade union movement has had a rather strong institutional position in Europe.
However, changing circumstances force the European Trade Union Confederation
(ETUC) to reconsider its strategies. New activities include the coordination of protests
against the services directive. It has been argued that these protests may mark a new
phase for the European trade union movement, the traditionally strong institutional
position being replaced to some extent by a need to build power as well as fight a
battle of ideas.114
Another indication of a changing role of the European trade union movement may be
ETUC’s intention to discuss organising and trade union innovation at its 2007 Congress.
General Secretary John Monks commented: “The ETUC is working with its European
member unions to build a new strategy. It is unlikely that we will go to the lengths of
some of the Americans and see organising as practically the only union strategy for
growth. But that will clearly be an important part of our broader strategy”.115
4.12 Coalitions
In the spring of 2004, Wal-Mart spent over a million dollar on a campaign to get
residents of the Californian city of Inglewood to vote for a proposition that would
exempt the company of all kinds of regulations. Because Wal-Mart has a poor
reputation as an employer (§ 5.2), the local AFL-CIO spent 110,000 dollar on a counter-
campaign. Even though Wal-Mart thus spent almost ten times as much on its campaign
as the labour council, sixty percent of voters voted against the retailer.116
This kind of ‘David and Goliath’ victories are not uncommon. Repeatedly, the American
trade union movement has achieved success despite its opponents having much deeper
pockets. A good example are the local living wage campaigns (§ 5.3). Such successes
are to a large extent due to coalitions with clergy, immigrants’ organisations,
neighbourhood associations and other community organisations.
It should be noted that some of the most powerful coalitions address not only issues of
 56 Innovative trade union strategies
union concern, but concerns that are in the mutual interests of both unions and
community organisations. Unions should also be aware that coalitions come in various
shapes and sizes, from ad hoc coalitions with community organisations around
particular events to deep, long term coalitions around shared interests and values. It is
important to recognise that coalitions vary, and ad hoc coalitions may be particularly
useful in reacting to a harsh employer or political attack, whereas deeper coalitions may
be more useful for building longer term proactive agendas. A framework of union-
community coalitions developed by Amanda Tattersall has been reproduced as an
appendix to the present report.
The fact that collaboration increases trade union power is an important motive, but
there are also other reasons to form coalitions. By working with community
organisations, unions show that they are not just defending narrow self-interests, but
fighting for social justice. Collaboration can further be a means to get in touch with
young people and ethnic minorities. Since coalitions can increase union power, they will
often be used in situations in which workers have a weak position, or the opponent is
very strong. Examples include campaigns for workers at the lower end of the labour
market, and campaigns targeting multinational corporations.
Collaboration between trade unions and community organisations can sometimes be
difficult. Community organisations sometimes feel that they are being used by unions.
For example, clergy stress that unions should not have a ‘rent-a-collar’ attitude. Unions
sometimes doubt whether community organisations can deliver on their promises.
Generally, it takes time to build mutual trust and it takes respectful relations to
negotiate coalitions that operate in the interests of both community organisations and
unions.117
Public sector unions sometimes form coalitions with users of public services to stop
privatisation, as for example in Britain in the 1980s. Such coalitions are not always easy
to sustain. Users are not always organised, which can make it difficult to reach them.
Also, they may be critical of public service employees if the quality of the services has
deteriorated, for example as a result of budget cuts. Social work in London faced this
problem, when clients wanted nothing to do with employees because they were
dissatisfied with the institution.118 On the other hand, public service workers may face
abuse from clients or clients’ families, which may in itself be an important organising
issue, although this does not necessarily rule out the option of simultaneously forging
coalitions with service users.119
Innovative trade union strategies 57
One of the advantages of human service work is that the work has to be performed
locally. Childcare workers, cleaners, homecare and most public services cannot be ‘off-
shored’. Because this work is fixed to the local area, coalitions with consumers and
other community organisations provide unions with an advantage against employers –
because they can build public support for unions and community demands in the same
space in which capital is fixed.120
Success has been achieved with campaigns against the privatisation of council housing,
in which public sector union Unison collaborates with local Defend Council Housing
groups. Unison has an interest in retaining decent jobs, while renters’ associations are
concerned about the disappearance of affordable housing. Often, renters are
blackmailed by the government, which says that overdue house maintenance will not
be carried out unless renters approve privatisation. In a number of cities, coalitions have
succeeded in blocking privatisation, and in this the support of the trade union
movement has proved crucial.121
Coalitions can be a way to counter the image that unions only pursue narrow self-
interests. For example, it would have been a ‘completely mistaken strategy’ to frame a
conflict between the Austrian government and railway staff as being about acquired
rights. Instead, an alliance with railway clients was formed, making it a fight against a
‘neoliberal and politically motivated’ attack on the railway service. In order to involve
local communities, the national slogan ‘Austria needs the railway service’ was joined by
local variants such as ‘Linz needs the railway service’.122
Effective coalitions require constant negotiation and a balancing of concerns between
what is held in common between the groups, and the individual interests that unions or
community organisations hold autonomously. An interesting example is a campaign
initiated by the Australian Teachers’ union NSWTF in collaboration with parents’
organisations, to stop public education budget cuts (see also § 4.14). The campaign
was primarily about maintaining the quality of public education, focussing on issues
such as reducing class sizes, improving school maintenance, supporting quality
teachers and professional development. However, union members wanted higher
salaries to be included in the demands, something the parents’ organisation opposed
because it feared that this would overshadow other issues. A compromise was reached
by calling for ‘the development of strategies to attract and retain teachers in an era of
teachers’ shortage’.
However, the government played the coalition partners against each other by offering a
 58 Innovative trade union strategies
6% wage increase, which narrowed the teachers’ focus to the wage issue rather than
public education more broadly. This was one of the reasons why the coalition with
parents’ organisations all but fell apart. However, when the government threatened to
pay the wage increase out of the general education budget, it shifted the issue back
from a wage issue to a general education issue. In order to protect the education
budget, unions and parents worked together, with parents taking the unprecedented
step of supporting strike action by the NSWTF. As one newspaper commented, “this is
not the usual fight by teachers over money; this has become a fight for the survival of a
valued and quality public education system”. Eventually, the union won a 12.5% wage
increase that was not paid out of the general education budget.123
Another potential union ally are organisations of health care users. In America, the
handicapped and the elderly can employ home care paid by the government. The user
of the service is at the same time acting as an employer. Caregivers, often immigrants,
are hard to organise. They work in isolation and turnover is high. In addition, going on
strike is not an option, because this would directly affect the elderly and the
handicapped. In California, the SEIU aimed to form coalitions with organisations of
health care recipients. Through intensive personal contacts with the leaders of these
organisations, it managed to build trust. After a campaign lasting for ten years, SEIU
managed to organise almost 150,000 home care givers.124
Similarly, health care coalitions have been a strong example of union and community
organisation in Canada, with the Ontario Health Coalition operating for over 15 years
in defence of public health care and against privatisation. Coalition work has been
most successful against hospital privatisation, where the direct interests of hospital
workers (to protect wages and conditions) match with the interests of the general
public who want to protect the standards of their local hospitals.125
In the Netherlands, the provision of home care is being decentralised to municipalities,
which are now outsourcing these services, sometimes to cleaning companies that are
cheaper than professional providers of home care. Existing coalitions of unions,
organisations of the elderly and organisations of health care recipients are being used
to put pressure on local governments to set higher quality standards for companies that
will provide home care.
When trying to form coalitions, it is important to be creative in finding approaches that
underline common interests. This certainly applies to issues like the environment,
where the interests of trade unions and environmental organisations sometimes clash.
Innovative trade union strategies 59
Besides, there may also be cultural and class differences; for example, members of
environmental organisations tend to be higher educated than trade union members.126
Despite these differences, it is sometimes possible to form coalitions on the basis of
shared interests. For example, an American union suggested creating a fund to provide
training to workers who would lose their jobs as a consequence of environmental
policies. The idea behind this is that the entire society benefits from a cleaner
environment and that therefore the costs should not be borne exclusively by workers
who are employed in a sector that is not environmentally friendly. Also, in a number of
cities there are coalitions that promote environmentally friendly project development
that should simultaneously yield decent jobs and affordable houses (§ 5.4).127
An even more daring attempt at coalition building is made by the SEIU on Fisher Island,
Florida, ‘one of the most concentrated pockets of wealth in the nation’. The union
deliberately launched a campaign to organise low wage service workers here, because
it is a ‘microcosm of the nation’s increasing social and economic divide’. With the help
of the clergy, the SEIU is trying to engage some wealthy employers in its campaign,
hoping they will be moved by the ‘contrast between their affluence and the meager
existence of many of their workers’.128
Coalitions require organisations that have an eye for social issues. An interesting
example is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN),
which organises low and moderate income families. The organisation, with 220,000
members, campaigns for living wages, for affordable houses, against cuts in education
and against ‘predatory lending’ (loans with unfavourable conditions that are forced on
people through aggressive marketing). In many campaigns, ACORN works with trade
unions. ACORN is different from many other organisations in that it is largely
independent from external funding. Eighty percent of its income is from members and
activities such as lotteries.129
Another important trade union ally is Jobs with Justice (JwJ), an organisation with
branches in forty cities. Both organisations and individual persons are affiliated to these
branches. Activists are asked to commit to participate in actions at least five times per
year. JwJ often supports trade union actions, such as strikes, but also supports workers
who are not members of unions. In cities such as Denver, JwJ helped revitalise the local
trade union movement. Initially, some within the union movement were critical of JwJ,
because it was seen as a competitor, but now the AFL-CIO supports the organisation.
JwJ often uses Workers Rights Boards, made up of prominent citizens, which organise
 60 Innovative trade union strategies
public hearings on issues involving workers’ rights. This method is often more effective
than legal protection of workers’ rights, because the government is not enforcing these
rights effectively.130
At the international level, some 200 NGOs, unions and social movement organisations
are members of the informal Our World is Not For Sale (OWINFS) network. This network
focuses on issues such as privatisation, outsourcing, structural adjustment, public
sector cut-backs, trade issues emanating from the WTO, etcetera. The experience of
Public Services International (PSI) is that collaboration has made other organisations
more aware of issues such as workers’ rights and trade union rights. “Initially, we often
had to bring up these concerns in any draft statement that the OWINFS was crafting
but, nowadays, such language is routinely inserted by whoever is writing the first
draft”.131
The AFL-CIO has in 2003 created Working America, a ‘community affiliate’ that aims to
organise people who do not work at unionised workplaces. Membership is free. By
going door to door, organisers have recruited some 1.5 million members. Working
America seems to have had a considerable impact on voter turnout in the 2006
Midterm Elections (§ 4.13).
4.13 Politics
Traditionally, many European trade unions used to have close ties to the Social-
Democrats. For example, the British trade union movement still makes important
financial contributions to the Labour party. In France and Southern Europe,
confederations with a communist background exist as well. Almost everywhere,
confederations have distanced themselves from the political parties that they used to
be allied with, and they now are involved with a broader political spectrum.
In Spain, for example, the Social-Democrat Prime Minister González failed to conclude
a social pact, something his successor Aznar of the right-wing Partido Popular did
manage. More recently, the French CFDT refused to join the CGT in protests against the
privatisation of Gas de France. With presidential elections coming up, it was afraid to
get mixed up in party politics. In Britain, Labour Party funding from unions declined
from 66% in 1992 to 33% in 2001. Unions now spend more money on independent
political campaigns. These campaigns often target Labour policies, such as the
privatisation of public services.132
Innovative trade union strategies 61
When the trade union movement tries to influence political decision-making, this
usually takes the form of lobbying and negotiating social pacts. In addition, political
actions sometimes occur. Sometimes these take on the form of strikes, but in countries
such as Germany and Britain, political strikes are illegal. The trade union movement
tends to be careful when it regards involvement in election campaigns, although the
German trade union movement did wage a campaign in 1998 that helped the SPD and
the Green Party secure a victory.
The American trade union movement has much more aggressive election campaigns.
The fact that Al Gore in 2000 received more votes than George Bush was partly due to
an intensive grassroots campaign of the AFL-CIO and affiliated unions. In 2004, the
trade union movement spent 150 million dollar on an even larger campaign. Unions
and organisations such as ACORN mobilised 40,000 volunteers, who staffed phone
banks, made house calls, handed out leaflets and assisted with voter registration.
The fact that Bush still won the elections can be explained in part by the fact that the
Democrats had neglected socio-economic issues, in spite of the fact that there was
broad support among voters for issues such as raising the minimum wage (§ 5.3). In
addition, the Republicans had a much larger campaign budget, thanks to corporate
contributions from companies such as Wal-Mart (the largest corporate contributor to
political candidates’ campaign funds). Having learned the lesson of the 2000
campaign, they did not rely exclusively on television ads, but placed a strong emphasis
on personal contact with potential voters. They used the infrastructure of the
conservative churches and the Chambers of Commerce, while the National Rifle
Association (NRA) helped them reach voters at gun clubs.
Despite the recent split in the trade union movement (§ 3.2), unions and community
organisations again launched a large campaign for the 2006 Midterm Elections. It is
generally acknowledged that this campaign has been instrumental in the Democrats’
victory. This time, propositions to raise the minimum wage were successfully put to the
vote in six strategically important states, which had an important effect on turnout
among low-income voters.
In comparison with past campaigns, unions tried to reach beyond their urban
strongholds, for example by targeting suburbs. Of considerable importance is Working
America, an AFL-CIO ‘community affiliate’ (§ 4.12) with some 1.5 million members,
which seems to have had a substantial effect on turnout. In a poll commissioned by the
AFL-CIO, eighty percent of Working America members who did not vote in 2002 said
 62 Innovative trade union strategies
they did vote in 2006. The same poll suggests that Working America effectively reaches
traditional Republican voters: one-third are born again Christians and one-third are
supporters of the National Rifle Association.
Now that the union movement has helped the Democrats win the elections, it wants
them to deliver on union issues. High on the agenda are a raise of the federal minimum
wage, access to health care and tougher legislation to stop employers obstructing
union campaigns.133
At least as important as national election campaigns are the local activities of the
American trade union movement. Unions judge political candidates by their position on
important issues, on the basis of which they may or may not be endorsed. Through
massive grassroots mobilisation, coalitions of trade unions and community
organisations can effectively take on opponents who have much larger campaign funds
thanks to corporate gifts. Some central labour councils go even further, engaging in the
recruitment and training of political candidates. For example, a trade union institute in
San José claims that half the council members have received training from it.134
Unions seem to become more critical when it regards giving their support to political
candidates, because they feel tehy have been let down at times by candidates they had
helped get elected. For example, the labour council in Seattle tries to get more specific
promises from political candidates, subjects them to interviews by rank and file
members, and has developed a scorecard system to hold them accountable when
elected. Reportedly, this departure from the traditional approach to political deal
making has made some politicians nervous.135 In Baltimore, the trade union movement
and ACORN forced a council vote on a living wage proposal. They realised that the
proposal would be defeated, but council members were forced to take a position.
Subsequently, trade unions and ACORN campaigned against the candidates who had
voted against the proposal.136
At the national level, the SEIU asked candidates for the 2004 presidential elections to
visit local branches and to meet for an hour with regular union members, to see “if they
could hang out comfortably” with these workers. Only Howard Dean accepted this
procedure, thus gaining SEIU endorsement. Members wearing SEIU t-shirts visited
political meetings to ask candidates where they stood on health care. “Candidates,
accustomed to seeing purple-clad SEIU members at their events, would answer our
members’ health care questions before they were even asked”. The SEIU has further set
up an organisation ‘They work for us’ to monitor whether elected politicians deliver on
Innovative trade union strategies 63
their promises to raise the minimum wage, improve health care, and to restore workers’
right to organise. If they fail to do so, “we’ll unelect them”.137
In the UK, the London Citizens coalition (§ 5.13) regularly organises meetings, typically
attended by around 500 members of affiliated organisations, in order to hold
politicians accountable. These politicians are presented with a ‘people’s agenda’, a
short list of concrete demands set by the members, and asked to say yes or no to them.
The large attendance makes it difficult for politicians to turn down the demands,
especially since the attendees tend to be politically involved citizens, who are likely to
vote. If politicians say yes to the demands, it will be monitored whether they actually
deliver. For example, London Citizens has been holding regular meetings with Mayor
Ken Livingstone after his 2004 re-election, in order to hold him to the commitments he
had made prior to the elections.138
In a number of countries, trade unions are involved in campaigns to stop or turn back
legislation that undermines workers’ and trade union rights. An example is Australia,
where 300,000 people participated in protests across the country on 30 November
2006. Earlier actions included a ‘Has your MP been naughty or nice?’ Christmas card
campaign; a campaign that got over 5,000 people to make an official submission to a
Senate Enquiry; and a campaign encouraging supporters to send 500 letters to local,
state and national newspapers, 50 being published the day after. The ACTU
confederation is now preparing a campaign for the 2007 election. The campaign will
involve setting up local groups and organising workplace discussions.139
Unions have a positive effect on political participation. In America, many studies have
found that union members are more likely to vote than other citizens. A recent
European study confirmed this, but also found indications of an indirect effect. Even
employees who are not members of unions themselves are significantly more likely to
vote if they work in a partly unionised firm than those in firms without a union
presence. The researchers suggest that creating an institutional context that facilitates
high levels of union density may be an effective means to improve political
participation.140
 64 Innovative trade union strategies
4.14 Think tanks and research
In America, there is a strong tradition of think tanks that feed public debate with
research and ideas. Both the left and the right are involved, but conservatives clearly
have the upper hand when it regards the development of ideas. Half of the think tank
experts quoted by the media are from conservative think tanks, while only sixteen
percent are from progressive think tanks. Major conservative think tanks outspend their
progressive counterparts by four to one.141
Although the right thus clearly has the upper hand when it regards the formation of
public opinion, there have been initiatives to counter this. An interesting example
regards campaigns to attach social conditions to government support for private
companies. Reflecting the right-wing criticism of ‘big government’, these campaigns
criticise ‘big corporations’. While right-wing ideologists insist that welfare creates
dependency, left-wing activists coined the expression ‘corporate welfare’ to draw
attention to corporate subsidies. In Chicago, ‘tours of shame’ were organised to
companies that pay poverty wages while receiving government support.142
It is important to recognise that there are broadly two ‘think tank’ strategies in
America. One is where progressive institutions have ‘in house’ researchers (for instance,
many US unions have an internal research team), and the second is where progressive
institutions build partnership relationships with public institutions (such as the Centre
on Wisconson Strategy, an organisation inside a university but acting with community
partners).
In the San José area, the trade union movement has created the Working Partnerships
institute, which receives support from charitable foundations and has a two million
dollar budget. Working Partnerships has built a reputation by publishing reliable
reports that have had an impact on public debate. For example, a number of studies
have been done into the growing divide between rich and poor in Sillicon Valley and
the rising number of poverty jobs. These studies helped create support for a living wage
ordinance (§ 5.3). Working Partnerships also did a study of the likely economic impact
of such an ordinance.
The institute further published a report that laid the groundwork for a campaign that
resulted in a decision that at least 5,000 affordable houses should be built at a newly
developed location. It also laid the foundation for a public health insurance for all
children of low income parents (including those who are undocumented). Meanwhile,
Innovative trade union strategies 65
labour councils in cities including Los Angeles, New York, Connecticut, Denver, Seattle
and Cleveland have created similar research institutes. The Economic Policy Institute
has provided technical support to new local think tanks.143
In Denver, the Front-Range Economic Strategy Centre (FRESC) worked with a group of
Asian small businesses to block the opening of a Wal-Mart store in an urban renewal
zone, publishing research that revealed that it would be a ‘lose-lose’ deal both for the
city and for property owners. It also helped getting stricter environmental regulations
passed, publishing ‘smoking gun’ documents that revealed negligence both on the part
of the government and polluters.144
These institutions are not just ‘think tanks’ but self described think and do tanks,
seeking to combine organising and ideas to achieve a research-driven campaign
programme. Ideas must not only be developed and substantiated, but also
disseminated. For that goal, Working Partnership in collaboration with the local
university set up an eight-week course for leaders from trade unions, but also churches
and community organisations. Participants are taught about the economy, regional
power structures and how the government operates. In addition, the programme
connects people with different backgrounds.145 In other cities, similar courses have
been set up as part of the Building Partnership network.
In Germany as well, the trade union movement works with research institutes that are
sympathetic to its cause to influence public debate on regional economic development.
The government promotes a vision that favours international competitiveness over
workers’ interests. The trade union movement promotes another analysis, which puts
more emphasis on employment. This results in ‘Deutungskämpfen’ (fights over
interpretation) in which slogans play a key role. To counter the vision of a ‘fast
Dortmund’, the trade union movement presents the vision of a ‘social Dortmund’. In
Nürnberg, IG Metall introduced the expression ‘crisis region’ to draw attention to job
losses.146
Even though the German trade union movement is thus trying to develop its own vision
at the regional level, critics say that it has no credible alternative to the government’s
policy of budget cuts. In France on the contrary, social unrest in 1995 would have
resulted in a ‘return of the intellectuals’. An extensive network was created of research
groups, that publish critical analyses and that sometimes provide material for trade
union campaigns.147
 66 Innovative trade union strategies
In Australia, teachers’ union NSWTF in collaboration with a parents’ organisation
responded to education budget cuts by setting up an independent inquiry into the
future of public education. An independent academic was appointed to head the
inquiry and was provided with a research team and an office. Through hearings at
schools, teachers and parents were invited to give input. The inquiry helped put the
quality of public education on the public agenda and strengthened the union-
community coalition. At a later stage in the campaign, the ties between teachers and
union members would prove crucial to secure a victory (see § 4.12).148
Also in Australia, Unions NSW, the central labour council in NSW, has set up a
research-driven campaign centre, called Working NSW, to expand the capacity to
promote research and organising across the union movement and civil society. The aim
is for this institute to build bridges between academics, unions and community
organisations around issues consistent with progressive values, and in organisations’
mutual interest.
In London, the Geography Department at Queen Mary, University of London formally
affiliated to Telco, a local coalition of trade unions and community organisations (§
5.13). In a way, this can be seen as formalising a situation that already existed in
practice. The university has done a lot of research for the coalition. Besides doing
research, students have been involved as activists in Telco campaigns, including a
demonstration at Queen Mary demanding better wages for cleaners at the university.
As a result, Queen Mary is now the first ‘living wage campus’ in the UK.149
Besides commissioning academic research to support its campaigns, Telco’s umbrella
organisation London Citizens also sets up public hearings and citizens enquiries. An
example is a recent enquiry into Lunar House, the institution immigrants must turn to in
order to apply for asylum or citizenship.
Responding to complaints about service quality, South London Citizens parked a
caravan at the entrance to collect evidence from service users. In addition, statements
from staff were collected and a public hearing was organised. In sum, testimonies were
given by 350 individuals and 50 organisations.
The report found that clients had to wait outside the office for 4 to 6 hours, sometimes
in bad weather. Facilities for parents with babies were inadequate, and there were
many complaints about insufficient or contradictory information being provided.
However, the report did find that some improvements had been introduced. The
Innovative trade union strategies 67
Immigration and Nationality Directorate has indicated that it will discuss with South
London Citizens how to follow up on the recommendations.
At the national level, the TUC has recently created the Union Ideas Network (UIN), an
initiative that aims to strengthen ties with researchers and policy makers. The UIN has
created a website where papers and ideas are exchanged. It also organises
conferences.150
4.15 Partnership
Unions in continental Europe have historically operated in a climate of institutional
support, with labour relations that focus on compromise rather than conflict. An
example is the Netherlands, where strike action is relatively rare. While this system has
produced favourable social outcomes, it has also made the trade union movement
vulnerable to changes in government policies.
A recent study hypothesizes that such partnerships are most likely to emerge when
governments are relatively weak, due to limited electoral support, sometimes
aggravated by political scandals. Another contributing factor is thought to be a
perception of a crisis that necessitates unpopular, neo-liberal economic measures.
Finally, partnerships would need a strong union movement with labour market power
and disruptive capacity, which is nevertheless willing to negotiate. In this respect, direct
democratic decision-making procedures such as referenda (cf §4.5) are thought to play
an important role. Without such procedures, radicals who are against collaborating
with the government can more easily dominate discussions and decision-making. The
study finally found that the role of employers’ organisations in the emergence of social
pacts is limited, but that their involvement is important for the durability of pacts.151
In Anglo-Saxon countries, partnership is sometimes advocated as a means to create
‘high road’ economic development that benefits both employers and employees. Such
high road approaches should focus on quality and training rather than cost-cutting.
However, the idea is far from uncontroversial. For example, critics in Britain say that in
many firms, “there is no high road or low road but instead a single road towards a new
flexibility based on task accretion, reduced job security and the threat of competition
between permanent and contingent workers”. The employers’ aim would be “to
engender a new employee awareness of market realities through the prism of
partnership”.152
 68 Innovative trade union strategies
The British government actively promotes partnership approaches. For example, the
Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) used to have a Partnership at Work fund and
has more recently created a £ 5-10 million Trade Union Modernisation Fund, to support
innovative projects that help unions adapt to changing labour market conditions. While
promoting partnership is not the main object of the latter fund, funding conditions do
favour constructive union-employer partnership and promote non-confrontational
roles for activists, such as ‘partnership champions’ and equality and diversity reps.153
While this might seem to be a text book case of co-optation, there is more to it than
that. For example, the government supports Union Learning Centres through a £ 14
million Union Learning Fund, which strengthen unions at the workplace (§ 5.12). Also,
the DTI acknowledges that vulnerable workers run a higher risk of mistreatment at
workplaces where there is no union and provides funding for a TUC-led project on
vulnerable workers.
In America, the SEIU is known for its confrontational campaigns. Nevertheless, its
leader Andy Stern claims that he rather uses the ‘power of persuasion’ than the
‘persuasion of power’. He tries to make deals with employers, promising that the SEIU
will not start negotiations until after it has organised a major part of the sector, thus
removing the employer’s fear of unfair competition. In return, he asks employers not to
obstruct the union’s efforts to organise workers. Recently, the SEIU has started to ask
employers to serve as ‘reference’ to other employers the union seeks as a partner: “our
current employers can vouch for our good-faith efforts to improve training or solve
problems that are important for business success”.154
While the SEIU’s commitment to partnership is no doubt genuine, it is also clear that
this union will not hesitate to fight when necessary. In Australia, it has been argued that
partnership can only be a viable union strategy if unions operate from a position of
power, and if they actively involve their membership; otherwise “workers will see
unions as an external force doing things for them and to them”.155
4.16 Strategy and organisational change
Although many unions adhere to an innovation agenda, implementation often remains
spotty and ad hoc. Decisions about renewal are made at conventions, but do not
always translate into day-to-day decision making and resource allocation. “A basic task
for decision makers concerned about ongoing strategic choice is comparing actual
Innovative trade union strategies 69
resource allocation (including allocation of staff time) toward major union objectives.
These comparisons can often be very disconcerting”.156
Some unions do make choices. The British T&G adopted a strategy for growth and
allocated £ 3 million to hire 100 organisers. In the 1990s, the SEIU decided to allocate
35 percent of its budget to organising. At the same time, the union all but abolished its
health and safety department and cut services to affiliates, leading to considerable
anxiety among its own staff.157
While appraisals of trade union strategy often focus on the share of resources spent on
organising versus servicing, it is also interesting to look at the sectors resources are
allocated to. In British unions for example, staff time is still mostly allocated to
traditional trade union strongholds rather than new growth sectors. Thus, there are
high concentrations of officers serving manufacturing and public administration, and
low concentrations in hotels, restaurants and business services.158
British unions have introduced performance management to promote recruitment,
organising and engagement with equality issues among their staff. Most union officers
now report regularly to a line manager, undergo formal appraisal and set and review
targets.
However, a study found that performance management did not have a decisive
influence on officers’ behaviour, probably because their professional role involves high
discretion. This seems consistent with the observation by an American researcher that a
command-and-control hierarchical model is ill-suited to the needs of innovating
unions. In the British study, it was found that training and advisory support are more
effective management tools. Further, it was found that the officers’ attitudes play a
crucial role. Since young officers were found to be more open to a change agenda,
recruiting young staff is also seen as a way to get trade union renewal implemented.159
In the American SEIU, organising jobs used to be seen as ‘career-ending choices, a place
for political losers and the uninspired’. Such views reflect union policies: “If a union
recruits its staff from local unions on the basis of success in collective bargaining and
servicing, promotes them on that basis, and provides primary access to political
advancement via ability to serve existing members, one should not be surprised to find
a large percentage of resources flowing toward traditional servicing activities”.160
70 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies 71

5 5 Examples
5.1 Justice for Janitors
The flagship of trade union revitalisation is the Justice for Janitors (JfJ) campaign of the
SEIU, which started at the end of the 1980s. The position of cleaners had been
weakened because large corporations had outsourced cleaning and because workers
could easily be replaced by immigrants from Latin America. Some of these immigrants
were undocumented, so if they joined the union, the employer simply called the
immigration service. The union reached the conclusion that traditional methods were
no longer working and started an assertive campaign to strengthen the position of
workers.

Importantly, SEIU realised that there was no sense in taking on just the cleaning
companies. Even if the union would manage to negotiate decent wages, the company
would become more expensive and lose its contract, with the result that cleaners would
lose their jobs. It was therefore important to deal with the clients of the cleaning
companies, that is, the owners of the office buildings. SEIU employed a researcher
whose task it was to analyse the sector and to find weak spots. This analysis was
subsequently discussed extensively with workers, to make them understand the market
and the leverage points for campaigns.

The SEIU’s approach consisted of trying to get to the cleaning company and the
owner of the office buildings in as many ways as possible. Companies were
confronted with ‘guerrilla legal tactics’. A building owner was confronted with direct
action at his golf club and street theatre at his favourite restaurant. Since the cleaning
 72 Innovative trade union strategies
company was part of the Danish multinational ISS, a trade union delegation from
Denmark was invited to come see how their company was treating workers in
America.
Local politicians were persuaded to exert pressure on building owners, who relied on
the local government for permits. Support came not only from Democrats, but also
from some Republicans, who found it important to have a good relationship with the
Latino community. Some politicians were at the front of protest marches, during which
some were even arrested. Numerous organisations also participated in the
demonstrations. Another source of support were other unions, including those of the
painters, the operating engineers, garbage collectors, carpenters and UPS drivers, who
refused to service the office buildings.
The activists had a keen eye for publicity. For example, they distributed flowers on
Secretaries’ Day because of the nuisance created by the actions. They also
demonstrated at the building where the television series LA Law was filmed, to protest
against the lawlessness going on there. An important aspect of the strategy was to gain
public support. One indication of the success achieved in doing so, is that the signature
red JfJ t-shirts became so popular that imitations entered the market. Despite their
popularity among the general public, activists were fired, arrested, and beaten up by
riot police; but in the end their perseverance forced the building owners to negotiate
with the union.
The campaign’s success has been achieved by a combination of grass roots mobilisation
and top down support from the national SEIU. The union has been investing heavily in a
campaign that would not yield results until after years. National support was also
important because some local union leaders were less than enthusiastic about the
campaign. Their power base within the union might be eroded if the composition of
the membership would change as a result of the efforts to organise new groups of
workers. At one point, the local board wanted to terminate the campaign, after which
the local was placed in trusteeship by the national union. The San Diego, Atlanta, San
José and Santa Clara locals also had JfJ campaigns forced upon them. The JfJ organisers
were no traditional union officials, but fresh blood coming from universities and social
movement organisations.
Another factor that contributed to the campaign’s success was the activism and
perseverance of the workers, who were often from Latin American countries. Often
they had a positive opinion of unions: ‘la unión hace fuerza’. In addition, they were less
Innovative trade union strategies 73
than impressed by the methods employers used to intimidate them. In LA you risk
losing a $ 4.25 dollar per hour job if you join a union; in El Salvador, you risk getting
shot. The JfJ campaign was successful in cities with a high proportion of immigrants in
the workforce, but also in Milwaukee, where almost all workers are black.
Meanwhile, the success of JfJ has proven durable. The model has been applied in many
cities and the union has been successful in subsequent rounds of negotiations. Partly
owing to the reputation gained through the JfJ campaign, the union managed to create
a bargaining position for cleaners in supermarkets. Elements of the JfJ approach have
further been used in campaigns to organise workers at LA Airport.161 By now, JfJ also
has a number of international spin-offs, including the British Justice for Cleaners
campaign and the Australian Clean Start campaign (§ 4.11).
In 2005, the SEIU achieved an important victory by organizing 5,000 cleaners in
Houston, in the anti-union South. A ‘community liaison’ had been sent to the city two
years earlier, to enlist the support of the clergy, pension funds (to put pressure on
building owners) and political allies. During the campaign, 25 Spanish speaking
cleaners were flown in from other cities to organise co-workers. Despite the successful
organising drive, employers have dismissed the union’s proposal as ‘unrealistic’. The
cleaners had to go on strike and staged a sit in at a mall, resulting in 12 arrests.
Solidarity actions have taken place in other American cities as well as in Berlin, London,
Mexico City and Moscow. Eventually, the actions resulted in a victory for the
cleaners.162
5.2 Wal-Mart
Supermarkets try to reduce their costs, which sometimes leads to workplace abuses.
For example, the German Ver.di has published a black paper on Lidl163, whereas in the
Netherlands, there has been a scandal regarding Aldi. However, this is child’s play
compared to the American Wal-Mart corporation, with 1.4 employees the largest
private employer in the world. Most workers do not receive a living wage. The company
does all it can to keep the unions out. Generally, it succeeds.
Wal-Mart is known for its tight control of its corporate culture. Job applicants have to
do a ‘personality test’ that seems to test primarily how compliant they are. Barbara
Ehrenreich, who wrote a book about her experiences in low-paid jobs, found out that it
raises some suspicion if you respond to the proposition ‘rules have to be followed to the
 74 Innovative trade union strategies
letter at all times’ by agreeing ‘strongly’ rather than ‘very strongly’ or ‘totally’. “When
presenting yourself as a potential employee, you can never be too much of a suck up”,
she concluded.
In addition, candidates have to do a drugs test, a rather common requirement in
America. Such tests have little practical use but to find out whether the candidate is
willing to undergo humiliations. If candidates pass the selection, they have to follow an
introduction course. They learn that they are not employees, but ‘associates’, and that
managers are not bosses, but ‘serving leaders’. They learn that Wal-Mart staff is really
one big family, and that they therefore do not need a union. And of course, they learn
the Wal-Mart cheer (‘Give me a W...’).164
If, despite all precautions, workers at a store still decide to organise themselves, the
headquarters will send a ‘labour relations team’ by private plane, often the very day the
call comes in. Sometimes subtle methods are used to frustrate organising attempts,
such as giving employees who do not want a union buttons saying ‘I can speak for
myself’. Sometimes, more drastic measures are taken. If necessary, the store will be
closed in order to get rid of the union, even though this is illegal. In the United States,
not one single store is organised.
In Canada, the UFCW nearly managed to secure a contract for one Wal-Mart store,
which, however, was subsequently closed. Now it is close to securing a contract for
another store. In the UK, where Wal-Mart operates under the name ASDA, there are
trade union activists in stores, but there is no collective agreement. In Germany, Wal-
Mart does have to respect sectoral collective agreements. However, the chain is
unsuccessful here, and has decided to pull out. In China, the company has been forced
to recognise the official state union ACFTU.165
In the USA, however, there is no question about recognising unions. An internal
management handbook said: “Staying union free is a full-time commitment... The
entire management staff should fully comprehend and appreciate exactly what is
expected of their individual efforts to meet the union free objective... This may mean
walking a tightrope between legitimate campaigning and improper conduct”. In the
past, Wal-Mart has been convicted for forcing unpaid overtime on workers and for
firing union activists. Recently, it reached a settlement in a case involving teenagers
working with dangerous equipment, including a chain saw. A court ordered the
company to pay $ 78 million in compensation to workers who have been forced to
work during breaks. The company is further involved in law suits regarding wage
Innovative trade union strategies 75
discrimination of women and employing undocumented cleaners. Fines seem to be
calculated as costs of doing business.166
During the past years, Wal-Mart has been under attack from groups such as Wal-Mart
Watch and Wake Up Wal-Mart. In addition, a rather successful low budget
documentary ‘Wall-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price’ criticised the company. This is a
problem for Wal-Mart, because in order to expand in America it needs to target middle
income and urban customers, who are sensitive to negative publicity. In fact, a poll
found that 2 to 8% of Wal-Mart customers have stopped shopping at the chain
because of negative publicity. Since 2000, Wal-Mart’s stock price has fallen by 27%, a
drop said to partially reflect investors’ concern about the company’s image.
The company has set up a ‘war room’ with a ‘rapid response public relations team’ to
counter negative publicity. An internal memo suggested ways to cut costs without
giving ammunition to critics. In order to cut health costs, it was suggested to
discourage unhealthy job applicants by including activities such as cart-gathering in all
jobs. Another proposal was to hire more part-time workers, who are often not eligible
to health insurance. The memo further expressed concern about the fact that workers
who have stayed with the company for a number of years are more expensive, but not
more productive.167
According to employees in Florida, the company suddenly barred older employees with
back or legs problems from sitting on a stool when working for example as a cashier,
despite the fact that they had been allowed to use them for years. The new policy was
believed to be a means to get rid of older, more expensive workers. Changes in
workers’ schedules led to a spontaneous walk-out of almost all employees at a Wal-
Mart Super Centre in Hialeah Gardens, Florida. Even more remarkable than the protest
itself was the fact that Wal-Mart immediately made some concessions.168
An important method to fight Wal-Mart are campaigns that aim to deny the company
zoning permission or tax subsidies to open stores in big cities. In Chicago, unions,
churches and community organisations formed a coalition to stop the opening of two
stores. Wal-Mart hit back with a campaign for which it contracted the services of the
mayor’s brother’s law firm. An important argument used by Wal-Mart was that it
would create 600 new jobs. Opponents presented a study showing that more jobs
would disappear than be created. In the end, the municipality decided to allow one
Wal-Mart store.169
 76 Innovative trade union strategies
Subsequently, the unions and community organisations ran a campaign for a living
wage for large mega-retailers in Chicago. This campaign ran for two years, and passed
an ordinance in July 2006. The ordinance was vetoed by the Mayor, and will now be a
major issue in the Mayoral elections in February 2007. If the living wage campaign
succeeds, it will be one of the most significant victories against Wal-Mart – but will have
been achieved by running a campaign about workplace standards, not exclusively
against this particular employer.
In the California city of Inglewood, Wal-Mart tried to circumvent the city administration
by asking in a referendum to be exempted from all kinds of local regulations. Here too,
a coalition of churches, unions and community organisations campaigned against Wal-
Mart. The union organised a protest involving ten thousand participants. Although
Wal-Mart had invested ten times as much in its campaign as its opponents, the initiative
was rejected by sixty percent of the voters.170
Although expansion into big cities is an important goal of Wal-Mart, the company
recently gave up plans for New York (or at least for Manhattan) because of fierce
opposition from unions, community organisations and politicians. A Wal-Mart
spokesperson blamed the defeat on ‘snobbish elites’ in New York that would have
something against the company.171
Wal-Mart spends a lot of money on marketing campaigns that portray unions as the
enemy of regular people. Unions are depicted as outsiders who look after institutional
interests, at the expense of jobs and low prices for the local community. For low-income
housewives, the chain is “an ally, an oasis of low prices in an unfriendly world”.172
For trade unions, Wal-Mart is important because of the huge number of employees,
but also because of the negative impact the company has on labour relations in other
companies. Other supermarkets cut wages and health insurance, arguing that this is
the only way in which they can compete with Wal-Mart. On the other hand, unionised
groceries in Canada welcome the unionisation of Wal-Mart stores, because this will
free them from unfair competition.173
Innovative trade union strategies 77
5.3 Living Wage
The living wage movement is one of the most successful initiatives the American trade
union movement is involved in. In the USA a Federal minimum wage applies, but this is
very low and not automatically adjusted for inflation; in fact, it has not been raised
since 1997. Many people have to take more than one job to make ends meet.
The idea behind the living wage campaigns is that someone with a fulltime job should
be able to support a family. Through lobbying, protest marches, occupations and public
hearings, coalitions try to get the local government to pass a living wage ordinance.
Sometimes local referenda are organised. These coalitions often include trade unions,
churches, and ACORN, a network of local community organisations. Often, coalitions
manage to find a couple of employers who support the idea of a living wage; this is very
important from a public relations point of view.
Usually, a living wage ordinance states that all companies that are contracted by the
government must pay decent wages to their employees. Often the ordinance also
applies to companies that receive government subsidies or tax cuts, and sometimes also
to subcontractors or to companies that rent from companies to which the ordinance
applies. It depends on the wording of the ordinance whether this will include for
example shops in shopping malls; or hotels, bars, restaurants, shops and security staff
at an airport. The wage level that companies have to adhere to varies, but generally it is
around $ 10 per hour, which is considerably higher than the Federal minimum wage of
$ 5.15 per hour. It takes a wage of $ 9.50 to raise a family of four above the official
poverty line.
Living wage ordinances have the additional advantage for public sector unions that the
pressure to privatise government services is reduced. Private companies can often work
cheaper than government agencies by underpaying their staff; living wage ordinances
makes such unfair competition more difficult. Sometimes ordinances include clauses
that prohibit the obstruction of union organising efforts. In addition, they may require
employers to have transparent personnel policies. In Pennsylvania, the living wage
campaign further argued that social welfare budgets should be raised, in order to allow
agencies to pay their staff a living wage.
In more than a hundred localities, living wage campaigns have succeeded in getting
ordinances passed, while dozens of campaigns are still running. Successes have not
only been achieved in progressive states, but also in the union-unfriendly south of the
 78 Innovative trade union strategies
USA. According to a late 2002 estimate, 100,000 to 250,000 workers are covered by
living wage ordinances. While this is a very small share of the total number of working
poor, it is a significant number nevertheless. It has been argued that living wage
campaigns, in order to be successful, need to be a combination of back room lobbying
and public actions to build power. Community involvement, while not a guarantee, has
been found to greatly increase the likelihood of success.
Of course, campaigns elicit resistance from corporate lobby groups such as the National
Restaurant Association; large multinational corporations such as McDonalds, Philip
Morris and Texaco; and smaller businesses. It is not unusual for living wage campaigns
to be outspent by opponents ten to one. Opponents argue that a living wage ordinance
is a ‘job killer initiative’; proponents will therefore have to be well-prepared to counter
such claims (§ 4.14). They will have to take into account that local media will tend to be
sympathetic to the point of view of businesses, because they depend on income from
advertisements.
Getting an ordinance passed is one thing, getting it implemented is quite another. In
Los Angeles, the trade union movement got the municipality to set up a new
department to oversee implementation. Also, funds where made available to educate
workers on the rights they can derive from the ordinance. LAANE, a think tank with ties
to the union movement, monitored all city meeting agendas to see what contracts
were coming up for bid and what subsidies were proposed.
It has been found that ordinances have the best chances of success if resistance to the
campaign is strong. This will force the trade union movement and its allies to create a
strong coalition to get the ordinance passed, which will subsequently be able to see to
it that it is implemented as well.
A living wage campaign strengthens the position of the trade union movement
through the coalitions it enters into and because it is an issue that contributes to a
positive image. In addition, living wage campaigns can be used to organise workers in
sectors that are difficult to organise. For example, SEIU and HERE strengthened their
position at LA Airport through a living wage campaign. A further advantage of living
wage campaigns is that they target the government. It is therefore possible to engage
workers without making them subject to employer repression.174
Since many workers will not be covered by living wage ordinances, it is preferable to
raise the minimum wage. At the November 2004 Presidential elections, referenda were
Innovative trade union strategies 79
held in Nevada and in Florida to raise the state minimum wage by one dollar. In both
states, George Bush received the majority of the votes for the Presidency, but two-
thirds of the voters supported the initiative to raise the minimum wage. The success in
Nevada and Florida was largely due to an active campaign waged by trade unions and
community organisations, including ACORN, which raised turnout among low-income
voters. At the same time, it is clear that many supporters of Bush find that raising the
minimum wage is the decent thing to do. Incidentally, Kerry failed to benefit from the
popular support for decent wages, because he did not adopt the wage issue in his
campaign.175
At the 2006 Midterm Elections, state minimum wage increases were successfully put to
the vote in six states. According to ACORN, the increases in the four states in which this
organisation was involved in the campaign will improve the pay of 1.5 million low-paid
workers. The minimum wage initiatives further contributed to voter turnout among
low-income voters.
5.4 Community benefits agreements
The Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) has pioneered initiatives to get
unions and community organisations involved in economic development through the
strategy of community benefits agreements. These are legally binding documents
that are part of the formal economic development agreement between the local
government and the developer. The agreements may commit the developer to living
wage jobs at businesses that are involved in the development. Further requirements
may include providing affordable housing and childcare centres, setting up a youth
centre, local hiring, creating a neighbourhood improvement fund and refraining from
obstructing union organising campaigns. In one case, a developer himself
approached LAANE because community support can make it easier to get a proposal
approved.176
The model of the community benefits agreement has been applied successfully in other
cities as well. In Milwaukee, for example, a coalition of unions, religious organisations,
low-income women and families and neighbourhood organisations targeted a master
plan for the redevelopment of Park East, a project in which the City of Milwaukee
invests almost 20 million dollars. Through a combination of lobbying, research, and
public actions, the coalition managed to get a community benefits agreement passed.
The agreement sets wage requirements, mandates wage reporting, and requires green
 80 Innovative trade union strategies
design and job training and apprenticeship programmes. Further, employers are
encouraged to hire local and minority workers and there is a commitment to building
affordable houses.177
In Denver, Cherokee Investments needed zoning approval as well as $ 150 million in tax
breaks to redevelop an old factory site and build a ‘$ 750 million village of offices,
stores and apartments’. A local trade union-sponsored think tank helped launch the
Campaign for Responsible Development, calling for a community benefits agreement
that would include provisions on affordable housing, decent wages, neighbourhood
parks and beautification, and an on-site child care centre. A Cherokee spokesperson
commented that ‘They want 50 acres of labour utopia’. However, the campaign
mobilised hundreds of community members and ended up securing a community
benefits agreement. The agreement is seen as an important precedent for future
development projects.178
A variant of the community benefits agreement are project labour agreements in
Seattle, applying to construction sites at the airport and the waterfront. Through these
agreements, apprenticeship programmes, pre-apprenticeship programmes and a
mentor network have been created. Community activists from outside the unions have
been given a role in the monitoring and implementation of policies.179 Outside
America, London Citizens has used a strategy resembling the community benefits
agreement with regard to the 2012 Olympics (§ 5.13).
5.5 Union Cities and Street Heat
At the local level, the American trade union movement has central labour councils,
consisting of different unions. These local branches receive dues from the affiliated
unions, and sometimes also receive subsidies. Their income is generally limited, and
they depend largely on volunteers. During the 1930s and 1940s, these councils were
involved actively in politics, and they had strong ties to community organisations, but
since, many councils have become dormant. The Union Cities programme, started in
the 1990s, aimed to give the labour councils a role again in revitalising the trade union
movement. One of the major successes of the programme has been Los Angeles, where
the trade union movement gained a position of strength through an innovative
approach.
Councils that want to participate in Union Cities must draw up a work plan based on a
Innovative trade union strategies 81
strategic analysis and stating concrete objectives. Activities include organising, creating
Street Heat teams, forming coalitions with community organisations, waging
campaigns to promote economic policies that create jobs, organising economics
courses (‘so union members can understand why workers and their families are
suffering, who did it to them, and what can be done about it’), lobbying for the right to
organise and increasing the diversity of official union bodies.
Many councils see Street Heat as the most important component of Union Cities. The
ambition is to recruit at least one percent of the local membership for teams that can
be rapidly deployed, for example for solidarity actions to support unions that are
active in sectors that are difficult to organise. The members of these teams can be
deployed for demonstrations, picket lines, and campaign phone banks. The council
also has to create a communication structure that enables the rapid mobilisation of
the team.
An example of Street Heat is the Justice Bus in Denver, which is filled with activists in
order to support unions or other local actions about ten times a year. Every summer, the
bus makes a trip to the worst employers to present a ‘No justice here’ certificate. For
balance, ‘Justice here’ certificates are presented to decent employers as well.
It appears that most councils have no trouble mobilising one percent of the
membership for Street Heat teams. These teams have proven to be an effective means
to engage youth, ethnic minorities and women in trade union activities. The teams also
made an important contribution to the mobilisation for the WTO-demonstration in
Seattle. However, the number of activities councils participating in Union Cities have to
engage in is a bit much for smaller councils, making the programme especially suited to
larger councils.180
5.6 Union Summer
In the 1960s, students’ organisation SDS announced that it would send students to the
factories to work there during the summer. At the time, the AFL-CIO did not applaud
the initiative: a warning was sent to unions to be on the alert for infiltrators. By 1996,
the attitude had clearly changed: the AFL-CIO itself took the initiative to organise a
Union Summer to bring students into contact with trade unionism. The inspiration was
not so much the SDS, but rather the 1964 Freedom Summer, during which over a
thousand privileged students went to the south to help register black voters.
 82 Innovative trade union strategies
By now, every year hundreds of students participate in Union Summer (the programme
was not offered in 2006 though). For a period of three weeks, students sleep in
cloisters, youth hostels or trailer parks, and receive 210 dollar per week. For eighty
hours per week, they learn about the trade union movement and participate in
campaigns, being on picket lines, handing out leaflets and making house calls.
The most important aim of the programme is not to achieve direct results in organising
workers, but rather to invest in long term results. For one thing, the programme aims to
improve the image of the trade union movement, especially among young people. On
the other hand, it helps create a new generation of student activists who are sensitive
to trade union issues.
The programme is rather successful. It has yielded a lot of positive media attention,
along with reporting on workplace abuses that had so far remained underreported. The
aim of creating a student movement with ties to the trade union movement has been
achieved as well. A well-known example is United Students Against Sweatshops
(USAS), an organisation that was founded by Union Summer participants. USAS runs
campaigns against the repression of workers by foreign companies that manufacture
clothes for companies such as Nike. In their campaigns, they make use of the fact that
university teams are important buyers of sports cloths.
Besides the sweatshop campaigns, there are also living wage campaigns (§ 5.3) at
numerous universities. These campaigns target the university in its capacity as employer
of cleaning and catering staff. Here too, former Union Summer participants have
played an important role. Although the results of the programme have thus been above
expectations, critics warn that ‘parachuting’ students must not take the place of
organising workers.181
Union summer is also an adaptable model. Since 2000, the ACTU Organising Centre
and Unions NSW in Australia have run a Union Summer program to increase the
number of young organisers and delegates in the union movement.
Innovative trade union strategies 83
5.7 Steelworkers
Since the 1980s, employers in America have confronted unions ever more aggressively.
An important milestone has been the conflict between Phelps Dodge, leader in the
copper industry, and the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) in 1983. The
company did not follow the usual pattern of threats and concessions, but entered the
confrontation with the union head on. Striking workers were replaced, the company
employed armed security guards and it convinced the government to bring in the
National Guard. The union was not prepared for such a tough confrontation and lost
the battle.
In 1990, a conflict broke out at the Ravenswood Aluminium Company, which followed
a strategy similar to Phelps Dodge’s. This time, the USWA resolved to win the conflict
no matter what. It was decided to run a campaign that combined a broad spectrum of
methods: careful research, step-by-step escalation and continuous worker
mobilisation.
Local trade union members followed the trucks that transported Ravenswood’s
aluminium, to find out who the buyers were. They convinced companies like the
Budweiser beer brewery not to use Ravenswood aluminium for their cans anymore.
They also issued a complaint with the health and safety authority. The first successes
did not make the union rest on its laurels, but instead it further escalated the campaign.
AFL-CIO researchers found out that one Marc Rich, an entrepreneur who had been
involved in all kinds of shady businesses, was running Ravenswood behind the scenes.
Rich had an interest in keeping his activities secret, so the union decided to follow him
wherever he went, generating publicity all the time. Trade union activists visited
Switzerland, the Netherlands, Britain, France and Rumania. They approached investors
and protested at trade conventions.
Thanks to the support of the local community, the strike was kept going for twenty
months. In the end, the strikers achieved a convincing victory. Laid off workers could
return to the company, workers won a wage increase and health and safety issues
would be addressed.
The USWA would continue using the strategy that had been developed during the
Ravenswood conflict. At first, it was thought that the strategy could simply be copied at
other companies, but that did not work. The union learned that every campaign must
 84 Innovative trade union strategies
start from a careful analysis of the targeted company. Most campaigns include efforts
to put pressure on investors and shareholders; solidarity strikes and other actions at
foreign subsidiaries; and publicity campaigns that emphasise social justice and human
rights issues. This approach helped the union secure victories in situations that had
seemed hopeless at first.182
5.8 Worker centres
Workers at the lower end of the labour market are often difficult to organise by
traditional methods. Often, work is outsourced to small companies that go bankrupt,
only to be replaced by new companies. Workers have weak ties to the workplace
because jobs are often temporary and some workers have multiple jobs with different
employers.
An answer to this scattering of workplaces is to organise people not where they work,
but in the community they live in, an approach that is sometimes called community
unionism. Often, this involves the creation of workers’ centres. At most centres,
workers can get advice on labour and immigration law; sometimes advice on other
issues such as housing is also given. Many centres also provide training and education,
especially language and computer courses. Often, people who are not union-members
can use the services of the centre under specific conditions.
Generally, worker centres are pragmatic when it regards the choice of activities to be
offered. Some will for example organise bingo drives and other social activities to
strengthen the ties with the local community. A centre in Winnipeg provides space for
unions and an unemployed workers’ organisation, but also to a choir and an artists’
association, both with ties to the trade union movement. A centre in Los Angeles has
set up football teams and a band, and has participated in the local marathon.
Some centres have been created by unions, but others by community organisations
that felt that unions were not doing enough for workers at the lower end of the labour
market. In the USA, there are 135 worker centres. The British Unemployed Worker
Centres have a similar character. The Spanish CC.OO has created over one hundred
Centros de Información para Trabajadores Extranjeros, where immigrants can turn to
for advice and to follow courses.
Most centres have limited budgets. Some can employ a few staff members, but almost
Innovative trade union strategies 85
always most of the work is done by volunteers. Often, charitable foundations are an
important but uncertain source of income. Unions sometimes contribute as well, but
have so far not decided to allocate resources to worker centres on a structural basis.
There is a risk that solving workers’ problems may encourage passivity: workers will put
their trust in others to solve their problems, rather than taking action themselves. Many
centres try to counter this by encouraging service users to become volunteers
themselves. At a centre in Oakland, users can collect credit points by doing volunteer
work, which entitles them to services provided by the centre. At a Long Island centre,
people who want to follow a course must commit to spend at least ten hours
organising and training other workers.
The Long Island centre is often approached by workers who have been underpaid or
not paid at all by their employers. The centre has rather successfully pursued legal
action against such employers, but it realised that this approach contributed little to
organising workers. It was therefore decided to use a different strategy, visiting
employers with a group of a few dozen workers and a video camera to demand back
wages. Similar approaches have been used in Toronto and by anarchist activists
supporting restaurant workers in Amsterdam.183
5.9 Organising Academy
In the 1970s, the AFL-CIO did not attach much importance to organising new groups of
members. “Why should we worry about organising groups of people who do not want
to be organised?”, the then president George Meany said. Later, it became apparent
that the trade union movement could not afford such an attitude, and in 1989 the
Organizing Institute was created. The Institute was to analyse what factors contribute
to the success of organising campaigns and to advise unions on the development of
strategies. In addition, it was charged with training new organisers. The institute is paid
by the federation and affiliated unions.
Following the AFL-CIO example as well as that of the Australian ACTU’s Organising
Works initiative, the British TUC and some of the affiliated unions decided to create the
Organising Academy. The initiative also aims to increase the diversity of trade union
staff. The average trade union official was ‘pale, stale and male’, with years of
experience as a trade union activist in a traditional sector. The academy has been able
to recruit a different type of employees: a majority of trainees are women under thirty
 86 Innovative trade union strategies
years old. Most had been trade union members prior to their enrolment and many had
been activists, but many had also gained experience in other types of organisations,
such as the students’ movement, civil rights organisations or the women’s movement.
As in America, there has been some resistance in Britain to recruiting external
candidates for the Organising Academy. Some unions have therefore insisted that
union activists be accepted as trainees. This will probably have the result that trainees
will somewhat more resemble the traditional trade union membership in the future.
Having higher union density than American unions and over 200,000 local union reps,
British unions have a bigger pool of activists to draw upon.
Trainees learn to plan organising campaigns, to map workplaces, to identify campaign
issues, to set up organising committees and to increase trade union visibility through
petitions, newsletters and surveys. It has been found that former trainees do indeed use
these methods in their organising campaigns.
In Britain, it has been found that former trainees had organised on average 360 new
members within a year. Taking their salaries into account, this would mean that the cost
per new member amounts to £ 77 on average, which is below what most unions
receive in membership dues per year. In other words, training organisers is cost-
effective. In addition, they had recruited on average 17 new activists per organiser.184
By comparison, studies in the 1990s found that graduates of the Australian Organising
Works institute organised on average 170 new members per year. The programme was
estimated to yield $ 2.7 million dollar per year, more than double the investment.185
TUC-affiliated unions employ some four thousand officials, while over 250 new
organisers have been recruited and trained by the Organising Academy. These figures
illustrate that changing the organisational culture of unions will fail unless ‘normal’
staff are trained as well. For this purpose, the Programme for Officers and Staff has
been created, with a curriculum that is similar to the one offered to new organisers.
In collaboration with the London School of Economics, the Leading Change
programme has been created. This is a ten day programme (including two days in
Washington), for persons in top leadership positions within the unions. They are
considered to be of strategic importance when it regards creating an ‘organising
culture’ within these organisations.
Innovative trade union strategies 87
The Organising Academy has further set up an advanced organising programme,
offering courses on ‘busting the busters’ (how to counter union-busting tactics used by
employers); organising beyond recognition (aimed at building sustainable union
structures at the workplace); training skills for organisers; using new technologies; and
strategic campaigning.
5.10 Autonomous unions in France
In France, besides the large confederations, smaller autonomous workers’
organisations are active. The most important is Union Syndicale Solidaires, which has
80,000 members. Within Solidaires, the so-called SUD unions play an important role.
An important characteristic of these organisations are their close ties to numerous
action groups. For example, key figures within Solidaires are also actively involved in
organisations of globalisation activists (ATTAC), the homeless (DAL), the unemployed
(AC!), and the undocumented. They also work with workers with precarious jobs at
chains such as Pizzahut and ‘McDo’, as well as in cleaning and distribution.
The membership of Solidaires is only a tenth of that of the CFDT confederation, but
organisations such as Solidaires are more influential than the size of their memberships
might suggest. This is due not only to their coalitions with other organisations, but also
to their direct action methods and use of publicity. For example, unemployed workers
visit companies equipped with video cameras to leave their resumes. Organisations of
the unemployed have also occupied a large number of branches of social security
agency Assedic, to demand an additional allowance for the unemployed. Other
methods include squatting buildings to provide housing to the homeless and providing
church asylum to the undocumented.
Of course, the unions are active at the workplace as well. Most companies are not
prepared for how young workers stand up for their rights. As one consultant put it:
“Most larger companies are used to a Red Army-style CGT, in which the troops follow
the commands coming from above. The young activists, they prefer direct action. They
are prepared to zap, to change unions if they feel they are not listened to”.
While the formerly communist CGT sometimes has difficulties with the methods of
young workers, this applies less to Solidaires. Solidaires does not have the traditional
federation structure: it is in fact little more than a network of small unions that operate
autonomously. They focus on practical workplace initiatives and do not want to build a
 88 Innovative trade union strategies
bureaucratic structure. In that respect, they resemble the anarcho-syndicalist CNT, with
three to four thousand members a small organisation, which is however popular
among young workers with precarious jobs.
The negotiators of the SUD unions have gained a reputation among the personnel
departments they deal with. According to personnel officers, SUD staff is ‘very
competent’ and they act with ‘a mixture of courtesy and threat’. The personnel officers
even seem to be a bit afraid of them: “I never forget that these are revolutionaries and
that they only strive after their own interests, and may even endanger of the company
in doing so”.186
Recently, the Social and Economic Council (CES) recommended revoking the
negotiating privileges of the five large confederations. If the advice is implemented, the
position of Solidaires might become stronger.187
5.11 Euromayday and flexworkers
A few years ago, a movement of flex workers was created in Milan. Although they stay
clear of traditional trade unions, many activists do have a trade union background,
while many are also active in the media. The most visible activity of the movement is the
yearly Mayday Parade. These parades consist of theatrical direct action, including
pickets to force large chain stores to close their doors on Mayday. Often a statue of San
Precario, the invented patron saint of flex workers, is carried along. In 2003, 50,000
people participated, and the number has doubled since.
Meanwhile, the movement is becoming increasingly European, carrying out actions
across Europe. In January 2005, for example, there has been a joint occupation of the
Académie Française in Rome, to support the French ‘intermittents’, freelancers in the
cultural sector who were protesting against the abolition of special benefits to bridge
periods without work.
The movement tries to organise both ‘brainworkers’ – knowledge workers who often
work on a freelance basis – and ‘chain workers’ – the workers at store, hotel and
hamburger chains and elsewhere in the services sector. The traditional unions are
deemed ill-suited to organise these workers, if only because they are attached to
specific sectors, while flex workers often switch sectors. The flex worker movement
instead tries to find new ways to organise workers, assigning an important role to the
Innovative trade union strategies 89
internet. It is emphasised that materials must look good: the objective is to “market an
idea of radical union activity, to see if it is possible to make radical unionism attractive
to the masses”.
The objectives of the movement include equal pay for agency workers; the right to
organise for flex workers; a basic income for all Europeans; and free access to
knowledge and information. Flexible work is not resisted but welcomed, on condition
of income security and equal opportunities.188
5.12 Learning reps
In an attempt to diversify its 200,000 workplace representatives, the TUC has been
creating new roles for activists. A successful example are the learning representatives or
learning reps, who provide advice on career development and learning opportunities at
the workplace. The learning reps are partly funded by the government.
There are already 14,000 learning reps, a third of whom are new activists, who have
helped over 100,000 people access courses in 2005. Among them are relatively many
young people, women and ethnic minorities. The ambition is to have 22,000 learning
reps and train 250,000 people per year in 2010. Although there are no data on the
characteristics of the users of the services of learning reps, it seems that many are
minorities, women, part-time and agency workers and workers at the lower end of the
labour market.
Besides providing workers with learning opportunities, the learning reps are also a
means to strengthen the workplace presence of unions and their ties with local
communities. In order to achieve this, they work with organisers, and use techniques
such as workplace mapping, workplace surveys and forming coalitions with community
organisations.
The TUC has published a brochure containing case studies of learning rep activities.
Some examples are listed below:
• In Lancashire, the GMB used learning services to build a reputation as a community
union, with strong ties to the Asian community. Among the learning reps is an imam
of a local mosque. Some workplace learning centres will be opened up to families and
friends of union members, some even to the entire local community.
• The CWU was used to Royal Mail branches where 99.9% of workers were members,
 90 Innovative trade union strategies
but now also has to deal with data processing centres were no one is a member. It
often regards low-paid, temporary jobs, and over half the workers have an ethnic
minority background. At the Stockport centre, 360 out of 500 contract staff have
been organised, partly through learning services. Among the courses on offer are
language courses.
• Usdaw managed to increase density at a distribution centre from 54% to 99% thanks
to learning services. At the distribution centre, 1,500 people do shift work, sixty
percent of them women and 25% ethnic minorities. A questionnaire was distributed
among staff in order to find out their learning needs. The union negotiated
successfully for the wages of union learning reps to be paid by the employer.
• At a meat processing factory, T&G offers learning opportunities to Portuguese and
Spanish workers. These include IT, maths and English courses, but also citizenship
classes on how to access social services, register with a doctor and access legal
services.
• In the financial sector, Unifi has recruited 1,000 new members in one year thanks to
the learning services. These services are not only seen as a recruitment device, but
also as a means to help workers deal with the consequences of globalisation
(§ 4.11).189
5.13 Community unionism in London
The City of London is the richest region in Europe, but London also has hundreds of
thousands of low-paid workers, often recent immigrants from countries such as Ghana
and Nigeria. While unemployment remains the most important cause of poverty, over
one in three children living in poverty reside in households where at least one person
works.
The East London Communities Organisation (Telco) has campaigned successfully for
living wages in the expanding local service economy. Telco is a coalition of over 40
churches, mosques, trade union branches, schools, student unions, hospitals and other
organisations, founded in 1995. Collectively, these organisations represent at least
50,000 members.
Similar coalitions have been set up in other parts of London, under the umbrella
organisation London Citizens, as well as in Birmingham. The Citizens organisations not
only campaign for better wages, but also for issues such as affordable houses, safer and
cleaner neighbourhoods and a humane treatment of asylum seekers. According to
Innovative trade union strategies 91
many, an important characteristic of these coalitions is the commitment to a long-term,
sustainable alliance, rather than ad hoc collaboration on specific issues.
In 2001, Telco started a living wage campaign, aimed at securing decent wages and
conditions for low paid workers in East London. Following some initial research, the
campaign started by targeting the wages and conditions of cleaners who work in
hospitals, and the banking headquarters at the prestigious Canary Wharf complex.
Pressure was built by mass attendance at hospital board meetings, demonstrations
outside hospitals, a three-day strike at a hospital, demonstrations and share-holder
attendance at HSBC’s Annual General Meetings, as well as the occupation of an HSBC
branch in the City. The campaign gained support from the Mayor of London, Ken
Livingstone, who has set up a living wage unit.
An important new phase in the campaign has been the involvement with the London
bid to host the 2012 Olympics. “Often with such large projects, people complain
afterwards that the local community has not benefited”, explained organiser Andrew
Crossley. “In this case, we wanted to get involved at an early stage, in order to make
sure that the local community does benefit”.
The efforts of London Citizens resulted in a letter of intent from the Mayor of London. If
London was to win the bid, he would promote the use of local labour; ensure that
workers are paid a living wage; train local residents for these jobs, especially in
construction; build at least 4,500 affordable houses; and improve local services.
At that time, the Olympic bid chairman indicated that this commitment to the local
community made the London bid ‘eminently more winnable’. Last summer, London did
indeed win the bid.
However, the recently set up Olympic Delivery Authority refuses to live up to the living
wage agreement. It claims that it would be illegal to make wage conditions on
contractors. Community organisations are protesting the decision. “We won’t stop our
campaign until we are sure that London 2012 will truly be a ‘living wage Olympics’,” a
London Citizens spokesperson commented.
The London initiatives can be seen as a successful instance of community unionism. A
recent study found that 22% of London’s low-paid workers were members of a trade
union, while two-fifths claimed to be active in a faith-based organisation. This suggests
that coalitions with churches and mosques may enlarge the impact of trade unions’
organising efforts.
 92 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies 93

Coalitions with community organisations may have other advantages as well. For

6
example, board members of hospitals may be members of churches and mosques
affiliated to Telco. “Once these community organisations get involved, the whole
dynamic changes” according to organiser Andrew Crossley. “It is no longer just
workers versus management”.

Collaboration with faith organisations is not entirely uncontroversial among trade

unionists. Some fear that achievements on women’s and gay and lesbian rights may be
compromised. However, other trade unionists say that unions are afraid to lose control
when they work with other organisations.

Public sector union Unison has worked with Telco organising in the health sector, while
banking sector union Unifi supported the campaign at Canary Wharf. The collaboration
with T&G has been somewhat difficult at first, but has improved, and a number of T&G
branches have recently affiliated to Telco. T&G is actively organising cleaners in London.
This is being done in collaboration with the American service employees’ union SEIU,
famous for its Justice for Janitors campaign (§ 5.1).

The Citizens coalitions include not only faith organisations and unions, but also for
example schools. School children participated in the Living Wage March as part of their
citizenship classes. Concern for street crime around schools was one of the reasons for
Telco to get involved in campaigns for safer and cleaner neighbourhoods.190
 94 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies 95

narrow self interests. In order to counter this, unions frame their objectives as social
justice issues.

Coalitions: Coalitions with community organisations strengthen the support for

political campaigns, help unions get in touch with ‘hard to reach’ workers and help
counter the image of unions pursuing narrow self-interests.

Long-term commitment: Some crucial campaigns have taken as long as twelve years
before bearing fruit. It is important to convince union members (and staff) of the
importance of investing time and resources in long-term objectives.

6 Conclusions
While trade unions in most Western countries face serious challenges, there is also an
enormous variety of innovative initiatives to cope with these challenges. These
innovations have not yet turned the tide for the union movement as a whole.
Nevertheless, some major successes have been achieved by individual unions and by
local coalitions. At present, it is difficult to say what kind of approach will work under
what circumstances. It is still very much a matter of trial and error. That said, there do
seem to be some general characteristics that can be identified in many successful
initiatives.
Partnership not without strength: Collaboration with employers and with governments
can yield important results, provided that unions do so from a position of strength and
actively involve their membership in what they do.
Battle of ideas: In many countries, unions have to cope with a political climate that is
hostile to workers and their organisations. Some unions have successfully set up think
tanks and worked with research institutes to regain the initiative and gather support for
alternative economic and social visions.

Organising new groups: Many initiatives focus on organising new groups, which are
underrepresented among the unions’ membership: young people, ethnic minorities,
and workers in the growing services sectors. Organising these groups is essential if the
trade union movement is to remain a relevant social actor in the future.

Bottom up and top down: Initiatives need to be bottom up in order to have real
grassroots support and to reflect the issues that are of concern to the population.
However, they also need a strong commitment from the top, in order to overcome
resistance to change and to have the level of coordination that is needed to be able to
take on large corporations and to influence government policies.

Local and international: At the local level, unions build community support and test
innovative approaches. At the same time, international networks are crucial to be able
to cope with the consequences of a globalising economy.

Social justice: Opponents often try to depict unions as outsiders who are fighting for
96 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies 97

7 7 Appendices
7.1 Literature
# Publications marked with a star are available free of charge on the Internet. They can
be found by entering the title in a search engine. Of course, it cannot be guaranteed
that they are still available free of charge.

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AFL-CIO
# 2001. Immigration. Chicago.

Albrechtsen, Helge
2004. The Broken Link – Do Trade Unions Represent the Unemployed? Evidence From
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Allex, Anne
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 98 Innovative trade union strategies
Annesley, Claire
2006. Ver.di and Trade Union Revitalisation in Germany. Industrial Relations Journal
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# 2002. The Resurgence of the Italian Confederal Unions: Will it Last? Genève:
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Baccaro, Lucio, Kerstin Hamann and Lowell Turner
2003. The Politics of Labour Movement Revitalization: The Need for a Revitalized
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Baccaro, Lucio and Sang-Hoon Lim
# 2006. Social Coalitions as Pacts of ‘Weak’ and ‘Moderate’: Ireland, Italy and South
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# 2005. South London Citizens enquiry into service provision by the Immigration and
Nationality Directorate at Lunar House, South London Citizens.
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 100 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies 101

Benseddik, Ahmed and Marijke Bijl Brownstein, Bob

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Kröger, Michael
# 2004. Ver.dis Lidl-Schwarzbuch: Wie in der Fremdenlegion. Spiegel Online 10
December.
Lampert, Allison
2006. Que. Close to Having Unionized Wal-Mart. Montreal Gazette, 11 October.
# 2003. La CFDT sur le divan. L’Express nr. 2735, 4 December.
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Lindo, Róger
# 2006. Sindicato AFL-CIO celebra el resultado. La Opinión, 9 November.
Luce, Stephanie
2004. Fighting for a Living Wage. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Luce, Stephanie and Mark Nelson
# 2005. The Cleveland AFL-CIO. Detroit: Wayne State University Labor Studies Center.
# 2006. Starting Down the Road to Power: The Denver Area Labor Federation. Detroit:
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Lumsden, Michael
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January.
 110 Innovative trade union strategies
Martínez Lucio, Miguel and Rob Perrett
2006. Linking Up? The Different Realities of Community Unionism. Bradford University
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Mernyi, Willi
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Meyerson, Harold
# 2000. A Clean Sweep. American Prospect, June.
Milio, Simona and Marco Simoni
# 2004. Scrutinizing Partnership: The Weight of Civil Society in Italian Territorial
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Moberg, David
# 2000. Union Cities. The American Prospect, 9 November.
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Monks, John
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Parker, Brenda
# 2005. This Land is Our Land: The Battle for a Community Benefits Agreement in
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2001. Workfare States. New York: The Guilford Press.
Pernot, Jean-Marie
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 112 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies 113

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2006. The Hidden One-in-Five: Winning a Fair Deal for Britain’s Vulnerable Workers.
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2007. An Islan of Moguls Is Latest Front in Union Battle. New York Times, 1 February.
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# 2004. La défaite programmée des syndicats allemands. Le Monde Diplomatique
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 114 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies 115

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2003. Le renouveau des mouvements contestataires à l’heure de la mondialisation. Global Unions, Global Comapnies, Global Research, Global Campaigns Conference,
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2005. A New Urbanity? The Ambiguous Politics of Large-Scale Urban Development
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# 2001. Dans la galaxie du Sud. L’Expansion, 10 May.
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Turner, Lowell
2001. Reviving the Labor Movement: Rank-and-File Mobilization in the United States,
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 116 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies 117

Visser, Jelle
2006a. Union Membership Statistics in 24 Countries. Montly Labor Review, January:
7.2 Abbreviations
38-49. ABVAKABO FNV Dutch public sector union.
2006b. Europese arbeidsverhoudingen toen en nu: Van het ‘labour inclusive’ stelsel AC! Agir ensemble contre le Chômage. French organisation of the
naar een ‘deltamodel à la carte’? Sociaal Maandblad Arbeid 61(10): 454-64. unemployed.
ACFTU All China Federation of Trade Unions.
Voss, Kim and Rachel Sherman ACORN Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
2000. Breaking the Iron Law of Oligarchy: Union Revitalization in the American Labor Organisation of people with low and moderate incomes.
Movement. American Journal of Sociology 106(2): 303-49. ACTU Australian Council of Trade Unions.
AFL-CIO American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial
Waddington, Jeremy Organizations.
2006. Why Do Members Leave? The Importance of Retention to Trade Union Growth. AOb Algemene Onderwijsbond. Teachers’ union in the Netherlands.
Labor Studies Journal 31(3): 15-38. ASDA British subsidiary of the American Wal-Mart corporation.
ATTAC Association pour une Taxation des Transactions financières pour
Waldinger, Roger, Chris Erickson, Ruth Milkman, Daniel J.B. Mitchell, Abel l’Aide aux Citoyens. Originally French organisation of
Valenzuela, Kent Wong and Maurice Zeitlin globalisation activists.
# 1996. Helots No More: A Case Study of the Justice for Janitors Campaign in Los CC.OO. Comisiones Obreras. Spanish confederation, originally
Angeles. Los Angeles: Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. communist.
CE Confédération étudiante. Students’ union, France.
Weil, David CFDT Confédération Française démocratique du travail. French general
2005. A Strategic Choice Framework for Union Decision Making. WorkingUSA 8: 327- confederation.
47. CGT Confédération Générale du Travail. French confederation,
originally communist.
Wills, Jane CNT Confédération Nationale du Travail. French anarcho-syndicalists.
2004. ‘Organising the low paid: East London’s living wage campaign’. In: G. Healy, E. CWU Communication Workers Union, UK.
Heery, P. Taylor and W. Brown (eds.) The future of worker representation. Hampshire: DAL Droit Au Logement. French organisation that campaigns for the
Palgrave Macmillan. homeless.
DTI Department of Trade and Industry, UK.
Wills, Jane and Melanie Simms ETUC European Trade Union Confederation.
2003. Building Reciprocal Community Unionism in the UK. Capital & Class 82: 59-84. EU European Union.
EVW Europäischer Verein Wanderarbeiter. European organisation of
Wrench, John labour migrants.
2004. Trade Union Responses to Immigrants and Ethnic Inequality in Denmark and the Finsec Finance Sector Union, New Zealand.
UK: The Context of Consensus and Conflict. European Journal of Industrial Relations FNV Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging. Netherlands Trade Union
10(1): 7-30. Confederation.
FNV Bondgenoten Largest union in the Netherlands, private sector.
FRESC Front Range Economic Strategy Center. Research institute in
Denver.
118 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies 119

GMB General and Municipal Boilermakers’ Union. UK. TUC Trades Union Congress. British confederation.
GURN Global Union Research Network of the ILO. TWU Transport Workers Union, Australia
HERE Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union. UFCW United Food and Commercial Workers, America.
America. By now merged with Unite. UIN Union Ideas Network, UK.
IG BCE Industriegewerkschaft Bergbau, Chemie, Energie. German energy UNI Union Network International. Global union for skills and services.
union. UNIFI British finance union, merged with Amicus in 2004.
IG Metall Industriegewerkschaft Metall. German manufacturing union. UNISON British public sector union.
ILO International Labour Organization. UN organisation of trade UNITE HERE American union, result of merger of textile union UNITE and
unions, employers’ organisations and governments. hotel and restaurant union HERE.
ISS Multinational cleaning and facility services corporation. USAS United Students Against Sweatshops.
IUF International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Usdaw Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, UK.
Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations. USWA United Steelworkers of America. Organises metal workers, but
JfJ Justice for Janitors. Famous organising campaign among cleaners. also government and health care employees.
JwJ Jobs with Justice. American coalition that campaigns for social Ver.di Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft. United Services Union,
justice. Germany.
LAANE Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. WSUN Working Students Union Network, Australia.
LHMU Liquor, Hospitality & Miscellaneous Union, Australia. WTO World Trade Organization.
NGO Non Governmental Organisation.
NSWTF New South Wales Teachers Federation, Australia.
OCAP Ontario Coalition Against Poverty. Organisation that uses direct
action on behalf of the unemployed and other groups.
OWINFS Our World Is Not For Sale. International network of organisations
concerned with globalisation issues.
PSI Public Services International. Global union federation.
SDS Students for a Democratic Society. American students’
organisation in the 1960s.
SEIU Service Employees International Union. Innovative and fast-growing
union in the USA.
SER Sociaal-Economische Raad. Socio-Economic Council, the
Netherlands.
SPD Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands. Social-Democrat Party
of Germany.
SUD Solidaires, Unitaires, Démocratiques. Group of autonomous unions
in France, now affiliated to Union Syndicale Solidaires.
T&G Transport and General Workers’ Union, UK.
TCO Tjänstemännens Centralorganisation. Swedish Confederation of
Professional Employees.
TELCO The East London Communities Organisation.
120 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies 121

7.3 A framework of union-community coalitions 191

Coalition elements Coalition measures Ad hoc Coalition Support Coalition Mutual-support Coalition Deep Coalition

• Initiated by request to support a • Issue or interest linked to a specific • Mutual direct interest of • Issues are direct to interest of
Org specific group’s agenda/issue/event organization’s agenda participating organizations is the participating organizations and to a
Common • Initiated by either union or basis of coalition broader social vision for all working
Interest community organization people
Common • Single organisational interest
Concern • Reactive message • Specific concern linked to issue
Social Frame • Often negative frame, often on (rather than value)
‘their’ frame • Narrow frame
• Issue not necessarily connected to • Issue either dominated by union • Issues have direct connection to
Member engagement union members members (union initiated) or organization members
• Not connected to union members
• One organization requests others to • Coalition dominated by initiating • Union issues framed broadly as • Union and organizations actively
support their strategy organization “community issues” engaging rank-and-file members
Org • Campaign distant from members • Campaign distant from members • Deeper mobilization and • Significant buy-in and financial and
Commitment • “rent-a-collar” • “rent-a-crowd” participation of organization staff resources committed
and apacity members
• Greater member and organizational
Org. buy-in
Relations • Episodic and tactical rather than • Short term coalition • Joint decision-making and strategy • Decentralized structure based on
strategic engagement • Formal organizational structure • Involvement of research and deep connections between union
• Initiating organization develops • Informal union dominance of coali- planning and community groups at
Structure strategy tion or limited union engagement • Organizations share similar political membership level
and Strategy • No joint decision making or coalition • Short term and cultural practices that lead to • Long term strategic plan to build
organizational structure • Organizations do not necessarily mutual interests power
share similar political practices • Shared power; orgs brings resources • Movement building
(cultural clashes) to coalition
• Reactive and short-term and limited • Formed around immediate • Opportunities for engagement • Opportunities for engagement
Political to specific immediate opportunity or opportunities or threats, but set calculated and strategic and created created by movement
Context Opportunities threat medium timeframe for influence by coalition/movement actions/strategy which opens up
and the scales new opportunities for engagement
of power • Engagement of power occurs at any • Engagement of power occurs at the • Engagement of power is sustained • Engagement of power occurs on
Scale / Power level – can be at a level not related same level as the decision makers and long-term on level of the various levels including the level of
to actual decision-making decision makers decision making and the local level
• Tactical resources, boost campaign • Can effectively coordinate and • Deeper bonds may narrow the • Build upon a shared social vision – is
morale, can lead to longer term, direct resources to a reactive, single number of organizational partners decentralized and can be explosive,
more strategic coalition issue campaign but reflect a • Easier to activate and mobilize but difficult to “direct” because of
Strengths / relationships relatively superficial solidarity membership due to direct interest decentralized actions on multiple
Weaknesses • Do not themselves build powerful • Can be one-sided and make deep connection – can open up deeper levels of power
relationships participation more difficult coalitions • Require organizations to see
• May create resentment over being themselves in a broad social vision
“used” beyond their own self-interest
122 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies 123

7.4 Endnotes 23 Wrench (2003). Of course, other factors play a role as well. For example, relatively
few immigrants live in Denmark.
1 Behrens a.o. (2004), Levi (2003), Esping-Andersen (1999). 24 Martínez Lucio and Perrett (2006), Perrett and Martínez Lucio (2006).
2 Steingart (2006). 25 Renaut a.o. (2003). El Ejido: Hamann and Martínez Lucio (2003), Hartiti (2002),
3 Bronfenbrenner and Hickey (2003), Clawson (2003: 5-7), Noble (2004: 136-7), FCE (2004).
Stern (2006: 52). British companies hire American union busting consultants: 26 Press release, 17 October 2006.
Heery (2003). The TUC Organising Academy has responded by creating a 27 Agricultural sector in the Netherlands: interview with Mohammed Dahmani by
‘busting the busters’ course for organisers. Tonny Groen, June 2006.
4 The latter percentage for the European Union actually refers to 2002. Visser 28 PSI (2006:14).
(2006a). 29 Holgate (2005).
5 Visser (2006b). 30 Kahmann (2002b: 7-8 and nt 6).
6 Bronfenbrenner and Juravich (1998). 31 AFL-CIO (2001).
7 Greenhouse (2006). 32 L.A.: Frank and Wong (2004).
8 Bright (2006). 33 Bronfenbrenner and Hickey (2003). No victims: Milkman and Wong (2001).
9 Stern (2006: 66 ff). 34 Bronfenbrenner and Hickey (2003).
10 Scary graphs: Crosby (2005: 14). 35 Karson (2004), Frank and Wong (2004), Reiss (2005).
11 Heery (2003). 36 JfJ: Erickson a.o. (2002a). Hotel staff: Meyerson (2000).
12 Tattersall (2006). 37 LeVoy and Verbruggen (2005: 51).
13 Leopold (2006), Frege a.o. (2004). 38 Benseddik and Bijl (2005).
14 Mernyi (2005: 9-10). 39 Kahmann (2002a: 34).
15 Heery and Adler (2004), Turner (2001, 2004), Behrens a.o. (2002), Baccaro a.o. 40 Taras and Steel (2007).
(2003). 41 Festraëts (2003). The quote is from Michaël Pinault.
16 The idea of periodic waves of protest causing important institutional change is 42 Landré (2006)
derived from social movement research (e.g. Tarrow 1998: 141ff; Piven and 43 Information provided by TCO, November 2006, February 2007.
Cloward 1997: 268; Sommier 2003: 111ff). In addition to the 1930s and the 44 Interview with AOb representative by Tonny Groen (FNV), September 2006;
1960s, the revolution year 1848 is often mentioned as well. On the relevance of information provided by Rutger Groot Wassink (FNV).
periodic mobilisations for the trade union movement, see Clawson (2003). In the 45 Voss and Sherman (2000).
periods in between the trade union movement is written off: Turner (2001: nt16). 46 Do not expect too much of financial services: Kahmann (2002a: 33), cf
17 Combination of top-down and bottom-up successful: Milkman and Wong Waddington (2006). Voice and responsibility: Festraëts (2003).
(2001), Voss and Sherman (2000), Savage (2006). On resistance to change, see 47 Simmons (2004), Reynolds (2003), Luce (2004).
also Heery a.o. (2002: 7). 48 Klein (2002: 37-40), Groves (2003). Welfare Rights Movement: Piven and
18 Weil (2005). Cloward (1977: h5).
19 Voss and Sherman (2000). 49 Albrechtsen (2004).
20 Heery and Adler (2004). TUC: Heery a.o. (2002: 7). 50 UK: TUC (2004a). Euro Marches: Behrens a.o. (2002). Ireland: Rhodes (2001).
21 Self employed: Dølvik and Waddington (2002). JwJ: Luce and Nelson 51 Peck (2001).
(20062004). 52 Dølvik and Waddington (2002), Dribbusch (2004). Lidl: Kröger (2004).
22 PSI (2006: 12). 53 Sánchez (2007).
54 Dølvik and Waddington (2002).
124 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies 125

55 Gennard (2007). 83 Greven (2003).

56 Cobble (2001), Wills and Simms (2003). Negative aspects: Rose (2000: 27-8). 84 Waldinger a.o. (1996).
57 Dølvik and Waddington (2002). Ver.di: Annesley (2006). 85 Stern (2006: 59).
58 Information provided by Ronald van der Krogt (policy advisor at the FNV) 86 America: Candaele and Dreier (2004). Norway: Dølvik and Waddington (2002).
November 2006; interview with Marjan van Noort (Director of FNV Zelfstandige France: Constanty (2004).
Bondgenoten) by Tonny Groen, September 2006. 87 Vandenberg (2006).
59 Heery a.o. (2004). 88 America: Moberg (2005b). France: Barroux (2004a). Norway: Dølvik and
60 Heckscher and Carré (2006). Waddington (2002). Duitsland: Behrens a.o. (2002: 16). Netherlands:
61 Abbott (2004). Kloosterboer (2005).
62 Germany: Behrens a.o. (2002: 11). America: Heery and Adler (2004). On activists 89 Tattersall (2006b).
in unions that emphasize organising: Dølvik and Waddington (2002). 90 Savage (2006).
63 Success rate: Bronfenbrenner en Hickey (2003), c.f. Clawson (2003: 91). Educate 91 Moberg (2000), Fine (2004), Dølvik and Waddington (2002), Olson and Steinman
members in JfJ campaign: Meyerson (2000). (2004).
64 Clawson (2003: 37). 92 http://www.laborstudies.wayne.edu/power.html.
65 Quote from SEIU-organiser: Voss and Sherman (2000). Local trade union leader: 93 Collaboration not self-evident: Fine (2004), Wills and Simms (2003). LA: Frank
Moberg (2000). and Wong (2004).
66 HERE: Voss and Sherman (2000). Chicago: Kest (2004). 94 Dortmund: Beese a.o. (2004b).
67 Heery and Adler (2004), Hamann and Martínez Lucio (2003). 95 Milio and Simoni (2004).
68 Netherlands: data provided by Vrouwensecretariaat FNV. Italy: Baccaro a.o. 96 ‘Community fetishism’: Teague and Murphy (2004). McKinsey: Beese a.o.
(2002). (2004a). Opportunistically adopting the funder’s objectives: Pichierri (2002).
69 Lhaïk (2003). Number of leavers: Barroux (2004b). 97 Beese a.o. (2004a, b), Gambaro (2004), Baeten (1999), Pike (2002).
70 Tattersall (2006). 98 Swyngedouw (2005).
71 Crosby (2006: 191 ff). 99 Beese a.o. (2004b).
72 Heery a.o. (2000, 2002). 100 Economic logic is lacking: Teague and Murphy (2004). Organisations only
73 Barroux (2004b), Landré (2006). involved because this increases chances of obtaining subsidy: Milio and Simoni
74 Behrens a.o. (2002). Benefits for members: Spiegel Online 1 November 2004 (IG (2004), Pichierri (2002). Trade unions and community organisations have limited
Metall will Nichtmitglieder schlechter stellen) and 10 December 2004 influence: Gambaro (2004), Beese a.o. (2004a, b), Pike (2002), Pichierri (2002).
(Weihnachtsgeld nur für Gewerkschaftsmitglieder). www.spiegel.de. Dortmund: Beese a.o. (2004b).
75 Dølvik and Waddington (2002). On services, see also Björkman (2006). 101 Moberg (2000).
76 Stern (2006: 74-5). 102 America: Bronfenbrenner and Hickey (2003). Europe: Beese a.o. (2004b),
77 Information provided by ACTU, November 2006. Pichierri (2002).
78 Heery and Adler (2004). 103 On this debate, e.g. Pottier (2003).
79 Waddington (2006). 104 Griffin a.o. (2003).
80 Crosby (2005: 80). 105 Barboza (2006). Philips: FNV chairwoman Agnes Jongerius quoted in de
81 This paragraph is based on a visit to the TUC Organising Academy in July 2005 Volkskrant, 21 October 2006.
and on a two-day organising course in Amsterdam in October 2005, provided by 106 Stern (2006: 23 ff), Volkskrant 21 October 2006.
UNI / SEIU in collaboration with FNV Bondgenoten. 107 Lillie and Martínez Lucio (2004).
82 Ashby (2005). 108 Brouwer and Borsboom (2006).
126 Innovative trade union strategies Innovative trade union strategies 127

109 Tattersall (2006). See also Stern (2006: 111 ff). IUF: Garver a.o. (2007). 140 D’Art and Turner (2007).
110 Buckley (2007). 141 Noble (2004: 45-7).
111 Quoted in TUC (2004b). 142 Peterson (2004). Baltimore: Fine (2004), Chicago: Reynolds (2003: 15).
112 De Bruyn and Ramioul (2006). 143 Byrd and Rhee (2004), Luce and Nelson (20062004, 2005), Frank and Wong
113 Barboza and Barbaro (2006). (2004), Reiss (2005), Simmons (2004), Byrd and Greer (2005).
114 Passchier (2006). 144 Luce and Nelson (2006).
115 Monks (2006). 145 Brownstein (2004), Byrd and Rhee (2004).
116 Broder (2004). According to Frank and Wong (2004) Wal-Mart even invested two 146 Beese (2004a).
million dollars in the campaign. 147 Germany: Rehfeldt (2004). France: Sommier (2003: 151 ev).
117 Collaboration sometimes difficult: Needleman (1998), Levi (2003), Allex (2004), 148 Tattersall (2006b).
Frege a.o. (2004). Dial-a-collar: Byrd and Rhee (2004), Byrd and Greer (2005). 149 Katbamna (2006).
118 Wills and Simms (2003). 150 Kloosterboer and Göbbels (2005). UIN website: http://uin.org.uk. Lunar House
119 Simms (2007). enquiry: Back a.o. (2006).
120 Tattersall (2006). 151 Baccaro and Lim (2006).
121 Frege a.o. (2004). Trade union’s support crucial: Daly a.o. (2004). Defend Council 152 Danford a.o. (2004).
Housing: www.defendcouncilhousing.org. Cf. America: Brownstein (2004) and 153 Stuart a.o. (2006).
Clawson (2003: 113). 154 Stern (2006: 105).
122 Mernyi (2005: 34). 155 Crosby (2005: 226-7).
123 Tattersall (2006b). 156 Weil (2005).
124 Needleman (1998), Clawson (2003: 127), Bronfenbrenner and Hickey (2003). 157 Bright (2006), Stern (2006: 64).
125 Tattersall (2006c). 158 Heery (2006).
126 Rose (2000, 2004). 159 Heery (2006). America: (Weil 2005).
127 Rose (2004). Local coalitions: Reiss (2005), Byrd and Rhee (2004), Byrd and Greer 160 Stern (2006: 54), Weil (2005).
(2005). 161 Waldinger a.o. (1996), Erickson a.o. (2002a, b), Meyerson (2000). See also the
128 Porter (2007). movie Bread and Roses by Ken Loach.
129 Kest (2004). See also www.acorn.org. 162 Greenhouse (2005c, 2006b).162 Geenhouse (2005??, 2006??).
130 Clawson (2003: 45, 126). Levi (2003). Denver: Luce and Nelson (20062004). See 163 Kröger (2004).
also www.jwj.org. 164 Ehrenreich (2001).
131 Information provided by Mike Waghorne (PSI), November 2006. 165 Featherstone (2004), Lumsden (2005). On Canada see Lampert (2006).
132 Hamann and Kelly (2004). Spain: Hamann and Martínez Lucio (2003). France: Le 166 Featherstone (2004, 2005). Unpaid overtime: Ehrenreich (2001: 183). Teenagers:
Monde, 14 October 2006. Britain: Leopold (2006). Greenhouse (2005a2005c). Work during breaks: BBC News, 13 October 2006.
133 Greenhouse (2006a, 2006c), Moberg (2006), Lindo (2006), Connell (2006). Undocumented cleaners: Greenhouse (2005b2005d). Discrimination: Hays
134 San José: Byrd and Rhee (2004). (2004).
135 Byrd and Greer (2005). 167 Barbaro (2005), Greenhouse and Barbaro (2005, 2006).
136 Reynolds (2003: 51). 168 Gogoi (2006), Greenhouse and Barbaro (2006).
137 Stern (2006), Kirkland (2006). 169 Kinzer (2004), Howlett (2004).
138 Kloosterboer and Göbbels (2005). 170 Broder (2004), Frank and Wong (2004).
139 See Your Rights at Work website, http://www.rightsatwork.com.au/campaigns/. 171 Barbaro and Greenhouse (2007).
 128 Innovative trade union strategies

172 Featherstone (2004).

173 Featherstone (2004).
174 Luce (2004). See also Clawson (2003: 167ev), Reynolds (2003), Reynolds and
Kern (2004), Olson and Steinman (2004), Frank and Wong (2004). For data on
ordinances and ongoing campaigns: www.livingwagecampaign.org.
175 Dreier and Candaele (2004).
176 Frank and Wong (2004).
177 Parker (2005).
178 Luce and Nelson (2006).
179 Byrd and Greer (2005).
180 On the historic role of central labor councils: Clawson (2003: 93). On Union Cities
and Street Heat: Kriesky (2001), Moberg (2000). Street Heat in Houston: Karson
(2004).
181 Union Summer: Clawson (2003: 43 ev). Living wage campagnes at universities:
Neumann (2001).
182 Bronfenbrenner and Juravich (2001), Greven (2003).
183 Winnipeg: Bickerton and Stearns (2002). Los Angeles: NAFFE (2002: 15). 135
centres in the USA: Heckscher and Carré (2006). Britain: TUC (2004: h.10). Spain:
Kahman (2002b: 23), Renaut a.o. (2003). Oakland: Needleman (1998). Toronto:
Gostick (2004), Berinstein (2004).
184 Organizing Institute: Foerster (2001). Organising Academy: Heery a.o. (2000).
Majority of staff still recruited internally: Beachler and Turner (2004). Additional
information on the Organising Academy was collected during a visit to the TUC in
Liverpool, 15-16 July 2005.
185 Hanley and Holland (2003).
186 Sommier (2003: 81ev), Syfuss-Arnaud (2001), Barbier a.o. (2003), Constanty
(2004), Barroux (2004a).
187 Simon (2006), cf. Pernot (2007).
188 Sullivan and Oudenampsen (2004), Foti (2004), Capocci a.o. (2004). See also
www.euromayday.org.
189 TUC (2004), Smith (2006).
190 Kloosterboer and Göbbels (2005), Wills (2004), Back a.o. (2005), Evans a.o.
(2005), Holgate and Wills (2007). London Citizens spokesperson quote on ODA:
www.peoplemanagement.co.uk, 26 October 2006.
191 Source: Amanda Tattersall (2005), There is Power in Coalition. Labour and
Industry, 16(2), 97. See also www.communityunionism.org.
Many trade unions have seen their memberships decline, while
having to cope with a globalising economy, the erosion of workers
rights and increasing labour market flexibility.

Innovative trade union strategies describes how some unions have

responded to these developments, by running assertive organising
campaigns at the workplace, engaging in strategic research,
strengthening their position in local communities and launching
internationally coordinated campaigns.

Some of these initiatives have been surprisingly successful, gaining

tens or even hundreds of thousands of new members and
improving the conditions of millions of workers, often low-paid
workers in the growing service sector.

“In a way, the trade union movement must reinvent itself in order
to deal with the challenges of the 21st century. Innovative trade
union strategies describes successful examples of how trade unions
across the world have taken on today’s challenges. I hope these
examples may serve as a source of inspiration”. Agnes Jongerius,
President of the Netherlands Trade Union Confederation FNV