Historical perspective on organising

The raison d’être for trade unions is to represent workers when bargaining with employers and lobbying the state. Their effectiveness in representing members depends in large part upon their success in recruiting and mobilising substantial numbers of workers. The higher a union’s membership density, the greater its resources (financial and activist), strategic power, and legitimacy as the workers’ representative. Organising and mobilising workers, therefore, have always been central business for trade unions (Reference Cooper and PatmoreCooper and Patmore, 2002).

At the same time, unions seek institutional stability in order to effectively represent workers. Historically, unions initially lacked legitimacy with employers and within civil society and were illegal or severely constrained in countries undergoing industrialisation. In many countries, their legal status is still contested or denied. However, in the developed world, the state recognised unions in a compromise that gave them legitimacy as workers’ representatives in return for their ‘playing by the rules’, which usually constrain their range of activities and use of the strike weapon. This occurred in the early 20th century in the UK, in Australia and New Zealand from 1894 with the advent of the compulsory conciliation and arbitration system, and in North America from 1935 with the US Wagner Act and its Canadian equivalents. Revolutionary syndicalist forms of unions, such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), have tended to scorn the respectability offered by this compromise but at the expense of constant organising with short-lived gains and eventual demise (Reference BurgmannBurgmann, 1995; Reference DubovskyDubovsky, 2000). In contrast, institutional recognition by employers and the state may have compensated at times for weakness in mobilisation of members.

There has always been a tension between these two dynamics of trade union growth and development, between the sense of movement involved in mobilising workers and institutional stability (Reference FlandersFlanders, 1970: 43). In the transition from ‘outlaw’ status to ‘respectability’, movement has commonly been channelled into organisation for survival and growth, so as to avoid the IWW outcome. Nonetheless, unions

Recent union attention to organising, therefore, may be seen as an attempt to recapture the sense of movement that had declined along with membership density over past decades.

Four general historical contextual issues arise from this perspective. First, it may partially explain the waves of union organisation that have occurred in Australia and elsewhere; for example, with peaks in the 1880s, early 1900s and 1940–1950s in Australia, and in the 1870–1880s, post World War One years and 1930s in the US. Of course, a number of other factors are important in explaining these organising peaks, not least the role of the state in granting unions legitimacy in the industrial relations systems established in the early 1900s and 1930s in Australia and North America respectively. Academic literature from the 1970s suggested that the declining levels of Australian union membership were associated with union dependence on the arbitration system, which guaranteed them a role in the system at the expense of movement and organisation at the workplace level (Reference MarkeyMarkey, 2002: 20). This may be true, but some literature also questions the central importance of the role of the state in the upsurge of union membership in Australia in the early 1900s and North America in the 1930s, because of the timing and nature of state intervention (Reference Adams and MarkeyAdams and Markey, 1997; Reference SheldonSheldon, 1995). In other words, organising was always important.

Second, the basis for union organising has shifted over time because of the changing institutional structures of unions. As Reference Hyman, Verma and KochanHyman (2004: 18) notes, unions were initially ‘built in the main on pre-existing solidarities: they gave institutional form to a prior consciousness of collective interests and collective identity’, notably in craft unionism, but also in other occupational groups. Professional unions, such as the Nurses (the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation), have inherited this tradition. But modern unions are based on industry and multi-industry membership and structures, where, since the wave of amalgamations that occurred in Australia and elsewhere from the late 1980s, collective identity and solidarities are less immediately obvious. The growth of casual and contract labour and associated labour mobility also undercuts collective identities. These trends have required a new emphasis on organising, sometimes in new ways.

Third, in attempting to recapture a sense of movement, unions have reached out to local communities and non-union actors within them through approaches such as social movement unionism, building community alliances and geographic organising in local communities. The Your Rights at Work campaign of 2007 was instrumental in defeating a Liberal/National Party government and its radical re-regulation of industrial relations legislation. It built on elements of these approaches (Reference Wilson and Spies-ButcherWilson and Spies-Butcher, 2010), but there are also numerous examples in Australia and the US of local alliances and community activism. In earlier waves of union organising, more localised unions were integral parts of local communities (Reference MarkeyMarkey, 2002). Indeed, the success of unions in previous membership upsurges has in part been based on their social legitimacy as civil organisations, which may have been more important than purely legal legitimacy (Reference Adams and MarkeyAdams and Markey, 1997). Social legitimacy, however, is contested, now and previously. Consequently, community alliances have always been important as part of union organising. A number of the contributions in this issue examine this phenomenon.

Fourth, union organising campaigns require leadership, often from beyond the immediate work group or even industry. All of the major upsurges in union membership of the past century or more demonstrate this. In the UK, in the 1880s and 1890s, ‘new union’ organising was led by socialists such as Eleanor Marx and Tom Mann (Reference HintonHinton, 1983). Elsewhere, organising has been led by peak bodies. In the US, the Committee for Industrial Organisation (CIO, later Congress of Industrial Organisations) led the organising drive in the 1930s, outside the then craft-based American Federation of Labor (AFL) (Reference BrodyBrody, 1980: 82–119; Reference PreisPreis, 1964). The IWW, another rival to the AFL in the US, essentially operated as a central body with travelling organisers (Reference DubovskyDubovsky, 2000). In Australia, colonial or state-based peak bodies, notably the Labor Council of NSW (originally Sydney Trades and Labor Council) led the organising drives of the 1880s and early 1900s (Reference CooperCooper, 2002; Reference MarkeyMarkey, 2002). There was nothing unusual, therefore, in the ACTU taking a leadership role in an organising programme in the 1990s.

‘Comrades, our movement is in deep crisis’: The origins of Organising Works^{Footnote 1}

The last two decades of the 20th century were a period of significant flux within the union movement. When the Australian Labor Party assumed government in 1983, the Prices and Incomes Accord between it and the ACTU provided unions with a seat at the table determining industrial and social policy. This was, however, accompanied by a continued and sharper decline in union density, which fell from 49.5% in 1982 to 30.3% in 1997 (Reference PeetzPeetz, 1998). It was also in this period that the neo-liberal New Right emerged, its adherents keen to break union power and challenge the award system (Reference BrambleBramble, 2008: 139).

In the early years of the Accord, prior to the introduction of enterprise bargaining in 1991, the ACTU’s influence across the labour movement reached its zenith (Reference BriggsBriggs, 1999), but the impact of enterprise bargaining and declining union density triggered unease. Union leaders feared that the labour movement’s culture and practices were being undermined (Reference Griffin and MoorsGriffin and Moors, 2002: 3; Reference Peetz, Pocock and HoughtonPeetz et al., 2007: 153):

The changing landscape led the ACTU to advocate and introduce major changes to the structure and operation of its member bodies, most notably the amalgamation and merger of smaller unions into ‘super-unions’ to achieve greater economies of scale (ACTU, 1987). Between 1989 and 1993, ‘the number of federally registered unions fell from 143 to 72’ (Reference BrambleBramble, 2008: 174). The Industrial Relations Act 1988 and the Industrial Relations Legislation Amendment Act of 1990, which provided for the review of registration of unions with less than 10,000 members, assisted this process. The ACTU’s aim was to consolidate union finances and to reverse declining membership by stimulating workplace organising (Reference GriffinGriffin, 2002: 10). The strategy originally envisaged the creation of up to 20 large industry-based unions, but political alignments inspired a number of key amalgamations, with some resulting in general multi-industry, rather than industry-based unions, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) being a notable example.

The process of amalgamation and its impact on union density have since generated much controversy (Reference DavisDavis, 1996: 169). By the early 1990s, the ACTU had come to the realisation that amalgamation per se was not enough to reverse union fortunes (Reference Griffin and MoorsGriffin and Moors, 2002: 3). The Labor Council of NSW was a significant critic of the process (Reference MarkeyMarkey, 1994: 411–412). Peter Sams, the Council’s secretary, argued that

[t]he drive to amalgamating into industry-based ‘super-unions’ has been a fundamentally flawed policy. It failed to recognise the cultural, vocational and craft-based focus of many whose members identify with this focus rather the ‘industry’. (Reference Sams, Costa and HearnSams, 1997: iii)

As a result, the focus on organising workers increased and interest developed in a new recruitment strategy that was to become known as the organising model (Reference Griffin and MoorsGriffin and Moors, 2002: 4). According to Chris Walton, a member of the 1993 ACTU delegation and later head of Organising Works, former ACTU Secretary Bill Kelty was deeply troubled by what was happening overseas, particularly the 1991 New Zealand Employment Contracts Act. He believed that if such legislation were introduced in Australia, unions would be ‘unfit for a fight’. Indeed, according to Walton, it was the proposed Fightback Policy of Liberal/National leader, John Hewson, that provided the catalyst for Kelty’s decision to send a fact-finding delegation to the US (Walton, 2015, personal interview).

In 1993, ‘the ACTU led a delegation of union officials to the United States in search of ideas for building membership levels, with a specific brief to examine recruiting methods and techniques’ (Reference Griffin and MoorsGriffin and Moors, 2002: 3–4). The delegation comprised representatives of individual unions, the Labor Council of NSW, the ACTU and the Trade Union Training Authority. A key visit was to the US, whose labour movement was experiencing similar challenges, including poor membership involvement, a dearth of experienced organisers, employer hostility and declining finances (Reference Griffin and MoorsGriffin and Moors, 2002: 4). The AFL-CIO had established an Organising Institute in 1989. It believed that organising workers, rather than simply providing services to members, was an appropriate response to union busting employers, because workers who were committed to their unions were more likely ‘to stay loyal’ (Reference Griffin and MoorsGriffin and Moors, 2002: 4). Members of the Australian delegation met with US iconoclasts such as Paul Booth, a founding member of Students for Democratic Society and later labour activist, and Stephen Lerner, who is credited with initiating the Justice for Janitors campaign (Walton, 2015).

Several weeks after the study tour’s conclusion, the ACTU congress accepted an executive report that drew heavily on the delegation’s findings (Reference MartinMartin, 1994). A few weeks beforehand, ACTU President, Martin Ferguson, had outlined six key steps to making newly amalgamated unions ‘effective unions’. The first was to employ ‘new types of recruiters’ better able to recruit women, young people and immigrants. The ACTU would facilitate this by training young people from community groups or ‘universities, colleges, TAFEs and apprenticeships’, who would form ‘flying squads of highly motivated recruiters [who] will go out and sell our message to key groups of young workers in growth industries’ (Reference FergusonFerguson, 1993).

Focus on recruiting rather than organising

Against this backdrop, in 1994, the ACTU established the Organising Works programme (Reference Griffin and MoorsGriffin and Moors, 2002: 2), and almost 700 people applied to be part of the first intake (Reference McDonald and McDonaldMcDonald and McDonald, 1998). Based upon the AFL-CIO’s Organising Institute, the programme was designed to enhance existing ‘organising capacities’ by providing additional resources (Reference CooperCooper, 2003: 3), which were to take the form of a ‘small training centre’ (Reference Griffin and MoorsGriffin and Moors, 2002: 5). Its purpose was to train and funnel ‘young and highly skilled groups of organisers into unions’ (Reference CooperCooper, 2003: 3), thus increasing the union movement’s diversity and organising talent. The centre’s graduates were intended to help with the recruitment of new members in hitherto unrepresented areas (Reference Holland and HanleyHolland and Hanley, 2002: 4) Labor movement ‘elder’, Reference McDonaldTom McDonald (2014), observed that

The programme also aimed to create and spread an organising culture that would actively engage union members (Reference Griffin and MoorsGriffin and Moors, 2004: 39) as well build unity: ‘Organising Works made a major contribution to ending the Cold War mentality that had divided the union movement for decades into “left” and “right”. Organising Works helped build the spirit of comradeship across the movement’ (Reference McDonaldMcDonald, 2014). While it may eventually have contributed to building unity, initially the programme was greeted with scepticism if not outright opposition in some quarters. In 1997, Michael Costa, prior to becoming Secretary of the Labor Council of NSW, claimed that Organising Works followed in the ACTU tradition of looking abroad for ‘quick fixes to complex problems’ and argued that the organising model reflected American circumstances with its focus on organising at the expense of servicing members. He suggested that Organising Works was in fact contributing to a situation where ‘the trade union retention bucket is potentially extremely leaky’ (Reference Costa, Costa and HearnCosta, 1997: 24).

Some unions were initially reluctant to participate because of the programme’s American antecedents and its graduates’ lack of traditional experience (Reference Holland and HanleyHolland and Hanley, 2002: 5). Some leaders’ limited understanding of organising principles and a focus upon recruitment of members rather than their empowerment were among the challenges confronting trainees (Reference Griffin and MoorsGriffin and Moors, 2002: 10, Reference Peetz, Pocock and HoughtonPeetz et al., 2007: 153). Non-supportive or hostile union leaderships did not welcome the notion that change could be driven from the bottom up, particularly when it came to changing union culture and practices and the diversion of resources (Reference Holland and HanleyHolland and Hanley, 2002: 3). Michael Crosby, former Director of the ACTU’s Organising Centre, observed that ‘a kid organiser is not going to tell a union official how the branch should run, and if they do, they just don’t last’ (Crosby, cited Reference Griffin and MoorsGriffin and Moors, 2002: 11). Indeed, within individual unions, support for Organising Works – and for organising more generally – has waxed and waned. Griffin and Moors’ (2004) case study of a ‘blue-collar union’ noted that, although organising was supported nationally, it was not at the state branch level. They concluded that leadership support is a key determinant of success. Moreover, as Reference Peetz, Pocock and HoughtonPeetz et al. (2007: 154) observe, members of some unions were concerned at the decreasing level of service provided to them. In the years after 1994, unions were also focussed on integrating amalgamated partners rather than organising per se, and many of the 1994 graduates were shifted to servicing roles supporting the unions’ enterprise bargaining strategy (Reference Griffin and MoorsGriffin and Moors, 2004). Additional external challenges to the programme came when, in 1996, the Liberal/National Party government withdrew funding from the Trade Union Training Authority which had provided ‘training expertise’ to the programme (Reference Griffin and MoorsGriffin and Moors, 2002: 11).

Although highly critical of the programme and of the ACTU, Costa maintained that the programme’s strength lay in its potential use as an effective means of ‘succession planning’ through its ability to recruit ‘fine young trade union leaders to the trade union movement’. In this, he appears to have been correct: the first class of 1994 produced Bill Shorten, later Secretary of the Australian Workers Union and subsequently leader of the federal parliamentary Opposition; Sally McManus, Secretary of the NSW and ACT branches of the Australian Services Union and currently vice president of ACTU; and Caterina Cinanni, the first woman to be elected as the National President of the National Union of Workers.

Since its introduction in 1994, Reference Griffin and MoorsGriffin and Moors (2002) argue that the Organising Works programme has undergone varying phases with differing challenges: first, a period of Gaining Credibility (1994–1996); second, Redirecting Strategy (1996–1998); and third, Renewed Push (1999–2001). Whatever the case, it has in that time graduated more than 800 trainees whose influence will undoubtedly continue to be felt as the skills they have acquired are employed within and beyond the ranks of the union movement. Many have used those skills outside the union movement, and beyond the workplace: the Your Rights at Work Campaign’s focus on connecting with the community arguably reflects in part the cultural shift within unions brought about by Organising Works (Walton, 2015).

Despite the diversity, there appears to have been a reduction in the number of women undertaking the programme and fewer young people participating (the average age of participants has risen by almost 10years). Over time, the content of the programme has changed substantially in order to prepare organisers and unions for future challenges. However, the programme’s success in doing so has yet to be adequately measured.

Overview of contributions to current issue

The six contributions that make up this special issue take up these broad themes in greater detail. John Kelly reviews the broad international political and economic context for unions, of globalisation and neo-liberal hegemony that have impacted so deleteriously on their membership and collective power. These two are not necessarily closely connected, since in some national bargaining regimes, collective bargaining coverage far exceeds union membership. He also argues that political bargaining power may follow separate courses to industrial bargaining power, dependent on institutional variables such as union-party linkages and union influence over party policy-making. Nor has membership decline been universal, even within countries. For example, some (especially professional) unions have maintained or increased membership, as others around them decline. Unions tend, however, to have become concentrated in the public sector as traditional manufacturing jobs have declined, and this represents a weakness in exposing unions to portrayal as representing a privileged special interest. New strategies such as organising campaigns and community alliances offer examples of success. These tactics may potentially benefit from the low level of wages growth in recent years, which poses a problem for employers and government because of declining tax returns and increasing social discontent. In order to realise this potential, however, unions need to develop a counter-narrative to neoliberalism.

Two of the articles assess the achievements of the strategic shift to greater engagement with the task of organising in an international context. Ed Heery refers to this shift as the ‘organising turn’, beginning in the US and spreading to Australia, the UK and elsewhere. He identifies three key characteristics of the organising turn. First, he notes that much of the strategic organisation associated with this turn has originated with peak organisations, the ACTU, the AFL-CIO and the Trade Union Congress (TUC), although there are exceptions in the ‘alt-labor’ movement consisting of community and campaigning groups and centres, particularly in the US. Critics of the organising turn have associated the predominantly top-down approach with union bureaucracy and lack of militancy, but Heery does not consider that this is clearly or necessarily the case. Second, the organising turn has been associated with a greater focus on organising diversity among women, ethnic minorities and migrants and precarious workers, with mixed success. Third, the organising turn has been associated with a neo-syndicalism with its emphasis upon strengthening workplace capacity to combat increasingly militant employers in an environment shaped by hostile governments. He concludes that, while success has often been mixed, there have been important gains from the organising approach, sufficient to warrant its continuation as a strategy.

Peter Fairbrother addresses aspects of both Kelly’s and Heery’s contributions at a more theoretical level. Like Kelly, he emphasises the importance of the political and economic context of the restructuring of productive forces from the 1970s. He notes the importance of placing the development of the organising strategy in the 1980s and 1990s within this context. Consequently, in considering the debates regarding union renewal and revitalisation, his key argument is that renewal needs to be understood as process of multi-faceted transition, involving a dialectic within the political economy of trade unionism, arising out of debates over the inter-relationships and integration of union organisation, union capacity and union purpose. In many respects, he echoes and updates Flanders’ concepts of the tension between movement and organisation.

Alison Barnes and Nikki Balnave consider the role of peak union bodies in community organising through local-level grassroots strategies to build union capacity in Australia. They take the Local Union Community Councils (LUCCs) developed by Unions NSW as a case study. These are groups of unionists and union-friendly activists, many of which had their origins in the Your Rights at Work campaign of 2005–2007. LUCCs essentially organise and participate in community events and campaign on local and broader issues. Their establishment indicates a willingness on the part of unions to embrace new strategies and tactics and campaign beyond traditional industrial relations issues. They demonstrate a significant potential for union revitalisation as social movement. However, Barnes and Balnave also show substantial hurdles for LUCCs to realise this potential, including the difficulty in establishing a stable structure and maintaining momentum beyond times of crisis or election, hesitancy of some unions with the new mode of organisation and capacity issues with sufficient union members and resources at the local level.

David Peetz, Georgina Murray, Olav Muurlink and Maggie May examine the role of union delegates’ networks as an organising phenomenon, noting that they ‘are the circulatory system that pumps blood between the different elements of collective action’. They found that many delegates do not recognise that they are part of a network and that where they exist, the majority is informal. Most have been internal to the workplace and initiated more often by delegates than union organisers, though organisers were the key support person for many delegates. Social media were little used. However, delegates did seek more extended networks and more support and interaction from union sources. Peetz et al. conclude that more union investment in networking skills and opportunities has the potential to contribute substantially to the organising effort, and thus, to collective capacity and power.

Sarah Kaine and Cathy Brigden focus on how unions have attempted to act as agents of regulation in a changing industrial relations environment, through utilisation of hybrid forms of ‘layered and parallel regulation’. By this, they mean that ‘new regulatory instruments do not fully displace but sit on top of or alongside the old’. Focussing on three Australian industry cases – garment homeworking, road transport, and aged care – they demonstrate how unions have adopted a portfolio of strategies. Not only have they adopted an organising mode at workplace level from the 1990s, but they have also attempted to create regulatory regimes supplementing industrial relations legislation, and to utilise and influence the legal framework. In particular, Kaine and Brigden examine in some of these cases how unions have sought to regulate the supply chain and conditions for non-standard workers. These efforts have not been rewarded with consistent success, but they do indicate an adaptability and resilience on the part of unions in changing political and economic environments. The article also illustrates the importance of the regulatory framework for organising, an issue that has frequently been underrated in literature on the ‘organising turn’.

Organising Works is certainly not the only organising initiative fostered by the ACTU or other peak unions in Australia, but it is clear that the organising model in all its forms has not been a panacea for the challenges facing the Australian union movement, any more than it has been elsewhere, including in the US. Almost a decade after the inception of Organising Works, Chris Walton stated that Australian unions needed ‘to get really serious about growth. This will require the allocation of serious resources, well thought through industry or sector game plans and the use of various strategic campaigning techniques’ (cited in Reference CooperCooper, 2003: 206). Indeed, it may be time for the union movement to consider difficult questions such as ‘Does a one-size-fits-all model still work?’ The contributions in this special issue begin to offer ways forward in answering this question.