I’ve been wanting to blog about the role that communications play in campaigns and organising for quite a while now so it was with great interest I read Mehdi Hasan’s article for the New Statesman where he explores the role of framing in politics.
By and large, the most difficult thing in the campaigns I have been involved in, is communicating what the campaign is trying to achieve to a wider audience. Often I hear complaints that the media is against us and no one want to listen. I can’t give you a silver bullet but I can point to some ways in which you might be more successful in communicating.
You may have picked up Carl’s original posting a month or so ago on trade union membership. But, in case you haven’t, here’s our first Organising Academy webinar on those figures and what they mean for unions. Be great to hear your thoughts.
Last week, I had to give a presentation to the Solicitors International Human Rights Group (SIHRG), on the topic ‘International Labour Standards: How effective is the current system?’ The main temptation was to simply say ‘not very’ and leave it at that, but the calibre of the audience demanded a rather more structured response.
When it comes to actually establishing international labour standards, the system might not be the Rolls Royce of global governance structures, but it’s definitely in the high end range compared to many of the other areas where we’re crying out for globally agreed standards, such as finance sector regulation or controls on tax evasion and avoidance.
The state of membership in the private sector, as revealed in the latest Trade Union membership statistics released earlier this year demands a new and innovative approach to how unions reach out to the majority of workers who aren’t in a union.
There’s an adage that says unionised sectors of the economy can’t remain islands of decent pay and conditions in a sea of declining standards. If we wanted proof that this is true then we need only look at the way in which the paucity of decent occupational pension schemes in the overwhelmingly non-unionised private sector has been used to undermine public service pension provision.
The scale of this challenge is significant. Density in the private sector is now just 14% – barely 1 in 7 private sector workers now belong to a union. Unions are present in less than a third of private sector workplaces and less than one fifth of private sector employees are covered by collective agreements. Since 2000 density in the private sector has fallen by 3.7% and membership by 840,000. And since the late 90s the number of workers who have never been members of a union has steady increased. Now, over half of all employees have never been in a union and in the private sector, three fifths of employees have never held a union card.
Unions and community organisations are turning to coalitions to present a people’s alternative to budget cuts and austerity measures. In Britain, unions and community-based organisations have come together to demand government intervention and investment, not budget cuts, in response to the financial downturn. Similar formations are developing in the United States in response to attacks on collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin, and in Canada, where privatisation and public sector cuts are also on the rise.
But, coalitions are no magic bullet for achieving social change. My book Power in Coalition considers when and how union-community alliances can simultaneously achieve social change, strengthen community-based organisations, and renew the power of unions, through a study of long-term coalitions in Australia, Canada and the United States.
There are important lessons for building strong coalitions that are useful for union and community organisers. For instance, counter to the popular belief that long lists of organisations produce strong coalitions – Power in Coalition argues that “less is more”. A smaller number of powerfully committed organisations will be more successful at sustaining social change and engaging union and community members than a highly broad and diverse coalition where there is little common interest.
The book stakes the claim that coalition success has to be multi-faceted and include not only the social change victories that are achieved, but also the ability for a coalition to sustain relationships between partner organisations, and develop the leadership skills and campaigning capacity of rank and file participants in the process.
Coalitions also are more successful if they have the versatility to act at multiple scales, and take action in local boroughs as well as across the city or nation. Through its case studies, the book identifies examples of where this has been done successfully through the establishment of local coalitions that have partnered with city-wide or regional coalitions. Yet, there is an art form to multi-scaled action, particularly around the need to balance bottom-up and top-down input into coalition strategy.
GUEST POST: Amanda Tattersall is the Director of the Sydney Alliance, a diverse coalition of unions, religious organisations and community groups (and a sister organisation to London Citizens) and the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Unions NSW. She will speak about her book, Power in Coalition: Strategies for Strong Unions and Social Change (published by Cornell University Press), which will be launched by TUC Deputy General Secretary Frances O’Grady, at Congress House on Wednesday 23 February at 6.00pm.
The new Republican governor of Wisconsin has proposed a budget that will cut the income of public sector workers in the state. He’s also pushing to end collective bargaining, something the Associated Press said would, “effectively remove unions’ right to negotiate in any meaningful way”.
On Tuesday, at a couple of days notice, the unions got more than 10,000 people to flock to the State Capitol building to lobby the politicians. The crowd included union members, students, community organisations, and workers who aren’t affected by the Governor’s proposal, including the police union. This video is a short intro to what that looked like.
Yesterday, at least 15,000 people turned up again. Today, almost 20,000 crowded the State Capitol. For Trade Unionists in the UK, this is encouraging and good to see, but what are lessons for us?
First off, the unions are drawing on alliances they have built over the last few years with organizations where in the short term there wasn’t an immediate benefit. They took the decision that the broader progressive infrastructure would benefit the unions in the long term. Unions here have gone out of their way to support and build up progressive bloggers, community organisations, and campaigners not from traditional union backgrounds. The appearance of students and other non-union workers on the frontline in Wisconsin is testament to this work.
Organizing for America, the group that sprung up from Obama’s Presidential campaign, is throwing its weight behind the union’s efforts, organising phone banks and coaches to promote the rallies – powerfully showing that centre-left parties can be partners to unions under attack.
Secondly, these campaigners are collectively using a whole range of new media tools to mobilise people and get their message out. Every hour, interested parties across the country are following the #WIunions hashtag among others, and the Twitter feed of organisers like Melissa Ryan. Photos like this one and these, and videos like the one above and this one, are telling the story that media outlets aren’t. Blogs like Talking Points Memo, Crooks and Liars and ThinkProgress are providing up to date coverage in a way that no mainstream media won’t or can’t. Because this is the US, unions are allowed to put out broadcast advertising like this radio ad, spread online through YouTube as well.
This broad, constant barrage of information sustains support that helps workers in Wisconsin, and is beginning to generate the media coverage that is fraying Republican support for the measures, and it is possible because organisers have online tools in their hands to simply and professionally spread the word.
Of course, most of this is stuff UK unions try to do, or know they need to, but as protests across Europe and North America grow, it’s important to take inspiration, and pick up some tips.
Matthew McGregor works for a new media agency that specialises in building online communities that take action for causes; his background is with trade union and Labour campaigns. He is currently living in Washington DC.@mcgregormt
Just spent a great afternoon with 40 NAPO (the union for family court and probation staff) membership secretaries as part of event looking at the unions approach to organising and recruitment.
Part of this process invoves redefining the role of membership secretaries within branches and helping them to plan their future activity.
I went along to give a presentation on planning and campaiging and also spoke about how we can motivate members to get more active in the union. I also facilitated an activity on developing a branch health check.
Becky Wright
Sam Gurney
Carl Roper
Amandatattersall
Matthew McGregor
