This question resurfaced while I was watching this article on the Rachel Maddow show.  In describing the Republican attack on the rights to abused women who have come to the US via marriage (and whose visas depended on this relationship), she outlines the relationship between the owners of sites that advertise mail order brides (who this law helps) and the groups who are lobbying to repeal the law. Half way through the piece, I began to consider again about the impact that money has on building support for campaigns coupled with a focus on slogans, messages and polling.

A while back I read David Plouffe’s Audacity to Win which described how their planned and ran the Obama election campaign.  With my organiser’s hat on, I found it a really interesting and thought provoking book.  In his description of how they built a grassroots membership and activism and the importance of this to winning the election, I was struck at first by how this was very similar to an organising campaign rather than any elections I had witnessed.

What impact did this emphasis on people have on the campaign?  Profound in terms of leadership, and authenticity.  If there was a negative ad about Obama, the network of activists would refute it to their families, friends and colleagues.  While looking after the front lawn, they would talk to their neighbours about why they supported him and what he stood for that was in their interest.  What had the most impact on that person’s viewpoint and was able to effectively bring someone on board?  Was it the ad or the person they trusted and respected?  Often we overlook the power of human interactions and subtle leadership.  The person in the community, workplace or family who everyone looks to for guidance or trusts in analysis.  Get that person on board and despite the prevailing winds, a campaign will be in a good position.

I advise campaigners and organisers to look at structuring plans in five basic areas:

• Goal: what are you trying to achieve (be specific!)
• Organisational considerations: all of your resources plus what you know you’ll probably need.
• Constituents:  Allies and opponents and who you want to campaign with/for.
• Target: Who is the person that will make the decision you will get you what you want.
• Tactics: Actions that will build up your organisation, and put pressure on your target.

I’m highlighting this because the order of the planning underlines where a campaign should put its emphasis.  Who is on your side and will be your advocates should come a long time before working out your slogan or title.  Groups as mentioned on the Maddow show have endless pots of money to spend on snazzy logos, slogans and ads.  When we try to compete on their terms we lose and overlook the most powerful resource that those of us on the progressive spectrum have - potential of people power.

There is a reason why astroturfing is so big in the US, it’s because those campaign groups have no organisation or people power and have to make it up.  We don’t.  Concentrate on how your campaign will build up your base rather than snazzy logos and slogans because the word of a trusted person is worth more than an ad.

Grassroots is being held at the TUC, Congress House, Great Russell St, London on 26 May.  To register go to http://grassrootsuk.org/register-to-come/ 

Campaigning can be tricky.  You have a position and you want someone else to agree with you.  You try all manner of tactics to press your positions.  Send out press releases and hope that there’s space in your local newspaper.  The trudge can be relentless and sometimes no end in sight.  Sometimes we win, sometimes we don’t.  But what happens when the dust has settled and the campaigning is over?  What does it really mean to win or lose? 

In these times, that is the greatest challenge we face.  Whether it is for elections, for a plastic bag free area or for better, more equitable pay and conditions, we need to reorientate our view of success of campaigns to incorporate organising more fully.  By doing that, we move away from gimmicks, from relaunches and branding for its own sake.  To win on the issue is important, but equally so is building a sustainable grassroots who continue to campaign, demand change and build for it.

What am I talking about when I talk about organising?  In the trade union movement, we debate about what it means for us to organise, and I’m not here to be prescriptive on how others view it, but to explain how I view campaigning is also to talk about my approach to organising.  For me, organising is about empowerment and hunger for change; creating a sustainable organisation that can weather success and failure.  To do that, we need to work on the issues that people care about, stand up for our values and, crucially, deploy our resources in the most effective way possible.  Campaigns can rise and fall, but people and their power remains if we organise rather than just campaign.

How do we move from purely campaigning to organising?

• Pick the right issue.  Talk about it in the way that is understandable to a lot of people and relates to our core values.
• Engage and involve people at every step of the campaign.  Think about how you build teams; step back as much as possible and let others take ownership of the campaign.  I can get some press if people are mobilise for the day, but we’re going to change the world if we organise for the long term.
• Be ready to learn.  A key element of our ability to be successful when organising is our readiness to learn from others, to look outside our world and be humbled and to recognise we don’t always have the answers.  The flip side to this is our willingness to share successes and failures with others.

Despite, being an organiser and campaigner for many years, I’m still in a process of learning which is why I’m excited about our conference on 26 May called Grassroots.  It brings together a wide range of organisations and activists who are looking to learn from each other, challenge perceptions and be as effective as we can.  We’re going to hear new approaches to strategy and tactics, good ways to communicate and lastly how we are going to organise meaningfully.

In focussing on organising in our campaigns, I’m going to amend a well known phrase: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, but lets make that small group as big as we can.

Grassroots is being held at the TUC, Congress House, Great Russell St, London on 26 May.  To register go to www.grassrootsuk.org/register-to-come

This is why I’m really pleased to be a part of a new venture called Grassroots.

On 26 May in London, trade unions and progressive organisations, who are committed to tackling the big challenges we face right now, will meet to share and hear the most exciting and practical ideas on campaigning, organising and mobilisation. 

Designed to enable activists and campaigners from across the movement, Grassroots will focus on three areas:

Rise up! Building support – How we campaign effectively around issues that demonstrate a need for change.

2, 4, 6, 8: How will people congregate – How can we build membership organisations that engage?

Reaching Out – How do we communicate our messages effectively?

For each theme, there will be three speakers who will be given 20 minutes to put forward their idea and demonstrate its practical use.  After we’ve heard all the ideas, there is a networking session to allow all participants to discuss what they’ve heard and share experiences.

Interested in bring involved?

There are three ways you and your organisation can be involved:

1. Submit an idea – do you have an idea on one of the themes that you think would be worth sharing?
2. Be a part on the day – take a stall, add info on the pack or advertise on our website
3. Advertise to your members and supporters

To register, head over to www.grassrootsuk.org or you can follow the event on Twitter @grassroots_uk

Look forward to seeing you there!

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.

Firstly, you need to know what exactly you want to achieve.  The more specific you are, the easier it is to explain to someone else.

Second, be in control of the message and of the frame.  By and large, human beings will gravitate to messages and ideas that fit in their understanding of the world and how it makes them feel.  Define a message based on what you think will resonate on that emotional level.  Don’t define your message based on what your opposing group have said, it’ll only reinforce their view.

Lastly, use techniques like Anger Hope Action in all aspects of communications, not just in face to face conversations.

If you’re interested more in how you can communicate effectively during a campaign you can come on our Communications and Campaigns course or read these thought provoking books:

• Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know your Values and Frame the Debate; George Lakoff
• Rhetoric for Radicals; Jason Del Gandio

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.

Domestic workers celebrate the passing of Convention 189 on Domestic Workers at the ILO's 100th Session in Geneva in June this year. Photo: © International Labour Organization

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 International Labour Organisation (ILO) has been fulfilling its mandate to establish conventions and produce authoritative recommendations that apply to the world of work since 1919. These standards are negotiated by governments, employers and workers representatives and are therefore supposed to be a product of consensus by all actors in the ‘real economy.’  The adoption at this year’s ILO conference of Convention 189 on the rights of domestic workers, one of the most exploited work forces in the world, shows the continued ability of the ILO to reach out to all workers.

However, setting the standards is of course only part of the battle, and benefits for working people only come if the standards are actually implemented and enforced. And in far too many countries around the world we aren’t even close.  As I told the SIHRG, the best (and in long run, only) guarantee of decent standards in the workplace is workers being organised into strong and effective unions. The role of a framework of labour standards is to help create the space to make this possible and provide a clear view of what Decent Work should actually be.

There has been a worrying reduction in governments ratifying recent ILO standards, and far too many long standing standards, including the 8 classed as fundamental rights (conventions covering freedom to organise and bargain collectively, ending child and forced labour and outlawing discrimination in the workplace) have still to be ratified in many countries, including the US and China.

Our own coalition government has joined this awkward squad recently, by refusing to even consider ratification of the domestic workers convention in the UK, on the spurious basis that it could lead to the elderly being sent to prison if a domestic worker in their employ had an accident.

To make the labour standards system effective there needs to be more practical support to countries to implement them (something our government has moved away from by cutting all of DFID’s funding to the ILO) and there needs to be a more effective stick for those that don’t.

The ILO has a well established system for gathering information on levels of implementation, but it lacks any real sanctions, hence the long standing global union demand that trade agreements should contain clauses on labour standards.

The logic behind this is that if they contain legally binding language on intellectual property rights and other business related interests they should also contain enforceable language on the rights of the workers who make trade possible in the first place.

Worded in such a way to ensure they can’t be used as for protectionist purposes, such clauses could help to ensure a more effective global system of labour rights.

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.

This is not to dismiss the efforts made by a number of unions in attempting to organise in the private sector but we have to be realistic and accept that the scale of the challenges means that we aren’t going to organise every workplace in the traditional way in enough time (the average size of a bargaining unit as reported by the CAC in 2010 was just 87 almost half the figure recorded in 2006). Nor is there any evidence that large numbers of workers going to spontaneously organise themselves.

If we accept that union membership, in marketing terminology, is an ‘experience good’ i.e. only by being part of a union does a person fully realise and appreciate the benefits of membership, part of any new approach to reaching out must involve thinking about how we can give more workers an opportunity to experience the benefits of union membership.

In thinking about how we set about this, the TUC and unions in the UK might look at an initiative launched recently by the New Zealand CTU. ‘Together’ is a new organisation established and run by the unions affiliated to the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions which aims to connect workers in non-unionised work places with the union movement and the union experience. Membership, which costs just NZ$1 per week, gives employees and contractors in workplaces and sectors without union support, access to help and expert advice.

What makes the CTU ‘Together’ initiative interesting is firstly the way in which it is in-part targeted at existing union members and encourages them to sign up members of their family and their close friends (this is based on surveys of union members that found high levels of concern about how their family members and friends were treated at work) and secondly the way it is used to join members together and with union campaigns. The pitch to workers is the offer of support and advice via a dedicated website and call centre and information on and access to union campaigns. The income is used to fund both the support that ‘Together’ members receive and new organising initiatives.

‘Together’ is explicitly not a substitute for union membership (you can’t, for example, join together if a union is already recognised or running a campaign in your workplace – it’s a way for ‘never’ members to connect with the wider union family.

Some may say that workers know where we are if they want to join us but the fact is that actually lots of workers don’t even know WHAT we are let alone WHERE we are. Others may say that the New Zealand initiative sounds like a return to the false promise of credit card trade unionism, but I think that we have learnt enough about the limits of that approach in the 80’s and 90’s not to repeat it. If we are smart we can use this and other new forms of engagement with a whole new group of workers to inform our organising priorities and add to the campaigning work that we do. Finally, such an initiative would only be really worthwhile if it worked alongside, not in place of, traditional workplace organising.

And there’s evidence showing that we can find a way of making union membership more easily available to the millions who don’t currently have it, there’s a receptive audience waiting to hear from us. Polling work for the TUC has shown that unions retain broad support from the British public – with 60% of the public agreeing that ‘unions provide vital protection for many groups of workers’ and in 2005 over 40% of workers in non-unionised workplaces said that if asked they would be likely to join a union.

A continued decline in membership and density in the private sector, particularly should it fall below 10%, will not only give our enemies a reason to question our legitimacy as voice for working people in the private sector, where most people in the UK work, but will increase the pressure on the terms and conditions of workers in unionised sectors of the economy. It’s in the long term interests of both unions and workers this is not allowed to happen.

This article also appears in the latest edition of ‘ForeFront’ the journal of Unions 21

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.

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.

Blogs like the widely read DailyKos are urging their readers to back the unions. Student organisations are backing the protests and Superbowl winning Green Bay Packers players have lent their support.

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.

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.