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.

“I’m on cloud nine. It’s given the company the right message and our job is to knuckle down and achieve the morale that’s necessary on the site through proper representation.”

Ken Chapman, UNITE activist

Despite the recession and despite the employer’s strong-arm tactics (as reported here by Tribune), UNITE’s members and activists have stood firm and secured a significant victory. The new agreement only covers 137 workers, but lets hope it has an impact across the whole of P & G’s 7,500-strong UK workforce, and we see subsequent recognition wins over the coming months and years.

Well done to all involved!

Around 250 union organisers, offfcers, activists and academics to consider aspects of organising and general union work.

It’s nearly 5 years since the Organising Academy hosted a visit from the DGB Jungen section to see what organising was all about and from the attendance at this event its obvious that interest in union revival and revitalisation via organising has really taken root.

I was there by the way to speak at a workshop considering the work of our Organising Academy and the approaches to organising by unions in the UK. Mel Simms from Warwick University who with Jane Holgate conducted some research into the Academy last year also spoke.

Our presentation were well received and the group asked some really good questions about the development and practice of organising in the UK over the last 10 years. They were keen to hear about the content of the training itself and the different kinds of organising carried out by UK unions.

At events like this you realise how far we’ve come in the UK in developing our approach and just what a good story we have to tell.

There’s much more to be done of course and we are in difficult times but we shouldn’t forget and should draw confidence from the fact that all of the learning we’ve done over the last 10 years – as well as assiting comrades in other countries – will stand us in good stead to face the challenges ahead.

2. Unions can also play a key role in reducing pay inequality. Research demonstrates that there continues to be a clear union pay premium for workers that tend to face pay discrimination: – women (9 per cent improvement); black & Asian employees (8 per cent) and manual workers (13 per cent) – trade unions clearly play a highly significant role in combating pay inequality.

3. Each year unions help over 100,000 people develop new skills. These programmes cover everything from continuing professional development to supporting workers who want to develop ‘skills for life’. The TUC and unions have trained over 22,000 Workplace Union Learn Reps. In addition to workplace based learning over 400 learning centres have been established and networked. Courses range from short, taster courses to longer programmes, skills for life, IT and NVQ’s and are open to trade union members and their families.

4. Trade unions are the most effective tool for ensuring good health and safety at work – put simply unionised workplaces are safer workplaces. There are more than 150,000 union safety representatives in the UK, trained to internationally recognised standards. These reps lower the accident rate by ensuring safe working practises, and reduce ill-health caused by the stress of working long hours, of being bullied, and of working in environments with poor lighting and ventilation.

5. Unions were the first to raise major concerns over levels of violence in the workplace, the effects of RSI, and passive smoking. When unions first raised the issue of stress at work, employers and the media argued it was nonsense. It is now recognised that workplace stress affects up to half a million people.

6. As a result of unfair treatment by employers, in 2004 unions won an estimated £16.2 million in compensation for their members at Employment Appeal Tribunals. Unfair dismissal awards won by trade unions are over three times higher than the average in a non-union backed unfair dismissal case. In 2007 unions won a record £330m in compensation for members through legal action. They also won £1m in equal pay claims – an average of £15,000 per member affected.

7. UK unions, through the TUC, have been at the forefront of ensuring better treatment for Britain’s 1.3 million agency workers. An agreement last year between the TUC, the employers’ organisation the CBI and the UK government secured UK agreement to the European Agency Workers Directive the implementation of which is being consulted on in 2009. Trade unions were instrumental to the introduction of the European Agency Workers Directive which builds on existing protection of agency workers rights campaigned for by UK trade unions.

8. Trade unions have a critical role to play in helping to change employer attitudes and ‘greening’ workplaces, reducing costs for employers, and making appositive contribution toward challenging climate change. The TUC’s ‘Green Workplaces’ project supported trade union initiatives to make six demonstration workplaces ‘greener’.

9. Unions not only make a difference to workers, they can also bring benefits to employers and the wider community. The Dept for Trade and Industry (now BIS) published a report in 2007 which assessed the benefits of trade union involvement and representation in the workplace – and found that by giving employees a voice, rather than them simply leaving a firm when they were unhappy, union reps significantly reduce the number of ‘exits’, improving labour retention and reducing absenteeism. The DTI estimated that this could be a saving to employers of between £72 and £143 million.

10. According to a recent TUC survey “Unions in the Community: A survey of union reps” union reps are heavily involved in campaigning and activities outside of work. Trade union reps are eight times more likely than the general population to engage in voluntary work and give more of their time to community organisations.

Stats taken from a new TUC publication ‘The Union Effect – the positive effect of trade unions on the economy and British society’, For a copy email me at croper (at) tuc.org.uk