The Future Of Union Organising

While 'union organising' has developed over time and in many different environments, it has become apparent that a number of key problems have developed. Evaluating its efficacy in terms of union strategies, tactics, styles and resources, this title outlines a number of strategies for improving these deficiences.

"The diverse cases and experiences examined in this book hold valuable lessons for labour everywhere." - Elaine Bernard, Harvard Law School

Organizing Matters demonstrates the interplay between two distinct logics of labour’s collective action: on the one hand, workers coming together, usually at their place of work, entrusting the union to represent their interests and, on the other hand, social bargaining in which the trade union constructs labour’s interests from the top down. The book investigates the tensions and potential complementarities between the two logics through the combination of a strong theoretical framework and an extensive qualitative case study of trade union organizing and recruitment in four countries – Austria, Germany, Israel and the Netherlands. These countries still utilize social-wide bargaining but find it necessary to draw and develop strategies transposed from Anglo-American countries in response to continuously declining membership.

This book presents a series of research essays on the state of unions in many different parts of the world. Written by leading researchers in the field it provides insights into the causes of union decline. But it goes beyond historical analyses to investigate the prospects for the future. Can unions organize in segments of the workforce such as the youth, women, low wage workers and those in the informal sector? Can unions network with other organizations such as NGOs nationally and internationally to gain power and influence?

As the American labour movement mobilizes for a major resurgence through new organizing, this text presents research on union organizing strategies. The introduction defines the context of the current climate and subsequent chapters include community-based organizing and building

After a decade of 'union organizing' in Britain, the time has come to make a thoroughgoing assessment of it. This book evaluates the efficacy of the union organising in terms of union strategies, tactics, styles and resources, and assesses the impact of differing regulatory regimes on union organizing.

This book brings together contributions from both expert academics and leading figures of UNISON in an in-depth analysis of the union's achievements to date. As the largest and most influential trade union in the public sector, UNISON is an ideal case-study for the possible future development of UK unions in the twenty first century.

This morning we will broadly examine the future of union organizing. It is no secret the number of workers electing to join a union has declined sharply in recent decades. Since 1983, the share of all workers belonging to a union has dropped from roughly 20 percent to less than 12 percent. Today, fewer than 7 percent of private sector workers are union members. There has been an unhappy story, even in this recovery, for the middle class. In the early days of this economic recovery, for every 1 dollar of growth that went to higher wages for America's workers $70 went to corporate profits. The evidence broadly suggests that when people engage in collective bargaining that those results are considerably better. On the average, members of unions earn 27 percent more than those who don't belong to a union for similar work. Members of unions are 28 percent more likely to have health care benefits provided for them at work. They are 64 percent more likely to have a pension plan when they retire. These are the elements of middle class success. AFL–CIO president, Richard Trumka, recently warned the labor movement is in crisis. Gary Chaison, an industrial relations professor at Clark University, told the New York Times unions are thrashing around looking for answers, and there is a sense that this is a make or break time for labor. Either major changes are done, or we will be too late to resuscitate the labor movement.