Trade Unions In Renewal

This comprehensive survey of continuity and change in trade unions looks at five primarily English-speaking countries: the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. The authors consider the recent re-examination by trade union movements of the basis of union organization and activity in the face of a harsher economic and political climate. One of the impetuses for this re-examination has been the recent history of unions in the USA. American models of renewal have inspired Australia, New Zealand and the UK, while Canada has undergone a cautious examination of the US model with an attempt to develop a distinctive approach. This book aims to provide a thorough grounding for informed discussion and debate about the position and place of trade unions in modern economies.

Trade unions in Canada are losing their traditional support base, and membership numbers could sink to US levels unless unions recapture their power. Unions, Equity, and the Path to Renewal brings together a distinguished group of union activists and equity scholars who trace how traditional union cultures, practices, and structures have eroded solidarity and activism and created an equity deficit in Canadian unions. Informed by a feminist vision of unions as instruments of social justice, the contributors argue that equity within unions is not simply one possible path to union renewal � it is the only way to reposition organized labour as a central institution in workers' lives.

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

Trade unions are in crisis. Decades of decline and retrenchment are being compounded by a global elite who are increasingly extracting profit through exploitative financial engineering, in ways that side-step labour and undermine the power of organised workers. Do these trends spell the end for unions, or signal the need for a rapid renewal? Alice Martin and Annie Quick argue that the role of unions is more essential than ever in the 21st century - but only if they change. Automation and a rapid green industrial revolution present a once in a generation opportunity for unions to take a leading role in building a new, more equitable economy. However, renewal will require radical thinking. Unions must reset their ambitions beyond the traditional aims of wage bargaining to include resisting profit extraction through interest on personal debts and soaring property rents. From worker ownership to organising strikes outside of the workplace, they must stake out a different path - or accept a diminishing role. No-one committed to building a new economy can afford to miss this urgent, highly original book and its radical vision for a new trade unionism.

The ongoing decline in union membership is generally attributed to an increasingly hostile economic, legal, and managerial environment. Samuel B. Bacharach, Peter A. Bamberger, and William J. Sonnenstuhl argue that the decline may have more to do with a crisis of union legitimacy and member commitment. They further suggest that both problems could be addressed if the unions return to their nineteenth-century, mutual aid-based roots.The authors contend that the labor movement is characterized by two models of union-member relations: the mutual aid logic and the servicing logic. The first predominated in the early days and encouraged a sense of community among members who worked to support one another. In the twentieth century, it was largely replaced by the servicing model, which asks little of members, who remain loyal only if their leaders deliver increasing wages and benefits.Regaining legitimacy and strengthening member commitment can only happen, the authors claim, if mutual aid logic is allowed to return. They examine three unions in the transportation industry to judge the effectiveness of new programs created after the old model.

This book studies a «best-practices» example of what is known as the organizing local approach to union renewal. Several unions in the US, the UK, and other countries have embraced this model of unionism as a formula for labor revitalization. Organizing locals aim to strengthen unions by redeploying resources and mobilizing workers around the goal of member recruitment. The union local under study stands out as an exceptional case within the US context. Against the backdrop of a languishing labor movement, this local has succeeded at recruiting workers and keeping its members engaged. The book seeks to unpack this success and examine closely what works, what does not, and how things work. The research design relies on participant observation and in-depth interviews to examine how formal systems of representation and macro-organizing strategies and platforms get translated into micro-level processes, experiences, and relationships. By adopting a micro-social approach, the author reveals what drives union activism in an organizing local, beyond the rhetoric of union officials. Further, the findings identify the conditions for successful union reform, and show formal and informal mechanisms for accommodating opposite orientations in union work, attending to members' expectations of union «help», and changing the status quo through organizing.

This open access book investigates how trade unions representing different social classes use YouTube videos for renewal purposes. Information and communication technology has undoubtedly offered new opportunities for social movements, but while research suggests that these new means of communication can be used for trade union revitalization, few studies have examined what unions actually do on social media. By analysing more than 4500 videos that have been uploaded by Swedish trade unions, Jansson and Uba explore how unions use YouTube to address issues such as recruiting new members, improving internal democracy, promoting political campaigns and constructing (new) self-images. The results demonstrate that trade unions representing a range of social classes use different revitalization strategies via YouTube. This research will be of use to students and scholars researching European politics and political participation, trade unionism and labour movements in the digital age.