Overcoming Obstacles to Transformation: Challenges on the Way to a New Unionism

[Excerpt] The change to organizing requires more than a shift in resources. It is difficult to imagine a sustained commitment to organizing at the grass roots unless locals have the tools, skills, and strategic perspective necessary to mount successful organizing campaigns. Ultimately the commitment to building the labor movement inherent in the organizing priority challenges unions to alter organizational cultures that are often deeply imbued with traditional and conservative approaches to trade unionism. The struggle to succeed at organizing, to maintain representation, and to alter union culture is forcing national unions to define their role in this process and to reassess their relationships with locals. A key objective of the research reported here is to help clarify the issues at stake in the process of the change to organizing at the local level. Although there are few definitive answers, the experiences of locals struggling with the realities of juggling organizing and representational responsibilities should guide the search for sustainable conversion

Organizing for Antiracism in Writing Centers: Principles for Enacting Social Change

We move through the chapter in three parts. First, we define organizing and answer the question of whether we in writing centers should do this work by showing how we already are. Second, we identify guiding principles consistent with the aims of antiracism as well as the collaborative and dialogic pedagogies of writing centers. Drawing on cross-disciplinary research, we articulate three frameworks for organizing: (1) direct action organizing (Bobo, Kendall, and Max 2001); (2) a balance of strategies and tactics (Alinsky 1945; Mathieu 2005); and (3) a dialectic approach (Papa, Singhal, and Papa 2006). We find the most potential in this third approach, one we see aligned with current research on both writing centers and community organizing and so we focus our discussion here. Third and finally, to put the principles into action, we analyze an extended case study of our efforts of organizing in professional associations and invite readers to participate in similar analyses on their own local organizing efforts. Here we add participatory action research (Fine and Torre 2006; Greenwood and Levin 2006; Sohng 1995; Weis and Fine 2004) as a method aligned with dialectic organizing to suggest a future direction for assessing our organizing efforts. Participatory action research (PAR), like dialectic organizing, promotes ongoing reflection, horizontal relationship-building, and democratic participation, thereby providing the means for antiracist work within one-with-one writing conferences and shared leadership of writing centers

Organizing the Internet

This paper examines XML and its relationships with SGML (Standardized General Markup Language) and HTML (HyperText Markup Language). It examines the importance of metatags and the XML Document Type Definition (DTD) and proposed alternatives. It looks at the differences between the two types of XML data: “valid” and “well-formed” documents

Organizing for individuation: alternative organizing, politics and new identities

Organization theorists have predominantly studied identity and organizing within the managed work organization. This frames organization as a structure within which identity work occurs, often as a means of managerial control. In our paper our contribution is to develop the concept of individuation pursued through prefigurative practices within alternative organizing to reframe this relation. We combine recent scholarship on alternative organizations and new social movements to provide a theoretical grounding for an ethnographic study of the prefigurative organizing practices and related identity work of an alternative group in a UK city. We argue that in such groups, identity, organizing and politics become a purposeful set of integrated processes aimed at the creation of new forms of life in the here and now, thus organizing is politics is identity. Our study presents a number of challenges and possibilities to scholars of organization, enabling them to extend their understanding of organization and identity in the contemporary world

Is There A Women’s Way Of Organizing? Genders, Unions, and Effective Organizing

[Excerpt] Between spring of 2008 and summer 2009, Cornell ILR Labor Programs faculty, staff, and students conducted a project to investigate and analyze several recent examples of women-focused union organizing campaigns. Our purpose was to contribute to the ongoing debates among labor and community activists about how to organize more effectively. We wanted to learn from the actual lived experiences of the women who were organizing about what they felt were effective strategies. We used as a starting point the work done by the Berger-Marks Foundation in their important study, “Women Organizing: How Do We Rock the Boat without Getting Thrown Overboard?” (2004), and the subsequent work outlining successful strategies used in women-focused union campaigns, “I Knew I Could Do This Work: Seven Strategies that Promote Women Activism and Leadership In Unions” (Institute for Women’s Policy Research 2007). The intent of the project was to answer the following questions: 1. Is there a successful way of organizing that is unique to women-focused organizing campaigns? 2. Among the seven strategies identified in the Institute for Women’s Policy Research report, which strategies are most often used, and how successful are they in ensuring the success of these organizing efforts? 3. Are there other strategies or ideas here that should be assessed, propagated, and perhaps generalized to organizing in other contexts that might help unions increase their success in organizing? 4. Are these new strategies? Or are they rooted in older models that are reemerging to challenge not only the traditional organizing practices of unions, but also the way unions view organizing and organizers’ roles

Comprehensive Strategy: The Key to Successful Organizing

[Excerpt] For the last two decades, organizing has continued to be the central focus of the U.S. labor movement. In the past year, the effectiveness of organizing has been influenced by the split in the AFL-CIO, by discussions of labor’s political leverage and strategy in the fall 2006 elections, and by the debate over which groups of workers should be targeted for organizing. Nearly every top union leader talks about “changing to organize” – committing more resources to organizing and running campaigns more strategically. For the majority of unions, unfortunately, this talk has yet to turn into action. Indeed, most unions are continuing to organize much as they did twenty years ago (Bronfenbrenner and Hickey, 2004). In this article, we’ll look at what’s been happening to union organizing – in education and generally, in Ohio and nationally – and the reasons why these trends continue. This article will also spotlight research that provides some answers for those looking for a model of successful union organizing. It is now becoming clear that a new comprehensive model of union organizing is emerging – a model that can be adapted by the OEA and its locals to build membership and influence

Organizing to Win: Introduction

[Excerpt] The American labor movement is at a watershed. For the first time since the early years of industrial unionism sixty years ago, there is near-universal agreement among union leaders that the future of the movement depends on massive new organizing. In October 1995, John Sweeney, Richard Trumka, and Linda Chavez-Thompson were swept into the top offices of the AFL-CIO, following a campaign that promised organizing at an unprecedented pace and scale. Since taking office, the new AFL-CIO leadership team has created a separate organizing department and has committed $20 million to support coordinated large-scale industry-based organizing drives. In addition, in the summer of 1996, the AFL-CIO launched the Union Summer program, which placed more than a thousand college students and young workers in organizing campaigns across the country

Demonstrating Our Values, Impact and Effectiveness: Final Report of the NeighborWorks Community Organizing Pilot Program

A Publication of NeighborWorks America and the NeighborWorks Community Building and Organizing Initiative. The NeighborWorks Community Organizing Pilot Program (COPP) was created by organizations within the NeighborWorks network to:- Place organizing in a central position as a strategy for community development and neighborhood revitalization;- Report to the broader community development field the significant value-added quality of community organizing to communities; and- Systematize ways of reporting improvements beyond housing development and investment that are important to the life of the communities in which community development organizations operate.The Community Organizing Pilot Program was both a program with specific objectives, and also an applied research project that explored the effects of organizing activities on the work of selected NeighborWorks organizations.This report presents the work and accomplishments of COPP both as a program, and also as a project in applied research