Union Voices: Tactics and Tensions in UK Organizing

[Excerpt] This book tells the story of what is, in our view, probably the most significant development in British trade unionism of recent years: the increasing focus on organizing activity. We do this by reflecting on the impact of the UK\u27s Trades Union Congress (TUC) Organising Academy (OA), the participants in the training program, and the organizing campaigns that union organizers have run. We explicitly want to give voice to these union activists who have worked so hard to recruit and organize new union members. Much has already been written in the United Kingdom (often by us) about these developments but what is often lost in short articles or surveys are the stories that organizers have to tell. In an effort to build a base of knowledge from which to start to analyze changes, we have so far tended to focus on publishing the studies that demonstrate general trends and developments. This book seeks to do something slightly different. We draw on those previously published papers where necessary, but here we want to engage with the politics and tensions behind those trends; both on a macro and a micro level. We want to tell the stories of what organizing is like on the front line, what organizers do, and how they do it. The workplace struggles of workers and their unions are at the heart of these stories. But we also want to draw attention to the wider reasons why union organizing is important. As we will argue, one of the things that happened as ideas about organizing migrated from other countries— notably the United States and Australia—to the United Kingdom is that the political conceptualization of why unions are organizing has been underexamined. We want to understand and examine organizing as a political process, and we want to look at the politics within the union but also the wider purpose of organizing, which often varies from context to context

Contemporary Union Organizing in the UK—Back to the Future?

Attempts to revitalize trade unions in the UK have had mixed results, leading to calls for more radical organizing strategies. This paper examines a recent organizing campaign in the UK public sector that involved a shift from an approach that focused on the development of rank-and-file leadership and worker engagement to one that prioritized member recruitment. The paper argues that a focus on recruitment is not necessarily inimical to union revitalization, but this depends on the extent to which it is used to develop new activists and to strengthen the ability of local unions to provide effective representation

Britain’s battered unions have new battles round the corner

No abstract available

Why workers go on strike

No abstract available

Rail workers union strikes a blow for collective bargaining

No abstract available

Friendship Bench trial: lay worker training in problem-solving therapy to reduce symptoms of common mental disorders

The Friendship Bench trial is a cluster-randomised trial of the effect of problem-solving therapy training for lay workers on symptoms of common mental disorders among clinic attenders in Harare, Zimbabwe. This dataset enables replication of analysis for a paper on suicidal ideation, but has undergone anonymisation process to protect study participants. 12 primary care clinics in Harare were randomised 1:1 to intervention or control. In each clinic, 24 participants were enrolled who were: visiting the clinic (either for their own health needs or accompanying someone else); aged 18 or over; living locally; and screened positive for common mental disorder symptoms. Outcomes were measured after 6 months. 86% of participants were women, 42% were HIV positive and 91% completed follow-up

A new deal for workers: Labour's plan and the future of union relations

No abstract available

Trade unions and the challenge of fostering solidarities in an era of financialisation

This articles re-examines evidence that trade unions in the UK have struggled to renew themselves despite considerable investment of time and effort. It argues that financialisation in the realms of capital accumulation, organisational decision making and everyday life has introduced new barriers to building the solidarities within and between groups of workers that would be necessary to develop a stronger response to the catastrophic effects on labour of financialisation in general, and the financial crisis specifically. The crisis highlighted the weaknesses of trade unions as institutions of economic and industrial democracy, but has also given some opportunities to establish narratives of solidarity in spaces and platforms created within a financialised context