Britain’s battered unions have new battles round the corner

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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

Rail workers union strikes a blow for collective bargaining

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Why workers go on strike

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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

Trade unions and precariat in Europe: Representative claims

Trade unions have been charged with neglecting labour market ‘outsiders’, while alternative actors have emerged to represent these. In response, unions have stepped up their claim to be representative of all workers, without distinction. We review the theoretical and policy debates on this issue, and argue that representation as such has been under-theorized. We draw on Saward’s concept of ‘representative claims’ to analyse the different grounds for competing assertions of representativeness. We identify four main forms of claims, and illustrate these with empirical examples. We conclude that these different claims are mutually reinforcing in stimulating attention to the outsiders, and in their interaction with institutional settings, they have a performative effect in defining new social actors

Organizing young workers under precarious conditions: what hinders or facilitates union success?

Under what conditions do young precarious workers join unions? Based on case studies from France, Germany, the UK and US, we identify targeted campaigns, coalition building, membership activism, and training activities as innovative organizing approaches. In addition to traditional issues such as wages and training quality, these approaches also featured issues specific to precarious workers, including skills training, demands for minimum working hours, and specific support in insecure employment situations. Organizing success is influenced by bargaining structures, occupational identity, labor market conditions, and support by union leaders and members. Innovative organizing tends to happen when unions combine new approaches with existing structures

Medical history complexity of patients attending dental student restorative treatment clinics compared with dental emergency clinics

Introduction: Dental students should graduate from undergraduate programmes with the knowledge and skills to safely manage patients. This requires exposure to patients with a range of medical needs, which may impact the planning and delivery of care. Aims and Objectives: We wished to establish the medical history complexity of patients presenting to student restorative clinics and compare them to patients attending a dental emergency clinic. Materials and Methods: We recorded the medical history data of 200 anonymised patients attending student restorative clinics and compared them to previously collected data from 200 dental emergency clinic patients. We collected basic demographic data (age/gender) and noted the number of medical disorders, amount of comorbidity and the number and types of medications for each patient. Results: The age and medical complexity of patients were different, with fewer young patients seen in the dental restorative clinics. Patients attending restorative clinics were more likely to have multiple comorbidities and took greater numbers and types of medications than those seen in dental emergency clinics. Conclusions: For patients seen in student restorative clinics, medical histories are taken once at the beginning of care and the subsequent treatment plan is delivered over many appointments accounting for that medical history. Emergency clinic patients attend for single treatment episodes and their medical complexity is immediately relevant to the treatment offered. Students have multiple, single encounters with patients in emergency clinics. In both clinics, dental treatment plans need to be adjusted to account for patients' drugs and diseases, providing opportunities to consolidate human disease learning

Consolidating human disease learning in the dental emergency clinic

Introduction Dental undergraduates typically learn and are assessed on aspects of human disease (HD) in the early part of their programme, but it is not until later in the programme that their HD knowledge is put into practice when they provide courses of treatment for numerous patients over multiple visits. The teaching of HD provides core knowledge on medical conditions & medications and is therefore essential in allowing newly graduated dentists to provide safe treatment for medically-compromised patients or those taking medications. We wanted to examine the medical complexity of patients attending a university hospital dental emergency clinic to determine whether this was a suitable group that would help students to consolidate their HD learning in the context of a single visit where treatment was also provided. Materials and methods We examined the medical history of 200 patients attending the dental emergency clinic in the University Dental Hospital, Cardiff using a previous study as a benchmark. Anonymous data was collected using the medical history proforma, and included age, gender, medications, types and number of medical conditions/disorders. Results Patients attending the clinic were more medically complex that those in the comparator study and the demographics reflect wider population data showing increasing numbers of older patients with greater medical morbidity. Discussion/Conclusions The emergency dental clinic is the place where most patients are new to the hospital, have a dental history, medical history, investigations, diagnosis and treatment in a single visit, and offers excellent opportunities for consolidating HD learning in a one-stop clinical treatment episode, guided by suitable instructors