We may have borrowed the theory of ‘organising’ from the USA but they borrowed it from our history and simply redefined it in a modern economy. Organising’s values are those the movement was founded on. As Dave Prentis has said to UNISON organisers “ We always knew this stuff. Somehow we just forgot about it”
We do though have to be very clear about what is the essential nature of a trade union. We are not a business selling a service. We are a voluntary association of workers, set up by workers to express and exercise our collective strength and power. We are the means by which workers can stand up to employers and say ‘listen to us – we are entitled to and demand the right, to be treated with respect’
Central to the idea of organising is a focus on growth. If we are not growing we will die. There are millions of workers who are not in a union both in the public and private sector and if we could organise those workers – building from our traditional strength our power to resist the onslaught we face will grow as well. Frances O’Grady of the TUC is right when she says
“As we campaign against socially divisive and economically counter-productive cuts in the public sector - as we defend the jobs, pay and pensions of dedicated public servants who are being made to suffer for the bankers' recession, and defend the services that millions of people rely upon - we must not lose sight of the central organising challenge we face. And that, of course, is rebuilding our presence in the private sector.”
http://www.tuc.org.uk/organisation/tuc-18167-f0.cfm?
Yes it is vital. we organise those workers who already benefit from union bargaining and pay nothing for the terms and conditions they receive. But we must have strategies to organise non-union employers competing with unionised workplaces especially in the public sector. We have to protect those employers who do the right thing by recognition, otherwise we will forever be chasing our tail, in the ultimate race to the bottom. Unionisation in the private sector is now down to 15.1% http://stats.bis.gov.uk/UKSA/tu/TUM2009.pdf and fewer than 20% of private sector workforce are covered by collective agreements
Yes we need greater density in our heartlands but we need to do more than simply infill organising.
We face privatisation on an unprecendented scale. Redundancies and job cuts will decimate whole sectors of the economy. If our strategy for building the collective power of workers depends on just the retention of the union members first established in the previous century, as Private Fraser used to say “We’re all doomed”.