Melanie Simms, Jane Holgate, and Edmund Heery, Union Voices: Tactics and Tensions in UK Organizing.

Tufts, Steven

Melanie Simms, Jane Holgate, and Edmund Heery, Union Voices: Tactics and Tensions in UK Organizing (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2013)

The 1990s was an optimistic period for organized labour in the United States and the United Kingdom as unions emerged from a decade long assault by Reaganism and Thatcherism. By the mid-1990s, union membership in the UK was just over seven million workers, down from thirteen million in 1979. (18) While Clinton and Blair hardly lent a helping hand to lift labour off the ground, they did perhaps remove the state's heavy boot from union backs. The dramatic decline of union membership in the UK began to level off and union density stabilized in the US. New organizing practices were being experimented with by unions that eventually found their way into the UK.

Melanie Simms, Jane Holgate, and Edmund Heery document the "organizing turn" in Union Voices: Tactics and Tensions in UK Organizing. The book contains well over a decade of intensive research on union organizing strategy, campaigns, and activist development that is simply unparalleled. The research begins in the late 1990s when labour leaders realized that UK unions were struggling and the "partnership" model had failed. As a result the Trades Union Congress (TUC, a UK central labour body) developed the Organizing Academy (OA) based on similar projects in the US and Australia. Through original survey and interview data, the researchers not only provide an account of the OA's development but also its impact on leadership development, union culture, and campaign success. As a result, they are able to provide an evaluation (perhaps less than optimistic) of organizing in the UK.

The book is an extremely focused piece. Building from the experience of the OA and its ripple effects across UK unions and campaigns over a decade allows for deep empirical reflection on union organizing and renewal efforts. However, the very focus on organizing and union renewal/ revitalization as conceptual frameworks also presents the authors with significant theoretical challenges. The authors attempt to address many of these conceptual problems in the first chapter which enters debates on union decline and renewal. For scholars engaged in some of these debates, the chapter will seem very familiar as the problems of binary models (e.g., organizing versus servicing, business versus social unionism, bottom-up versus top-down organizing) and what actually constitutes "renewal" (i.e., increased recruitment versus democratic reform) are presented. Many these early binaries have long been discounted by scholars, including the authors themselves. For example, a major argument throughout the book is the need for some coordination or "managed activism" (31) of union campaigns rather than dependence on spontaneous workplace action. If some of the theoretical issues now read as dated, it must be kept in mind that the research project itself is a long study grounded in a theoretical framework that emerged in the late 1990s. My other minor issue with this chapter is the explanation of the rise of organizing in the US. The authors' strong assertion that US organizing in the 1980s and 1990s can be linked to IWW ideology requires more qualification. A similar claim could be made to the influence of community organizers inspired by Saul Alinsky, or anti-war organizers from the New Left that found their way into union leadership positions. The US turn to organizing is simply too overdetermined to be reduced to one group's political influence.

Perhaps it is my own disciplinary bias, but welcomed geographical insights are found consistently throughout the book. The authors have an implicit (if not explicit) geographical sensibility, which can perhaps be credited to their exposure to the work of Jane Wills among others. The second chapter provides a useful account of how the "organizing turn" travelled to the UK (via the US and Australia). The international lineage is traced with special attention to how the UK national labour regulation regime reshaped organizing to the local context. Specifically, the practice of voluntary recognition by less hostile UK employers versus the statutory recognition (i.e., certification votes that are dominant in North America) significantly shape workplace organizing strategies. The authors argue persuasively against any single universal model of organizing.

The OA managed to train 240 organizers between 1998-2008, not only building skills capacity and networks of union organizers, but also changing the organizing culture of unions. While the OA had an impact, it was found that, over time, there was more emphasis on the bundles of tactics used to reach workers and much less on larger strategic questions and developing capacities to deal employers at a sectoral level.

The third and fourth chapters turn to the experience of organizers themselves and their impact on unions. The authors document the tensions that emerge between often younger "specialist" organizers and "generalist" staff. While these tensions are very real, there is also evidence of hybridity and the variety of ways organizers are integrated into union practices. Particularly insightful are the case studies used to illustrate these different approaches. The intensive research with organizers themselves is also compelling as the 240 graduates of the OA are tracked throughout the UK labour movement and are integrated among the 3000 union staff in the UK. While there are relatively few organizers who have left the union movement, many do identify workload pressures and career path limitations. While metropolitan organizers were much less isolated from their OA networks than their rural counterparts, there are cases of isolation in unions that maintain specialist and generalist divisions.

In the chapter that specifically focuses on campaigns, there is a clear criticism on the scale of efforts which continue to address workplaces rather than entire sectors or regions. UK unions are commended for focusing campaigns on greenfield private services as well as infill targets where unions already have a presence, but the focus on the scale of the workplace is of primary concern when wages need to be removed from entire industries.

The primary strength of this book is its exhaustive examination of organizing within the confines of UK union renewal. Here, the book is situates itself among leading labour renewal research in the UK, US, Canada, and Australia. At the same time, the conclusions the book reaches are rather limited by the confines of these debates. Yes, evaluating union organizing with criteria beyond recruitment of new members is important. Union recognition without strong membership support and involvement only leads to poor collective bargaining outcomes. Targeting underrepresented groups of workers in underrepresented sectors will also remain a challenge even with the current organizing turn if workers are not themselves involved. The authors are clear that self-organization and union democracy are just as vital for worker empowerment and that organizing must include these objectives.

But how do you really achieve this in the UK union context? The authors spend less than two concluding pages on alternative models such as social movement unionism. Indeed, the authors finish quite pessimistically and are clear that restriction to workplace organizing and bargaining "does reflect a certain lack of imagination on behalf of unions." (170)

But why not expand the final chapter to discuss the organizing done by unions and unionists outside of recognition and bargaining processes? Did Unison not support London Citizens and the very successful organizing campaign for a living wage? Do graduates of the OA have any links to other Left and community organizations struggling outside of unions? It is here where I think the book's greatest strength, a clear focus on organizing and renewal within the confines of traditional unionism may also be its greatest limitation. The authors might have also considered if innovative "UK organizing" for workers is simply occurring elsewhere.

Steven Tufts

York University