Renewing our Trade Unionism With Big Ideas

There is far too much loose talk about trade union renewal. I guess I have been as guilty as anyone in succumbing to the temptation to call for the renewal of our movement. I also guess that I'm about to succumb yet again.

I should say, by way of justification, if one is needed, that my latest offering to the debate about union renewal was stimulated by listening to Will Hutton speak to Oxford Labour Party last night. Will Hutton spoke of the need for bold and imaginative thinking to confront the unprecedented economic challenge we now find ourselves in. I didn't agree with all that Will Hutton said in his contribution (which I will pick up in another blog post in the future) what I was impressed with was his extremely bold, clear, innovative and thoroughly imaginative thinking. While understanding that not everyone in the room would necessarily agree with his ideas or policy proposals what struck me was his understanding that this was a time for big thinking and big ideas.

Not being an economist, and given everything else going on right now, my mind drifted to the challenges we face in the trade union movement. By that I don't just mean the huge and unprecedented attacks taking place on public services and on the hard working people who strive to deliver them - and these are truly huge and unprecedented in their size and ferocity - but I thought of what environment we in UNISON will have to try and organise in and how we go about out task.

UNISON is a truly democratic union so coming up here with policy proposals out of the blue that have yet to be discussed within our family is not at all appropriate. However, we can all see, without the gift of second sight, what the future public sector workplace might look like. In fact for many workers delivering public services, as successful as we might be as a union, they will not enjoy the benefits of the traditional workplace. Indeed, for many they may only rarely see a work colleague, going from their home, delivering a service in someones home and then perhaps going directly to another 'clients' home. This is already a reality for many UNISON members and for thousands of public sector workers. The challenge for us is to find ways of recruiting and organising these workers.

As the workplace, the standard foundation of our organising, transforms even further, we have to find new and more imaginative ways of linking workers together so that they can enjoy the benefits of collective organisation and action even while they work in more isolated settings. That's why bold and imaginative thinking is called for. If we continue to organise on the basis of workplaces that are likely to become more scarce then, putting it mildly, that doesn't seem an altogether sensible approach.

A recognition of the different types of workplaces as well as the different types of jobs that workers do is fundamental to any union organising strategy. UNISON is no different. We already recognise that there is no one way to organise across a workforce as complicated and multi-faceted as the ones that we cover. If there is no one way to organise then, by definition, that means there are lots of different ways. This can either be seen as a negative or a positive. In my view this is completely positive and should have always been the song we sang. It means that we then do not try to organise by formula but, instead, we look at the workplace in front of us and decide what needs to be done and the tools we need (including organising techniques) to get the job done. No two workplaces are the same so why should our organising strategies be the same? Clearly they should not be.

How we organise in these new and challenging times will take bold and imaginative thinking that actually challenges our perceived wisdoms and the way that we have always done things. If we challenge ourselves and some of our past perceptions and working practices prove to still be correct and good for the current environment then we should continue to embrace them. If they do not meet the needs of these challenging times then we, in line with all other unions, will need to jettison them or, perhaps more accurately, simply add them to the armoury of tools that organisers can utilise but not slavishly adopt.

While I have always championed the utilisation of new social media and improved new technologies for organising I have never seen them as the only way to go. They are just tools to be used for organising. Gateways to our union or tools for our organisers. For me though there is no better organising technique than the oldest one of all - one worker talking directly with another one! For me it's how we use this oldest of all organising techniques effectively that will be one of the biggest success indicators.

Trade union renewal is vital in my view. We are under immense attack where the very basic principles of our movement, especially the worth of collectivism, through social provision, organisation or action, is under threat. So I think we need to not be afraid to say what it is we stand for as a movement but make sure that we are able to set it out in a way that makes sense to workers and organise it in a way that helps to build real power for working people in their working lives. That's going to require bold and imaginative thinking and to embrace a big ideas culture - even if, at first we don't really fully agree with some of the ideas we hear.