Union Voices by Melanie Simms & Jane Holgate & Edmund Heery

Author:Melanie Simms & Jane Holgate & Edmund Heery [Simms, Melanie & Holgate, Jane & Heery, Edmund]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Labor & Industrial Relations, Political Science
ISBN: 9780801478130
Google: XzFpTQUhf0QC
Goodreads: 14923023
Publisher: ILR Press
Published: 2012-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Motivation to Train as a Union Organizer

The main motivating factors for the decision to train as a union organizer were broadly similar for the majority of academy graduates: they wanted to contribute to changing the union movement and assisting workers to assert their rights. In short, they wanted to “make a difference” in the way people are treated at work. Many saw the role of organizer more as a vocation rather than a job and spoke almost evangelically about union organizing:

[I wanted] to be involved in inspiring others to become involved in active, campaigning trade union activities; transforming attitudes and lives; fighting employers and leading the way for better employment rights, and greater representation and involvement of disenfranchised workers and communities. (OA organizer #127, white female)

There was, it was believed, a necessity to transform the union movement so that it was truly capable of representing and defending vulnerable workers. As expressed by one organizer, “It’s kind of our duty as trade unionists to have a collective response to ensure that vulnerable people are ok, and more than ok actually” (OA organizer #63, white female).

As might be expected given that most had experience of the union movement, organizers were acutely aware of the difficulties that unions had experienced over the preceding decades, but they were more than just aware—they had given considerable thought to how the union movement needed to change. No doubt the process of undertaking a year-long training program with a small cohort of other organizers, where people came together throughout that year for residential training, meant that there was plenty of time for discussion and debate about previous experiences and the future of the union movement. This meant that organizers were able to develop an overall view of different union strategies and approaches to organizing in a way that many others in the union movement were unable to do from the limited perspective of their own unions. Academy trainees were in a relatively unusual position; they had an overall perspective of organizing potential and activity because their training explicitly requires them to share experiences with organizers from other unions informed by their experiences in different workplaces and sectors. In some sense, the ability to see the “big picture” was one that was perceived not to be fully shared by others within their unions—not because other union officers were incapable of such an insight, just that their roles and interaction with officers from other unions was more limited, and where there was crossover between unions, discussion between officers were more likely to be around servicing and negotiations rather than the specifics of organizing strategies.

It was interesting to note that others working in the union movement who were most likely to share the organizers’ wide perspective on organizing (although not necessarily the detail) were often those at the opposite end of the career ladder. As a result of their specific and strategic roles, some senior union officers were perceived to have a greater understanding than other union officers of the

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