Organising strategy - mobilise or organise?

On 8th November I attended four fascinating meetings at the Historical Materialism conference with people from the USA and Canada discussing the plight of the labour movement and ideas for turning it round.

I found the debates really useful and there were a lot of ideas the British labour movement should engage with.  I've written up some of the key points as a series of three articles.  The first ("Mobilise or Organise?") is mainly about Jane McAlevey's ideas on organising strategy and has been published here.  The other two should be published over the next few days and will cover "Migration, the labour market and social reproduction" and "Reversing the decline".

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Virgin Media union busting

The CWU and BECTU unions are reporting an initiative by Virgin Media to try to deny staff union recognition.

With no warning, the employer has used a company it has engaged, rather than anyone independent, to run a "ballot" of staff in its Access Division over the company's plan to derecognise the unions.  The company has sent staff material explaining its position, not including any material from the unions, and has included in the ballot people who aren't covered by union recognition anyway.

If any union ran an industrial action ballot like this the law would be down on us like a ton of bricks.

This kind of employer action brings back memories for me.  I first joined the union at work when my own employer tried to derecognise it.  Many others joined at the same time.  At the time the union in my workplace wasn't well organised and wasn't very effective for us, but we felt that we, not the company, should choose who represented us.  We understood that getting rid of the union was likely to be a precursor to worsening pay, terms and conditions.  Our campaign was successful in defending union recognition and the union today is a lot more active and effective than it was then.

I hope staff at Virgin Media are successful in defending their union recognition and come out of the campaign with their organisation reinvigorated.

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Fujitsu strikes on Monday

With last-minute efforts to reach an agreement not proving successful, Monday's strike by Fujitsu workers in Crewe and Manchester is going ahead. The UNITE press release gives details of the picket lines and the public rally in Manchester on Monday morning.

UNITE members will be buoyed up by the success of PCS members elsewhere in Fujitsu in winning higher pay, as reported in Computer Weekly and elsewhere.

UNITE has an "appeal for support" leaflet (which gives background to the dispute) and a collection sheet on www.ourunion.org.uk and the news page of the same site gives updates.

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UNITE and PCS strikes at Fujitsu come closer

UNITE members at Fujitsu Crewe have been taking industrial action over the victimisation of Alan Jenney, one of their reps, since 30 June. On Wednesday PCS announced the result of its ballot of members in Fujitsu (mostly in Telford, Swansea and Netherton) which is over pay. Yesterday UNITE announced the result of its ballot of members covered by the Fujitsu Manchester Recognition Agreement, over the breakdown of industrial relations, union busting, breaches of agreements and victimisation of reps.

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Bombardier, Southampton and Fujitsu

Three important campaigns that deserve everyone's support.

UNITE members building trains at Bombardier in Derby are campaigning to save their jobs. There's a petition on the union web site.

UNITE and UNISON members at Southampton Council have been striking for weeks against brutal cuts which the council is seeking to impose by dismissing the workforce and re-engaging them on new contracts. I've posted the details on how to support them before.

Fujitsu, my employer, has escalated the dispute that led to members in Crewe striking on 30th June and taking ongoing action short of strike. Today they dismissed leading UNITE rep Alan Jenney as "redundant", even though this was readily avoidable and totally in breach of agreements and past practice. It is increasingly apparent that this is part of a wider attack on the union, with the company breaking a wide range of agreements. Manchester members are now being balloted too, with the ballot due to close on 4th August. Updates are posted on www.ourunion.org.uk/news and an appeal for support leaflet is regularly updated on www.ourunion.org.uk where you will also find a collection sheet.

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Unionising Procter & Gamble

I've been contacted by one of the activists busy unionising the Procter & Gamble (formerly Gillette) site in Reading.

It sounds like they're doing a great job of building up the union, despite an active anti-union campaign by the employer. They've even set up their own "Bring It On" blog to promote the campaign.

Despite organising being a central plank of UNITE's strategy, it's still common to find activists involved in campaigns like this who've had little or no training in organising techniques or in countering union-busting techniques from management. While they often manage to solve many of the problems through their own research and ingenuity, high quality training would surely help us win more often, more quickly and more decisively.

We really must make sure that one of the outcomes of the current review of UNITE education and training is to provide training aimed at activists in the process of building up union strength and fighting for union recognition. Not only must the content be good, but the courses must be readily available at times and locations which are accessible to new activists who don't yet have the legal rights to time off that come with recognition.

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INTEL laundry workers demonstrate

This story from the US illustrates the way that many employers in our sector will go to great lengths to prevent working people having an effective voice.

The argument that they're protecting the rights of employees who don't want to be in the union is fast becoming the standard union-busters' spin on both sides of the Atlantic.

Note that the US trade union "UNITE HERE" is totally separate from our own UNITE - The Union.

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