Conception of how trade unions should operate
The organizing model, as the term refers to trade unions (and sometimes other social-movement organizations), is a broad conception of how those organizations should recruit, operate, and advance the interests of their members, though the specific functions of the model are more detailed and are discussed at length below. It typically involves many full-time organizers, who work by building up confidence and strong networks and leaders within the workforce, and by confrontational campaigns involving large numbers of union members. The organizing model is strongly linked to social movement unionism and community unionism. The organizing model contributes to the discussion of how trade unions can reverse the trend of declining membership, which they are experiencing in most industrial nations, and how they can recapture some of the political power, which the labor movement has lost over the past century.
The organizing model is frequently compared and contrasted with other methods of union organization, such as the servicing model. There is disagreement as to the logistics of applying the organizing model and whether it should focus on organizing existing members, recruiting new members, or both. The prominence of the model and the debate over its worth are seen primarily in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom.
Definition.
The principal aim of the organizing model is that of giving power directly to union members. The organizing model in its ideal type has these features:
Organizing versus servicing.
The development of the organizing model is as opposed to the servicing model, and there are various differences between the two models for union structure. Edmund Heery, Melanie Simms, Dave Simpson, Rick Delbridge, and John Salmon talk about how in the servicing model, "...the function of the union is to deliver collective and individual services to members who are dependent on the formal organization and its hierarchy of officers to provide what they require." Heery, Simms, Simpson, Delbridge, and Salmon state that the organizing model is different from the servicing model because it focuses instead on making union members feel "empowered", rather than alienated from the whole union process and environment.
Jack Fiorito states that the organizing model and the servicing model cannot be considered separate and there needs to be provision for using both models at the same time; Fiorito's research about British union members showed that "...a large number of responses express reservations about the OM or at least the organizing vs. servicing dichotomy suggested. Many of these responses emphasize the importance of service as an aid to organizing (18%) or something that is expected by the members (23%)." Fiorito believes that the organizing model and the servicing model are not mutually exclusive in some cases; there are some instances when the two models could be complementary. The debate over the organizing model versus the servicing model is widespread and multifaceted. Even the goals of the organizing model are debated and disagreed upon.
Internal versus external.
According to Bill Fletcher and Richard W. Hurd, unions that employ the organizing model often try to apply the above tactics in "internal", not just "external" campaigns. Indeed, many unions that employ the organizing model attempt to win a greater right to organize non-union workers through pressuring an employer through using current members' collective strength. Richard Hurd says that "Throughout the late 1980s the "organizing model" was used almost exclusively to apply to internal organizing;" however, "...by 1995 the "organizing model" concept was indiscriminately used to refer to both internal organizing to mobilize members and external organizing that promotes grassroots activism as a way to build support for union representation."
There is debate as to the proper role of the organizing model and whether it should focus on internal or on external applications. Bob Carter talks about the difference between internal organizing and external organizing in the context of the earliest British unions to use the organizing model. Carter says that "...despite the core message of the American model – that organization, rather than recruitment as such, was primary – officers were given individual recruitment targets...placing an emphasis not so much on the changing nature of unionism but simply on short-term recruitment." There is an apparent disconnect between employing the organizing model primarily for recruitment purposes and using the organizing model to facilitate better union conditions for pre-existing members of the union.
According to Fletcher and Hurd, exactly what constitutes internal organizing and what constitutes external organizing is unclear. Jack Fiorito offers an argument about internal vs. external organizing in the context of British unions. Fiorito says that external organizing is "...organizing in new areas...", while internal organizing is "...recruitment in sites where the union has recognition..." Fletcher and Hurd believe that the organizing model should be more focused on external, rather than internal, organizing, and they cite "Organizing Locals" as a good example of how that could be accomplished.
History and context.
Trade unions originally existed to organize their members democratically, and during their early growth, they typically put a strong emphasis on active recruitment and militant rank and file action, including strikes. By no means did they always unambiguously act in the interests of their members, but they were perceived as organizations that existed to struggle for collective action. Particularly since the end of World War II, however, the trade unions have tended more and more to act as service providers for their members: providing legal advice, training and so on; eschewing mass-based, militant action. During the '60s, '70s and onward, this trend deepened, with union density among the workforce falling all the while, until it could be measured at between 10% and 20% in many industrialized countries. In the context of this history, the organizing model is in principle not so much a new conception, as an attempt to recapture the essence of the labor movement.
The 1980s saw various attempts, in the United States, to compensate for falling union membership. Richard Hurd says that through the adoption of the "Organizing Institute" in the US, the organizing model was able to spread to other countries, as it "...served as a prototype for Australia's Organizing Works and Britain's Organizing Academy." Bob Carter explains the logistics how the organizing model spread across the world. Carter says that "After a visit to the US of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), the influence of the organising approach spread to Australia and New Zealand and back to Britain via MSF." Carter asserts that the organizing model started in the US, went to Australia and New Zealand next, and then went to the UK. David Peetz and Barbara Pocock state that the ways these various countries implemented the organizing model were quite different, and the model looked slightly different based upon these minor discrepancies.
History in the United States.
According to Richard W. Hurd, the history of the organizing model in the US began from the failure of a "labor law" to be passed in the 1970s. In addition, Hurd explains that the 1980s were a very troubling time for unions in the US as a result of "the anti-union reign of Ronald Reagan" and "Twin recessions". Both of these factors contributed to the decline of union membership that so infamously characterized the labor movement in the US in the 1980s. In fact, Hurd says that, "The labor movement lost more than one-fifth of its private sector members during the first half of the 1980s." Therefore, US unions were forced to try some new tactics in the hopes of regaining the membership they were losing.
In response to this labor crisis, the AFL–CIO made many attempts to renew its labor movement in the 1980s, but none of them were successful. However, in 1988, an AFL–CIO-organized teleconference of trade unionists recognized the potential of the nascent organizing model, gave it its name, and resolved to spread it throughout the trade-union movement: this was an element in the model's popularization. After the teleconference, the AFL–CIO, according to Hurd, established the "Organizing Institute", and the goal of the institute was "to train union organizers." While, as Richard Hurd suggests, the attempts at reigniting the flame of union membership were largely unsuccessful, in 1995, former SEIU President John Sweeney was elected president of the AFL–CIO on the New Voice slate, on a platform of spreading the organizing model across the members of the federation. According to Richard Hurd, when Sweeney took over, he created an "Organizing Department" to enhance the strategy of employing the organizing model throughout the AFL–CIO, and he encouraged unions to begin "devoting 30% of their budgets to recruitment." The extent of the success of this is disputed, with some suggesting that more rhetoric has changed than anything, but it did have at least some effect. Richard Hurd suggests that "The reality is that the individual national unions determine their own resource allocations and develop their own organizing programs," but "Most unions have increased the funding of their organizing departments, and many have devoted substantial resources to the effort." This is how the AFL–CIO tried to implement the organizing model in response to the membership crisis.
In the mid-1980s, the SEIU union found itself in a similar state of crisis. A period of intense internal discussion gave rise to the view that a radical program was needed to rebuild the union and make it relevant to current and potential members. The Justice for Janitors campaign was launched as the organizational spearhead of the SEIU's attempt to reinvigorate their membership; beginning in Denver, Colorado, in 1985. In addition to the Justice for Janitors campaign, according to Jennifer Jihye Chun, around the same time, the SEIU also engaged in campaigns for "home care workers" in Los Angeles. Chun says that "Through a combination of aggressive grassroots organizing strategies, a focused political action campaign, and mass worker mobilizations, SEIU organizers were able to sign up 15,000 workers."
Working along the lines described above, the SEIU experienced huge growth in membership and a significant number of high-profile public victories for workers. (Though some proportion of the SEIU's membership growth has resulted from mergers, such as with 1199). The tactics and strategies of the SEIU and Justice for Janitors go beyond the organizing model which is, as has been described, an approach to local-level organizing and campaigning. It applies to a drive for the recruitment of members and leaders on the level of a firm or city. Other aspects of the SEIU's strategies are national or international. For instance, the drive to gain industry-wide coverage across a large geographical base – i.e., to organize janitors not only within one building but across a whole city, state and eventually all across the US – or the advocacy of union mergers.
History in Australia.
After a wave of massive industrial unrest and unprecedented increases in wages and conditions during the 1970s, the union movement became restrained in their demands, and part of the official apparatus of government during the ALP-led, neo-corporatist, Accord period (1983–96). According to Bob Carter and Rae Cooper, the ALP and the ACTU formed the "Accord" by establishing a formal "relationship" with each other While unions had amalgamated prior to the Accord, and the Australian Council of Trade Unions had itself absorbed other lesser peak industrial councils, the accord period and the later enterprise bargaining period encouraged mergers into super unions. These super unions often obliterated previous small union identities and loyalties (on both the "left" and "right" of the trade union movement) and created unions with a relatively artificial internal culture. Often the largest union in the merger imposed its internal culture on the other divisions of the new union. Additionally, during the period of mergers, the traditional links between members, local organisers, industrial officers, branches and the peak leaderships of unions broke down. This presented a challenge to the union movement. According to Bob Carter and Rae Cooper, the Accord period was very harmful to labor unions, and the super unions did not do anything drastic to improve the conditions of the unions.
Bob Carter and Rae Cooper state that the 1980s and 1990s were particularly bad decades for Australian unions. According to Carter and Cooper, the decline of union membership was worse, during the 1980s and the 1990s, in Australia than it was in the U.K. Carter and Cooper explain that the membership decline in Australian unions was the result of the "...pro-active anti-union approach..." by the "...conservative Coalition federal government...", along