British union renewal: does salvation really lie beyond the workplace?

• Author: Joanna Karmowska,Philip James
• Published date: 01 March 2016
• Date: 01 March 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12128

British union renewal: does salvation really

lie beyond the workplace?

Philip James and Joanna Karmowska

ABSTRACT

The paper examines a union initiative to recruit among migrant workers through the

provision of individual services outside of the workplace. While the initiative is shown

to have initially generated new members,questions are raised about the viabilityof such

an approach in the absence of mutually supportive access to workplace representation.

1 INTRODUCTION

The limits of workplace focussed organising as an avenue for union renewal in North

America and Britain have constituted an important theme within debates about how

unions can reverse longstanding declines in membership, employer recognition and

bargaining power. The same is true with regard to the role that various forms of

beyond-the-workplace activity can play in supporting such a process of renewal.

1

An examination of US and British union attempts to engage with potential mem-

bers outside of the workplace reveals the adoption of two broad and distinct

approaches. On the one hand, are approaches that embody an explicit and strategic

linkage between such engagement and the pursuit of collective organisation at the

occupational, sectoral or workplace level. On the other, are those where recruitment

is pursued through the provision of individual member services and only loosely

linked to its use as a platform from which to develop workplace-based union repre-

sentation and organisation.

A variety of examples of the former type of approach can be identified in the

United States, including the ‘comprehensive organising’that Bronfenbrenner and col-

leagues have identified in respect of National Labor Relations Act election campaigns

(e.g. Bronfenbrenner and Hickey, 2004), and a number of successful union campaigns

involving the organisation of predominantly migrant workers that have involved joint

working with community groups and a focus on regulating occupational labour mar-

kets marked by extensive sub-contracting (Erickson et al., 2002; Milkman, 2006). In

Britain, there has similarly been some union involvement in community-based

campaigns around the living wage (e.g. Wills, 2009), while the Transport and General

Workers’Union, prior to the 2007 merger that created the Unite union, adopted an

(ongoing) sectoral organising approach in certain industries that has at times

❒Correspondence should be addressed to Philip James, Business School, Middlesex University, The

Burroughs, Hendon, London NW4 4BT, United Kingdom; email: p.w.james@mdx.ac.uk Joanna

Karmowska, Department of Business and Management, Oxford Brookes University, Wheatley, Oxford

OX33 1HX; email: jkarmowska@brookes.ac.uk

1

The use of the phrase ‘beyond-the-workplace’was adapted from that of ‘beyond the enterprise’used by

Heery et al. (2004). However, as a reviewer pointed out, it had earlier been used in the title of a book written

by Marginson et al. (1989).

Industrial Relations Journal 47:2, 102–116

ISSN 0019-8692

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd