Union Voices: Tactics and Tensions in UK Organizing by Melanie Simms, Jane Holgate and Edmund Heery Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 2012, 203 pp., £14.50 pbk, £43.50 hbk.

• Published date: 01 November 2013
• Author: John Kelly
• Date: 01 November 2013
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12022

Union Voices: Tactics and Tensions in UK Organizing

Melanie Simms, Jane Holgate and Edmund Heery

Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 2012, 203 pp., £14.50 pbk, £43.50 hbk.

Union Voices provides a comprehensive account of the authors’ wide-ranging research

into union organizing, with particular reference to the TUC Organizing Academy. The

book contains a wealth of evidence from many sources: interviews with organizers,

multiple surveys of both organizers and unions, observations of meetings and docu-

mentary sources. The data was collected over a period of ten years and covers 238

organizing campaigns. On the basis of this material, the authors offer a sobering

judgement:

‘It is therefore hard to avoid the conclusion that thirteen years of organizing activity has made

comparatively little impact on formal, aggregate measures of union power.’ (p. 163)

It is true that several thousand recognition agreements were signed between 1995 and

2008 and as a consequence bargaining coverage was extended to almost one million

workers. However, the continuing decline of membership and coverage, both in

manufacturing and the public sector, has been more than sufficient to offset the

limited gains from organizing. It is also true that without the resources committed to

organizing, then union density would have been even lower than its 2012 figure of 26

per cent. For those academics and activists who invested so much hope in the organ-

izing agenda, this will be scant consolation.

Union Voices identifies a series of issues and problems around organizing that help

us understand why the net impact on density has been minimal. Some of the obser-

vations and arguments are highly persuasive, in light of the evidence assembled by the

authors, whilst others are more contentious and will undoubtedly generate valuable

debate. Early on in the book, the authors note that the concept of organizing and the

associated idea of an ‘organizing model’ are both problematic. Data from the TUC

Academy and from individual unions—UNITE, GMB and USDAW—is used to

show that ‘organizing’ has taken different forms in different settings. For USDAW it

is strongly centred around infill recruitment in individual workplaces under the

umbrella of partnership agreements with employers. In contrast, UNITE has placed

more emphasis on securing multi-employer agreements in greenfield sites based

around strong workplace organization. Data from many of the Academy graduates is

consistent with the idea that different approaches may be required in different set-

tings: their training is seen to have provided them with a toolkit of techniques rather

than a single, universal model. Whilst the authors appear to value this pragmatic

approach they are equally keen to emphasise one of its less obvious downsides and

that is the absence of an overarching political agenda. The ‘organizing model’, as

constructed in the United States was not only a set of practices designed to boost

union membership and member participation in unions; it was a wide-ranging

ideological critique of ‘business unionism’ and an assertion of the case for a ‘social

movement trade unionism’ whose remit would go well beyond wages and conditions.

According to the authors there is very little evidence of social movement unionism

(SMU) in the UK, apart from a few isolated examples, and they argue this is one of

the key factors that helps to explain the modest achievements of union organizing in

the UK.

586 John Kelly

© 2013 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd