Community Unionism

Lessons from long term coalitions in Australia and Canada

This paper was presented at the European Group on Organizational Studies colloquium, sub theme 38: social movement unionism, in Bergen Oslo, 7-9 July 2006.

Union revitalisation strategies in industrialised countries include attempts by unions to reach out to community organisations and engage in community unionism. One form of community unionism is the long term coalition between unions and community organisations. This paper develops a definition of community and community unionism, identifying three key elements that vary coalition practice – organisational relationships, common concern and multi-scalar capacity. These elements are explored in a comparison of the public education campaigns in NSW and the Ontario Health Coalition in Ontario. I find that both case studies develop successful and sustainable forms of community unionism, while also reflecting stark variations in these three elements. I use these two case studies to speculate about how variations in community unionism operate. For instance I argue that there is an ‘agenda-participatory’ form of community unionism, evident in the public education campaign, where there was strong common concern and multi-scalar capacity without a strong structure of organisational relationships. I argue there is a ‘structure-participatory’ form of community unionism, in the Ontario Health Coalition campaign, where there was a strong organisational structure and multi-scalar capacity without a deep common concern connection. The paper highlights that while each of these forms of community unionism contribute to union power, they provide unions with different sources of power and achieve their success as coalitions in different ways.

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The concept of community unionism is built on the idea that union connection to the community builds successful campaigns and strengthens unions. This paper investigates how and when this might occur, focusing first on achieving a concrete definition of community, second by establishing a framework for understanding the contours of successful community unionism and finally exploring this framework through a comparison of two case studies of community unionism from Australia and Canada.

The term community has entered union discourse as union density and power, particularly in the industrialised world, has diminished. While work between unions and community organisations is not new, theoretical interest in these relationships has surged in the last 15 years (Brecher and Costello 1990a; Frege, Heery et al. 2004; Reynolds 2004). Yet the scholarship on coalitions has some limitations, often focusing on best-practice case studies and assuming rather than proving if and how coalitions are a source of power for unions (Tattersall 2005).

This paper argues that coalitions can be understood as one example of a broader concept of community unionism. By defining the term community, and then using this definition as a conceptual tool, this paper explores key elements of coalitions and how those elements vary coalition success and form. In doing so, it does not seek to develop a strict benchmark definition of community unionism, where some magic threshold of engagement or campaign success represents an ideal type of practice. Rather it argues that community unionism is a deeply variable concept and by breaking down its elements, we can understand significant variation and success through concepts such as the kinds of common interest, organisational relations and multi-scalar campaign capacity present.

Furthermore, the paper argues that there is a progression of forms of power that community unionism can concretely provide unions, stretching from an instrumental to a deeper, more politically transformative power. Firstly, community unionism provides an instrumental form of power – complementing union capacity by increasing a union’s financial, physical and human resources, providing expertise and enhancing the number of union supporters (Frege, Heery et al. 2004). Secondly, community unionism provides a legitimising form of power, where union action is framed as a ‘sword of justice’ with broad community support and not simply the vested interest of unions (Flanders 1970). Thirdly, community unionism can assist unions to build an agenda for change (Reynolds 1999; Tattersall 2006b). Finally, community unionism, by creating influential relationships between unions and community organisations and by mobilising union members on a variety of issues can create change in unions themselves – community unionism may be an agent of union revitalisation (Frege, Heery et al. 2004; Tattersall 2005; Turner forthcoming). I argue that the forms of power that community unionism offers unions vary as the success and interdependent relationships between unions and community organisations deepen, thus this paper argues that there is a connection between the capacity of community unionism and the source of power that community unionism provides unions.

1. Community and Community Unionism
Community unionism has a contested and uncertain meaning, in part due to the ambiguity of the term ‘community.’ The ambiguous use of the term community makes it difficult to assess what community unionism looks like. However, while the term community is loosely deployed across union renewal literature, there are some consistent themes (Tattersall forthcoming a). Most commonly, the term community is used as a surrogate for community organisation, for example in the term union-community coalition (Brecher and Costello 1990a; Tufts 1998; Tattersall forthcoming a). Secondly community is used to describe a group of people who have common interests or identities, such as a community of women or environmentalists (Cranford and Ladd 2003; Fine 2005). Thirdly, community is used to mean place, as in a defined geographic area such as a local neighbourhood community (Ellem 2003). These three discrete definitions can be seen as complementary and supplementary, defining the attributes of community and providing a concrete anchor for exploring terms such as community unionism (Tattersall forthcoming a)