Community Unionism

This has been submitted for publication in the Labor Studies Journal (USA).

Abstract
Union renewal and coalition unionism are widely considered necessary, however the different factors that provoke union engagement in coalitions is an under-theorized area of scholarship. This article develops a framework using the term community and the dialectic of opportunity and choice to explore likely factors for long-term union coalitions with community organisations. It then explores this framework by comparing two case studies of union engagement in long-term coalitions in Australia and Canada. The article finds that the dialectic of opportunities and choices is critical, and in particular emphasizes the role of pre-existing union identities, and common interest and decentralized union structures for generating deep union engagement. It highlights that unions are likely to engage in coalition unionism when there is a coincidence of crisis and perceived opportunity for coalition practice, while noting that the depth of union engagement is greatly affected by the type of union actors that initiates coalition participation (whether officials, factions, organizers or delegates). The article finds that different passages for coalition unionism are possible, and they can originate inside unions or be provoked externally by coalitions. It stresses that union leadership support for coalition unionism may be necessary for coalition practice, but it is not sufficient for generating deep union engagement in coalitions.




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There is a hope that union renewal is possible. Yet indicators of when a shift to renewal is likely to occur are uncertain, and often a secondary focus of scholarship. Some suggest that union-community coalitions (labor-community coalitions) are one example of renewal (Frege, Heery et al. 2004; Reynolds 2004; Turner forthcoming). Long-term coalitions between unions and community organisations, or coalition unionism, is said to be an important source of power and renewal for unions who are suffering from a crisis of density, lack of political influence or needing to build a broader social agenda (Tattersall 2005).

This article focuses on the question of coalitions, often called labor-community coalitions, beginning with the meaning of the term community. It then presents a framework of the opportunities and choices that make an individual union more likely to engage in coalitional unionism. This framework is then explored in two comparative case studies – the NSW Teachers Federation’s collaboration with the Public Education Alliance in Sydney Australia and the Canadian Union of Public Employees collaboration with the Ontario Health Coalition in Canada.

1. What is Community?
Terms such as labor-community coalitions, coalition unionism and community unionism have a contested and uncertain meaning, in part due to the ambiguity of the term ‘community.’ However, while the term community is loosely deployed across union renewal literature, there are some consistent themes (Tattersall 2006a). Most commonly, the term community is used as a surrogate for the phrase community organisation, for example in the term labor-community coalition (Brecher and Costello 1990a; Tufts 1998). 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 neighborhood community (Ellem 2003). These three discrete definitions are complementary and supplementary, defining the attributes of community and providing a concrete anchor for exploring terms such as labor-community coalitions, coalition unionism and community unionism (Tattersall 2006a). See figure 1.

Figure 1: The threefold dimensions of community (included at end)

Thus, union collaboration with the community, or what I term community unionism, can include one of three different practices (Tattersall 2006a). It can include working in coalition with community organisations (Banks 1992; Tufts 1998). It can include unions or community organisations acting with a broad common ‘community’ or class interest or acting with people with a specific identity (Cranford and Ladd 2003; Fine 2005). Or, community unionism can include acting with a place-specific strategy where unions seek to work across a specific geographic area, using local support to enhance union influence and power (Ellem 2005). This article explores one of these practices in detail – coalition unionism – when unions collaborate with community organisations, asking when long term collaboration likely to develop.

Not only can the definition of community define community unionism, but it also defines the different elements of coalition unionism (Tattersall 2006a). Coalitions have organizational features, operating with different types of organizational relations; they have common interest or identity features, operating with different degrees of common concern between organisations, and coalitions have place based features as they engage with the external world, operating with scalar dimensions (Tattersall 2006a; Tattersall 2006c). Thus the term community can also be a guide for understanding the operation and variations of coalition unionism.