Unions have for many years relied on staff to encourage members to build the union through new organizing drives at non-union workplaces, but there’s so much more they could be doing.
An organizer usually works a union campaign in separation — even isolation — from the rest of the union. They may make reports to a membership meeting but are otherwise separated. This structure is bad for us, bad for the workers we are trying to organize, and bad for the current members of the union. This separation between organizers and the union reflects the service model of unionism, where the union and its staff work on addressing members’ concerns rather than empowering the rank-and-file themselves. This model has developed over the past 40 years and is one reason only 10% of US workers are in a union.
For unions that prioritize worker-to-worker organizing, there will be immediate benefits for an organizer. Members may have friends working in non-union facilities which can be set up for a campaign as first contacts. These members can hang around the workplace to talk up the unions as workers leave the building.
Boosting Member Engagement
These members can participate in campaigns by sharing their personal stories and experiences, especially if they got the benefit of a successful grievance or an arbitration victory. With so much of a new organizing campaign focused on economic issues, like low pay and lousy benefits, the heart of the union that protects every worker every day from bad and unfair conditions is often neglected. There is no one so persuasive about the value of the union than a worker whose job was protected.
Having members participate at meetings, or on social media, to describe a grievance they won and how it made work better can be important in a new organizing campaign.
These members can spread the importance of new organizing among the other members, so that they will support spending their dues money to run campaigns.
Getting these members to participate in a new organizing campaign can be very persuasive, especially if they can describe a grievance they won. They can come out to organizing meetings in person or go along on home visits. If their work schedules make this difficult, they can even make a video talking about how their union won the grievance that can be spread around the organizing group.
As the members participate and see their value in new organizing, they will be supportive in the local about continuing — and funding — the new organizing program.
Making Members into Organizers
Encouraging members to change their habits and get involved in new organizing requires some attention, but stress to them that you are trying to organize competitors, to make your industry union, so that the boss in negotiations can’t try to cut pay and benefits, using non-union competitors as the excuse. Tell your members that new organizing, especially in their industry, is cash on the bar.
If you can get some of your members to go on home visits with you, they will hear the horror stories of a nonunion workplace and will appreciate their union even more. When they come back to their workplace and tell the stories, it will build the union.
Making members into organizers will also dramatically change the structure of your union, as the members now will think the union belongs to them, and not to the officers or paid staff. This can be hazardous, however, because many union officers do not want the members involved in the union in any way except paying dues. Rank-and-file members can threaten entrenched union officers who don’t want to see changes in the union, since those changes might threaten their paid positions, but the numbers — only 10% organized, down from 37% — tell the truth. We have to change, or we will continue to be cut down.
Expanding the power of our members is simply the best way to expand unionism in the country. Elon Musk, for example, has nearly 200 million followers on his Twitter/X account. How many organizers, or officers, have a spread so wide? Compared to Musk, unionism is invisible, so organizers have to change the game. Getting every one of our members to participate will change unionism in a good way.
We have to try to reach every worker with the message about organizing, so let’s start with our own members.
