Organising For A Change

As long ago as 2018, social anthropologist and comrade David Graeber set out his “Bullshit Jobs” theory. (David Graeber: Bullshit Jobs – The rise of pointless work and what we can do about it. Penguin Books 2019) The kind of jobs where the people doing them know that if they stopped tomorrow, nobody would notice. But they stay to pay the rent and keep food coming in. Not all low paid and hard jobs are bullshit jobs of course. Like cleaning hospitals for example they need doin

Powerful corrupting forces swirl and surround unions. They act equally on both the “permanently organised faction” of full time officers set to manage the union and the elected lay representatives set to govern it. This corrupting influence can take many forms apart from just the obvious cash bribes and watches as gifts from employers, pay talks in exotic locations etc… all designed to bend the union agenda but which remain rare and easy to spot. But other forms of corruption

Union Builders know that employers will tend to latch on to anything that helps them divide their workforce and set them against each other as we try to build unity and solidarity. Many of the working practices that union builders face such as zero and micro hours working and outsourcing have division built into them for this reason and can create invisible sections of the workforce, where exploitation can be easily ignored or overlooked Major Unions report that the rhetoric

In a post on the eve of the 2024 General Election we reviewed the promises Labour was setting out in its manifesto on new employment...

Organising for a Change interviewed Louise Chinnery from UNISON about her unions successful union building campaign in NHS Hospital...

Building a union is about calling out the huge imbalance of power between workers and bosses in the workplace and setting out to make...

Special guest blogger Avril Chambers writes about her massively successful union building strategy and tactics in schools with support...

Another Labour Government looks to be upon us and its time to plan our campaigns based on our recent experience As set out in this blog...

On current trends 2024 seems on course to produce a Labour Government for the first time in 14 years. The Tory Party seems likely to be...

The recent groundswell of wage militancy across the public, private and privatised sectors has been more than a decade in the making....

Estimates vary but union builders are seeing a huge expansion of platform style working conditions across the labour market as capitalism...

1993 saw the Tories announce their latest masterplan to destroy and disable unions once and for all – the re-sign legislation which...

We bargain when the employer knows we can stop the job and deliver effective strike action supported by the majority of their workforce....

A direct challenge from those whose shoulders we stand on lurks in the background – to reject the easy cop out of managing the decline of...

The right wing view is that leaders make history. Our view in the labour and trade union movement is essentially the opposite – that...

Workplace leaders tend to be those who define reality and build consensus within a group of workers. Either for, or against, the union....

A useful ready reckoner for union organisers and campaigners to bring together in one place the tools methods and philosophy contained in...

A campaign is not an end in itself. Its about getting a specific Target to make a change they don’t want to make by mobilising people to...

All the rights we have as working people were fought for and squeezed out of the rich and powerful against their will. We were never...

Some research shows that people at work are not active in their local union because they have never been asked. Organisers know that what...