What is organising?
What is organising? What is an organising culture?
An organising Union means:
- members recognise that their union’s real strength comes from their power as a group or collective,
- members want to be involved in their union and see success related to their efforts,
- activists recruit other workers, handle grievances and play a major role in the workplace.
An organising union recognises:
- that collective representation is critical to the resolution of workplace issues,
- the need to organise the unorganised & mobilise current members,
- to find the issues and concerns that will mobilise members and engage potential members, acknowledging that these issues will not always be purely industrial but may also include professional, social justice, environmental and other issues of concern.
- the dangers in members seeing the paid officials as ‘the union’ ,
- the need for problems and disputes to be solved by the members and paid officials working together rather than everything being handled by the union office and paid officials,
- that if members see their union purely in terms of the services it provides, active involvement will suffer and ultimately membership will decline,
- that the most effective way to recruit new members is usually through one-to-one contact between members and fellow workers rather than by union officials,
- that recruitment and organising activities must continue before, during and after enterprise bargaining negotiations,
- that there must be a balance between organising and providing essential services (bargaining expertise, research, OH&S advice, membership benefits and discounts and so on).
Why change the way we operate?
While the NTEU is one union that has enjoyed membership growth, the union movement in general has witnessed a dramatic decline in membership. Some of the reasons for this include:
- changing patterns of employment including moves away from public to private sector employment,
- an increase in the number of smaller workplaces,
- changes in employment status from full time to fractional, part time and casual,
- changes in industrial relations including wholesale attacks on unions and workers terms and conditions by the federal and some state governments,
- a lack of positive recruitment and organising strategies by unions.
The decline in union membership in Australia creates the risk of:
- a loss of credibility as workers’ representatives,
- loss of influence with governments (affecting a wide range of industrial legislation and various elements of the social wage such as health, education and social security),
- less financial ability to run organisations, employ staff and provide services to members,
- loss of influence at industry & university level affecting our ability to intervene on behalf of large numbers of workers,
- loss of bargaining strength at individual workplaces,
- non-unionists undercutting conditions at the expense of union members.