Assessing Union Organizing in the United Kingdom: Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Abstract

This paper presents an assessment of the union organizing agenda in the United Kingdom. It considers the origins and recent developments of organizing and examines how the union movement has sought to operationalize organizing as a tool for revitalization. We seek to tease out a twofold argument that is sensitive to both external and internal dynamics and politics. First, we examine the way in which organizing has become contextualized within the specific regulatory dimension of the United Kingdom and the priority that has been given to recognition campaigning to the relative neglect of wider political perspectives around union identity, purpose, and societal status. Second, we suggest there has been a tendency to isolate the strategic development and capacity of organizing within the broad operational imperatives of unions—a process that can, unintentionally, reduce goals and purpose to specific sets of tactics and techniques. We argue that organizing should be seen as a template for developing narratives that allow unions to focus around new forms of progressive trade union services and a shared repertoire of activities across organizational structures.