Union Organizing: Beyond Fear and Anger
An opinion piece by Peter Hall-Jones*,   November 2008

There are those who believe unions exist purely to bargain for higher pay and for protection against unfair treatment. This may be true in developing countries, in fact it may be a tall order, but in richer nations this model of unionism has been in steady decline since the 1950s (1). After all, it relies on fear and anger as drivers for union recruitment. As we will see below, there just isn’t enough of this going around to build a truly representative labour movement. On top of that, studies suggest that workers are setting their sights higher.

Reality check

Let’s look at the daily grind – at the workplace as it is, and the way workers experience it day-to-day. In doing so we’ll concentrate on developed countries because, to put it simply, the game just ain’t the same in the global south (2).

Linda Kelly, a Director at the UK-based Partnership Institute (3), once observed:   "The average workplace is made up of about 20% of workers who are angry and alienated, 60% who are generally pretty content, and 20% who are on best behaviour. The challenge for unions is to reach further into the workplace than this first group, and to organize the second."

Studies suggest she is about right. Below we have taken data from various sources to show levels of job satisfaction in 21 developed countries. The average number of workers who are either fairly satisfied or very satisfied with their work is no less than 83%.
 

Of course the exact numbers vary from workplace to workplace and sector to sector, as well as country to country (8). There are also notorious problems with the definition and measurement of job satisfaction (9). However the overarching message for unions could not be clearer: an organizing strategy which is centred around fear and anger will only resonate with a minority of potential members. The result for unions is not just self-limiting membership, it is also—by extension—a skewed analysis of the contemporary workplace.

Before we go any further let's be clear about something. This is not a call for unions to become any less assertive in dealing with members' problems (quite the contrary, as you will see). Many working people have plenty of reason to be angry. However the table above raises a more general question:  do we seriously intend to make job dissatisfaction a condition of entry for union membership?

One of the conditions for becoming more involved in a union or community group is anger/concern or dissatisfaction.
ILO/ACTRAV training course (10)

Sometimes unionists even argue that if we do not find sufficient anger, we must foster it.

...people must be shaken out of apathy by anger at their problems, convinced that something can be done about their problems before the anger turns to depression, and then swiftly moved into taking action...
US organizer

If people have issues that are deeply felt they have a right to be angry. We should not be scared of this - in fact we should encourage it.
UK union training material

We need the members to be angry so we can get them what they want.
Union organiser, New Zealand

It might be tempting to think this approach can lead us towards a sustainable model for unionism - a niche built around the most discontented section of the workforce. However evidence suggests this is not the case: union membership can go significantly lower than this core constituency. France, Japan and Spain are three examples.
 

So how low can union membership go before it hits bedrock?  Let's start by setting the record straight. Internationally speaking, union membership numbers stopped declining and have been roughly stable since the late 1990s (details).  However, if we look at specific cases we can see that government intervention certainly does make a difference. For instance, in the USA 25% of workers are not allowed to join a union, for various technical/legal reasons. Another factor is privatisation (union membership in the French private sector is down to 6%, in the USA it is less than 7%).  Such factors set in place a vicious circle. In some countries anti-union legislation helps employers suppress union presence, while diminished membership reduces the unions' ability to respond.

A recruitment strategy based around anger inadvertently assists this vicious circle. It allows anti-union legislators to paint unions as a destructive socio-economic force, and it allows anti-union managers to promote positive values (eg caring, trust etc) in the face of a perceived "external" threat. WalMart is an example of this cynical combination: ideologues in management, supported by slick consultants and strategic reward systems, can effectively bribe their way out of the union loop (11).

But these are extreme cases. Much more serious, in my opinion, is the division which an anger-centred approach creates among workers themselves. We hear it everywhere, in fact studies show that it has now become the dominant view:

“I support unions, but I don’t need one myself”.

So how can unions organize, if not through recruitment campaigns based on workplace problems?  The answer, rather obviously, is to organize around what workers are FOR.  

Above all else, this means listening.

Listening to Change

Luckily for the union movement, lots of careful listening has been done already.

In 1999 the most extensive workplace survey in the USA since the 1970’s (12) - published as What Workers Want - showed that:

workers want collective involvement in decision making

• Nearly 90% of workers wanted some sort of independent employee organization in the workplace;
• Most employees supported the formation of labor-management committees, to which they elect representatives to run the organization and settle conflicts.

The study's findings were confirmed in 2007 (13). Effectively, the challenge which US workers are placing in front of their unions is to start democratising the workplace.

What about other countries? There have been a swelter of studies, and the picture which emerges suggests a new agenda and a new approach are needed.

In the United Kingdom:   "Workers consistently put ‘having a rewarding and interesting job’ at the top of their list of priorities in working life.   ...unions are most likely to be seen as effective in making work interesting and enjoyable where they are able to move... to an ‘aspirational’ agenda focused on the quality of working life, job redesign, job enrichment and career development." (14)

In Canada:   "An employee’s work environment has the biggest impact on their work satisfaction"  (15)   and:   "The quality of employment relationships is more important to overall job satisfaction than pay or benefits" (16)

In South America and Spain 'recognition' appears to be the most important factor in job satisfaction (17).

In Scandinavia most people want 'interesting work' (17).

In fact this latter demand seems to emerge as the dominant one. A 2006 study of 21 countries (see table below) found that there were six factors most closely associated with job satisfaction. Listed in descending order, these were:
   • Opportunities to do an interesting job
   • Recognition for your performance
   • Balance between private life and worklife
   • Prospects for advancement
   • Job security
   • Salary/payment (17).

If we compare this list of factors with our traditional approach, might we say that we almost have it upside down?

The findings are cited below, with the most important factor for each country highlighted.

So, what might it mean if unions were to rejig their organizing and recruitment practices so that they were better mapped against what workers want? 

Clearly a righteous or a sneering approach, based on a "goodies and baddies" mentality, will not impress a majority who identify themselves as satisfied, but are longing for work which is more interesting. Yet the changes that are sought are  ambitious ones, and will require the development of real influence. It seems that workers are looking for a new kind of presence - an on-site voice which can seriously address matters like workplace culture, inter-personal difficulties, stress, management styles and work-life balance. For a union to tackle such issues effectively it would need to have its heart and soul in the workplace, not downtown at the local office.

You thinking what I'm thinking?  We have a workforce wanting more interesting work, and we have interesting problems for them to solve. These solutions are in the workers' interests.  Snap!  It may require some organizer retraining, and it may mean looking for new skills in workplace reps, or (better) the diversification of union roles over a wider group. But essentially it's an organizing job.

Union values

Given much of the data we've seen above, it will come as no surprise to find that most workers want fairer pay (18), not just higher pay.  Work satisfaction is not tied to any absolute income level, it's about relative amounts compared with others in the same organisation, and/or others in the same occupation. This applies across gender lines, and across education and qualification levels.

	workers want pay that is fairer, not just higher

In some respects this takes us beyond the traditional bargaining agenda. While negotiations over pay and conditions need not change, alongside pay equity and other campaigns, a deeper process needs to be introduced to help make the whole field more transparent.

Your common-garden economist will say that self-interest drives the demand for higher pay. It's just not that simple. In fact the only section of the work force which appears to obey this rule are those at the highest end of the scale. With directors, the blunt desire for 'more money' appears to be a major motivating factor (19).  This attitude may explain why those on higher pay seem to think that individually-targetted performance pay will improve productivity. The facts don't fit their argument. For instance, in 2003 an OECD paper (20) found massive problems with performance pay in public services:   “...the technique is functioning well in none of (the OECD) countries' public services. In addition, it has created side effects that are difficult to deal with.”  A parallel study in Australia (21) found that performance pay:
   • demotivated staff
   • created workplace divisions and eroded cooperation
   • undermined of teamwork
   • reduced open feedback within the workplace
   • increased administrative burdens and costs

	workers want cooperation, not competition

Richard Layard, director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, complains about the narrow, economic view of human nature which finds its expression in competitive rankings and performance-based systems (22). It is a complaint that working people have been raising, in one form or another, since the earliest days of unionism.

This brings us to an important question. Why should managers even care about job satisfaction?  Workers want to be happier at work—doesn't everyone—but why should that make any difference? Evidence from the last 10 years has sparked a lot of new thinking in this area. Unions can now point to conclusive evidence (23), across countries and across industries, that job satisfaction is linked to improved performance. The link to productivity seems to be clearly established as well. In fact, in the right circumstances, high performance and job satisfaction can reinforce each other. In the words of Frederick Herzberg: If you want someone to do a good job, give them a good job to do. (24)

The significance of all this from both union and management perspectives cannot be overstated. As competition for markets and resources becomes more intense, improving social dynamics in the workplace will make or break an organisation.

The ability to compete is becoming dependent on the ability to cooperate.

This coincides with what some are calling the end of neoliberalism—the extreme free market model which has dominated global economics since the era of Reagan and Thatcher (26).  Workers are now in a position to start thinking strategically. It is not just a matter of rights, nor of right vs wrong.  In the widest and most useful possible sense, it is about what works best.

Towards a union theory of management?

Organizing around job satisfaction and workplace culture cannot be done by remote control. On the contrary—it's hard to imagine a more hands-on form of unionism. Yet over the last ten years many unions have been moving in this direction for compelling reasons:
   • it's what workers want
   • management resistance is (quite literally) counter-productive
   • it roughly triples the base for union membership recruitment.

Chances are there won't be ballads sung about the transition in years to come. Where the change is being made, wins tend to be slow and incremental. They also need to be defended as CEOs come and go (once every 3 years, on average!). However the mere process of engaging at this level makes unionism a real and everyday part of working life. It builds workplace relationships in a meaningful way, and it produces union skills which are transferable across country, sector and industry. It places the union at the heart of the production process; and from such a base unions need never again be as vulnerable to political attack as they are at present.

As we saw with the issue of pay above, this is not a game with absolute goals. Job satisfaction is not a destination which can be pinpointed on an industrial relations map. It is about people learning to sit down and collectively assess a situation, then develop positive and realistic alternatives. The rest is organizing. 

"The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating.
The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them
changes both the maker and the destination."
John Schaar (27)

 
* Peter Hall-Jones is a union communications worker who currently manages communications for the New Unionism Network.  This article—which builds on earlier work for the PSA and PSI—represents his own views, not those of the network or its members.

Notes

1    The term “business unionism” has not been used in this article as it has become too narrowly associated with the approach of certain US unions, even where unions in other countries use the same tactics. Furthermore, many unions who use fear/anger models would never see their approach as part of this tradition. One sometimes finds a fear/anger approach promoted under the name “Anger-Hope-Action”, however we have avoided the use of this term as well, as there are advanced and useful variants of this approach which can reach a broader section of the workplace. See http://www.answers.com/topic/business-unionism.

2   "A previous international study (of job satisfaction), using the World Values Survey, has indicated that a shift takes place, as societies become more affluent and the nature of employment changes, from a focus on extrinsic work values (pay, working hours – the benefits a job has for the employees’ life outside of work), to a focus on intrinsic work values (the quality of the work itself)".  
From the FDS International Limited study What Workers Want: A Worldwide Study of Attitudes to Work and Work-Life Balance, 2007

3    The Partnership Institute was originally set up by the TUC – the national body of British unions – as part of the New Unionism project. Although still supported by the TUC, it is now an independent body. See www.partnership-institute.co.uk. This quote is from 2002.

4   EWCS refers to the European Foundation's European Working Conditions Survey published in 2000. See http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/docs/ewco/4EWCS/ef0698/chapter10.pdf.

5   ISSP refers to the International Social Survey Programme study, published in 1997. See http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/oswald/1997internationaljobsatisfaction.pdf

6   JWRPS refers to the Japanese Worker Representation and Participation Survey. See http://people.colgate.edu/tkato/tplsohashi.pdf

7   GSS refers to the General Social Survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center /University of Chicago.  See http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/07/pdf/070827.jobs.pdf

8   Most of this data comes from either 2000 (EWCS) or 1997 (ISSP). Whether job satisfaction has increased or declined since then is a matter for debate - different reports at national level point to contradictory conclusions. This reminds us that measuring job satisfaction is not an exact science!  Other studies suggest that workers in the least prestigious job categories (unskilled manual and service occupations) have the lowest level of satisfaction. Job satisfaction also seems to be linked to education levels and pay. However in no sector in any developed country could we find less than 50% of workers who were not either “very satisfied” or “fairly satisfied” with their jobs.

9   See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_satisfaction

10  See http://actrav.itcilo.org/courses/2008/A3-01018/resources/RA-anger-hope-action.doc

11   This strategy has been effectively by WalMart.   “...We believe that if Company managers are sensitive to the needs and desires of their associates, there will be no necessity for them to seek union representation... many employers are forced to close their operation as a result of a strike. Remember, associates do not vote for a union, they vote against management. ...it is very important for you to treat your associates fairly, to make them feel appreciated and secure,and to make yourself accessible… Staying union free is a full-time commitment.”  (extracted from You and Your Labor Relations, What a Wal-Mart Supervisor Should Know About Labor Unions).  In other words if management are sensitive, or believe they are, then they are justified in denying staff the right to join a union. And if the staff believe otherwise? We find the answer later in the manual: “The secret of staying union free is the internal elimination of problems.”  This sentence is no less sinister than it sounds. WalMart regularly fires workers for promoting unionism, and closes outlets rather than allowing them to become unionised.

12  Workers Representation and Participation Survey, originally carried out by Richard Freeman and Joel Rogers and reported in What Workers Want (1999, updated in 2006)

13    Do Workers Still Want Unions - More Than Ever by Richard Freeman, EPI Briefing Paper #182.  See http://www.sharedprosperity.org/bp182.html

14    Trades Union Congress paper A Perfect Union: What Workers Want From Unions, 2006.   See http://www.newunionism.net/library/organizing/TUC%20-%20What%20Workers%20Want%20from%20Unions%20-%202003.pdf

15    21st Century Job Quality: Achieving What Canadians Want  by Graham Lowe, Research Report W|37  2007 for Canadian Policy Research Networks Inc. See http://www.cprn.ca/doc.cfm?doc=1745&l=en

16   What’s a Good Job? The Importance of Employment Relationships by Graham Lowe and Grant Schellenberg, Research Report W|05 2001 for Canadian Policy Research Networks Inc. See http://www.cprn.ca/documents/2289_en.PDF

17  From the FDS International Limited study What Workers Want: A Worldwide Study of Attitudes to Work and Work-Life Balance, 2007. See http://www.theage.com.au/ed_docs/WhatWorkersWant(Final).pdf

18   Satisfaction and Comparison Income, Journal of Public Economics, 61, AE Clark and A Oswald 1996

19  See summary of research at http://www.solbaram.org/articles/willwork.html

20  Performance Related Pay in the Public Service, Francisco Cardona  OECD/SIGMA (first presented to the second conference of the Institute of Public Administration and European Integration, October 2002)

21  Performance Management and the Psychological Contract in the Australian Federal Public Sector, Michael O'Donnell, University of Canberra and John Shields, University of Sydney - Faculty of Economics and Business  Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 44, pp. 435-457, 2002 

22  Happiness: Lessons From a New Science, Prof Richard Layard  Penguin UK 2005

23   For instance in 2001 a survey of 2,500 Canadian employees showed that good employment relationships were the key ingredient of a good job. The study also found strong synergy between job satisfaction and productivity growth (What’s a Good Job? The Importance of Employent Relationships, Graham Lowe and Grant Schellenberg  Canadian Policy Research Networks Inc 2001). This echoed a UK finding two years previously, when the Institute of Work Psychology published an eight-year study (People Power, London School of Economics Journal Centre Piece, Professor Michael West and Malcolm Patterson of the Institute of Work Psychology, 1998) showing that the organisations which performed best were those who:
   • avoided aggressive management styles
   • made sure their staff were never bored
   • allowed them to feel they had a stake in the company’s performance.
Added Malcolm Patterson, who led the research: “It appears that a happy workforce is a more productive workforce. It is a simple message to bosses, but is backed up with hard evidence.”
A 2004 report in the American Psychological Society Journal confirmed this. “The costs of unhappy workers to economic productivity are enormous. Policies aimed at producing a happier workforce make sense both because they can enhance well-being in an important realm of life and because they can increase economic productivity and profitability". (Towards an Economy of Well-Being, American Psychological Society Journal 2004 http://www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/pspi/pspi5_1_4-20.pdf).
Management experts David Sirota, Louis Mischkind and Michael Meltzer have surveyed over four million workers in 89 countries over the past 30 years. Their book The Enthusiastic Employee - How Companies Profit by Giving Workers What They Want (2005) reported that 90% of employees become indifferent to their workplace over time. The top 10% of companies are those that meet three goals which their employees desire: equity, achievement and camaraderie. These goals apply to baby boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, or Gen D (digital). With an enthusiastic workforce, the authors report, employee turnover can be reduced by as much as 80% and performance can be increased by 25%.
In the light of these and other studies most analysts have concluded that a link between job satisfaction and productivity does exist, although they have difficulty and differences of opinion in defining it. As a result, economists are now developing a wider view of job satisfaction.

24  Frederick Herzberg, Workers' Needs: The Same Around the World Industry Week, 21 September 1987, p. 30. For more about Frederick Herzberg see: http://www.aafp.org/fpm/991000fm/26.html

25    Fortune magazine recently called Gary Hamel “the world’s leading expert on business strategy”. The Economist called him “the world’s reigning strategy guru.” Wall Street Journal ranked him #1 among the Top 20 most influential business thinkers. 

26  Among the many commentators to make this assertion is Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist at the World Bank, economic advisor to Bill Clinton, and Nobel Prize winner for economics.  See http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stiglitz101

27  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Schaar