10 years on: the impact of the Organising Academy on the union movement
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Ten years ago, in 1998, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) established its Organising Academy (OA) as part of its wider 'New Unionism' project. Responding to the dramatic year-on-year decline in trade union membership over a 20-year period, plus significant changes in the labour market, which had eroded the traditional base of union membership, the New Unionism project aimed to develop a culture of organising that could help to transform unions by bringing in new and diverse members.
Previous initiatives to revitalise union membership in the UK, including the ideological shift to 'New Realism' and 'credit card trade unionism', had proved ineffective, with membership falling by some six million members between 1979 and the mid-1990s. 'New Unionism' marked a new approach for the TUC characterised by a willingness to work alongside the New Labour government on issues of common interest, but also engaging and promoting a new organising and campaigning agenda.
The Organising Academy, inspired by similar initiatives in the US and Australia, was established as a flagship programme under the 'New Unionism' initiative with explicitly transformational objectives1. The TUC, working with OA sponsoring unions, hoped to target groups of workers that were underrepresented within the trade union movement (including young workers, service sector workers, black and minority ethnic workers and, to a lesser extent, women workers). The aim was to encourage unions to invest more heavily in organising activity and to attract new people to work in the trade union movement as organisers, policy makers and officials. In addition, there was a hope that the initiative would encourage unions to expand into workplaces and sectors that were poorly unionised, to adopt a particular approach to organising activity that emphasised member involvement and participation, and to develop a cadre of specialist organisers - with the hope that this would help facilitate a broader renewal of trade unionism across the UK.
The key focus of the Organising Academy was the recruitment and training of a cadre of union organisers to a new 12-month long training programme designed to give them the skills and experience necessary to develop and deliver effective organising campaigns. Their key role would be to develop new organising and recruitment campaigns, but - crucially - to help facilitate and empower members and activists in the workplace. As others have noted, this type of organising was an attempt to 'rediscover the 'social movement' origins of labour, essentially by redefining the union as a mobilising structure which seeks to stimulate activism among its members and generate campaigns for workplace and wider social justice.'
The aim of this pamphlet is to look at the impact of the OA 10 years on. Essentially we were interested to find out how OA graduates have progressed since leaving the Academy. Where were they now? Have they stayed within the union movement, or moved on? Have they helped to shift unions to a new culture of organising? What problems have they faced in their campaigns? Before we look at these issues, it is useful to look briefly at the evaluation of the OA which took place after the first five years.
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Briefing document (600 words) issued 22 Oct 2008
