Professor Gregor Gall, Centre for Research in Employment

Studies, University of Hertfordshire

i) Can unions act strategically?

ii) If so, what would this look like?

Iii) If so, under what conditions can this happen?

Contention: analysis of past evidence can help illuminate way forward for practice

Heuristic starting points:

US is an oxymoron

Is talking about US an irrelevance?

Unions are not businesses

Past experience indicates unions have shown the ability to act both strategically and non-strategically (eg abolition of WorkChoices)

Strategy has been used to rebuild power

Strategy does not guarantee success – strategy and power do (or more likely to)

Means > ends, purposeful, conscious, deliberate, thought out choices over key issues and challenges. Also organic, anticipative, self-reflective and iterativeOperationalisation of aims

Not: raison d’etre, aims, opportunism, tactics, description of what do

Issues of scale & coherence ordering

If definition of US=a) Pro-active – for, pre-emptiveb) Post is reaction to, against, after

Problem as dynamics & complexity of social processes mean that pro-action & reaction are 2 sides of same coin.

Eg reaction can be proactive and v-versa

Unions are conscious actors but Marx’s dictum ‘men make their own history but not in circumstances of their own choosing’ has enduring relevance

Even if implicitly, unions have conceptualised what their missions (constituencies, theatres) are so that at least they think strategically

Conflation of no US is often one of poor US

Unions are voluntary, democratic and dynamic organisations

Even oligarchy does not do away with this

Path dependency and bounded rationality ala Marx

Difficulty in constructing resources for implementation – the double shift

Strategic unionism – SAf, B, SK, P Social democratic unionism Social movement unionism Business unionism Union mobilisation (eg union organising) Partnership (micro-, macro-) Pragmatism – accommodation, compromise Trade unionismBut variation in time, place and social dynamics

can mean these cease to be rational

Social capital Internal dialogue Organisational intelligence (ordering) Bureaucracy as function (indirect democracy) Authoritative not authoritarian leadership

For realisation (esp. under minimal state/neo-liberalism)

Union commitment and participation Mobilisation and leverage