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Public sector trade unionism in the UK : strategic challenges in the face of colonization
Gemma Edwards Work Employment Society 2009 23: 442 DOI: 10.1177/0950017009337075 The online version of this article can be found at: http://wes.sagepub.com/content/23/3/442

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Work, employment and society

Copyright 2009 BSA Publications Ltd Volume 23(3): 442459 [DOI: 10.1177/0950017009337075] SAGE Publications Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC

Public sector trade unionism in the UK: strategic challenges in the face of colonization
I

Gemma Edwards
University of Manchester

A B S T R AC T

This article explores the potential contribution of Habermass social theory to debates on union decline and renewal in the UK public sector. It employs data relating to 20045 research on the National Union of Teachers (NUT) to suggest that two of Habermass concepts are particularly valuable when considering strategies to increase membership activity. The concept of communicative action is useful for highlighting the importance of spaces for collective discussion among members, while the concept of colonization allows an appreciation of the ways in which these communicative spaces are being increasingly eroded in the course of public sector restructuring. In this context, NUT strategies for renewing membership activity involve opening up alternative communicative spaces for members in schools, the union, and online.
K E Y WO R D S

colonization / communicative action / Habermas / NUT / public sector restructuring / union decline / union renewal

Introduction

T
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he work of German critical theorist, Jrgen Habermas, has been applied in a range of debates since the 1970s. In particular, his (1987) differentiation between system and lifeworld and the concept of colonization have attracted ongoing critical attention. This attention is especially true in the field of social movement studies, where Habermass ideas on the decline of the labour movement and the rise of new social movements have stimulated controversy. Habermas (1987) argues that the evolution of welfare state societies has gone hand-in-hand with an institutionalized welfare state compromise with workers,

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which reduces trade unions to a narrow range of issues, within an increasingly bureaucratized bargaining system. While Habermass brand of social movement theory lends itself to analyses of union decline, it is no surprise therefore that it has registered little impact on debates which have surfaced in the last two decades on union renewal. Indeed, it is (largely) the American, rather than European schools of social movement theory that have made the greatest contribution here. Kelly (1998, 2005), for example, has drawn upon mobilization theories to address questions of union revitalization and occupies a prominent place within the union renewal literature. This literature focuses on ways to turn around the decline of unions since the 1980s, which has been reflected in, among other things, falling membership numbers and reduced strike activity. The meaning of renewal is multifarious and relates to improvements in membership participation and workplace self-activity, as well as gains in recruitment and organization. While some have concentrated on grassroots strategies for stimulating membership activity (Fairbrother, 1996), others have focused upon top down strategies, like those related to the TUCs 1996 New Unionism Project and Organizing Academy (Heery et al., 2003). What is missing from both these approaches is an in-depth exploration of the actual conditions required at the level of the workplace for membership activity to take place. Top down approaches, argues Carter (2000: 133), should be questioned because a model which is premised on debate and involvement cannot be successfully introduced without discussion (i.e. among the membership). In contrast, Fairbrothers (1996) bottom up approach acknowledges the role of participatory routes to change, but outside of his focus on issue conflict, still lacks an exploration of the conditions upon which collective discussion can be fostered. This article argues that Habermass social theory can help to address these current weaknesses by pointing to the importance of communicative spaces in the process of organizing members. Communicative spaces, in which discussion and debate take place between union members, are essential conditions for the building of collective identities and solidarities (Edwards, 2008), and for creating the kind of consensus and commitment to goals referred to by Carter (2000). The role of discussion and debate has been highlighted in a range of studies looking at union activism: from literature emphasizing the importance of communication between members (Fosh, 1993; Leicht, 1989), to that which stresses the importance of bringing members together in spaces where a workplace community can form (Jarley, 2005). This focus on community relates to the renewal strategy that Jarley terms social-capital unionism, which highlights how frequent interactions permit people to know and trust one another, share information, and develop common goals, values and points of view (Jarley, 2005: 4). Most recently, Klikauer (2007) has drawn upon Habermas to explain the rise of instrumental management and the decline of communicative rationality at work, which creates problems for worker solidarity. Significantly, however, Klikauer rules out traditional labour organizations as places in which democratic communication can be re-established (Klikauer, 2007: 238).

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Habermass concept of communicative action is therefore valuable in exploring the actual workplace conditions upon which union renewal is premised. This does not exhaust his contribution, however. In his theory of the colonization of the lifeworld, Habermas usefully links the erosion of communicative spaces to processes of marketization and bureaucratization. These processes are increasingly relevant to public sector workplaces in the UK, which have been subject to fundamental restructuring. Although there have been references to colonization in literature on worker resistance and changing modes of workplace regulation since the 1980s (see Casey, 1995; Fleming and Sewell, 2002; MacKenzie and Martinez Lucio, 2005; May, 1999), there has been little serious engagement with Habermass concept, particularly in relation to union decline and renewal. This article takes the field of UK state education, particularly that of England, as a case study for further exploration. State education reflects some general trends in the restructuring of the UK public sector, as well as its own nuances. In this context, it concentrates upon how restructuring has affected the largest of the teacher unions, the National Union of Teachers (NUT). Despite a growing membership, which totalled 239,976 in 2003, the NUT has been the subject of research on public sector union renewal (Carter, 2004; Stevenson, 2005). More recently, it has explicitly sought new strategies to increase levels of membership participation and revive its democratic structures. The article consists of four sections. I start by introducing the research methodology. The second section outlines key concepts from Habermass social theory. This section is followed by a discussion of how educational restructuring can be understood as a process of colonization and why it is useful to view it as such. The fourth section looks at the ways in which membership participation in the NUT is complicated by the erosion of communicative spaces for teachers, and the ways in which emerging NUT strategies are carving out alternative spaces.

Research methodology
This article draws upon research into the NUT conducted in 20045. This research looked at the issue of membership participation, which became a key strategic focus for the NUT at their 20035 annual conferences. The NUT forwarded a resolution on Union Democracy in 2003, which aimed to find new ways of increasing the involvement of members at all levels within the union. This resolution came in the wake of a perceived democratic deficit and the projection of a problematic future in finding replacements for officials nearing retirement (concerns shared by other UK unions). The data used in the article is taken from in-depth interviews with 45 members of the NUT (from 10 out of the 27 union electoral districts), conducted in 20045, and first-hand analysis of a 2004 Labour Research Department (LRD) survey on NUT membership participation (N=1252). The LRD survey contained 53 variables relating to the level and nature of members participation, their attitudes towards teaching and the NUT, and what prevents and encourages their participation. The survey used a national

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random sample of members and the response rate was 21 percent. Women made up 77 percent of the sample (reflecting the proportion of women in the NUT overall at 76 percent). While 3.3. percent of the sample were over 60 years old, 60 percent of the sample were over 40 years, and 21 percent were aged 31 40 years. The sample were 96.9 percent white. Reflecting the bias towards primary teachers in the NUT membership, 58.6 percent worked in primary schools, 39.5 percent in secondary schools, and 1.9 percent in middle schools. The data was analyzed for largely descriptive purposes in SPSS. Interviews with members adopted a semi-structured approach and lasted half an hour to two hours. Of the interviewees, 16 were rank and file members of the NUT and the others held official union positions from School Representative (three), to Division/Local Association Secretary (11), Division/Local Association Committee Member (eight), Regional Officer (three) and National Executive Member (four). Eight were aged 238 years, five were aged 318 years, nine were aged 4049 years, and 23 were aged 5059 years. All interviewees were white. Eight worked in primary schools, 21 in secondary schools, three in middle schools, and four in special needs/behaviour support. One was a supply teacher and one a retired teacher, while six were full time union officers. The 10 (out of 27) union electoral districts represented included rural and urban areas, and were concentrated mainly in North West and South West England. The interview transcripts were subjected to a thorough thematic/content analysis. Key themes formed the basis for a coding system. The quotations used within the article are selected on the basis of representing a typical response from the interviewees contained under that code. Quotations have been made anonymous here by identifying interviewees by their interview number rather than by name. Interviews were not, therefore, drawn from a national random sample, partly because of practical constraints and also because of the lack of an available sampling frame. The claims of the article are subsequently not based upon a representative sample of NUT members. Sample bias and the size of the study affect the nature of generalizations that can be made on the basis of the data. The interviews were, however, sufficient in size and diversity for a preliminary investigation of the issues, and formed a multi-method dialogue with the national random survey data.

Key concepts from Habermas

The argument presented in this article draws upon two key concepts from Habermass (1987) social theory, both of which require further explanation: communicative action and colonization. These two concepts are inherently related, for in the process of colonization it is the space for communicative action that is eroded. Communicative action is a concept that Habermas draws from the work of G.H. Mead (1934), who stressed the importance of linguistically-mediated, face-to-face symbolic interaction for processes such as socialization, building group solidarity, the transmission of knowledge, and identity formation. These processes are defining components of Habermass concept of lifeworld. Communicative

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action is the medium through which the lifeworld is reproduced on a daily basis. In the lifeworld, action has to be carried out communicatively, i.e. through a process of linguistically mediated interaction. Communicative interactions are therefore formed in and through discussion and debate, which has the purpose of achieving a mutual understanding and shared definition of the situation. Habermas states that:
In communicative action, participants pursue their plans cooperatively on the basis of a shared definition of the situation Participants cannot attain their goals if they cannot meet the need for mutual understanding. (1987: 1267)

Communicative action is therefore associated with a specific form of rationality, or logic, which is distinctive of the lifeworld. In contrast, Habermas sees other realms of society as operating upon different principles of rational-action, the kind of instrumental rational-action associated with rational-action theories, where action is organized upon narrow calculations of cost-efficiency. This type of rationality is seen by Habermas as characteristic of state-bureaucratic and economic institutions. Here actions are coordinated by money and power, rather than by linguistic communication and mutual understanding. Action in these system contexts is the outcome of a functional interlocking of various inputs and outputs, like for example in the capitalist marketplace, which is integrated through the balancing of supply and demand. The form of rationality that organizes action in the system is therefore of this instrumental or technical variety. These different forms of rationality are not necessarily in a relationship of conflict or superiority. Technical rationality does, in fact, make the economy and the state far more efficient in their tasks. The particular direction of development in modern capitalist societies, has, however, brought these two processes of rationalization into conflict with one another (Habermas, 1987). This conflict essentially rests upon the fact that the system of technical rationality is growing in order to meet the demands of capitalist markets and states, and in the process of growth, it is intruding into areas of everyday life which are organized communicatively. The concept of the colonization of the lifeworld therefore denotes the situation where the communicative coordination of action is displaced by its technical coordination, either through an extension, or intensification, of markets and state-bureaucracies. This displacement is particularly problematic for Habermas (1987) (and for the new social movements who resist the process), because in these lifeworld contexts action has to be carried out communicatively. Socialization, group solidarity, and cultural and identity processes depend upon spaces for communicative action and when they are interrupted by attempts to reorganize them on a technical basis, pathological disruptions arise. Spaces for communicative interaction are therefore spaces belonging to the lifeworld and are fundamentally eroded by colonization. One key area of the lifeworld for Habermas (1987: 369) is education. Within schools, action must be coordinated communicatively if processes of socialization, knowledge transmission, and identity formation are to take place undistorted. With the increase in government and market interference in education, the colonization of schools has

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become a topic of debate within Habermasian circles (Pugh, 2004; Young, 1990). While bureaucratization and marketization in education are not new phenomena, since the 1980s there is evidence to suggest that they have become more intense as a result of the restructuring of the UK public sector.

UK public sector education: restructuring as a process of colonization

Much has been written about the restructuring of the UK public sector since the 1980s when government economic demands and neo-liberal philosophies combined to ensure that cost-cutting and efficiency became key priorities (see Corby and White, 1999; Fairbrother and Poynter, 2001; Kirkpatrick et al., 2005; Pollitt, 1990). The mode of ensuring that these aims were delivered involved a widespread marketization of public services through the introduction of competition (e.g. between schools), privatization (e.g. compulsory competitive tendering of educational services) and new management techniques (e.g. performance management). In this process, the public sector was reduced in size, and what remained was modelled on the private business sector in terms of the New Public Management (NPM). NPM reflected the argument that improving public services could be achieved through better management (Pollitt, 1990: 1), equating to devolved management (Fairbrother and Poynter, 2001: 314). In the educational context this meant, for example, the local management of schools (LMS), where schools in England opted out of their local education authority control and received their budget directly from central government. This managerialist philosophy continued under New Labour, articulated in the language of public sector modernization (Finlayson, 2003). Local management of schools is now reflected in the academy system. Academy schools are independent state schools, individually managed and funded in partnership with the state and private interests. The situation under New Labour also parallels that of the 1980s and early 1990s in that devolved management almost paradoxically (as highlighted by Hoggett, 1996: 17) goes hand-in-hand with increases in centralized power through performance monitoring (e.g. the state inspections of schools through Ofsted), targetsetting (e.g. national curriculum specifications and compulsory testing) and the publication of results (e.g. school league tables). Despite devolved management, the state thus retains central control by setting the parameters of what is to be achieved through local management, and checking that it has been done (Dent, 2008: 105). The autonomy of public services, as New Labour put it, has to be earned (DfES, 2001: 5). Further changes contained within the 1998 consultation paper Teachers Meeting the Challenge of Change (DfEE, 1998), also pushed forward a technical, output-orientated agenda in education, seeking to dismantle the (economically) inefficient social service culture of schools and remodel the profession (Merson, 2000). The proposals for remodelling included the application of human resource management techniques within schools (first introduced with LMS) and measures like performance-related pay.

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These new management practices signal a qualitative change in the nature of public sector work (Kirkpatrick et al., 2005). As the state has taken control over the content of service delivery, it has reshaped the teaching profession and re-defined what teachers do on a daily basis, as it has done for other professionals (Muzio et al., 2008). While some see devolved management as a loosening of bureaucratic control structures, for others it is tantamount to a (neo)Taylorization of the public sector labour process, with control firmly at the core (Pollitt, 1990: 177). In this context, restructuring has been widely associated with deskilling, job fragmentation, de-professionalization and work intensification across several services, although generalizing change in this fashion does not do justice to complex variations and the impact of resistance by the professions affected (Kirkpatrick et al., 2005; Pollitt, 1990: 51). In the context of education, however, three trends are particularly prevalent (a-c).

(a) The intensification of teachers work

Work intensification is widely reported in existing literature on the changing labour process of teaching (Carter, 2004; Ironside et al., 1997; Stevenson, 2005). Since the 1988 reforms teachers workloads have increased due to the National Curriculum, testing, target-setting, inspections, and performance management. The Teacher Workload Study (2001) indicated that teachers have a longer working week compared to similar occupational groups (52 hours compared to 45). It also reported that teachers have particularly intense working days, marked by a fast pace and a high level of stress. The teachers interviewed put increases in stress and workload down to the restructuring of their workplaces by constant reforms, referring to the relentless number of initiatives that come out of government (6, female local association member). In this context, survey data indicated that work/life balance and workload were crucial issues for teachers in the NUT (see Figure 1). All interviewees were concerned with workload issues. They talked of paperwork overload (3, male regional officer) and the constant stress of making teachers do more and more (24, male division secretary):
Ever since Ive been in teaching weve always felt that theres just too much to do and the longer Ive been in the profession the more the pressure has grown. (14, male primary teacher)

An intensification of work effort has therefore been one of the key changes in the labour process of teaching due to restructuring, with teachers spending large amounts of time on satisfying technical requirements of the job (paperwork, tests, and inspections). There is some evidence to suggest that this work intensification has had the effect of eroding communicative spaces for teachers at work as teachers experience a lack of time for reflection and also lack professional spaces for talking with colleagues (NUT, 2004: 22). This outcome was supported by teachers who talked of trying to get through from one day to the next not even thinking about the issues (6, female special needs teacher/ local association member).

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Figure 1 Most important issue at work for teachers in the NUT Data Source: NUT Membership Participation Survey 2004, LRD

(b) Increased state regulation of teachers work

Increased state regulation over teachers work was also a legacy of the 1988 reforms. In particular, a prescribed National Curriculum, the publication of results in league tables, and inspections, signalled a move away from teachers as autonomous professionals to what Tomlinson (2001: 61) calls technicians delivering a prescribed curriculum, or as one teacher put it, teaching to the test (31, female primary teacher). Rather than the professional autonomy and control seen as characteristic of teachers work in earlier periods (Whitty, 2002), the 1988 reforms sought to close down spaces in which teachers professional judgment and discretion could shape working practices, and in contrast, increased the number of actions prescribed from above:
When I first started teaching in 1973 people were a lot more self-directed. There was a need for a National Curriculum, but it has moved too far in that direction. (26, female behaviour support teacher)

The reformed image for a public sector professional is one which Kirkpatrick and Ackroyd (2003: 743) call the bureau-professional, characterized by limited autonomy and limited collective aspirations. Some have also pointed to the ways in which remodelling and the Workload Agreement of 2004, although welcomed in its aim to cut unnecessary administration, may

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also reinforce an image of teachers as limited in their range of tasks (Merson, 2000; Stevenson, 2007).

(c) Performance management in schools

The implementation of private sector techniques of performance management in the public sector has raised issues about the adoption of new management practices in schools. The labour process perspective is useful in highlighting how new management practices like performance management and pay translate into new modes of control in the workplace (Hoggett, 1996; Taylor et al., 2002). Importantly, for some, these new modes of control are discursively produced (Delbridge and Ezzamel, 2005), and subordinate workers through a dominant managerial discourse in which their subjectivity is constructed in the technicized, individualized, reward-orientated language of Human Resource Management (HRM) (Casey, 1995). For some teachers this discourse has introduced competition between and within schools, where the emphasis is on how I have to do as well as my colleague who is teaching (21, male secondary school teacher). From new labour process perspectives, this individualizing discourse amounts to the disappearance of the collectivism at work (see Martinez Lucio and Stewart, 1997), with workers trapped within a totalizing (and in the Foucaldian terms in which some debates are cast, disciplining), managerial discourse. Performance management therefore includes further potential for reshaping teacher professionalism from what has been called the old collectivist to the new entrepreneur (Mac an Ghaill, 1992). What is significant about the latter is that rather than fostering professional solidarity, it involves what Merson (2000: 1589) calls a competitive individualism, with the potential to erode traditional workplace ties.

Restructuring as colonization
Habermass concept of the colonization of the lifeworld is useful for understanding these changes to teachers work because what these changes have at their core are dual and sometimes contradictory tendencies towards the marketization and bureaucratization of schools. Moreover, however, colonization points to the way in which the restructuring of public sector work involves an erosion of spaces for the communicative coordination of action, and an increase in technical coordination. Indeed, a notion of colonization has been used to analyse restructuring by theorists who explore shifts in modes or boundaries of regulation at work (Martinez Lucio and MacKenzie, 2004). They talk of a colonization of spaces of discretion at work (May, 1999), a colonization of informal regulatory spaces at work (MacKenzie and Martinez Lucio, 2005), and a colonization of worker subjectivity (Casey, 1995). Viewing restructuring as a colonization of the lifeworld also coincides with the arguments of those who talk about education reforms leading to a dominance of technical over practical forms of knowledge and action for both pupils and teachers (see

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Tomlinson, 2001; Whitty, 2002). Similar concerns are also present in literature on the NPM more widely. Drawing upon Habermas, it has been argued that evidence-based policy making in the public sector represents the dominance of instrumental rationality at the expense of practical knowledge (Ferguson, 2003; Sanderson, 2006). Habermass colonization concept is also useful in following up the link between technical managerial discourses (identified in new labour process debates) and the possibilities for collective resistance in restructured workplaces. For example, drawing upon Habermas, Klikauer (2007) argues that changes in management have been accompanied by changes in the nature of communication between employers and employees. He distinguishes between managements technical/instrumental rationality (orientated towards control and strategic decision-making) and workers communicative rationality (orientated towards the construction of meaning, mutual understanding and democratic decision-making). New management practices, like HRM, extend the former at the expense of the latter (Klikauer, 2007). The result is a workplace that is increasingly orientated towards technical considerations of targets and rewards, and a decline of spaces for open and inclusive discourse in which workers collective interests can be constructed. As outlined in the introduction, the issue of devolved management in the public sector has led to some debate about the potential for union renewal. Despite management practices that tend towards an individualizing employer discourse, it has been argued that new sources of collective grievance and interest continue to arise (Martinez Lucio and Stewart, 1997; Stewart, 2005: 6). Furthermore, in Fairbrothers (1996) renewal thesis, the decentralized nature of management means that worker grievances are transferred directly to the local level of the workplace, where they can reinvigorate grassroots union participation. Claims for a renewal of this nature have not, however, been entirely supported. While Ironside et al. (1997) point to growing resistance from teachers because of devolved management structures, studies of teacher unions, such as the NUT, suggest that restructuring has not led to a resurgence of school-based union participation (see Carter, 2004). The following sections extend the argument that this suggestion is an accurate one, and that the decline of those open discursive spaces at work, which Klikauer (2007) talks about, is one strand of an explanation as to why.

Colonization and strategies to increase membership activity in the NUT

Both survey and interview data suggested that members of the NUT have experienced significant sources of conflict within their workplaces because of restructuring. This conflict did not, however, translate into renewed union participation. Indeed, low levels of membership participation (in the democratic structures of the

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NUT), were reflected in LRD survey and interview data. Survey data revealed that 22.6 percent of NUT members never voted in local/division elections, 94 percent had never held a position on the local union committee, and 89 percent had never taken part in organizing a union campaign. In relation to attendance at general meetings of the local association, 85 percent of members never attended, 10 percent occasionally did, and five percent regularly did. These levels, described as worryingly low (25, male division secretary), were widely discussed in interviews:
Out of a membership of about 600 well be lucky if we get 15 members and thats not out of the ordinary, thats by and large replicated across the country. (2, female division secretary)

The evidence for union renewal in the NUT in terms of increased membership participation is therefore sparse. The reasons are twofold. Firstly, the erosion of communicative spaces for union members is an important (although far from sole) reason for this lack of renewal, and secondly, opening up alternative communicative spaces for members has been an important consideration in NUT strategies for renewal.

The erosion of communicative spaces

It has been the premise of this article that space for collective discussion is an essential condition for organizing union members within the workplace. Changes in the labour process have, however, led to a contraction of both formal and informal communicative spaces for NUT members. Firstly, formal spaces for communicative action between members are conventionally supplied by union meetings, where members get together and come to some agreement about how to go forward (14, male primary teacher). Evidence suggested, however, that these spaces were undermined by members lack of time, high workload and stress. Lack of time was a factor related to low levels of attendance at meetings by all interviewees. They stated typically that:
Id like to go [to union meetings in school] in theory but if Im honest its not high on my agenda because of workload its just having the time, or the energy to get more involved. (39, female secondary teacher)

Lack of time as a factor in teachers non-participation in union activities is widely cited in existing literature (Carter, 2004; Ironside et al., 1997; Stevenson, 2005). It is also supported by the survey data, where the largest proportion of teachers (28%) said that too many work commitments was the most important reason why they did not attend local association meetings. Due to the erosion of formal communicative spaces, teachers argued that the extent of discussion and debate among members was limited:
Active involvement for me is to be a part of the debate and discussion about the direction you should take, and I think there is a huge gap there. (11, male division secretary)

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Secondly, there are several informal spaces within the workplace in which communicative interaction can take place between teachers. Typically the staffroom has been an important arena in this respect, although Stevensons (2007) research on teachers also highlighted other meeting places that form in spaces like the photocopying room. Discussion in these spaces may be informal, but as an NUT school representative stated:
A cosy chat produces an awful lot of interest. With some of my colleagues Ive just sat down with them over a coffee and Im amazed at some of the issues that have raised their heads. (21, male secondary school representative)

Spaces for informal union communication have been seen as particularly important in the context of teaching, where because of the time constraints mentioned above, formal activities have often been limited (Carter, 2004; Ironside et al., 1997; Ozga and Lawn, 1988; Stevenson, 2005). There was evidence to suggest, however, that these informal communicative spaces were also contracting due to changes in the labour process of teaching. Teachers talked of the decline of the staffroom because people are in and out of the staffroom all the time, theyve got this and that to do (27, male primary teacher/division secretary). Subsequently, people dont all congregate in the staffroom to the extent that they did (2, female secondary teacher/division secretary). This lack of informal communal space posed problems for some NUT members trying to communicate with others:
I could only walk down the corridor and say heres the newsletter and hand it out, thats the union meeting. Nobody would sit and discuss issues or if we do its informally in the staffroom and there will be a five second discussion. (31, female primary school representative) Its very quiet in this school. You wouldnt know that there were unions most of time. Ive never seen anybody actively talking about anything. I wouldnt know who was an NUT person. (43, female secondary teacher)

The erosion of communicative spaces for members therefore makes processes of collectivizing workplace issues problematic. Conditions for discussion and collectivization, and not just the existence of issue-conflict (Jarley, 2005: 12), are crucial for fostering membership activity. As Fosh (1993: 581) states, levels of participation and of solidaristic commitment to the workplace union rise when issues of concern to the membership are being widely discussed (quoted in Stevenson, 2005: 223).

Communicative spaces and NUT strategies for union renewal

The importance of communication between members is already recognized by the NUT, with many officials arguing that the most effective tool for recruiting members is for school representatives to personally ask them to join. NUT officials were also hyper-aware of the impact of teachers intense working lives on their opportunities for involvement. In this context they sought to adapt their

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organizing strategies to changed circumstances. Innovations in strategies to increase membership participation were being made at both the local and national level. Although varied, these strategies shared a common aim in attempting to carve out new communicative spaces for NUT members. One of the key adaptations at a local level was a strategy informally referred to (by 22, 12, 18, 26, 19) as the going to the members movement. This movement aimed to bypass the problem of low attendance at union meetings and employed a different way of communicating with members. As a regional officer (12, male) put it, were interacting with our members in quite a different way, what were doing is going to them rather than them coming to us. The movement therefore encouraged union officials to visit schools on a regular basis with the intention of setting up stalls on specific issues, or trying to engage teachers in conversation about what their concerns are in school (12, male regional officer). As members are too tired to come to union meetings, you have to go into staffrooms and speak to them (26, female division secretary). This kind of strategy therefore aimed to open up communicative spaces for NUT members in school, and outside of, the formal union meeting. Going to the members was not, however, problem-free. The labour process of teaching continued to place obstacles in the way of this alternative:
People dont want to see you first thing in the morning when theyre preparing their lessons, dinner times theyre getting ready for the afternoon, lots of them are doing staff meetings you cant get to teachers. (8, female local association secretary)

In this context, new ways of communicating with members were also being explored online. The NUT sought strategies relating to wider innovations in the use of ICT in union renewal (Freeman, 2005). The internet was seen by NUT officials as offering a promising way to reach members who will not attend meetings, or cannot be contacted on school visits. One National Executive member (22, male) argued that there are other ways that we need to communicate that are 21st century weve been trying to do it electronically. Alongside the nationally run website, many local associations had set up their own sites which members could visit and use as a tool for information and communication. A North West Division Secretary (10, female) stated that because teachers dont seem to want to attend meetings were trying to set up a website, which would be a way of communicating, while members in the South West talked about the potential for creating virtual centres for union activity, in order to start to provide a forum get together as a group (37, female). Rather than meetings, some young teachers wanted message boards, similar to the ones they used on the Times Educational website, where its always full of teachers just talking and sharing ideas (42, female aged 24). These forms of activity were seen as favourable by some teachers because they can be accessed at any point in the day and take less time:
If there was a community, and I knew about that community, where theres online debate going on, I would probably be more ready and able to access that. (28, male secondary teacher aged 38)

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The issue of how to increase the numbers of young people actively involved in trade unions cuts across occupational sectors in the UK and is at the heart of recent TUC debates on participation (Unions21, 2001). The internet was seen by the NUT as a promising strategy in this respect. Alongside this internet use was the establishment in 2005 of a young teachers section within the union. The aim of the young teachers section is to offer a specific space in which young members can engage in dialogue and debate, as well as foster more general union networks.

Conclusion
Despite some uses of Foucault and Habermas to explore issues of discourse and communication at work, Willman (2005: 45) is still right to suggest that arguably, one of the more curious features of academic work on trade unions in the UK has been its failure to develop or indeed use theory. While this article does not argue that Habermass social theory provides an overarching framework for trade union studies, it does suggest that initiating a dialogue between Habermas and debates on union decline and renewal is a productive exercise. Two of Habermass concepts have been highlighted as making a valuable contribution to debates. Concepts of communicative action and colonization supply one perspective through which to view the process of public sector restructuring in the UK over the past two decades, and its significance for firstly, the labour process of teaching, and secondly, union decline and renewal in the NUT. This perspective allows an exploration of the ways in which public sector restructuring has involved a marketization and bureaucratization of education, which have not only extended technical forms of rationality, but have also eroded spaces for communicative action. Importantly, the concept of colonization, when related to the agenda of state restructuring, places changes in management practices which extend new technical and discursive modes of control into public services into their wider political and economic (or system) context, something that new labour process theory has been criticized for underplaying (Taylor et al., 2005: 234). Although a complex and multi-faceted issue, the problems associated with organizing members to be active in the NUT have been related here to the erosion of both formal and informal communicative spaces for members. While restructuring may heighten issue-conflict in the workplace for teachers, it also undermines conditions upon which the discussion and debate necessary for collectivizing this conflict depends. This may account in part for the existing divisions in the literature on union renewal in the public sector, which stress on the one hand the potential for increased local activity by members as conflicts move to the level of their workplace, and on the other hand the lack of evidence for union renewal found in the recently studied teaching sector (Carter, 2004; Stevenson, 2005). Emerging NUT strategies (on both national and local levels), however, explicitly acknowledge the importance of communicative spaces for increasing membership activity, and aim to construct alternative ones for members

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within school, the union, and online. With these efforts to reinvigorate spaces for democratic communication within the union, Klikauer (along with Habermas) may be premature in concluding that traditional labour organizations will remain ill-equipped to take up the task of constructing a communicatively established consensus and social action directed towards positive social change (2007: 238). A Habermasian perspective therefore offers a number of advantages compared to existing approaches. It can emphasize for example how top down strategies for renewal, like those associated with the TUC Organizing Academy, need to account for the local level conditions upon which organizing strategies are premised. These conditions include, primarily, the availability of spaces for collective discussion and debate among the membership (as pointed out by Carter, 2000). Similarly, it indicates that Fairbrothers (1996) thesis on union renewal in the public sector places too much emphasis upon the mere existence of issue-conflict in the workplace due to the decentralization of public services (Jarley, 2005). In this respect, Habermass contribution also supports the use of other social movement theories, such as, mobilization theory (Kelly, 1998, 2005). This theory stresses that grievances are not enough to produce collective action. What is required (in part) is a shared sense of injustice (Kelly, 2005: 66). The mechanism through which this collective identification is constructed relies fundamentally upon communicative spaces for union members, for it is here that solidarity and shared goals can be formulated. While union renewal debates have engaged with other areas of social movement theory in recent years there is, therefore, a further need to break down the barriers between Habermasian researchers of social movements and researchers of trade unions. Concepts such as colonization and communicative action have been well used elsewhere to explore the dynamics of modernday protests and movements. This article suggests that there is little reason why debates on union decline and renewal should not also benefit from the insights they might gain.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Labour Research Department and the National Union of Teachers for allowing me access to the 2004 survey dataset NUT Membership Participation.

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Gemma Edwards
Gemma Edwards is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Manchester, UK. Her recent research has involved the empirical application of Habermass social theory to trade union activism and participation in the UK public sector. Current research interests include public sector modernization, social movements, and social network analysis. Address: University of Manchester, School of Social Sciences, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK. Email: gemma.m.edwards@manchester.ac.uk

Date submitted April 2007 Date accepted January 2009

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