276 BOOK REVIEWS

recent Australian changes for non-Australian readers who want to understand this important
recent example of labor reladons system reform.
Alexander J. S. Colvin
Martin F. Scheinman Professor of Conflict Resolution
ILR School, Cornell University
Union Voices: Tactics and Tensions in UK Organizing. By Melanie Simms, j ane Holgate,
and Edmund Heery. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press/ILR Press, 2013. 176 pp.
ISBN 978-0-8014-7813-0 (Paperback).
In 2008, I pardcipated in a four-day training in organizing strategies coordinated by the
U.K trade union umbrella organization, the Trades Union Congress (TUC). I remember
being stirprised when I entered the classroom at Ruskin College, Oxford. Expecting the typi-
cal "pale, male, stale" crew, I found myself surrounded by about 20 young, energedc, and
ambitious activists, male and female. While reading the book Union Voices: Tactics and Tensions
in UK Organizing, I often thought back to those days, as many of the arguments resonated
with myalbeit very briefexperience with part of the TUC's Organising Academy.
Melanie Simms, Jane Holgate, and Edmund Heery, three long-dme experts on union or-
ganizing in the United Kingdom, have bundled together a plethora of data from between
1996 and 2010 to examine the development of organizing pracdces within the U.K. labor
movement. Basing their analysis on in-depth qualitative case studies of union organizing
campaigns, surveys of graduates from the organizing academy, participant observation, and
more than 200 in-depth interviews with key actors, such as union organizers, mentors, union
officers, and policymakers, they attempt to answer the follorang questions: Wliy has the Brit-
ish labor movement focused increasingly on union organizing since the mid-1990s? Is there
a so-called organizing model transposed from the United States and Atistralia to the United
Kingdom? What are some of the tensions that arise between professional union organizers
and general union officers? And, finally, how should we evaluate the organizing strategies
that have been employed over the past two decades?
Through their enormous wealth of longitudinal data, the authors provide a nuanced
analysis and a more complex evaltiadon of union organizing than has any previous work. Of-
fering the reader "thick" descriptions, this comprehensive study is accessible to academics
and pracdtioners alike. As a heads up, however, often no easy answer can be given as to
whether certain strategies work better than others. This topic is not a simple and straightfor-
ward story that can be placed in a parsimonious model with just a couple of key variables ex-
plaining the success or failure of organizing campaigns. As the authors point out, in many
situations no right answer is possible, but differing approaches have their advantages and
disadvantages, and different tensions can come to the forefront. That said, the authors do a
remarkable job of explaining the intricacies in an accessible way and disentangling the com-
plexities for a broader audience.
Rather than describing each of the six chapters, I will pull otit some of the key points
made throughout the book. According to the authors, while organizing occvirred in the
United Kingdom before the mid-1990s, no cadre of trained, specialist organizers was on
hand to promote broader cultural change within the labor movement. In 1996, after long-
term decline in union membership, the TUC stepped out of its purely coordinating role and
decided to launch the New Unionism Inidative to promote union renewal. Influenced by the
organizing initiadves in the United States and Australia, the TUC set up the Organising
Academy and had its first intake of yotmg, mainly union, acti\ists in 1998. Over the past few
years, however, the training has become increasingly skill-based, often neglecting the impor-
tant strategic or political aspects of organizing. As a consequence, organizing, defined as "an
approach to union btiilding that relies on unions facilitadng local leadership at the work-
place level so that workers are empowered to act for themselves" (7), became a "toolbox of
tactics" from which to pick and choose, rather than a radical or political strategy for renewal.
Unions use varying organizing strategies and have differing purposes for organizing, so the
nodon in the United Kingdom of an organizing "model" is fundamentally flawed. For
BOOK REVIEWS 277
example, the union Unite takes a specialist approach, in which organizing is carried out by
organizers, while negodadng and representing members are the responsibility of the union
officers. In the general union GMB, the union officers take on the organizing work as well.
The integradon of these two roles has meant that, iti some cases, the actual organizing has
been neglected as officers have too much work addressing individual grievances. Finally, for
the service sector union USDAW, organizing is rather roudtiized work using specific tacdcs
and arguments to convince workers to join the union.
Only about 300 organizers are in the U.K. labor movement, compared with more than
3,000 union officers. While the idea was to promote the organizers as "agents of change,"
they have often clashed with the union officers. In some cases, the officers consider organiz-
ing equal to recruitment and focus on the increase in membership numbers, whereas the
organizers strive to build sustainable membership structures and to promote a deeper form
of union democracy and worker self-organizadon. The organizers are often very young and
assume a low, entry-level status within the labor movement, with bleak career prospects. Half
of them eventually became officers, enjoying higher pay and the presence of a career ladder.
As a consequence however, given the lack of career prospects, the labor movement loses a
significant number of skilled people.
From a survey of 238 organizing carnpaigns, it is clear that most campaigns are about "in-
fill" organizing, or strengthening the union structures where collective bargaining is already
in place, rather than "greenfield" organizing, or setdng up collective bargaining where no
union exists. The unions will often strategically target workplaces in the private sector or
workplaces closely related to traditional strongholds, rather than expand into new areas.
Based on their data, the authors argue that organizing campaigns require workplace support
as well as strong central coordination or support from the officers. In their conclusion, mea-
sures of organizing outcomes are discussed, resulting in a rather bleak picture. Over the past
two decades, gains in terms of membership, collecdve bargaining, represendng underrepre-
sented groups or underrepresented sectors, and, finally, union democracy or worker self-
organizadon have been far from opdmal.
While the authors end with a fairly negative assessment, it is actually unclear whether they
regard the need for organizing toward union renewal essendal, or what an alternative could
be. In this regard, it is somedmes hard to understand why organizing as an innovadve praxis
has failed to revitalize the labor movement. And while the authors point out that differences
in the spread of the pracdce can be explained through differences in the history, polidcs,
and structure of the unions, they don' t really expand on this. Similarly, they argue that orga-
nizing was done before the mid-1990s, but they do not make clear to what extent and how it
differed from the current wave. In that sense, it would have been fruitful to adopt a more
analytical perspecdve. But again, the purpose of the book was clearly to describe and to tell
the untold, complex stoiies rather than present the data in a purely academic manner.
These reservadons aside, the authors offer extremely valuable insights into the complexi-
des and the tensions that surround organizing pracdces, and they do so in a very readable
and accessible way. Union Voices should be on the shelf of every academic and pracdtioner
interested in understanding the opportunities and challenges of union organizing or in the
future of the British labor movement more broadly.
Maite Tapia
Assistatit Professor
School of Human Resources and Labor Reladons
Michigan State University ' -, - .