ALBERT EINSTEIN is credited with saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

This seems an eminently sensible point of view to me. You have to wonder why then if someone widely regarded as one of the foremost minds of any generation says such a thing that the trade union movement and the left — if indeed those things are the same — just bundles along doing the same old thing, expecting different results from the ones we keep getting.

I have been around the trade union and labour movement a while now.

Long enough at least to have been involved in countless discussions about how we need to do things differently.

I remember when a whole new world awaited the trade union movement if only we adopted — seemingly wholesale — the organising strategies pioneered by one particular union in the US.

The British movement seemed undeterred by the fact that trade union membership in the US was plummeting even at the time, and got caught in the headlights and mesmerised by the “showtime-style” organising strategies from the US.

When it, not surprisingly, didn’t really work this side of the pond it was quietly abandoned and we returned to business as usual.

In the meantime, British trade union membership, in spite of the occasional upward blip — such as the current one — is on a long-view downward trajectory.

Trade union activism, that is, the number of people actually taking a role in their unions, is also spiralling downwards.

Everyone agrees that this is a dangerous situation for our movement to be in. The solutions, however, seem to range around everything, from offering improved insurance products to members through to reducing organisers in the field and spending members’ subs on digital products that can apparently reach members and create new activists better than people can.

The type of organising that we returned to in Britain was essentially a conflation of organising with recruitment.

There was a sense of the more we say we are an organising movement then the more likely it was to become true.

Maybe we should have followed it with clicking ruby red slippers and saying there is no place like home?

However, it’s hard to claim the mantle of an organising movement when the number of people involved is declining rapidly.

Sadly, the same can certainly be said of the Labour Party. The community organising unit established by Labour under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn was quickly dismantled for the safety of business as usual by the new Keir Starmer administration.

No real indication of any desire to build, support and empower an activist base. Indeed many would argue the opposite to be true.

So what are the results that are being sought? At a time when this country is more unequal than ever, when workers’ rights are being undermined by tactics such as fire and rehire and workers often feel helpless more of the same simply will not do.

A sea change is required by unions to give us a chance of bringing about a fundamental and irreversible shift in favour of working people.

Half-hearted and temporary measures simply will not cut the mustard. Unions must measure everything that they do by what they contribute towards building, not just membership but also real power in the workplace, through increased activism.

The more active members in workplaces, the stronger unions are and the more people will want to get involved.

Organising strategies also need to be smarter than they are. We can’t rely on a failed US showtime model of organising  to win in Britain.

We need an approach designed to deal with British employers, who are often subsidiaries of large transnational corporations who are skilled at dealing differently with workers dependent on where they are.

This means that union internationalism has to move beyond fine words of solidarity towards concrete worker-led transnational and targeted organising strategies.

This new approach to organising needs to be targeted, planned, fully resourced with effective activist training if unions are to win.

The usual scattergun approach to organising will not bring about the scale of victories that workers need.

Neither will small local victories make very much difference. It’s great for the workers involved in those local disputes if they win.

I would never argue against real raises in wages or better terms and conditions. Too many workers are simply struggling to survive. 

In reality though these local wins rarely make any difference to big companies. They can and do just ride them out in the knowledge that not much is really going to change across their organisation.

Only a full-scale and planned commitment by unions to organising will make the difference. We have to prioritise winning big, not just in local disputes but across sectors — whether public, private or in the community and voluntary sector.

So it’s time to stop doing the same things as we have always done. It’s simply not working and we need different results.

We need a trade union movement that is big enough and strong enough to bring about real change in favour of working-class people.

We can only win by having clear plans, strategically targetting all the resources of our unions and prioritising strong workplaces.

Roger McKenzie is a long-time trade union and anti-racist organiser.