THE recent groundswell of wage militancy across the public, private and privatised sectors did not drop out of a clear blue sky — it has been almost 15 years in the making.

The challenge of decades-long wage theft, made worse now by profiteering energy companies driving an inflationary spiral, simply has not lent itself to a “servicing model” trade union response, and needs a collective organising one, centred on workplaces.

Unions were perhaps better equipped to capture this wave of working-class militancy than they might have been — but now is the time for the “organising agenda” to deliver on its promise.

Now, when we have already started to secure limited organisational and industrial progress in some disputes, is when honest reflection on what to do better next time should begin and focus on how we build a truly member-led union movement.

But already a new organising, training and bargaining agenda to develop our workplace activists’ skills fit for the times is emerging from these disputes.

Being ballot-ready

The core purpose of a union is to be ready to win a ballot of its members with a decisive majority — and demonstrate that readiness to the employer every day. This involves a degree of record-keeping, workplace mapping and leadership that has been revealed in disputes to have fallen short. Training, support and staffing must be shifted to ensure activists are building this knowledge.

Building super-majorities

We must raise our sights above the 50 per cent threshold set by the Tories if we are to avoid minority strike action and defeat. Instead, our aim should be to show that in any ballot we are confident of achieving 75 per cent majorities for action. And the question for each group of workplace leaders is what they need to start doing today to achieve that result for the next pay dispute.

Local bargaining

The reach, power and effectiveness of national bargaining structures are eroding fast. Most national bargaining agreements are sparsely populated in terms of membership densities. Pay review bodies are becoming common and exist to replace bargaining with begging.

We have a choice — to just cling onto the wreckage of national bargaining structures and keep trying to regenerate them from the top down or start to build new structures of local bargaining in parallel to drive this regeneration. It is not an “either-or” question and it can be done in the same way as we did historically — from the bottom up, workplace by workplace, then sector by sector.

Tackling ingrained sexist and racist wage theft

Despite the Equal Pay and Human Rights Acts, there is an epidemic of longstanding pay discrimination particularly on grounds of sex and race across both the public and private sectors — and even in industries such as local government where there are national bargaining and pay review structures specifically designed to prevent this. These gaps must be called out for the sexism and racism that they are and tackled industrially through organising and bargaining claims — with legal claims in support.

Refocus on industrial power

Seeking to buy, borrow or beg transitory influence for the union’s “brand” in social or broadcast media, in political spaces, and legally through ambulance-chasing mass litigation is trying to build the union on quicksand. A re-focus is required on building industrial power and judging our campaigning, bargaining and organising work through the three key measures of membership growth, strengthened leadership structures and an industrial impact members can see and touch — and always having a claim on the table.

Open bargaining

The ownership and leadership of workplace campaigns by those most affected by the issue are critical to successful union-building. Too often this principle is forgotten, with unions slipping into seeking to deliver results for members instead. Adhering to the maxim of “nothing about us without us,” with an open and democratic approach in pay campaigns we can mobilise all those affected by a workplace campaign to meet the employer directly, to physically demonstrate the power of the union every time they meet us.

Re-learning leadership

New approaches to building and developing leaders can be learned and adopted with the specific intention of encouraging workplace leaders to lead from the back and not from the front — and for professional union organisers to step out of the limelight as soon as is feasible in every campaign. Paid organisers should avoid social and broadcast media profiles for themselves and seek invisibility in favour of letting member leaders take centre stage.

Freedom from fear campaigns

The single major reason why working people stand back from joining or getting active in their union is fear of reprisals from their employers. In new and existing recognition agreements, giving workers access to the union free from this fear is crucial to building confidence to bargain and organise.

Our political lobbying should refocus on critical collective rights such as freedom from fear, alongside a shared critical analysis of access and organising agreements reached so far in the platform economy as the most extreme end of current labour practices.

Our role in the run-up to a general election is to drive the expectations of politicians and employers of working people’s aspirations upwards rather than manage our members’ expectations downwards on their behalf.

We can no longer afford for our workplace activism, organising and bargaining to be taken by surprise by repeated below-inflation national pay offers, ongoing outsourcing and job splintering. These have been facts of working life since 2008 and will likely continue to be so.

Wherever each of the current disputes finally settles, there is still no final victory or defeat for union builders. If we are to be a movement, not a monument, we must continually redesign our organisations in action and constantly re-earn our right to represent, bargain and organise in changing times.