‘New unionism’, organising and partnership: a comparative analysis of union renewal strategies in the public sector

Abstract

The TUC's ‘New Unionism’ project contains contradictory tendencies in its promotion of both partnership relationships with employers and the adoption of more aggressive organising techniques. This paper investigates the impact of partnership-organising tensions on union activity at the workplace level in local government and the NHS. We explore these tensions by considering three dimensions of workplace union organisation: management-union relations; activist leadership style; and activist full-time officer relations. The paper rejects the argument that partnership and organising can be complementary union renewal processes. Instead, partnership relations detach senior activists from union members and restrict member participation and mobilisation.