Contested Terrain: London’s Living Wage Campaign and the Tensions Between Community and Union Organising

Holgate, Jane

doi:10.1057/9780230242180_3

Cited by 75 publications

(95 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…The BCGEU's organizing strategy was a community based one, shifting its focus from the workplace to geographic communities. But unlike the more commonly understood community campaigns, such as living wage campaigns (Holgate, 2009;Wills, 2001) that continue to build support in a geographic area on the basis of labour market issues, the BCGEU's campaign focused on building a community of identity around love and pride of the socially undervalued work of caring. This is not an insignificant shift for two reasons.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Community unionism covers a broad range of organizing practices in support of workers' rights. In its diverse forms, community unionism has tended to involve unions, or employment centred community organizations (such as Living Wage coalitions or Worker Centres) in building alliances between unions, vulnerable workers and community groups in efforts to improve employment conditions on a broader community scale (Holgate, 2009(Holgate, , 2005Cranford and Ladd, 2003;Tattersall, 2010;Tufts, 1998;Wills, 2001). Community unionism has tended to shift the locus of worker rights' campaigns from the workplace and a job, to local geographic and identity-based communities (Fine, 2006).…”

Section: Gendered Workers Genderless Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Organizing Women in the Spaces between Home, Work and Community

Yates¹

2012

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Since women began mobilizing more than 40 years ago to transform the labour movement, unions have made significant changes to increase women’s participation, leadership and interest representation. Yet, there are limitations to this progress. Unionized women are concentrated in the public sector amongst full-time employees. Moreover, women’s interests have tended to be added onto existing union agenda; women are therefore encouraged to adjust to existing union structures and practices rather than unions undertaking transformational organizational change. Unions tend to socially construct the collective interests and identities of women workers in gender-neutral ways that end up limiting union capacities to make bigger organizing breakthroughs amongst women. The article develops an argument that women’s relationship to work is distinct from men’s. Women are more likely to experience a blurring of the boundaries between work, home and community, which leads many women workers to be less responsive to union appeals that focus strictly on the job and workplace. These ideas are explored using a case study of a province-wide organizing drive amongst child care providers by the B.C. Government Employees Union (BCGEU). The BCGEU used methods of community unionism to build a sense of collective identity and capacity for collective action amongst a diverse group of child care providers, including those who work in child care centres, in-home providers and migrant domestic workers. The union built its campaign around shared relationships of caring and love, and by rejecting the devaluation of child care as unskilled, women’s work. The article concludes with an evaluation of whether this approach to organizing women opens new possibilities for reaching out to non-union women.Depuis que les femmes ont commencé à se mobiliser il y a plus de 40 ans pour transformer le mouvement ouvrier, les syndicats ont entrepris des changements significatifs afin de permettre une plus grande participation des femmes, d’augmenter leur représentation dans les instances et de mieux représenter leurs intérêts. Cependant, il y a des limites à ces progrès. Les femmes syndiquées sont surtout concentrées dans le secteur public parmi les employés à temps plein. De plus, les intérêts des femmes ont eu tendance à se superposer à l’ordre du jour syndical existant ; les femmes sont donc encouragées à s’ajuster aux structures et pratiques syndicales existantes plutôt que de voir les syndicats transformer leur organisation. Les syndicats tendent à construire socialement les intérêts et identités collectives des travailleuses de manière asexuée ou sans aborder les questions de genre, ce qui finit par limiter leur capacité à faire une plus grande percée dans l’organisation collective des femmes. L’article développe l’argument selon lequel le rapport des femmes au travail est distinct de celui des hommes. Les femmes font bien plus face au brouillage des frontières entre le travail, le foyer familial et la communauté, ce qui conduit beaucoup de travailleuses êt...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Gendered Workers Genderless Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Organizing Women in the Spaces between Home, Work and Community

Yates¹

2012

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“…Indeed, viewed from the perspective of CSOs, a national study showed that only 12% of the CSOs surveyed have direct contact with 'workplace trade unionism' (Heery et al, 2012b: 151) and that one of the least common forms of cooperation with unions was support for bargaining or organising campaigns. Similarly, research in the area of migrant and ethnic minorities has showed that coalitions are ad hoc, uncertain or likely to fail (Alberti et al, 2013;Fine, 2007;Holgate, 2009), and only in a few cases has unions' engagement with communities effectively promoted the interests of migrants and BME workers .…”

Section: Migrant Workers' Organising: Advantages and Limitations Of 'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Moving beyond the dichotomy of workplace and community unionism: The challenges of organising migrant workers in London’s hotels

Alberti¹

2014

Economic and Industrial Democracy

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This article examines a joint effort by the union Unite and the community organisation London Citizens to unionise two migrant-rich hotels in London. The author explores the effectiveness of union and community strategies in the field of migrant organising drawing from the literature on union strategy and workers' activism and focusing on workers' own experiences of mobilisation. Gender, contractual and migration-related barriers to workers' engagement in the campaign appeared determinant of the failure of the unionisation effort while the leaders eventually favoured a politics of incentive towards employers, 'contracting out' the protest to institutional actors in the community. The central argument is that neither workplace-based nor community unionism alone appears effective in terms of sustaining union activism among highly fragmented, migrant and precarious workforces. The renewal of industrial unionism in the UK rather requires unions to tackle the intersecting discriminations experienced by migrants across their communities and workplaces.

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“…Reviewing the early evidence from living wage ordinances in the USA, Luce (2004) suggests that for every 100 workers who see a direct increase in wages, another 40 receive increases as a result of ripple and spill-over effects. Another important second-order effect is the scope for living wage campaigns to invigorate union recruitment, and to mobilise low paid workers in pursuit of "social justice" (Holgate, 2009;Lopes and Hall, 2015;Wills, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, although the living wage is often seen as an important "proxy" for collective bargaining in low paid and non-unionised sectors, concerns have been expressed within the trade unions about the threat to "traditional" collective bargaining from living wages, leading to a more reactive than strategic approach to tackling the issue of low pay (Holgate, 2009). While living wages may create a short-term focus for union recruitment drives (Lopes and Hall, 2015), the experience of the GMB campaign in UK local government also suggests that recruitment and organising efforts among low paid workers provide the basis for strong negotiations and lobbying of employers rather than the other way around (Prowse and Fells, 2016a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implementing the living wage in UK local government

Johnson

2017

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If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. Implementing the living wage in UK local government Mathew JohnsonAlliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK Abstract Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to understand the impact of living wages on organisational pay systems. Design/methodology/approach -The research draws on 23 semi-structured interviews with HR managers, trade union representatives, and politicians at four UK local government case study sites. Findings -The findings suggest that living wages can have a positive impact on directly employed workers in cleaning, catering and care services, but the research also finds that the localised adoption of living wages can lead to significant wage compression, resulting in a broad band of "low skill-low wage jobs". Originality/value -The theoretical contribution is twofold. In-line with earlier research the "first-order" effects of living wages are clear: hourly wages for a large number of women in part-time roles increased sharply. However, this is only part of the story as "second-order" effects such as ripples and spill-overs are less extensive than suggested by other studies. This is due to the limited scope for trade unions to restore wage differentials through collective bargaining, the slow progress in extending the living wage to contracted staff, and parallel processes of downsizing and outsourcing.

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Contested Terrain: London’s Living Wage Campaign and the Tensions Between Community and Union Organising

Cited by 75 publications

References 14 publications

Organizing Women in the Spaces between Home, Work and Community

Organizing Women in the Spaces between Home, Work and Community

Moving beyond the dichotomy of workplace and community unionism: The challenges of organising migrant workers in London’s hotels

Implementing the living wage in UK local government

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