Union Ideas Network  


Making hard choices - 24/05/2006 04:52 Colleagues may be interested in this paper uploaded onto the UIN by David Weil from Boston University.

David has developed a really useful 'strategic choice' framework for unions - and an on-line tool which allows unions to assess their strategic leverage and organisational capacity.

You can see the UK version of the 'SCAT' survey, which was developed with the support of the TUC, here .

Let me know what you think of it.

Post edited by: Paul Nowak, at: 2006/05/24 04:53
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Re:Making hard choices - 29/06/2006 23:13 The SCAT survey seems like an excellent way of helping key decision makers to think about the strategic positioning of their union and organisational capacity.

It could help feed into the international debate about the way unions respond to the changing environment in which we work; developing the organising model or partnership working, political or corporate leverage, industrial muscle, global campaigns or local empowerment.

Weil's paper correctly identifies the dangers of becoming sidetracked from our strategic aims by periferal or conjunctural events. Is this a particular weakness of our unions?

Do colleagues feel that we must be more disciplined in driving forward our strategic plans rather than allowing tactical considerations to predominate?

How do we enable ourselves to think further ahead and ensure that the important strategic considerations faced by the movement drive our response to immediate political, regional, or local factors, rather than the other way around?

It does seem to me that we need to make some hard choices!
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