Paul Nowak
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Re:Whatever happened to "new unionism" in the UK? - 31/10/2006 02:34
Hi Peter
The TUC's New Unionism project was set up in 1996 to try and get unions more focussed on organising (increasing investment in organising and recruitment, reaching out to under-represented groups of workers, employing and training skilled organisers, rebuilding strong workplace organisation)
Alongside this work the TUC was also very supportive of the whole push towards 'partnership', and the 2 strategies were seen (though not by everyone!) as complementary: basically 'partnership' without strong, effective unions is meaningless while organising is not an end in itself but essential for unions to build any sort of positive relationship with the employer and secure gains for members(you can see I'm skipping over all this very superficially here!). Ed Heery at Cardiff has written a great article re organising and partnership.
The TUC's New Unionism project was formally brought to a close just over 2 years ago - but most of the work initiated by the project (such as the TUC Organising Academy) has remained and developed. You can track some of the work the TUC is doing to support organising here:
http://www.tuc.org.uk/organisation/index.cfm
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