Holgate, J orcid.org/0000-0003-2311-6981 (2021) Trade unions in the community: Building broad spaces of solidarity. Economic and Industrial Democracy, 42 (2). pp. 226-247. ISSN 0143-831X
Abstract
This article approaches the subject of trade union community-based organising from the perspective of one union’s attempt to broaden its remit by recruiting ‘non-workers’. In 2011, Unite, the largest private sector union in the UK, announced it was to recruit retirees, students and people who were unemployed into a new section of the union. This could be a radical and potentially ground-breaking development for a UK union where the organising approach stems from an understanding that the purpose of trade unionism is to advance the interests of the working class as a whole – whether or not individuals are, indeed, working – broadening the ideology of trade unionism from its narrow economistic focus. The article reports on a six-year study of this initiative and analyses whether this can be understood as a reorientation of union purpose as a consequence of loss of power in the workplace. It further considers the potential this has for rebuilding wider spaces of solidarity.
Metadata
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2018. This is an author produced version of a paper published in Economic and Industrial Democracy. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. | ||||
Keywords: | Civil society, class, coalitions, community unionism, ideology, leadership, power, trade union identity, union organising, Unite the union | ||||
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Institution: | The University of Leeds | ||||
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Business (Leeds) > Work and Employment Relation Division (Leeds) | ||||
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Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications | ||||
Date Deposited: | 13 Mar 2018 15:30 | ||||
Last Modified: | 10 Feb 2022 10:56 | ||||
Status: | Published | ||||
Publisher: | SAGE | ||||
Identification Number: | https://doi.org/10.1177/0143831X18763871 |