Power in Coalition: Strategies for Strong Unions and Social Change 9780801459351

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Power in Coalition

Power in Coalition Strategies for Strong Unions and Social Change

Amanda Tattersall

ILR Press an imprint of Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2010 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2010 by Cornell University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2010 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tattersall, Amanda, 1977 – Power in coalition : strategies for strong unions and social change / Amanda Tattersall. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-4899-7 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8014-7606-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Labor unions — Political activity — Australia — Sydney (N.S.W.) — Case studies. 2. Labor unions — Political activity — Illinois — Chicago — Case studies. 3. Labor unions — Political activity — Ontario — Toronto — Case studies. 4. Community organization — Australia — Sydney (N.S.W.) — Case studies. 5. Community organization — Illinois — Chicago — Case studies. 6. Community organization — Ontario — Toronto — Case studies. 7. Social change — Australia — Sydney (N.S.W.) — Case studies. 8. Social change — Illinois — Chicago — Case studies. 9. Social change — Ontario — Toronto — Case studies. I. Title. HD6895.S9T38 2010 322⬘.2 — dc22 2010003028 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Cloth printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Paperback printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedicated to my two boys, Charles and Hartley

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Abbreviations

xi

Introduction 1. The Elements of Coalition Unionism

1 17

2. The Public Education Coalition in New South Wales

32

3. Living Wages and the Grassroots Collaborative in Chicago

63

4. The Ontario Health Coalition

104

5. Power in Coalition

142

Conclusion: The Possibilities of Successful Coalitions

166

References

183

Index

203

Acknowledgments

This work has been five years in the making, a task begun when I was a union organizer perplexed by how to build powerful coalitions. The journey took me back to university as well as to travels through Canada and the United States. Since the end of my research I have returned to organizing, to prove that those who can “teach” can also “do.” We are three years into establishing the Sydney Alliance, a long-term broad-based coalition. This book, however, was not complete until after another adventure, the birth of my baby boy. Luckily, these different experiences, which could (and did) make this book a challenge, fueled my own belief in the importance of a text on the promise of coalition building. While writing can be a solitary task, this has not been a lonely journey. This research received tremendous support from the University of Sydney and Unions NSW. Key backers, including Bradon Ellem, Russell Lansbury, John Robertson, and Mark Lennon, recognized the value of crossing the divide from the union movement to university and back again, which was critical for making this book happen. Scholarships, particularly the Denis Freney Memorial Scholarship from the Search Foundation, helped fund the translation of my PhD dissertation into a book. Dozens of unionists and community organizers, through reading and conversation, actively shaped the ideas that developed. I want to single out Erik Peterson from Wellstone Action for reading countless drafts and engaging in hundreds of challenging conversations that certainly improved the analysis in this book. I also want to acknowledge fellow union and community organizers Adam Kerslake, Jennifer Acklin, and Joe Chrastil, who helped refine the analysis by reflecting on our organizing.

x

Acknowledgments

A cohort of academics also helped shape the work over time. Peter Fairbrother, Janice Fine, Charlotte Yates, Ian Greer, Rae Cooper, Al Rainnie, Bruce Nissen, Verity Burgmann, and two anonymous reviewers helped sharpen my argument about the promise of coalitions. I also want to thank Holly Bailey who skillfully edited the book on its way to press. Dozens of organizers involved in my three case studies played a critical role in producing new insights into coalition practice. Special mention goes to Madeline Talbot, Keith Kelleher, Amisha Patel, Natalie Mehra, Maree O’Halloran, and Angelo Gavrielatos, who joined a long conversation about coalition building that included honest and sometimes critical evaluation of their own work. Their ability to reflect meant that this book was able to make new, grounded claims about coalition power. I want to thank Cornell University Press and their talented team for their work. In particular Editorial Director Fran Benson was both patient and persistent, qualities that were essential to making this book happen. Finally, and most important, this book, and the research that preceded it, would simply not have happened without my family. My parents and sisters, Charles’s parents, and especially my husband, Charles, made the daunting task of revising a manuscript with a young child possible. Not only that, but Charles’s participation in countless conversations and his preparedness to be a constant sounding board were essential to refining my ideas. He also was my touchstone when things got tough, and his belief in me made finishing this possible. Similarly, the boundless enthusiasm and happiness that my son, Hartley, brings to us every day gives me new fuel for organizing and reflecting on social change. For their support and love, I dedicate this book to them. •

•

•

Parts of chapter 2 were previously published: Bringing the community in: Possibilities for public sector union success through community unionism. International Journal of Human Resource Development and Management 6 (2/3/4) (2006), 186; and Using their sword of justice: The NSW Teachers Federation’s campaigns for public education between 2001 and 2004. In Community Unionism: A comparative analysis of concepts and contexts, ed. J. McBride and I. Greenwood (Palgrave: Hampshire, 2009).

Abbreviations

ACORN ACTU AFL AFL-CIO AFSCME ALP BHC BPNC CAW CBC CC CCF CCH CCPPP CEP CFL CHC CIO CLC CORE

Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now Australian Council of Trade Unions American Federation of Labor American Federation of Labor –Congress of Industrial Organizations American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Australian Labor Party Brampton Health Coalition Brighton Park Neighborhood Council Canadian Auto Workers Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Council of Canadians Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (Canada) Chicago Coalition for the Homeless Canadian Council of Public-Private Partnerships Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union (Canada) Chicago Federation of Labor Canadian Health Coalition Congress of Industrial Organizations Canadian Labour Congress Congress of Racial Equality

xii

Abbreviations

CTWO CUPE DET FOSCO IAF IRC KHC MPP NDP NGO NHC NLRB NSW NSWTF OCHU-CUPE OFL OHC OPEC OPSEU ONA P3 P&C PEA PICO PPA PSPF SDS SEIU SPC TGWU UAW UFCW

Change to Win Federation (United States) Canadian Union of Public Employees Department of Education and Training (NSW) Federation of School Community Organisations Industrial Areas Foundation Industrial Relations Commission Kingston Health Coalition Member of Provincial Parliament (Canada) New Democratic Party (Canada) Nongovernmental organization Niagara Health Coalition National Labor Relations Board (United States) New South Wales New South Wales Teachers Federation (Australia) Ontario Council of Hospital Unions –Canadian Union of Public Employees (Canada) Ontario Federation of Labour Ontario Health Coalition Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries Ontario Public Sector Employees Union, Canada Ontario Nurses Association Public-private partnership Federation of Parents and Citizens (Australia) Public Education Alliance People Improving Communities through Organizing Primary Principals Association (Australia) Public School Principals Forum (Australia) Students for a Democratic Society Service Employees International Union Secondary Principals Council (Australia) Transport and General Workers Union United Auto Workers (USA) United Food and Commercial Workers (United States and Canada)

Power in Coalition

Introduction

In February 1999, the New South Wales Teachers Federation (NSWTF) was under attack. The front page of the Daily Telegraph— Sydney’s Murdoch-owned tabloid newspaper — had just featured a cartoon of the union’s president wearing a dunce’s cap, with the headline reading “If the cap fits” (Daily Telegraph 1999). The union’s political influence was at an all-time low in the midst of its most hostile wages bargaining campaign in a generation. In the face of this crisis, a group of union organizers and stewards hatched a plan for changing the union’s relationship with government. Their idea was for a major “public education campaign” that would project the union’s broad vision into the public arena. It would pay heed to the union’s workplace concerns while connecting its membership with a coalition of parent and school principal organizations. By the time of the state election four years later, the resulting public education coalition across six organizations had turned the union’s fortunes around. An eighteen-month, million-dollar independent public education inquiry had forced the government to support a list of reforms, including reduced class sizes and increased professional funding for teachers. The union had energized its membership and pushed the state to massively increase education spending because it had built a successful coalition. For decades, unions around the world, like the teachers’ union in Australia, have been struggling. Across advanced English-speaking economies, we have seen the rising power of capital and its increasing influence over

2

Introduction

government. This has created a hostile environment for unions, characterized by aggressive employers, unfriendly governments, and declining union membership. Unions have been forced to reevaluate their role and objectives. Debates have considered how unions could advance the conditions of their members and whether achieving this goal also requires a more fundamental confrontation with the political and economic logic that underpins this crisis for unions (Hyman 2007). The result has been an emergence of novel strategies that suggest new possibilities about how unions can work. One of these is coalition (or alliance) building, where unions engage in cooperative relationships with community organizations. Coalitions have the potential to be not simply a tool for advancing union goals but, more than that, a means of achieving new kinds of social change that could also contribute to the reinvention of unions. Despite a long history of union coalition building across industrialized countries, in the last decade coalitions with community organizations have become increasingly significant. When union density was at its peak, unions exercised social and economic influence alone. Today, “the workers united” are frequently defeated. Social isolation and membership decline make it ever more necessary for unions to unite with other social forces if they are to successfully advance a broad vision of economic and social justice. If unions are going to survive this crisis of power, they need to reinvent themselves. A key strategy for revitalization is building “positive-sum” coalitions, as opposed to transactional coalitions. Positive-sum coalitions build the power of unions and community organizations while also achieving social change. When unions recognize this and enter into strong, reciprocal, and agenda-setting coalitions, the labor movement increases its chances of building a new political climate while winning on major issues that they have been losing. More mutual and shared relationships among unions and community organizations can also help revitalize unions internally, invigorating their political vision, campaign techniques, and membership engagement. This book is about the promise of successful coalitions. I consider why coalitions have re-surfaced as a strategy and the various ways in which coalitions can successfully achieve social change and rebuild the organizational strength of civil society. To do this, I identify three elements of coalitions using case studies based in Australia, the United States, and Canada. I draw out key principles about how to build strong coalitions and the cir-

Introduction

3

cumstances under which coalitions succeed. I apply these lessons directly to unions, distinguishing the ways in which coalitions support union revitalization and enable unions to win on issues and build political agendas that they have struggled with on their own. I develop three central propositions. First, coalitions are most successful when they achieve social change while operating in a way that builds organizational strength for their participating organizations. This is a broad prescription for how coalitions can be powerful. Success is not simply the realization of social-change outcomes but is reflected in how such victories are achieved. I consider how coalition power is strengthened or weakened depending on the kinds of relationships that develop among organizations, the process of negotiating and framing coalition goals, and how organization members are involved in the coalition. Second, a coalition’s ability to achieve success is shaped by the strategic choices of coalition participants, whose actions are affected by their particular political context. I analyze the constant tradeoffs coalitions are forced to make between the kind of social change that coalitions are able to achieve and the kinds of organizational strength that they can build. Third, coalitions are a source of power for unions, not simply because they supplement a union’s objectives with the resources of another organization but because they help renew unions. This kind of strength requires a sometimes challenging kind of reciprocal coalition building. Yet this slower, stronger coalition practice can help unions rebuild their internal capacity, develop new leaders, and innovate how they campaign. Coalitions can also shift unions from being agents focused on the workplace to becoming organizations that connect workplace concerns with a broad agenda that in turn can transform the broader political climate. As Flanders (1970) expressed it, coalitions allow unions to act not only in their “vested interests” but with a “sword of justice.” This book not only is a product of my intellectual interest in the labor movement but arises from the challenges I faced as a coalition organizer for a decade both inside and alongside the union movement in Australia. As a community and a union organizer, I have long sought to build coalitions between community organizations and unions as a strategy for tackling major social and economic justice issues. In 2002, I began working in the union movement because unions were the largest community organizations in Australia. From my perspective they were bigger and stronger than the student and immigration movements where I had learned to organize, and they had a proud track record of winning

4

Introduction

changes in the name of union members as well as for society at large. Yet while I believed that unions could act for social good, they were in the midst of organizational crisis. By joining the movement I took on a responsibility to help revitalize unions, seeing coalitions as a means for reforming unions as well as achieving social change. My experience in building coalitions between community organizations and unions, however, was at best uneven. I was involved in numerous attempts to campaign on issues like higher-education funding and refugee rights that produced only short-term alliances, where the relationships fell away soon after a key event had been organized or the issue had passed. My involvement in the 2003 Walk against the War Coalition in Sydney was a watershed moment. Despite us building a coalition of more than sixty organizations and helping to organize the largest demonstration in Sydney’s history, not only did the war proceed, but the coalition unceremoniously tore itself apart. It revealed fundamental flaws in how we had sought to work together. Moreover, despite the efforts of many union organizers and delegates, the labor movement was not deeply engaged in the peace coalition. At the time of the Walk against the War Coalition I was an organizer at Unions NSW (formerly the Labor Council of NSW), which represented more than 650,000 workers across Sydney and New South Wales (NSW). On February 19, three days after half a million people had walked for peace I went to the Sydney Town Hall to hand out peace flyers at a public education event. It was a major public hearing staged in the run-up to the state election. All the key politicians were there, speaking to an overflowing audience of more than a thousand teachers, parents, and school principals brought together by the Public Education Alliance (PEA). This was a very different type of coalition. It involved few organizations, but at the same time it was acting on an issue that deeply engaged the membership of these groups, including the union. Contrasting the education campaign and the peace campaign, I could see that a more successful coalition practice was possible. The experience sent me on a journey to investigate what it takes to build powerful coalitions. This research is important because of the increasing use of coalitions as a strategy. It, however, became even more pressing while I was undertaking it. In 2004 union membership levels continued a decline that had begun in the early 1980s. In Australia in 2005, the federal conservative government attempted to dismantle the industrial relations system, which in response saw unions popularize strategies like coalitions as a tool of resistance. In 2008, the global financial crisis and subsequent downturn

Introduction

5

heralded a period of marked economic uncertainty, magnifying the importance of effective social-change strategies. These events reinforced that the challenge of building powerful coalitions was of pivotal and immediate importance. If my practical organizing experience was one source of my argument in this book, four years of primary and secondary research in Australia, the United States, and Canada was the second source. I studied three coalitions in depth, as an observer, not a participant. I selected my first case study, the public education coalition, from my vantage point inside the Australian labor movement. I chose the other two case studies based on recommendations and interviews with unions and community organizers in Toronto and Chicago. I selected the Toronto case study after interviews with a cross section of unionists who suggested the Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) was similarly long-lasting and had genuine union and community organization participation. My U.S. research was located in Chicago, because it was a similar-sized global city like Sydney and Toronto, and unlike U.S. cities like Los Angeles, Chicago’s union had been less frequently studied. I identified the key organizations in the Chicago study from the 1995 – 98 living wage case study by Reynolds (1999). I chose the Grassroots Collaborative from a range of different coalitions operating in Chicago at the time because, like the subjects of my two other case studies, it focused on one issue, living wages, over several years. But also, as a self-described multi-issue coalition, it offered a point of comparison with the issue-based coalitions in Australia and Canada. Although I was a relative outsider to the coalitions I studied, my interviews with coalition participants greatly benefited from my work as an organizer. I could identify with the challenges that these people faced because we had shared similar experiences. Using my research in a dissertation on coalition unionism, I completed my doctorate and returned to eighteen months of full-time union and coalition organizing before completing this book.

Hope in a Hostile Climate

The difficult decade bookended by September 11 and the global financial crisis led many union leaders to feel they needed to do “something different.” Coalitions with community organizations became an increasingly common tactic for many unions. The unfriendly union environment has been widely documented. The

6

Introduction

United States, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Australia had all experienced significant reductions in union membership over the previous generation (Peetz 1998; Frege and Kelly 2004a). At the same time, the power of employers had become increasingly mobile and more powerful. Government deregulation of capital flows and privatization of state infrastructure had been caused by, and contributed to, a resurgence in the power of business (Streeck and Hassel 2003). Industrial relations were decentralized. Business strategies such as outsourcing and enterprisebased employment regulation reduced unions’ ability to temper wage competition among workers. Labor parties distanced themselves from unions, and this further constricted unions’ political power. The relationships among capital, labor, and the state had changed. The combination of these factors put pressure on unions to seek out new strategies and ways of confronting their declining political power and the ascendancy of employers. Some unions clung to a narrow understanding of what their role was. Those that continued to practice what was variously known as “business unionism” or “arbitration unionism” largely saw their role as negotiating with employers, using collective bargaining and working through industrial commissions, such as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), to improve wages and conditions. To the extent they became involved in politics, it was mainly to address industrial issues. This was the role that had predominated when unions had higher density, which often led to a perception that unions did not need to seek broader community relationships to achieve influence. Yet this strategy produced a declining rate of return. From the 1980s on, in Australia, the United States and Canada, weakened state institutions and resurgent employer power regularly left unions in a position where their only option was to “concession bargain” — where they agreed to accept reduced conditions in order to retain their position as the bargaining agent. Meanwhile, the industrial commissions that these unions relied upon had not kept pace with corporate restructuring. For instance, in the United States, the NLRB remained focused at an enterprise level while the corporation changed radically. Corporate decision making increasingly moved to an international scale while production fragmented through multifirm corporate structures and the outsourcing of production and services. In addition, in some countries the industrial commissions themselves had been systematically weakened. In Australia, protective regulations such as compulsory conciliation and arbitration, which provided automatic union

Introduction

7

recognition and set industry-wide wages and conditions, were diluted through employer pressure to decentralize bargaining to the scale of the enterprise and the individual. Of course, not all unions had taken a narrow view of their role. Some had long traditions of a broader, more adventurous unionism that potentially could challenge the increased power of employers and hostility of the state. Collaboration was not an unfamiliar tactic. Most union movements developed union-to-union alliances through central labor councils, first through cities and states in the nineteenth century and then as national union bodies in the twentieth century. Furthermore, unions’ political relationships sometimes stretched to issues beyond the industrial. While the labor movement in Australia had long distinguished between its “industrial” and “political” wings, formal participation of unions in the Australian Labor Party (ALP) provided unions with the capability to influence social policy. For instance, the 1983 – 96 Prices and Incomes Accord between the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and the ALP enabled unions to win universal health insurance (Medicare) and compulsory employer contributions to retirement savings (superannuation). Beyond formal political ties, some unions developed collaborative practices with community organizations that meant they did not act alone, even in workplace disputes. In the United States in the late 1930s and 1940s, the birth of community organizing through the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council in Chicago also led to the cultivation of powerful coalition relationships in support of workplace disputes between the Catholic Church and the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee. Later on, through the civil rights movement, unions like Local 1199 in New York and the sanitation workers of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) worked closely with religious organizations to pursue issues of racial justice. In Australia, collaboration with community organizations was more common, partly as a result of the long-lasting activism of the Communist Party of Australia in the union movement. Australian Communists, like their U.S. and Canadian counterparts, actively cultivated union participation in a wide variety of political struggles through their support for coalition strategies such as the “united front” and “popular front.” In Australia, this had the long-term effect of popularizing coalitions and campaigns for social justice. For instance, in the lead-up to World War II, waterside workers in Wollongong refused to load iron ore onto ships des-

8

Introduction

tined for Japan. This kind of socially interested unionism continued through the 1960s and 1970s, when many unions played active roles in support of peace, women’s rights, and identity-based social movements. It was exemplified by the Builders Laborers’ Federation’s Green Bans from 1969 to 1975, which brought together union and middle-class residential groups to protect the urban environment. While the Communist Party’s ideology supported the development of coalitions in the twentieth century, Communist coalition leadership was also a limitation as it meant that coalitions were often considered the sole domain of ideologically left unions. In Canada, the twin strategies of political activity and collaboration came together in the 1960s during the struggle for public health insurance. An alliance of unions, farmers, and urban intellectuals was the backbone of the New Democratic Party. But because of the party’s minority status, unions needed to complement political party work with a community campaign for universal health care before it gained the support of the governing Liberal Party. By the mid-1990s, unions in industrialized English-speaking countries faced declining membership, weakening political influence, and poor collective bargaining outcomes. This created sufficient difficulties that the national labor councils in Australia, the United States, and Canada initiated internal debates that considered the need for widespread revitalization strategies. These strategies sought to break with “business” or “arbitration” unionism to build a “social movement unionism” in which unions rebuilt their power. Prescriptions included changing unions’ internal organizational operations, a commitment to growing union membership, using corporate and industry research to help identify organizing opportunities, and using union education to increase the organizing skills of members, as well as various experiments with such strategies as corporate campaigning and community coalitions. The focus of union revitalization strategy and scholarship was on the question of how unions could internally transform themselves, with debate canvassing the impact of new leadership, membership collapse, and the capacity of union leaders to drive reform (Moody 1997; Voss and Sherman 2000; Crosby 2005). Many in the labor movement were open to the idea that they needed to change. Numerous unions had experimented with a broad range of strategies. One of these was building coalitions with community organizations. It was nothing new. For a few, coalitions were familiar. For others, coalitions were a technique exhumed from long, often-neglected union traditions. The reasons to work in coalition were particularly pow-

Introduction

9

erful at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Unions were isolated and no longer strong enough on their own to confront the power of employers at work and in politics. Central labor councils from Australia, the United States, and Canada all endorsed coalitions as an important strategy for union survival. The Australian Council of Trade Unions’ 2008 Union Organising and Working for a Fairer Australia framework called on unions to “build coalitions with community and faith groups,” building on a decade of support for community outreach (ACTU 1999, 2008). Similarly, in 1996 the American Federation of Labor –Congress of Industrial Organisations (AFL-CIO) Union Cities program included a call for coalition building, reinforced by the 2001 AFL-CIO’s mission statement that appealed for a “strengthening of the ties of labor to our allies.” Likewise, the 2005 Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) argued that “it is important to protect workers and their families where they live by working with like-minded community allies” (CLC 2005). Paralleling the changing strategy of the labor movement, academic interest in coalitions emerged in the early 1990s. Scholarship was most widespread in the United States, appearing at first through a wave of edited books that described the essential characteristics of best-practice coalitions. These began with Brecher and Costello (1990), Nissen (1995), and later Reynolds (2004). A series of special edition journals also brought together coalition scholars and practitioners (Banks 1992; Sneiderman 1996; Reynolds and Ness 2004). Since 2000, coalition scholarship has expanded to focus on classifying different types of coalitions (Frege, Heery, and Turner 2004; Obach 2004; Tattersall 2005), issue-specific coalitions like living wage coalitions (Reynolds and Kern 2002; Luce 2004), unusual alliances such as those between environmentalists and unions (Rose 2000; Obach 2004), and the uneven development of coalitions across different national contexts (Frege, Heery, and Turner 2004; Turner and Cornfield 2007; Greer 2008). While the labor movement proclaimed that coalitions were a useful strategy, two significant issues remained — why and how. In answering why they would engage in coalitions, unions often identified a narrow role for themselves and there was not a clear understanding about how to build powerful coalitions. Most frequently, unions saw coalitions as an add-on to the pursuit of union goals. For instance, the AFL-CIO 2001 Executive Council report described coalitions as an extension of union activity — for example “ex-

10

Introduction

pertise in coalition building” was about “identifying local groups to help during an organizing campaign” or “participating in a broad-based coalition to actively support a strike ” (AFL-CIO 2001, author’s emphasis). Similarly, the Australian Council of Trade Unions referred to coalitions as one part of a strategy to build a “strong union voice” (ACTU 1999, author’s emphasis). This constrained view saw coalitions as a tool to be used for unions, rather than envisaging the potential power that might arise from an exchange with community organizations. For instance, it overlooked how coalitions can be more powerful when pursuing objectives negotiated between organizations rather than determined by a union alone. Instead of simply supplementing a union’s agenda, a more reciprocal coalition can help revitalize unions and contribute to achieving social goals that shift the unfriendly political and economic climate. Sometimes unions explicitly identified a broader political role for coalitions. In 2005, the Canadian Labour Congress emphasized the important role that coalitions played in advancing legislative reform on issues that workers faced outside the workplace (CLC 2005). Moreover, in practical terms, coalitions and community campaigns increasingly became a default union “solution” to long-term political challenges, such as health care reform in the United States, rights at work in Australia, support for migrant workers and responses to climate change. In the aftermath of the 2008 economic downturn, there is even more reason to think coalitions are a practical strategy. During the two decades preceding the crisis, the consensus was that government intervention into the economy was wrong, particularly when it came to regulating markets and building new social infrastructure. Coalition campaigns therefore had to confront this ideology while also building sufficient political pressure to advance reforms such as public education, health care, or living wages. The financial crisis changed this. It challenged the ideology that the market can control itself, creating space for government to reregulate the behavior of corporations. At the same time, widespread consensus emerged, even among hardened market ideologues, that government must play a role in stimulating demand in the economy. This produced opportunities for political reforms, including those for spending on new social infrastructure, and political responses to social hardship caused by unemployment and housing foreclosures. Furthermore, the coincidence of climate change and financial downturn has increased the prospects of state support for jobs that would abate climate change, say, in renewable energy and building retrofits. In light of these pressures, there is an opportunity for coalition unionism. Yet these opportunities are also counterbalanced by the chal-

Introduction

11

lenges that the economic downturn has posed for unions. Job losses have thinned union density, weakening unions’ ability to negotiate wage raises and negatively impacting on union resources. Moreover, opportunities in the political system are not a guarantee of coalition success. The financial bailouts of late 2008 showed that the interests of business continued to heavily influence government intervention. If coalitions can help unions confront the difficulties they face, the challenge is how to make coalitions powerful. Time and again coalitions have been just another media stunt, an opportunity to list a large number of organizations on a letterhead in support of, or against, an issue — so-called letterhead coalitions. The perceived strength of these coalitions was frequently and incorrectly equated to the number of organizations assembled. These relationships came together and fell away based on the issues at hand, and the coalitions had no greater purpose than to generate publicity for an issue. There was often tension between the organizations, but strategies were rarely developed to overcome these differences. These coalitions were merely an alignment of organizational leaders. They did not engage, let alone politicize or enhance the campaigning skills of union or community organization members. Unsurprisingly, this kind of coalition rarely supported sustained campaigns on an issue. Sometimes letterhead coalitions delivered a veneer of success, but it was not enough to change unions’ political and economic environment. Some unions, however, engaged in a different kind of coalition practice, of which the case studies in this book are a good cross section. Each involved campaigns underpinned by a long-term commitment to build relationships, managing distinct interests and creating common concern. They engaged their leaders and their rank and file, building enduring strategies that won on issues and promoted their own social agenda. In order to explore what it takes to build a successful coalition strategy, I identify three coalition elements — common concern, organizational relationships, and scale. Common concern refers to the goals of the coalition. Organizational relationships refers to how the coalition supports and structures the interaction between its participating organizations. Scale refers to the geographic location of the coalition and how it is strategically organized across a single area (e.g., the state) or across multiple scales (e.g., local and state). The case studies consider how these elements vary over time and between different places, and how choices and context impact on coalition success. I believe that if the labor movement is to survive and emerge stronger, its leaders need to understand how to build real, positive-sum coalitions,

12

Introduction

and so I have devoted this book to that purpose. I challenge the conventional wisdom that implies that coalitions are just a tactic for furthering a union’s goals, and argue that coalitions present tremendous opportunities for achieving social-change outcomes and renewing the potency of civil society organizations. Yet they are not a panacea. Coalition building is a multifaceted strategy that can be deployed in distinct ways depending on the pressures imposed by the political context and the strategic objectives of the coalition actors.

The Case Studies

The centerpiece of this book is three case studies of long-term coalitions. I explore these coalitions with the aim of analyzing their strengths as well as their “internal obstacles, struggles and difficulties” (Lopez 2004, 12). My aim is to explain why the coalitions experienced success and faced challenges based on how they organized and sought to achieve social change. Taken together, the coalitions cover vitally important substantive issues, made even more dramatic by the global economic downturn. Public education, national health care, and living wages are staples of social equality, and their advancement speaks to the development of a more active state, so vital in times of economic insecurity. The case studies document novel strategies where coalitions have defended and extended these institutions in different political contexts (see table I.1). Chapter 2 explores Sydney’s public education coalition from 2001 to 2004 and the coalition element of common concern. I show how this coalition established a prophetic agenda for public education by building a successful independent inquiry that translated into specific policy victories around reduced class sizes and investment in professional development for teachers. Fueled by issues that simultaneously engaged the interests of parents, teachers, and the general public, the coalition fundamentally improved the ability of the teachers’ union to politically advance its interests with the state government. I identify how the coalition’s strong agenda was supported by its scale, where the state-scaled coalition worked with local public education lobbies of rank-and-file teachers, school principals, and parents that brought the campaign to local communities. Yet the coalition struggled with its organizational relationships, as it was consistently dominated by the teachers’ union.

Introduction

13

TABLE I.1 Variations between the case studies Australia

Canada

United States

Issue

Public education

Health care

Living wage

Length

4 years 2001 –4

5 years 2001 –6

4 years 2003 –7

Number of organizations

6

16*

10

Who initiated?

Union

Union

Community organization

Strongest element

Common concern

Scale

Organizational relationships and structure

* There were sixteen organizations on the administrative committee, plus thirty-five local health care coalitions.

Chapter 3 investigates the living wage campaign engineered by Chicago’s Grassroots Collaborative between 2003 and 2006 and the coalition element of organizational relationships. I describe how the hub of this coalition was a strong set of personal relationships between ten organizational leaders who made long-term commitments to build political power in the city of Chicago. This crucible was a space for campaign reflection and planning, eventually translating a problematic campaign against Wal-Mart into a push for living wages for workers in big-box stores. These respectful coalition relationships created an environment where organizations were willing to share resources, which in turn assisted the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) in its attempt to stymie Wal-Mart. The campaign struggled to secure a policy victory, as the mayor vetoed its living wage ordinance, but the coalition’s work had an enduring impact on the city’s political climate by changing the face of the city council. I note that a weak point for this coalition was its scale. The coalition’s relationships focused only on organizational staff, missing out on opportunities for membership development and political influence on a local scale. Chapter 4 analyzes Toronto’s Ontario Health Coalition between 2001 and 2005 and the coalition element of scale. By examining a variety of health care campaigns, I show how this coalition built a remarkable multiscaled capacity through forming thirty-five local health care coalitions.

14

Introduction

The coalition’s organizational relationships coordinated by a full-time staff person brought together a table of dozens of provincially scaled groups, including unions, seniors’ organizations, and representatives of its local coalitions. I argue that the OHC’s locally scaled health care coalitions provided a space for key unions like the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) to develop the campaign skills and coalition-building capacity of key local activists. Moreover, this multiscaled movement provided an impetus for CUPE to experiment with new campaign tactics, like plebiscites, provincial tours, and a provincewide canvass. Yet I suggest that the coalition’s weak point was how it framed the issues it worked on, what I call the coalition’s common concern. While abounding in furious activity, the coalition struggled to formulate demands that set an agenda for health care in Ontario. Chapter 5 brings the case studies together. In addition to outlining general principles of strong coalitions and canvassing the impact of national context on coalition strategy, I explore the implications of coalition success for union power and union renewal. The concluding chapter considers the consequences of these findings. I canvass dozens of examples of other coalitions to draw out the contributions that coalitions can make to social change, campaign strategy, and coalition practice. I consider the implications of powerful coalitions for unions and industrial relations, identifying the importance of collaboration, scale, and member participation for union recovery and revitalization.

Understanding Coalitions across Borders

To demonstrate the possibilities and limitations of coalitions as a strategy, I undertake a coalition-to-coalition international comparison, identifying the similar and different ways that coalitions work in Australia, the United States, and Canada. This departs from the traditional approach to internationally comparative research in industrial relations, which is based on state-to-state comparisons. In those studies, the state is the primary level of analysis, and differences in union or coalition strategies are attributed to the effects of national context. This approach gives the nation-state prominence, thereby potentially obscuring the determining influence of other factors on coalition differences. Yet there is a growing recognition that the processes of economic change associated with neoliberalism have unsettled many of the “old ge-

Introduction

15

ographic certainties of industrial relations” (Herod, Peck, and Wills 2003, 184). In particular, the state itself has been affected in several ways, including how it regulates collective bargaining, how it provides social welfare, and how its social democratic political parties relate to unions. For instance, decentralization of collective bargaining and hostility to unionism are similar across many national contexts. While countries have different resources for resisting these changes, such as different union densities and different kinds of community organizations (Sellers 2007), the patterns of union retreat and resistance are highly uneven, not only between countries but also within them. Strategies such as coalitions are affected not only by national differences but also by variations in local social and political institutions (Turner 2007). The state continues to play an important role but as one of a collection of factors that help explain political behavior and outcomes in light of this heightened geographic complexity. I selected Australia, the United States, and Canada as the setting for the three case studies because they have relatively similar national contexts despite emerging local differences produced by globalization. All three countries are liberal market economies, which can be contrasted to continental Europe’s more coordinated market economies (EspingAndersen 1990; Hall and Soskice 2001; Frege and Kelly 2004b). While Australia’s and Canada’s political histories had significantly stronger labor parties and post – World War II welfare states than the United States, these political traditions have been significantly eroded by neoliberal reforms, revealing similarities to the hostile antiunion political and economic context that has had more continuity in the United States. Additionally, I chose case studies located in similar cities. In 2007, Sydney, Chicago, and Toronto had comparable populations of between four and five million people. They are also the centers of key regional economies — Sydney and Toronto are the economic capitals of their countries, and Chicago is the capital of the midwestern economy of the United States. They are also frequently grouped together as “global cities” — command centers for the global economy — because they are where the decision makers in the largest firms are based. Global cities are similar because they share significant levels of finance capital, corporate headquarters, and producer service firms (e.g., marketing, accounting, and legal firms) (Sassen 2001). Across Australia, the United States, and Canada, declining union density and the political isolation of unions have intensified interest in coalitions. Yet the three coalitions I investigated were significantly dif-

16

Introduction

ferent — distinctive in how they developed their goals, structured their relationships, strategically challenged decision makers, and in their forms of success. State-to-state comparison would be of limited use, as it would focus on how national context was the primary cause of difference across the coalitions. Turner and Cornfield’s (2007) international comparative work on coalitions showed that neither national context nor the relative effects of globalization sufficiently explained the presence or absence of coalitions in particular cities. In their view, the development of coalitions was influenced by opportunities in the social and institutional context but, equally important, by the independent decision-making capacities of individual organizers, their organizations, and the coalitions in which they participated. I seek to build on these findings, beginning with the coalitions themselves in their political context and focusing on the similarities and differences in the coalition strategies. I recognize that national context is important but argue that in addition there are other significant variables that affect how coalitions play out in different places. In noting the impact of national context, chapter 1 and chapter 5 identify several differences across the Australian, U.S. and Canadian contexts that affected how the coalitions organized and were successful across these liberal market countries. To compile the case studies, I used a variety of sources, such as semistructured interviews, internal coalition and union documents, newspapers, and participant observation of coalition meetings and events. In total, I completed more than 120 interviews. I gave the interview subjects the option of being recorded as anonymous or named (in keeping with the human ethics agreement at the University of Sydney). This was a pragmatic choice. Anonymity allowed subjects to talk frankly about their coalition involvement and their own organization’s practice without threatening ongoing relationships. I have been particularly sensitive to this in citing quotations in the case studies, frequently using anonymous sources. Not only did many of the critical observations raised in the case studies come from the keen observations of the coalition participants, but many of these issues have subsequently been the focus of internal coalition debate and reflection. This is a tribute to the rigorous and open way in which these coalition organizers approached the opportunity to have a researcher document and reflect on their remarkable coalitions.

Chapter 1

The Elements of Coalition Unionism

Many people in the labor movement see coalitions as an important tool for social change and union revitalization. Yet few analytical devices exist to help us understand what makes coalitions successful and what makes them fail. Instead, union renewal scholars have invoked terms like “laborcommunity coalitions” and “community unionism” to describe coalition practice. These terms have been unclearly defined, clouding our understanding of how to build strong coalitions (cf. Fine 2005a; McBride and Greenwood 2009). The term “community unionism” has frequently been used to describe coalitions, as well as to identify strategies beyond coalitions. It was coined by James O’Connor in 1964, and that summer it was appropriated by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) to describe its organizing strategy of building local community unions as interracial organizations of poor urban workers based in the neighborhoods where workers lived, rather than their workplace (O’Connor 1964a, 1964b; Frost 2001, 46). In 1965 the Industrial Union Department of the AFL-CIO and the United Auto Workers also began to pioneer community unions. Several of these projects were in the same cities as the SDS projects (such as Chicago and Newark) but were established in different locations and were sponsored directly by organized labor (Bok and Dunlop 1970). These projects organized the marginalized urban poor around their common interests in improved housing and schooling and used existing union members as an organizational base while their leaders attempted to organize nonunion workers (Fine 2003, 308; Tait 2005). Emerging identity-based union

18

Chapter 1

organizing projects in the 1960s paralleled the strategy of community unions. These included Cesar Chavez’s farm worker unionism and the civil rights unionism of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) (Flug 1990, 328). In 1992 the term “community unionism” reemerged in the United States to describe coalitions between unions and community organizations, at a time when unions were in decline (Banks 1992). Defining community unionism as coalitions also spread to Canada and Australia (Tufts 1998; Lipsig-Mumme 2003; Cutcher 2004; Tattersall 2004, 2006; Muir 2008). Labor geographers appropriated the term “community unionism” to bring an understanding of labor geography to the literature on alliances. They presented a place-based approach that argued alliances at a local scale can rebuild union power (Wills 2001; Ellem 2003). In the late 1990s, the term “community unionism” was again used to describe community-based organizing strategies focused on common ethnic and gender identities located in specific neighborhoods (Fine 2003, 2005a). In Canada and Japan, the term was used to describe organizations of marginalized, migrant workers (Cranford and Ladd 2003; Urano and Stewart 2005). I believe that these contested interpretations of community unionism have remained unresolved largely because of uncertainty about the meaning of “community.” Union practitioners frequently used the term “community” to describe coalitions. Not only is the term community unionism used to describe coalitions, but coalitions have been labeled labor community coalitions. At one level the term “community” has been colloquial and vague. It is not, however, meaningless. In union revitalization literature, “community” repeatedly conveys specific descriptions that could provide a deeper foundation for understanding coalitions and defining related terms like “community unionism” (Tattersall 2009). To me, the term “community” conveys three different meanings: • Community as organization • Community as common interest or common identity • Community as place

Most commonly, the term “community” refers to organization. Coalitions are frequently described as labor-community coalitions, where “community”

The Elements of Coalition Unionism

19

Organization

Common Identity/ Common Interest common interest

Place

Figure 1.1 Three interpretations of community

refers to community organization. Community also describes people who have a set of common interests or identities, such as a religious community or a community of women. Fine and Cranford use the term “community” to underscore the importance of common identities, such as race and gender, as forms of solidarity (Cranford and Ladd 2003; Fine 2005a, 154). The word has also been used to describe the common interests of workers beyond the workplace, including concerns such as transport, health care, and education (Cornfield and Hodson 1993; Gindin 1995; Eisenscher 1999). Finally, community describes a place, such as local neighborhood or village. Labor geographers use the term to emphasize the important role of geography for understanding union practice inside contested social and economic relations (Massey 1984; Herod 1998a; Ellem 2005). The three definitions of community shown in figure 1.1 are not mutually exclusive; they are reinforcing and connected. For instance, the Federation of Parents and Citizens (P&C) is a community organization in New South Wales, Australia, whose membership consists of a group of parents with a common interest in improving public schools, and the organization is statewide, operating as a federation of place -based organizations in local schools. I use this three-part definition to provide a new way of

20

Chapter 1

Coalition Unionism

Community-based workplace organizing

Place-based organizing strategies

Figure 1.2 Defining community unionism

approaching contingent terms like “community unionism” and “coalition unionism.” If you accept this approach, “community unionism” becomes a descriptive term that refers to the broad set of strategies that emerge from these three aspects of community. Community unionism involves the interconnection of unions with organizations, common interest/identity, and place (Tattersall 2008). This captures and organizes the three concurrent uses of community unionism I described above. Thus, as outlined in figure 1.2, I see community unionism as the expression of three types of union (and community organization) strategies: • Coalitions between unions and community organizations (coalition unionism) • Organizing workers on the basis of common identity or interests rather than the workplace • Place-based union organizing strategies

Accordingly, community unionism describes the strategy I explore in this book, where unions work with community organizations in coalition,

The Elements of Coalition Unionism

21

Organizational relationships

Common concern

Scale

Figure 1.3 The elements of coalitions

what I call coalition unionism. Additionally, community unionism refers to an organizing strategy, where unions or community organizations seek to organize workers on the basis of their identity or interests rather than their common workplace. This may include organizing women or migrants or union campaigns on issues beyond the workplace. Finally, the term community unionism encompasses place-based organizing strategies, such as the desire for unions to act globally or locally (Ellem 2003). This may be local or city-scaled strategies, such as the AFL-CIO’s Union Cities program, which sought to improve how the union movement shaped the local political environment, or the desire for unions to act across the global community (Tattersall 2007a). Within this broad definition of community unionism sits the specific strategy of building coalitions between unions and community organizations. And since coalition unionism is a kind of community unionism, we can use the three-part definition of community and community unionism to define coalition unionism. Applying this approach to coalitions reveals that they have three attributes or elements (see figure 1.3): • Organizational relationships and structure • Common concern • Scale

22

Chapter 1

If you take a look at figure 1.3, you will notice that the elements of coalitions directly correlate to the three interpretations of community — organization, common interest/identity, and place. Consequently, not only are coalitions rightly called a community strategy, but the term community helps us see how this strategy works: coalitions exist when two or more organizations (such as unions or community organizations) build relationships in order to forge a shared common interest agenda to achieve social change in a specific place. Yet coalitions act out this strategy in dramatically different ways. By bringing order to these terms I hope to move beyond debates about what coalition or community unionism is (Black 2005), to examine when these strategies become powerful. My intention is to zero in on coalition unionism as one example of community unionism and focus on how coalitions are successful. To do this, I examine the objectives of coalition unionism and what I call coalition success.

Coalition Success and the Coalition Elements

To understand what makes coalitions successful, we need to design a new approach because union renewal scholarship has rarely focused explicitly on coalition success. In the 1990s, scholars concentrated on describing coalition best practice (Brecher and Costello 1990; Eisenscher 1999; Reynolds 2002). While this usefully confirmed that coalition practice had become more widespread, it provided only limited guidance as to the circumstances that led coalitions to produce successful outcomes. They also tended to underplay the obstacles and challenges that coalitions experience (Lopez 2004, 12). Similarly, multidisciplinary approaches, whether from labor geography or social movement theory, emphasized how these theories could be applied to coalition practice, but they did not establish how those theories helped us understand coalition success (Kelly 1998; Herod 1998a). By contrast, my primary interest is coalition success, and I focus on the different outcomes that coalitions produce. I identify four measures of success. First, success refers to winning a specific external outcome— for instance, the extent to which a coalition influences the decision of a politician or employer. This could include winning a living wage ordinance or stopping the development of a public-private partnership hospital. Sec-

The Elements of Coalition Unionism

23

ond, a coalition is successful to the extent to which it shapes the broader political climate and the environment within which future campaigns can be fought. This could include creating a political environment more receptive to campaigns like public education by changing the elected politicians or by shifting popular opinion in support of that agenda. Third, success refers to the coalition itself and whether it operates in a way that creates sustainable relationships between the organizations. Finally, coalition success relates to the organizations in the coalition and whether the coalition works in a way that increases their internal capacity by developing new member leaders and by strengthening the campaigning skills and political vision of the organization’s leaders, organizers, stewards, or members. The first measures are social-change outcomes, and the latter two are forms of organizational strength. These four kinds of success are outlined in Table 1.1. My approach to coalition success focuses on how coalitions can work to build their own strength, and it is derived from a combination of sociological and community organizing approaches to the concept of power. I understand power in relatively neutral terms, as the ability to act, consistent with the interpretation used in community organizing (Chambers 2003). Seeing coalition success as winning outcomes reflects a pluralist (onedimensional) view of power, where power is evidenced by who prevails in decision making (Dahl 1957; Gaventa 1980, 14), and coalitions are successful if they influence the decisions of politicians or employers. Seeing success as shaping the political climate echoes Lukes’s idea (2005) that power is exercised through influencing the kinds of issues, people, and agendas that are considered relevant and legitimate (Gaventa 1980). Coalitions are therefore successful if they work in a way that allows them to draw attention to their own issues and redefine those issues as central to social debate and political reform (Fine 2005b, 250). Seeing success as organizational strength borrows from community organizing, where power is about building social and community resources to act in the future (Sen 2003). A core principle of community organizing is developing leadership and relationships between individuals and organizations as a strategy to enhance a group’s ability to take public action (Warren 2001; Fine 2005b, 255). Coalitions are therefore successful if they provide organizations with greater resources to take future action by enabling them to draw on a network of sustained relationships with other organizations, and if they enhance an organization’s internal capacity to act.

24

Chapter 1

TABLE 1.1 Coalition success Social change Winning a specific outcome

Shaping the broader political climate

Organizational strength Sustaining relationships

Increasing the capacity of member organization

Coalitions, like other forms of trade union action, embody possibilities and limits (Anderson 1967). I use this multifaceted definition of coalition success to explore the various (and often contradictory) goals of coalitions. I focus on the tension between a coalition’s ability to campaign for social change and how this affects its ability to build organizational strength. For instance, there is a difference between a coalition that achieves only a single policy victory and one that simultaneously builds a more supportive political climate for future campaigns. I develop this distinction in chapter 3 by documenting how a group of organizers in Chicago built a coalition that could outlast a campaign based on a single issue. Their coalition demonstrated the enduring power that comes from changing the political climate in addition to, or even instead of, winning a single policy victory. Coalitions can fail to achieve policy victories but can still be successful because they increase the strength of the coalition’s participating organizations. In chapter 4 I outline how a coalition can build power through how it chooses to campaign as well as in what it wins. I describe how, in response to a difficult campaign against public-private partnerships in hospitals, the Ontario Health Coalition resourced dozens of local health care coalitions to sustain a grassroots health care movement. Conversely, coalitions can achieve victories in ways that reduce the strength of the participating organizations or the sustainability of the coalition. Coalition campaigning can exact an opportunity cost. I explore this in chapter 3, which discusses how winning a policy victory required the coalition to make a trade-off and work in a way that drained resources from its most active community organization. In chapter 2 I consider a

The Elements of Coalition Unionism

25

different kind of trade-off, where a political victory damaged the coalition’s organizational relationships. Coalitions are frequently forced to prioritize different types of organizational strength. Ideally coalitions would concurrently sustain their relationships and build the capacity of the participating organizations while winning campaigns. Yet the pressures of a hostile context, combined with the limited resources and discrete priorities of organizations, frequently make these goals conditional. I use the coalition elements to analyze how coalition success works. The elements identify common features of all coalitions, helping us to explore the differences between how particular coalitions work in practice. For instance, the public education coalition in chapter 2 began with a broad common concern for public education. It brought together the teachers’ union and parent and school principal organizations through organizational relationships sustained through regular meetings between their leaders. The coalition took public action at the scale of the state and in local communities in order to influence the education policy of the NSW state government. My comparative approach differs from earlier attempts to categorize coalition types. For instance, Frege, Heery, and Turner (2004) and Obach (2004) each developed coalition models that classified and evaluated different types of coalition practice. Using terms like “vanguard” or “instrumental coalition” and “integrative” or “compromise coalition,” they coined labels that helpfully evaluated the significance of familiar features of coalitions, comparing short- or long-term relationships, or union-dominated, more mutual, or “enlightened” relationships that are outside an organization’s direct interest. These categories, however, were sometimes unclear. For instance, the most popular coalitions were said to be those based on “common cause” or “mutual interest,” yet these terms themselves obscured or overlooked two distinct types of coalition practice: the presence of a strong interdependent coalition structure (i.e. strong organizational relationships) and the presence of shared goals (i.e. common concern). By contrast, I argue that all coalitions can be compared according to their common concern, organizational relationships, and scale. This allows us to be explicit about the kinds of coalition practice that generate particular forms of coalition success. We can then assess, for instance, what happens when a coalition structure is strong but common concern is weak (a feature of the Ontario Health Coalition in chapter 4) or, conversely,

26

Chapter 1 TABLE 1.2 The elements of coalitions and their key measures

Common concern • Organizational commitment • Member commitment • Public commitment

Organizational relationships and structure • Organizational capacity • Coalition structure • Forms of decision making • Organizational culture and bridge builders

Scale • Political opportunities • Scale(s) of the decision makers • Local broker organizations

when common concern is strong and structure is weak (as is the case with the public education coalition in chapter 2). In the case studies that form the next three chapters of this book I define each of the coalition elements in turn and use examples to show how the elements describe a range of coalition behaviors, techniques, and players. I use examples from the case studies to break down specific measures for each of the coalition elements (see table 1.2). I use these measures to assess how the operation of a coalition’s common concern, organizational relationships, and scale shapes coalition success. Common concern, which I explore at the conclusion of chapter 2, describes the goals of the coalition. The word “common” refers to the degree to which these goals are shared. The concern held in common may include the organization of an event, an issue, an agenda, or even a broad set of values. I argue that a coalition’s common concern operates successfully to the degree that it deeply engages three different coalition constituencies: the participating organizations, the membership of the participating organizations, and the general public. Common concern is strongest when a coalition’s goals reflect the mutual self-interests of the participating organizations while simultaneously being wielded as a sword of justice — that is, when a coalition’s goals embody both organizational interests and public interest. We see this in chapter 2, where the public education coalition was able to appeal to the

The Elements of Coalition Unionism

27

general public as well as to the interests of teachers and parents by arguing that reducing class sizes would improve public education. I examine organizational relationships and structure at the end of chapter 3. This element shows how a coalition’s strength is drawn from the capacity of its participating organizations as well as the processes that a coalition uses to broker relationships and build commitment between the coalition parties. Strong organizations do not of themselves create strong coalitions; rather, the strength of a coalition relies on shared decisionmaking processes and the presence of coalition staff or bridge builders that help cultivate organizational commitment to the coalition’s goals. The result is my somewhat counterintuitive finding that strong organizational relationships are guided by the principle of “less is more”: fewer organizations with more power to share create more powerful coalitions than a large number of coalition partners with limited commitment. We see in chapter 3 that the Grassroots Collaborative cultivated this kind of practice by inviting only organizations that had a proven track record of mobilizing their membership to participate in the coalition. I use the third element, scale, to explore how a coalition contests for power at various geographic scales, like the local, state, or national. This concept is often overlooked in coalition scholarship. Most studies of coalitions, especially in the United States, focus on those that act at the scale of the city (Reynolds 2004; Turner and Cornfield 2007). Yet this leaves unanswered the question of how coalitions can successfully take action at multiple scales, like the city, state, and nation (Freeman 2005). This is important because most policy reforms require the intervention of multiple levels of government. Moreover, even a specific scale, like the local scale, is shaped by decisions and processes that happen at other scales, meaning that a sensitivity to geography can aid an understanding of coalition success (Savage 1998). I single out scale as one of three elements of coalitions in order to investigate how coalitions seize political opportunities from the local context, contest for power against decision makers, and effectively coordinate campaigns simultaneously at multiple scales. What I found is that a coalition’s scale is strongest when it is stratified and the coalition is operating at multiple scales simultaneously. This may not always be necessary — for instance, if the coalition’s key adversary is situated at the local scale (Herod 2001). As I explain in chapter 4, however, when a coalition is contesting decisions by a national or provincial

28

Chapter 1

government, then the establishment of local town-based coalitions, like the Ontario Health Coalition, that work in partnership with a provincewide or nationwide coalition dramatically increases a coalition’s power. Taken together, the case studies reveal that relationships between the coalition elements and coalition success are complex. Ideally, a coalition would have strong common concern, organizational relationships, and scale and would achieve equally strong outcomes on all the measures of coalition success. Yet this was not the case in any of the case studies. Instead, the choices that organizers made resulted in a discord between the elements and different patterns of coalition success. I explain this disconnect by arguing that the political opportunities and challenges present in a local political context, combined with the strategic choices made by coalitions and their organizers, cause coalitions to prioritize some of the elements but not all of them. When the elements are not all strongly present, success is limited or circumscribed. Coalition success is constrained either by difficulties in achieving social-change goals or, more commonly, by how challenging it can be for a coalition to build the strength of its participating organizations while it campaigns. Adding to this complexity is my finding that over time each of the coalitions embodied some of the elements strongly, some moderately, and some weakly. Consequently, I argue that coalition success is multifaceted, because each of the coalitions in the case studies was successful in some ways and not in others. For instance, the public education coalition skillfully moved an agenda and achieved significant policy reforms while also developing its membership by engaging them in a massive public education inquiry. Yet it struggled to sustain relationships with parent groups over time. Similar contradictions between the limits and possibility of coalition action also emerged in the other case studies. Overall, I argue that the objectives of coalition organizers and the constraints in the local political setting affect how coalitions achieve social change. Coalition participants are forced to trade off the kinds of success they achieve. In particular, they make choices about how their coalition work will build the strength of their organizations over time. When it comes to unions, coalitions can be a source of power. I argue there are three different kinds of coalition power, each associated with the three coalition elements. A coalition with strong common concern

The Elements of Coalition Unionism

29

can help politicize a union and achieve political influence. This develops when a coalition helps a union to set out a public agenda by articulating a union’s vested interests as social interests (sword of justice) or helping it to politicize union members. Strong organizational relationships assist unions by encouraging community organizations and unions to share resources in pursuit of common goals. Unions gain power from a strong scale, by providing them with opportunities to increase the campaigning skills of union leaders and members in the process of coalition campaigns. Yet the benefits that unions may receive from working in coalition are not automatic. Unions can engage in coalitions in different ways, ranging from instrumental relationships with community organizations, where the perceived purpose of a coalition is to allow a transfer of resources from community organizations to unions, to positive-sum relationships, where community organizations mutually build power with unions. When unions build relationships that share power with community organizations, they in turn are most likely to become more powerful. Through the case studies, I show how the idea of positive-sum coalitions runs counter to the conventional wisdom about coalitions outlined in the introduction, which traditionally regards coalitions as a means of adding community support to union objectives. Positive-sum coalition building has implications for the process of union revitalization, which I explore in chapters 5 and 6.

National Context

The larger purpose of this book is to analyze how the strategic choices of coalition organizers shape different types of coalition success. I have considered how these choices are shaped by a coalition’s location and the local and national institutions and opportunities available to coalition organizers. I selected case studies from relatively similar national contexts in order to illuminate tensions and variations in how the coalitions organized and made strategic choices in their local context. Yet there were also differences in the national contexts across Australia, the United States, and Canada, and these affected the success of the coalitions. There are four significant national contextual factors. They range from

30

Chapter 1

political institutional variables like the openness of the state and union relationships with political parties to the agency of civil society evident in the national character of unions and community organizations. I outline these national differences as part of an introduction to each country’s case study and then consider their impact on coalition success in chapter 5. A coalition’s ability to achieve social change and shape the political climate is in part affected by the opportunities available from the types of state and political parties that operate in particular national contexts. These include contrasting histories of welfare state capitalism, state support for union collective bargaining and workplace regulation, political cultures (like binding or nonbinding parliamentary caucuses), and the relationships between unions and political parties. In terms of civil society, unions in Australia, the United States, and Canada have different political identities, densities, and experiences of crisis that have helped shape familiarity with and interest in coalitions. Likewise, the makeup of coalitions across these three countries is affected by community organizations having very different historical traditions and membership capacity. Although the three coalitions in the case studies are affected by their different national contexts, their context was just one of a range of factors that influenced how the coalitions played out and achieved different kinds of success in their local setting (Herod 1998b; Turner 2007). The public education coalition in Australia had the advantage of working in a relatively supportive national context with the most open state and active union-party relationships across the three countries. Australian unions were familiar with coalitions, but its community organizations were relatively weak. The Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) in Canada had a less open state and therefore fewer structural opportunities to influence the state than in Australia, but its community organizations had moderately more capacity than those in Australia. The Grassroots Collaborative in the United States faced a hostile political context, but it also had a civil society with significant opportunities arising from its crisis-motivated unions and its robust community organizations. The coalition elements explain how distinct kinds of success emerged, irrespective of these national differences. Across the three countries, the coalitions showed strong similarities — pointing to consistent themes or principles of strong coalitions. For instance, Sydney’s and Toronto’s coalitions stratified and developed local broker organizations, while this did

The Elements of Coalition Unionism

31

not occur in Chicago. Chicago and Toronto employed staff coordinators for their coalitions, while this did not develop in Sydney. Across these different contexts, it was a combination of national contextual factors, local political opportunities, and the strategic choices of the coalition organizers that influenced the possibilities and limits of the coalition elements and coalition success.

Chapter 2

The Public Education Coalition in New South Wales

On Public Education Day, May 23, 2002, a representative from the community organization the Federation of Parents and Citizens (P&C) sat in New South Wales Parliament House’s Jubilee Room in the middle of what should have been the press conference of the group’s life, but instead the spokesperson was subdued. Parents, teachers, and school principals had joined with Tony Vinson, the head of their Independent Inquiry into the Provision of Public Education in NSW, to announce their findings on how to improve the education system. The key demand was to reduce class sizes for students in kindergarten through year 2, something to which all the coalition partners had agreed. But the teachers’ union was doing most of the talking. The silent P&C spokesperson later reflected that the P&C and the principals “were just sitting there as table decorations” (interview 7 with P&C representative, April 13, 2005). But in response to a question from a prominent Australian TV presenter, the P&C representative changed tack: “I got a bit passionate. . . . I got right into it, and the other principals all started getting into it and it actually expanded the whole thing out to the wider table . . . it really took on a genuine partnership arrangement then” (interview 7 with P&C representative, April 13, 2005). What could easily have been just another teachers’ union press conference turned into a gathering of peers. This inquiry and the public education campaigns it supported were symbolized by the events of that May press conference. These campaigns were made possible by the teachers’

The Public Education Coalition in New South Wales

33

union, the New South Wales Teachers Federation (NSWTF), which subsidized most of the inquiry’s expenses. Yet the campaign was bigger than the union. It was a coalition across the education system of parents, principals, and teachers. Most powerfully, this coalition had an agenda for how to change public education. Tony Vinson, the experienced education professor holding court with the media, wielded a document with concrete recommendations and funding proposals. These included a $250 million proposal to reduce class sizes for students in kindergarten through year 2, as well as suggestions for improving school maintenance and increasing resources for the professional development of teachers. This coalition was not simply trying to stir up a front-page newspaper story; it had a strategy for change, and its agenda would soon unsettle all the political parties in NSW as the politicians scrambled to be identified with this education program. The power of this coalition was apparent to all those who watched — including a visitor, Bob Chase, then president of the National Education Association in the United States, the biggest independent union in the world. “He couldn’t believe his eyes,” Angelo Gavrielatos, the NSWTF vice president recalled. It was “extraordinary . . . the legitimacy, validation, authentication . . . all of our campaign objectives articulated through this independent inquiry” (interview, February 1, 2005). This day was the highest point in an education campaign that delivered the most wide-reaching reform to the NSW public education system in a generation. It was the peak achievement of the NSW public education coalition from 2001 to 2004. The Sydney-based public education coalition was a union-initiated coalition that created a broad public policy agenda. The public education coalition had strong bonds of common concern and developed an ability to campaign at multiple scales, but it had a weak coalition structure. The coalition provided real benefits to the union, in particular it created a vision for reforming public education that propelled the teachers’ professional interests and supported a collective bargaining campaign. It also enabled new forms of member engagement through locally scaled education lobbies. The coalition’s weak organizational relationships and structure, however, led to unevenness between the coalition parties, resulting in union dominance of the coalition.

34

Chapter 2

The Public Education Coalition in Context

The Australian state has been shaped by a political context historically open to popular influence and where coalitions have been a familiar tactic of many unions. The Australian Labor Party (ALP) has constantly been a central figure in the Australian state. The formation of the NSW party in 1891 by the Labor Council of NSW was tied to an awareness that industrial action was necessarily limited, a lesson taken up after the unsuccessful strike wave that had marked the 1890s depression (Freudenberg 1991). The formal relationship between the ALP and the union movement helped create a relatively worker-friendly political and industrial relations system in twentieth-century Australia. For instance, it produced a state that actively intervened in the economy, particularly on industrial issues (Macintyre 1989). In 1904 a system of conciliation and arbitration gave birth to a protective industrial environment, where labor disputes were arbitrated through industrial commissions, and a basic wage was regulated through industry and occupation-wide agreements (called awards). The political influence wielded by unions not only shaped the industrial relations system but spread to economic and migration policies, such as tariff-based protectionism and restricted immigration. Dovetailing this burgeoning state was worker self-activity, where union organizing generated rapid increases in unionization, with union membership growing by 78 percent between 1900 and 1914 (Cooper 2002). From World War II until the 1970s, union, party, and state relationships were generally mutually supportive. Union membership was remarkably strong, representing more than 50 percent of employees for almost the entire period from 1942 to the 1970s, with a peak of 63 percent density in 1953 (Peetz 1998, 26). From post – World War II until the mid-1970s, the practices of state intervention in the economy and union relationships with the ALP supported a strong Keynesian welfare state. The ALP at a state and federal level provided union access to government policy, and formal union dominance of the party through the ALP conference gave rise to strong informal influence of union leaders over party and government decisions (Freudenberg 1991, 198; Cavalier 2008). Underlying this relative prosperity, however, lay significant political conflict, with the sharpest division after World War II caused by the rise of Communism. Between the 1950s and 1970s Communist Party of Australia activists took leadership positions in several unions, including con-

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struction, mining, the maritime industry, and teaching. Anti-Communist groups soon began organizing against Communist activity. This anti-Communist movement eventually coalesced into a union and ALP faction called the Right, characterized as ALP loyalist, socially conservative, and anti-Communist, whose political base was the Labor Council of NSW (Dodkin 2001). Against this group, the Left, which united unions and socialist ALP agitators, came together to press for a more radical political program inside the ALP and also to work in alliance with the 1960s social movements. The Left-Right split led to a polarized embrace of coalitions, and coalitions with community organizations were typically confined to the leftist unions. The Militant Minority activities of the Communist Party in the 1930s popularized the strategy of a “united front” among the many different strains of Communist-influenced unions, which built alliances on industrial and social concerns. These ranged from the public education alliances of the NSWTF in the 1950s and 1960s (O’Brien 1987) to the leadership role of unions in the anti-Vietnam peace movement and urban environmental movements in the 1970s (Burgmann and Burgmann 1998). The coalitions of this period were successful because of the vibrant community organizing of the New Left on issues such as women’s rights and the rights of migrants and indigenous peoples (Burgmann 1993). These social movements soon institutionalized into a wave of radical nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). These were social welfare community organizations whose organizing philosophy mixed social service, consciousness-raising, and advocacy. Their social agitation included the successful demand for government financial support for their service and advocacy roles. While this entrenched the practice of community development, it also sowed the seeds of government influence over the Australian NGO community. The 1970s gave birth to economic challenges that led to a new set of union strategies and state practices in the 1980s. The collapse of the Bretton-Woods system of regulating exchange rates and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil crisis soon led to stagflation and then recession in Australia. A new political order beckoned with the 1983 election of an ALP national government that sought to mix a commitment to the free market with a social conscience (Buchanan and Watson 2001). The labor government and the ACTU developed a formal Prices and Incomes Accord between 1983 – 96. It was a class compromise

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of sorts, where unions agreed to moderate wage claims in return for a social wage that included single-payer health insurance and self-funded retirement. The Prices and Incomes Accord also seeded union discontent by placing a cap on wage raises (Buchanan and Briggs 2005, 11). This pinnacle of state support for unions simultaneously eroded union strength. The global dimensions of the retreat from Keynesian economics had led to a shift toward a new kind of economic orthodoxy. Neoliberalism was promoted by the Reagan and Thatcher governments, and during the Prices and Incomes Accord the ALP became an adherent, deregulating the money markets and floating the Australian dollar, prioritizing monetary policy and interest rates as levers on the supply of money, and privatizing large state enterprises. Most significantly, the Prices and Incomes Accord ushered in the decentralization of industrial relations, where enterprise-based contracts were first introduced as a form of employment contract that could set wages and conditions in parallel to awards. Thus from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, many of the institutional supports for unionism were removed (Hall and Soskice 2001). Alongside this was the demise of union industrial power. The centralization of the Prices and Incomes Accord took attention away from workplace organization, and union density suffered accordingly, collapsing from 56 percent to 34.7 percent between 1983 and 1996 (Peetz 1998, 173). This collapse in national union influence was sealed with the election of the conservative government of John Howard in 1996. Waves of industrial reform further decentralized industrial relations, circumscribing industry-wide awards and replacing them with enterprise-based bargaining and individual contracts. The consequence was rising insecurity at work and a further collapse in union density. The Howard government also wreaked havoc on Australian community organizations. Throughout the 1980s, community organizations had suffered a trajectory similar to that of the union movement. While they had benefited from state support, this had created a relationship of dependence in which organizational survival relied on state and national funding. The Howard government soon turned the funding relationships into a tool of control. Organizations that engaged in political critique were soon defunded or attacked, including the Australian Youth Policy Coalition, Migrant Resource Centers, and the National Union of Students (Hamilton and Maddison 2007). Paralleling this at both a state and national level, financial grants to community organizations became increasingly limited, funding the provision of services and not advocacy.

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Consequently, the power of community organizations as potential coalition partners was constrained because of their close relationship with the state. The pressure of declining union density and the Howard government’s industrial reforms sparked a sense of union crisis by the mid- to late 1990s. Unions were said to be suffering from organizational sclerosis, relying on arbitral systems rather than committing themselves to organize (Pocock 1998). Unions were encouraged to identify and train workplace delegates, target and recruit new members, confront employers through industry-wide strategies, and return to their social movement roots, which included strategies like coalition building (ACTU 1999; Crosby 2005). In Sydney, coalitions emerged as a popular tool, being deployed most frequently in response to political decisions by the Howard government, such as cuts to education funding, health care, attacks on refugees and the decision to participate in the Iraq War (Tattersall 2007c). As the political reforms of the Howard years came to focus on unions, coalition strategies became a more mainstream union tactic. For instance, in 1998, when the government conspired with a maritime company to dismiss its union workforce, the union movement actively pursued community support, and “community pickets” were the public face of union resistance (Sadler and Fagan 2004). Similarly, the 2005 – 7 “Your Rights at Work” campaign relied on supportive relationships with religious organizations and local community organizations (Muir 2008). Despite a hostile national scene, in Sydney, unions, particularly publicsector unions, continued to benefit from the right to arbitrate wage claims, courtesy of a state labor government elected in 1995. During the period of this case study, the state system offered a significantly more supportive industrial system than the national system, through access to a quasi-judicial industrial system called the Industrial Relations Commission. While the state ALP government continued to support the right of unions to bargain for wages, it, too, was influenced by neoliberalism’s prescriptions for fiscal restraint, which in turn created fissures in its relationship with unions. Even though Australia had historically provided strong financial intervention for social protections like public education, funding arrangements were increasingly influenced by demands for privatization and reducing public funding, which paralleled trends in the United States (Berman et al. 2003). In NSW tense relationships between the political and industrial wings of the labor movement often led to attempts to form coalitions (Tatter-

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sall 2007b). For instance, the 1997 campaign against electricity privatization and the 2003 Transport Alliance each sought ad hoc support from community organizations. These were emblematic of a trend in which coalition unionism was focused on political issues (such as state funding or legislative reform) or on industrial issues when the state was the employer. I selected the public education coalition as a case study because, among its contemporaries, it was the most successful example of this emerging union strategy.

The Emergence of the Public Education Coalition

In the late 1990s, the NSWTF, the union representing teachers in NSW, was beset by serious problems. A crisis of funding for public education fundamentally threatened the power of the union. The Australian education system is very different from its North American counterparts; it is not regulated by school boards but by the state of NSW through a minister and Department of Education and Training (DET). It also receives supplementary funding from the federal government. The challenges in the public education system were driven by both ideological and fiscal pressures. Between 1996 and 2004, the Liberal-National Party Coalition that ran the federal government operated with an economically liberal, socially conservative political ideology (Brett 2003). Its preference for private education and “parent choice” saw it allocate increasing levels of public funds to private schools (Liberal Party 2004; Watson 2004). During the same period in NSW, the ALP was in power. It supported the principle of public education but displayed an overriding fiscal conservatism that moderated its funding decisions and influenced a series of policies that aimed to reduce the size of the education budget (NSW Department of Education and Training 2001; Vinson 2002, 117 – 54). Public education appeared to have real union strength behind it, given the stalwart NSWTF, one of the oldest and largest unions in the state. Established in 1918, the NSWTF represented all teachers and school principals and in 2003 represented more than 84 percent of full-time teachers as members. It had always been a radical union; in the 1960s and 1970s Communist activists pushed “united front” strategies and played leading roles in the peace and feminist movements. As early as the 1950s the union took on the role of defending public education as a social good, forming

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the “Three Federations” — a meeting space with parent groups to strategize about public education. The union had a distinctly democratic and decentralized structure, with 145 regionally based teacher associations that met monthly across the state, the State Council of over 300 teacher delegates that met eight times per year, and school-based union representatives in every one of the state’s 2,238 schools. The work of teachers has always been based in the local community. Schools service a local constituency of parents and children who all have an interest in the quality of education. The union’s progressive identity, decentralized structure, and localized industry provided a constellation of opportunities that supported coalition unionism. Alongside the union, the P&C, the key parent organization, represented all public school parents in the state. It consisted of school-based branches, linked by a regional structure with state representatives. In the late 1990s, much of the P&C’s power derived from the strong leadership of its president, Bev Baker, who provided a high-profile voice for parents in the media (interview 6 with former minister for education, March 30, 2005). Even with these apparent strengths, the public education coalition did not emerge until the public education funding crises struck the core interest of the union — teacher wages. The union’s bargaining campaigns to improve salaries and renew teachers’ collective bargaining contract had a long history of being a flashpoint for the NSW government, as teacher wages were the single greatest recurrent expenditure out of every item in the state budget (interview 6 with former minister for education, March 30, 2005). During the 1990s, Maree O’Halloran, the NSWTF president, explained that teacher salaries campaigns had become “increasingly bitter — the government proposed slashing conditions and the union spent the whole campaign clawing them back” (interview, December 20, 2004). The 1999 – 2000 salaries campaign was hostile. And, as noted in chapter 1, the government was supported by an aggressive media campaign against the union (Daily Telegraph 1999). The antagonistic atmosphere of the salaries campaign fundamentally threatened the union. Union organizers recalled State Council and teacher association meetings where teachers vented a combination of fury and anguish about being denigrated on talk radio. Sometimes the anger was hurled back at the union, with debate, motions, and sentiment building that the union had let the teachers down by not having a sufficient media presence. Driven by a sense of desperation, many teachers sought

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a quick fix. Motions at State Council proposed an advertising campaign as a solution to the lack of positive media (NSWTF 1999a). Spurred by the crisis and continuing the work of the radicals that had gone before them, an informal network of teacher delegates and organizers in the southwestern and the outer western suburbs of Sydney began to develop a more comprehensive plan. It was no surprise that this group formed in the outer western suburbs — the most socioeconomically disadvantaged area of Sydney, where public education was most people’s only real option. They understood the anger among the membership and the demand for an advertising campaign, but they wanted to translate this impulse into a broader plan for the union. Their brainstorming received a shot in the arm when Gary Zadkovich, the southwestern Sydney organizer, won a union scholarship to the United States and Canada to learn about social movement unionism and coalitions. He wrote a report about how the NSWTF’s history could help it harness the kinds of union revitalization developing in other parts of the world (Zadkovich 1999). This informal network soon became a reform group and presented three proposals that converted the threats from the government and the media into opportunities for union reform: a new strategic relationship with principals, the formation of local coalitions called public education lobby groups, and a new resource base for public education funding. First, the western Sydney organizers recognized that teachers could not change their fortunes and the system of public education on their own. Teachers needed new allies, including school principals. The NSWTF had traditionally had an awkward relationship with principals: principals were union members, but principal professional organizations tended to be held at some distance for fear that they would take over the NSWTF’s industrial role, as school principal associations did in other Australian states. But the crisis in education had affected the principals too, most noticeably in western Sydney, where a new principal organization called the Public School Principal Forum (PSPF) had formed in 1996. This group had split from the Primary Principals Association (PPA) over the issue of basic skills testing for students. The more formal principal groups had also grown concerned about the education system: the Secondary Principals Council (SPC), which represented 480 high school principals, launched an investigation into education funding in the late 1990s. The western Sydney organizers built relationships with the PSPF, the PPA, and the SPC and advocated that these relationships should be extended across the state (Zadkovich 1999).

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Second, the reform group argued that the NSWTF needed to formalize coalition practice at a local scale. They suggested that the union initiate advocacy groups, called public education lobbies, which would take the public education fight to individual members of parliament inside their electorates. A teacher, a school principal, and a parent, all from the local area, would convene these groups jointly. The rationale was that a public education campaign needed to be able to move an education agenda locally, complementing state-based rallies and forums with a local engine room of lobbying and community participation. The formation of these lobbies produced some of the largest forums the union had held on public education. The first two, in 1999, in the suburbs of Campbelltown and Liverpool, attracted 600 people, and then in 2000 a forum in Mount Pritchard brought out 750 people. Finally, and most radically, the reform group pushed for a renewal of the union’s vision and a resource base called the Public Education Fund. A motion was proposed at the 1999 annual conference, and despite a heated debate a decision was eventually approved by a State Council meeting (NSWTF 1999b). The Public Education Fund was created by a compulsory fee calculated as a percentage of union fees (the equivalent of $17 per member at the time), and it would serve as a million-dollar fighting fund for public education campaigns. The motion also stipulated that all the union’s campaigns should be framed as public education campaigns. Because it could fund advertising campaigns, the proposal captured member interest for an improved media strategy, and it translated anger into an allocation of resources not simply to union advertising but to the formation of a broad-based public education strategy. From 2001, the union reframed all its campaigns as campaigns for public education, supported by a pool of funds to resource them. By 2001 the union had built the foundations for a long-term coalition. It had responded to the political and media threats in its 1999 salaries campaign by building a capacity and commitment to fight for public education. This broadening agenda created a ready space for public education allies. In particular, an alliance with principals complemented the union’s long-standing relationship with parent groups. The NSWTF built a coalition structure that enabled it to campaign locally and at a state scale, establishing a multiscaled coalition capacity. But there was a critical weakness. The coalition’s work tended to be union-dominated. While the union’s commitment gave the coalition unparalleled human and financial resources, it simultaneously resulted in weak relationships with the

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P&C and school principal organizations. This domination would shape the relationships between coalition partners, sometimes making them tense and unstable.

The Vinson Inquiry into Public Education: April 2001 to May 2002

I explore the public education coalition in three stages, each of which had its own flavor. They were all framed as public education campaigns, but they varied as the coalition relationships drew together but were then pushed apart. The ALP state government was the major political target for the NSWTF, as the state government was the key funding body for public education. The ALP government constantly came up with ideas for how to change education, and by early 2001 the union was in a state of frustration about the government’s seemingly incoherent agenda for schools. This was exemplified by the government’s 2001 proposal: named Building the Future, this plan included demolishing thirteen inner-city schools (NSW Department of Education and Training 2001). Opposition to this proposal was strong. Union wildcat strikes spread across inner-city communities, and public meetings attracted mass support. One meeting in Marrickville, in the inner west of Sydney, was attended by more than a thousand people. As it had done in response to previous reform proposals, the union called on the government to hold an inquiry that would force it to justify its current reforms within a broader education rationale. But this strategy soon took a different course, when at the 2001 April rank-and-file executive meeting one Wollongong teacher exclaimed, “Why don’t we just do an inquiry ourselves” (Simpson interview, April 12, 2005). The largest independent public education inquiry ever held in Australia was soon to follow. The inquiry looked like a formal government inquiry and simultaneously developed an agenda for public education while also catalyzing union member participation. It was initiated by the NSWTF and the P&C and led by Tony Vinson, an emeritus professor of education from the University of Sydney. The reason for the partnership between parents and the union was that the NSWTF knew it could not run a legitimate “independent” inquiry on its own. As one union official described it, involving the P&C “was as much for political reasons as it was based on our belief that they were partners

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and stakeholders in the provision of education. . . . If you have the NSWTF and the P&C both commissioning this, it would make it that little bit harder for our political opponents to dismiss it” (Angelo Gavrielatos interview, February 1, 2005). The inquiry asked parents and teachers to take seriously the future of public education by identifying problems and solutions that would be considered by Vinson. It received 772 submissions, held twenty-eight public hearings, and undertook hundreds of school visits (Vinson 2002). The inquiry operated simultaneously at the local scale and the scale of the state, intensely engaging union members and parents through submissions and hearings. For one experienced unionist, “to write a submission was a more engaging process than to strike which can be organized in an individualized way . . . this was deeply collective and participatory” (Simpson interview, April 12, 2005). The inquiry’s backbone was its public hearings, which lasted more than six months. They were an organizing opportunity on a grand scale across the state. The events were school-based. Inviting teachers and parents to air their grievances and make recommendations for public education generated a deep level of rank-and-file participation. Maree O’Halloran, the key NSWTF official working on the inquiry, explained that the hearings “touched the middle teacher that doesn’t usually get involved in their union” (interview, December 20, 2004). The inquiry relied on the capacity of the union, with events planned and executed by regional organizers and teacher associations across the state. Vinson, the inquiry’s head, attracted an extensive collection of parents, teachers, and journalists wherever he went. As one organizer located in rural NSW recalled: I contacted the schools, I contacted the media. . . . I picked him up. “Tony we’re going over to this school, now we’re going to visit the Area News. . . . At 11, you have a television interview with WIN [regional TV station]. . . . And then we’re visiting another school and by the way, we have got a meeting at the Returned Service League Club this afternoon at six o’clock, and we’ve invited the P&C and local parents and community groups.” (Irving interview, 1 February 2005)

Paralleling the hearings, the NSWTF also held multiscaled events to connect the key Vinson inquiry events with its membership. The union harnessed satellite television, called Sky Channel, to launch the inquiry

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and later inform its members of major developments and to create virtual mass meetings across the state. Face-to-face meetings were simultaneously held in more than two hundred sites around Sydney and across NSW, linked together by the Sky Channel broadcast and ensuring easy access for union members. They were called community meetings and involved local parents, with the P&C and principal organizations invited to participate in the broadcast (O’Halloran interview, 20 December 2004). There was, however, a transitory quality to this organizing. The union struggled to sustain broader participation in public education campaigning after the inquiry hearings. According to a union organizer based in Sydney who was very supportive of the inquiry, while the Vinson visits brought union members and parents out to hearings, “when it came to translating that anger into political effect, they [the members] dropped away” (interview 2, February 2, 2005). The Vinson inquiry supplemented this local organizing and linked parent and teacher organizational interests through its common concern. Public commentary about public education was able to encompass the P&C’s concern for school maintenance and smaller class sizes and the NSWTF’s concern for wage justice and class sizes. The inquiry’s hearings not only engaged the organizations but provided a space where members were asked to communicate their concerns about the education system that grew out of their day-to-day experiences. Similarly, the public message of public education and the repeated hearings across the state provided a means for generating media attention for public education. Angelo Gavrielatos, the NSWTF vice president and one of the union’s spokespeople, recalled, “There was hardly a day where there was not a story about public education” (interview, February 1, 2005). This public attention also had an effect on how the union talked about itself in the media, as Maree O’Halloran pointed out: “I made an effort of saying ‘parents, principals and teachers say,’ not just speaking as the union but as the education community” (interview, December 20, 2004). In all, the inquiry was defined by a strong capacity to make an impact at multiple scales — from the school hall to the national media. It simultaneously built an agenda for public education while organizing a movement across the state that could translate this vision into political change. Yet an enduring weakness for the inquiry and its public education coalition was that its organizational relationships remained dominated by the union. The inquiry was sponsored by just two parties, the NSWTF and

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the P&C, which produced a tight relationship. Yet in practical terms it was possible only because of the financial resources of the union. The NSWTF provided almost all of the inquiry’s half-million-dollar budget, with a symbolically important but minor contribution from the P&C. Despite this, a source of strength in the coalition’s organizational relationships was the inquiry’s head, Tony Vinson. He acted with significant independence. He was paid a modest stipend (the equivalent of a teacher’s salary) and he insisted on a separate office space for the inquiry. Vinson hired his own research team and had control over discretionary research funds. In effect, he acted as the autonomous head of a distinct coalition organization. Underneath this, senior leaders from the union and the P&C met regularly and were responsible for the inquiry’s day-today operation. The fact that Vinson operated above the coalition partners helped the inquiry broker relationships with government and other education organizations. Vinson had previous experience reviewing government services and was widely seen as a credible independent expert who would deliver a report based on its merits. To ensure this, he independently sought out a constructive relationship with the ALP government, the leader of the opposition, and the Department of Education and Training. As Vinson explained, “I said to them I was only going to undertake this if they were open-minded enough to realize that someone like myself would be capable of rendering an objective report. I think I took the wind out of their sails. . . . Heads were nodded” (interview, March 3, 2005). Vinson constantly placed himself above the coalition partners, and this helped to moderate the union’s influence over the coalition. This also allowed him to focus on common concerns for public education and not conflicts of interest. Vinson explained. “The moment I started to look as though I was aligned to this group or that group it would have undermined the whole thing” (interview, March 3, 2005). After nine months of touring and research gathering, the inquiry released its findings as three public reports in May, July, and August 2002. The first and major release in May on Public Education Day began with a press conference and culminated in a dinner of teachers, principals, and parents in the Parliament House dining room. The idea was for teachers and parents to symbolically reclaim Parliament “because the government wasn’t doing its job on education” (interview 11 with NSWTF senior official, May 2, 2005). For the NSWTF, there was a sense that the Vinson inquiry had given

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the union the upper hand. O’Halloran argued the inquiry presented a “thesis” and forced the government to be the antithesis. It allowed the coalition to “seize the agenda” and forced the government to react (interview, December 20, 2004). The government did react. During the inquiry in November 2001, it appointed a new education minister, John Watkins, a former teacher with a more accommodating approach to the public education coalition. By the time of the release of the first report in May, the government responded with plans for greater consultation, establishing its own handpicked community representative group — the Public Education Council. Having set the agenda, the NSWTF was now able to escalate on its own initiative: it did so by launching the PEA.

The State Election Campaign and the Public Education Alliance, July 2002 to March 2003

The NSWTF joined with the parent and principal groups to form the PEA in July 2002. The alliance was a coordinated state-scaled coalition that aimed to win targeted reforms using the opportunity of the 2003 state election. This fitted in with a key objective of the Vinson inquiry, which was to time its reporting schedule to coincide with the looming election and to make education a key election issue. The PEA sought to create a “united front . . . of parents, teachers, and principals speaking with a united voice” (Geoff Scott interview, March 9, 2005). The alliance operated between July 2002 and March 2003 through irregular but constant meetings held at the NSWTF offices. These meetings were attended by the executive officers of all the participating organizations. The participants put aside their differences within alliance meetings, as one school principal representative acknowledged: “I wouldn’t say we are close now as individuals, but when it comes to a public face for pursuing those ideas for public education, well, then we are buddies” (interview 4 with principal representative, February 25, 2005). The alliance’s first responsibility was to translate the broad slogan of public education into a campaign agenda. To do this, the alliance wrote a set of six united demands that it thought it could win in the lead-up to the state election. The core demand was to reduce class sizes for students in kindergarten through year 2. This had been a professional focus of

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the union since 2001. It had brought out experts and educated union members and parents about the educational benefits of small class sizes for student learning outcomes and particularly for young children (NSWTF 2002b, 2002c). This issue appealed not only to teachers but also to parent groups, who had their own interest in the class-sizes campaign, as it would improve the quality of education for children in the classroom. The goal was in the mutual interests of the organizations across the PEA, creating strong bonds of common concern that underpinned organizational commitment to the coalition’s activities. Writing the demands was an exercise in negotiation. The first draft was written by the NSWTF and then shopped around to the other parties. Despite the authorship, all the organizations had a broad sense of ownership. As one parent representative argued, “We always had the power to veto. . . . We wouldn’t put our name to anything that we did not approve of as an organization” (interview 3 with representative from the Federation of School Community Organisations (FOSCO), February 17, 2005). The major controversy was over a demand that mentioned salaries. The NSWTF “couldn’t get away without having salaries there in the united demands” (interview 1 with senior NSWTF official, December 20, 2004). Beyond the election the union would move into salary negotiations. Mentioning salaries would help offset disquiet in the union’s membership that the NSWTF was forgetting its core responsibilities for improving teacher wages and conditions. While internal debates had built majority support for a public education campaign, there were still pockets of resistance among the membership, who framed the union’s self-interest narrowly to the point of separating its interest in salaries from its interest in building support for public education. The parent groups — particularly FOSCO, which represented a group of primary school parents — were equally adamant that salaries would not be mentioned. Parents argued that it was “inappropriate” to use the alliance to campaign on an issue that they thought was just a teacher concern, fearing “that this issue would overshadow the alliance, given the dominant role the union was already playing” (interview 3 with FOSCO representative, February 17, 2005). Their reasoning was partly a reaction to union dominance and partly a narrow view of what salaries meant. The NSWTF compromised, with the united demands instead calling for the “development of strategies to attract and retain teachers in an era of teacher shortage,” which at least for the union was a way of expressing a

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need for salary justice without mentioning the word “salaries” (Carr 2002). By not tackling these debates head on, the coalition was able to deal with its main priority of securing the united demands. But the tension over salaries remained a simmering problem between the groups. At an important lobby meeting with Premier Bob Carr just before the state election, the issue came up with tempers flaring. When the coalition representatives were asked what its priorities were, the union volunteered “class sizes and the Vinson five per cent,” referring to a statement by Vinson in which he had called for an immediate 5 percent increase in teacher wages (Vinson 2002, 372). This was consistent with the NSWTF’s public comments at the time, which connected class sizes and salaries. As O’Halloran explained, “It was always there; you would say class sizes were a major issue for the election and you would also mention salaries” (interview, December 20, 2004). Yet one of the parent groups left that meeting very “angry.” Its members thought that the NSWTF had acted against the decision of the coalition “when we had made it clear that we did not want salaries to be a part of the public education campaign” (interview 8 with parent representative, March 13, 2005). This tension revealed a limitation in how coalitions establish common concern. While an alliance flourishes on issues of mutual interest, organizations also have autonomous internal needs, such as a union’s concern for salaries. The art of coalition practice is to balance these competing needs. But in the midst of a difficult campaign where time was a precious resource, the alliance made a trade-off. It prioritized winning the policy reform rather than spending time managing the conflict that had developed between the organizations. Nevertheless, once the demands were determined, the PEA planned a series of successful events focused on the scale of the state, and in particular, zeroing in on the premier, the minister for education and training, and the opposition. The alliance harnessed the different capacities of the partner organizations, each of which volunteered different resources. The principal organizations had close relationships with the minister for education and the department of education. The P&C had a strong voice in the media (SBS News 2002; Totaro 2003a), and the union had financial and human resources, paying for an advertising campaign and mobilizing its membership base around some key events. Local activity was less prominent in the state election than in the Vinson inquiry. While schools displayed signs that said “public education is the issue” and local teachers and parents lobbied members of Parliament,

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momentum was drawn to state-based events that were focused on influencing the senior politicians. The alliance’s agenda created political opportunities that divided the political parties. On November 4, 2002, the leader of the Liberal-National (conservative) Party opposition, John Brogden, endorsed the alliance’s demands regarding class sizes five months before the election (Totaro 2002). This escalated pressure on the NSW ALP government, producing a meeting with the premier on January 22. This was a remarkable achievement for the NSWTF, which had not met with the premier in years. The premier made no firm commitments, so the coalition continued to escalate its campaign with a public education forum in February 2003, where parents, principals, and teachers filled the Sydney Town Hall and communicated their demands directly to political representatives from all the major parties. Some of the campaign observers were surprised that the alliance did not do more external outreach to potentially supportive organizations, for instance, with the broader union movement. The NSWTF reasoned that unions would not be interested because the class-sizes campaign was not an “industrial” matter but a “professional and educational concern” (interview 1 with senior NSWTF official, December 20, 2004). The decision not to do more relationship building with other organizations also related to the relatively weak organizational relationships underpinning the PEA. All the PEA’s organizational resources were focused on just keeping the group together, and without a dedicated coalition coordinator the alliance had limited opportunity to work on external outreach. Nevertheless, on March 9 at the ALP’s election launch, the NSW government announced a class-sizes policy costing $250 million, consistent with the alliance’s demands (Doherty 2003; Totaro 2003b). Two weeks later, the ALP was reelected. For the NSWTF, it was the broad range of voices, including Vinson and “parents, teachers and principals,” that generated the policy victory. O’Halloran acknowledged that these voices “allowed the premier to announce his decision on class sizes without having to look like he was conceding to the NSWTF” (interview, May 2, 2005).

The Teacher Salaries Campaign, May 2003 to June 2004

From the outset of the salaries campaign, the NSWTF stood in a strong position because of its coalition unionism. The PEA and the Vinson in-

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quiry had enhanced the union’s ability to set the direction of public education. One senior official argued that the coalition work “had created a platform from which we were able to launch into salaries” (Angelo Gavrielatos, interview, February 1, 2005). Yet the shift into the salaries campaign saw a rapid deterioration of the close relationships built over the previous two years. Back in 2002, the NSWTF had prepared its salaries strategy, contemplating the possibility of a formal arbitration to determine its new award (a collective bargaining contract) before the NSW Industrial Relations Commission (IRC). At the time the IRC had the power to compulsorily arbitrate wage disputes through open hearings and to independently determine a settlement. The NSWTF surveyed its members and resolved at its 2002 annual conference that if the government guaranteed existing working conditions, then the union would arbitrate its wage claim in the commission (O’Halloran 2002; NSWTF 2002a). For the NSWTF, while a commission hearing “wasn’t a preferred option,” the NSWTF leaders believed that an arbitration case solely on the issue of wages could reverse the unfavourable process for how salary disputes were handled in the 1990s, where the government’s “initial offer” was based on a loss of conditions or trade-offs, “and the campaign was spent clawing conditions back” (O’Halloran interview, May 2, 2005). The only other option, direct negotiations and industrial action, would potentially have more problems. O’Halloran noted that since there were “four years to another election,” it could be an “intractable fight,” which many “members did not want,” given the “brutality” of the 1999 teacher salaries campaign (ibid.). The coalition unionism of the state election campaign helped deliver the NSWTF an early meeting with the premier and a newly appointed education minister, Andrew Refshauge, on May 9, 2003. At that meeting, the NSWTF told the minister that “we can fight for four years over salaries or perhaps you can agree that our working conditions don’t get touched and we go to the IRC” (ibid.). On May 12, the NSWTF was “surprised” to receive an early pay offer of a 6 percent wage increase over two years and was told it could go to the commission for more (ibid.). This offer was significantly below the union’s goal of a 20 percent increase, but it was a dramatically better starting point than what had resulted from the concession bargaining of the 1990s. The union’s previous coalition work had delivered an improved basis for launching its salaries campaign.

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Yet, unknown to the NSWTF, the government had canvassed its options for how to manage the salaries negotiations and had determined that an arbitrated decision in the commission was also its preferred option (interview 10 with senior staff person in DET, May 4, 2005). It wanted to “avoid a war” like that in the 1990s and wanted to use the industrial space of the commission to control the dispute (ibid.). In preparing for the campaign, the NSWTF faced three obstacles. Most pressing was that the union had not secured a commitment from the government to fully fund any pay recommendation from the commission that came in above 6 percent. A fear was that if the IRC awarded a pay increase above 6 percent, then the government would pay for that increase out of the existing public education budget — in effect cutting money from schools to pay for teacher salaries (O’Halloran interview, May 2, 2005). In addition, the NSWTF’s relationship with the P&C had changed. In July 2002, the P&C experienced an acrimonious change in leadership. The new president announced that she would prioritize building a stronger relationship with the education minister and the premier, in effect distancing the P&C from the NSWTF (Parker 2002; Wood 2002). This separation was compounded in April 2003 when the new education minister, Andrew Refshauge, initiated regular meetings with the P&C while the salaries negotiations commenced (interview 7 with parent representative, April 13, 2005). The NSWTF – P&C relationship “deteriorated” to such a point during the salaries campaign that senior officials in the NSWTF and the P&C president “wouldn’t exchange words” (ibid.). In addition, the fact that the NSWTF’s commission hearings covered only the quantum of wages helped separate the union from parents. In contrast with the class-sizes campaign, where the union and the alliance were advocates on an issue that was perceived to be in the direct interests of parents and teachers, the parents saw the wage claim as an issue only for teachers (Sharon Brownlee interview, March 18, 2005). Compounding these challenges, the NSWTF campaigned on salaries alone, without the support of regular meetings with the public education coalition. Despite the fact that the NSWTF initially placed its concern for salaries within a broad public frame, as one senior official explained it, “pitching our campaign in a context that was relevant to the community,” using slogans such as “work value” and “valuing teachers” (Gavrielatos interview, February 1, 2005), support from the coalition partners was lacking. Since the 1960s, the NSWTF had not worked with the

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P&C or principal organizations on the issue of salaries, believing that as the sole industrial organization it was the only legitimate body to determine wage outcomes (interview 5 with parent representative, March 3, 2005). While this ensured that industrial power remained unified within the NSWTF, the salaries campaign strategy separated the NSWTF from the other education partners. The lack of a coalition caused friction with the P&C when the NSWTF tried to speak on behalf of the community but was acting just as the union. For example, tensions mounted when the NSWTF produced a pamphlet about its pay claim, which talked about parents, that it circulated in Sunday newspapers without consulting the P&C first (interview 1 with senior NSWTF official, December 20, 2004; NSWTF 2003a). The industrial context and processes of the commission hearings compounded the organizational isolation of the NSWTF in the salaries campaign. The IRC took the NSWTF into a courtroom, separated from the public agenda it had just created. While the NSWTF brought its members to IRC hearings and included witness testimony from two principal representatives and Vinson, the tactics the NSWTF used were industrial and not community-based. The first rally about the salaries claim on July 8 featured only NSWTF speakers, and the second rally in September added an industrial partner, Unions NSW, but not an education partner (Sydney Morning Herald 2003). Similarly, as the commission began its deliberations in 2004, NSWTF media comments increasingly focused on the percentage of wage increase that was being offered. NSWTF advertisements narrowly focused on the issue of teacher pay rather than the link between pay and quality education (the advertisement stated that “for many years teachers’ pay has been going backwards increasing less than average weekly earnings”), while the P&C leadership simultaneously distanced itself from the NSWTF’s industrial action (NSWTF 2003b; McDougall 2003). The hearing process strained the employer-employee relationship between the NSWTF and the government. The NSWTF was very angry at the “aggressive” manner in which its teacher witnesses were interviewed (O’Halloran interview, May 2, 2005). The Department of Education and Training was “shocked” at the “vitriolic” comments that the NSWTF circulated internally about department witnesses (interview 10 with senior staff person in DET, 4 May 2005). This compounded the isolation of the union; one external union observer noted, “The NSWTF builds so many enemies outside that it is often just left on its own” (interview 9 with senior union official in NSW, April 18, 2005).

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The government exerted further pressure on the NSWTF in May 2004 when it used unprecedented means to influence the commission while it determined its award (O’Halloran interview, May 2, 2005). The premier made a public statement on May 11, “warning” the commission “not to hand out unaffordable wage increases,” and then on May 13 the minister for industrial relations sought to reopen the salaries case to lodge additional evidence about the government’s incapacity to pay wage increases while the commissioners were undertaking their final deliberations (Dixon 2004; O’Halloran 2004; Burke 2004b). Unintentionally, the government’s perceived aggression changed the political opportunities of the salaries campaign, shifting the campaign from the quantum of pay to the issue of fully funding the pay raise. The NSWTF leaders now believed that the greatest obstacle to a salary increase would be whether the government would fund an award made by the IRC (O’Halloran interview, December 20, 2004). With this broader political demand, the NSWTF reached out to its education partners and its members. It leafleted parents at schools on May 25 arguing that full funding was in the “interests of the public education community” as it “protected the public education budget” (Zadkovich 2004), and then it staged a oneday strike on May 27. The strike’s public message was focused on the issue of full funding, even though many members were mobilized on the basis of needing a wage increase. According to the NSWTF, these campaign messages of salaries and full funding “were a complex balancing act,” but the use of salaries to generate member commitment combined with a powerful public message focused on full funding created a successful teacher mobilization, as the rally was the “largest protest by teachers in the ALP Government’s history” (NSWTF 2004). The public actions did not create the desired outcome on salaries, and on June 9 the IRC handed down a 12.5 percent pay increase over two years, which “deeply disappointed” the NSWTF (Dixon 2004). The IRC result, however, did clarify the need to secure a government commitment to fully fund the difference between the 12.5 percent award increase and the initial 6 percent pay offer. The campaign shifted to the issue of full funding, and this began to change the media commentary, which started to support the NSWTF. The Daily Telegraph, the same paper that five years before had run articles mocking the NSWTF, ran an opinion column written by an in-house journalist on June 16 that said, “[T]his is not the usual fight by teachers over money, this has become a fight for the survival of a valued and quality public education system” (Parker 2004).

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The shift to full funding also created the space for a critical vote inside the P&C in support of the NSWTF. The NSWTF had announced a strike on June 25 to escalate the pressure for full funding. The weekend before the strike, the P&C had a council meeting during which there was a motion that called on the P&C to “effectively support the teachers’ salary campaign on the basis that it was no longer a salary issue, it was an education issue” (interview 7 with P&C official, April 13, 2005). The motion was “resoundingly supported by the P&C Council” even though it was not supported by the P&C’s president (ibid.). According to one senior P&C official, the widespread support derived from “considerable concern across the council” about how the teachers’ dispute was affecting the education system, and the motion represented an “opportunity” to help resolve it (ibid.). News of the motion immediately hit the press, with articles the next day talking about parents and teachers uniting against the government (Burke 2004a). The day after the P&C motion and the day before the threatened strike, the government committed to fully funding the salary increase. For the NSWTF, the P&C’s support was critical. O’Halloran argued, “That actually kicked the balance in terms of full funding . . . it was historic” (interview, December 20, 2004). The public message of the full funding debate was broad enough to legitimately enable a dissenting faction of P&C leaders to publicly support the NSWTF salaries campaign and assure the NSWTF a victory.

Reflections on Common Concern and Coalition Success

The vitality of the public education coalition between 2001 and 2004 was closely linked to its development of a strong common concern. This flourished during the Vinson inquiry and the state election, and weakened when the campaign shifted to bargaining around salaries. This case study provides a window into how the element of common concern influences coalition strength and changes the power of a coalition over time. The public education coalition’s common concern was most directly connected to the commitment of the NSWTF, which conceived and drove the coalition in a way that directly touched its organizational interests, identity, and values. The goals of the coalition were directly linked to the union’s strategic prioritization of reduced class sizes and increased

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salaries. It tapped into the teachers’ professional identity, particularly during the Vinson inquiry, when it asked teachers to propose educational reforms based on their experience. The broader message of public education also connected to the union’s values, as throughout its history the NSWTF had seen itself as the “tribuni plebis” or “protector” of public education as a means of achieving social equality (Bloch interview, March 26, 2005). Powerful coalition relationships developed when the NSWTF’s organizational commitment was in the mutual self-interest of the other partner organizations. The six united demands generated the strongest principal and parent commitment because they enabled each organization to identify separate but associated interests around the common theme of public education (Frege, Heery, and Turner 2004). The issue of reducing class sizes was a perfect example of mutual self-interest. Teachers’ interest was based on the idea that smaller class sizes improved student learning conditions and therefore enhanced workplace conditions. Parents had a different direct interest, because smaller classes would improve educational outcomes for their children. These mutual interests were then encased in a shared social interest — that reducing class sizes would improve public education. The mutual self-interest in the class-sizes demand readily contrasted to the lack of shared interest in the salaries campaign. Only when salaries became part of a wider education debate about full funding did the P&C rejoin the campaign. Mutual self-interest was critical for sustaining coalition relationships. Throughout the state election campaign, the coalition’s common concern was vulnerable, with seething conflict being managed but not effectively resolved. The debate about salaries during the election campaign was emblematic. This issue could have threatened the coalition, but instead the NSWTF and parent groups “agreed to disagree” (Rose 2000, 135, 144). The NSWTF rewrote the demands to enable the organizations to focus on common issues and move past those that were in conflict. While the coalition sustained itself until the election, because the NSWTF salary campaign commenced once it was over, agreeing to disagree turned out to be a delay mechanism rather than a strategy for overcoming conflict. The issue of salaries broke down the coalition’s common concern and fractured the coalition. The coalition’s common concern helped generate member commitment among the NSWTF, P&C, and principal organizations. This was most

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effectively achieved during the Vinson inquiry. Gamson (1992) argues that social movements become mass-based if the issues they campaign on touch the day-to-day experiences, values, and interests of organization members, motivating them to take action. This intersection was evident with the inquiry. For the NSWTF membership, the inquiry was a radical response to the 1999 salaries campaign, and this interest connection led to strong teacher participation. The Vinson inquiry connected the union’s desire for a new approach to education campaigning to day-to-day classroom experiences by asking teachers to make constructive suggestions about how to improve public education. This, however, was difficult to sustain. As Fraser (1989) argues in relation to social movements, an issue needs not only to connect to people’s experiences but to frame these experiences as linked to concrete solutions achievable through collective action. Teachers participated in the Vinson inquiry because it was an effective space for surfacing new issues, but the membership was not then involved in prioritizing the issues that were the focus of the state election campaign. The disconnection between issue identification, issue framing, and campaigning to win policy changes on those issues contributed to a decline in teacher participation between the Vinson inquiry and the state election campaign. The public education coalition’s common concern was framed as a positive public message for public education. The public education slogan became a bridge between the coalition’s different campaigns — from the inquiry to class sizes to salaries. It offered a consistent explanation for what the coalition was demanding and why (Snow and Benford 1992, 136). Similarly, the specific united demands like class sizes served the public education message. They acted as “surface” demands that enabled the coalition to build a public education agenda through achieving specific incremental victories, assisting the coalition to build policy outcomes and a political climate favorable to public education (Pastor 2001; Lakoff 2005). The surface demands made it possible for specific examples of organizational interest to connect to a broader social interest, or, in the language of Flanders (1970), to connect “vested interest” and a “sword of justice.” Common concern was at its most powerful when organizational interest intersected with social interest. Additionally, the coalition’s choice of figurehead enhanced the potency of its message. The Vinson inquiry allowed a neutral academic who had no vested interest in the inquiry’s outcome to speak for the coalition and the union. His separation from the union was a source of strength

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because it reinforced the broad social values that underpinned the coalition’s campaign. The coalition’s common concern reached its zenith when it simultaneously generated shared organizational commitment, member commitment, and public commitment. We saw this in the Vinson inquiry, which set the stage for the coalition’s class-size success and the positive political climate that greeted the salaries campaign. The inquiry also built organizational strength. It engaged a new layer of members, including the so-called middle teachers, whom the NSWTF had struggled to engage on industrial issues. The inquiry was an opportunity for member politicization because it asked rather than told teachers and parents what the important issues were and demonstrated that the union had a role in speaking for issues beyond wages and collective bargaining. I outline the connection between the specific measures of common concern and coalition success in table 2.1. In relation to the other coalition elements, the public education coalition often had a strong scale, as it regularly campaigned at multiple scales. This enhanced its political influence and increased the capacity of its participating organizations. The coalition’s public education lobbies drove its multiscaled capacity. These lobbies were an example of what I term “local broker organizations” (discussed in more detail in chapter 4). They were coalition agents at a local scale that allowed the public education coalition to make an impact at that scale. They provided a space for teachers, parents, and principals to create locally scaled public education events and to lobby. They helped the central coalition tap into local support; for instance, the lobbies in south western Sydney were particularly successful because that area had pronounced socioeconomic disadvantage. The lobbies also became a pathway for member participation in the Vinson inquiry hearings and Sky Channel meetings. For the public education coalition, its weakest and most variable coalition element was its organizational relationships. The coalition was formed by the NSWTF and was subsequently dominated by the union. The Vinson inquiry, for instance, was resourced by the NSWTF’s financial and human resources. The structure of the coalition gave a high degree of informal control to the NSWTF. The PEA meetings were ad hoc, always called at the discretion of the NSWTF and held at the NSWTF offices. The structure of the coalition, however, did vary, and during the Vinson inquiry the coalition then was limited to just the NSWTF and the P&C. At that time, the small number of organizations was a key source of power,

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TABLE 2.1 Understanding types of common concern Organizational commitment

Member commitment

Public commitment

Winning outcomes

Shared commitment helped the coalition sustain a longer-term campaign

Member commitment helped produce mass participation in coalition events

Public message helped generate supportive media, which influenced political decision makers

Supportive political climate

Shared values and interests sustained a longterm agenda through incremental victories

Members took the campaign local, increasing public awareness and support

Positive message and carrier of message helped generate longterm public support

Sustaining relationships

Organizational commitment was sustained when interests were shared and threatened when coalition priorities conflicted with organizational interests

Relationships were easiest to sustain when the coalition worked on issues that were also in the member’s interest/ experience

Direct connection not claimed

Building the capacity of participating organizations

A shared agenda allowed organizations to build a broader vision in the process of working in coalition

A new layer of members was engaged There were opportunities for politicization because the coalition produced a new perspective on traditional interests or values

Direct connection not claimed

as it made it easier to build consensus and generate organizational commitment. In this sense, less was more when it came to building strong organizational relationships. In addition, Tony Vinson was a strategically important individual. He acted like a separate coalition coordinator who was able to help manage relationships between the P&C and NSWTF and broker relationships with government decision makers. Yet the strengths evident in the Vinson inquiry were temporary. During the state election

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campaign, the coalition’s organizational relationships were not strong enough to reconcile the tension over salaries, threatening the sustainability of the coalition. We can see that the trajectories of the public education coalition help illuminate the complexities of coalition success, as well as the limits and possibilities of coalition unionism. The coalition’s history reveals how sometimes social change and organizational strength can foster productive relationships, but at other times these two goals can contradict each other. One of the ironies of the public education coalition was that while NSWTF and P&C officials unquestionably believed that the Vinson inquiry was the coalition’s highest feat, it did not directly produce political outcomes. The role of the inquiry was as a harbinger of a new political climate that led to political victories over the following three years. It is a testament as to why coalition success has to be understood as more complex than simply winning policy changes. In my view the Vinson inquiry effectively straddled the competing challenges of achieving social change and building organizational strength. The coincidence of an agenda that teachers and parents wanted to influence, and the momentum of repeated teacher and parent mobilizations around the state, provided a space for union and community organization capacity building. Yet when the coalition moved into the state election campaign, it faced far more constraints. Organizational relationships focused on creating the united demands and winning them. Contextual pressures like the impending election forced the coalition to make trade-offs in how it organized. While employing a separate coalition staff person could have helped the coalition to cope with the weaknesses in its organizational relationships, the organizational leaders did not allocate time or resources to managing the conflict over salaries because their main concern was winning policy changes. Similarly, the scale of the coalition also shrank, with activity converging on the state scale of the decision makers. This sharpened the coalition’s social-change objectives but reduced its capacity building. The united demands targeted the education minister and the premier, with coalition activities like lobbying and the public education forum directed at the state scale. The NSWTF stopped its active support of the public education lobbies and the lobbies became less active. Ruthless prioritization, however, had its social-change benefits. It helped enlist the Liberal (con-

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servative) opposition’s support for class sizes, which was a turning point in securing political victory. The limits of the public education coalition became more pronounced when the union moved into its salaries campaign. We saw the NSWTF retreat from its coalition work, fanned by the government’s courtship of the P&C and the P&C’s change in leadership. Yet even with a limited investment in the coalition, the NSWTF benefited from ad hoc organizational relationships during this time. The NSWTF’s salary increase and victory on full funding were made possible because of the supportive political climate generated by the public education coalition’s earlier work. Likewise, those campaigns produced the informal connections between the P&C and NSWTF that were critical for the full funding victory. The public education coalition’s trade-offs between campaigning and capacity building were at one level a product of the strategic choices of the coalition, and particularly the type of coalition the NSWTF chose to build. It was the union’s deep organizational interest that initiated and propelled the coalition, yet this deep engagement also ran counter to the idea of an equal coalition. In terms of the coalition elements, while common concern was generally shared across the coalition and the coalition moved at multiple scales, the unequal capacity and commitment of the union created permanently unequal organizational relationships. The coalition organizers, and particularly the union, chose to run the coalition in this way to maximize the use of the union’s resources. The coalition’s trade-offs were also a product of the NSW and Australian political context and the power relationships the coalition confronted. The NSWTF was a strong union in a landscape where an ALP government and relatively open industrial relations system created opportunities for coalition influence. The ideological pressures in support of the free market and small government remained ever present, particularly in the tense 1999 salaries campaign and the Building the Future restructuring proposal for education. But compared to Canada, and in particular to the United States, this political context provided significant opportunities. While the union needed the “legitimacy” of the parents and principals to shift the ALP government “without having to look like it was conceding to the NSWTF” (O’Halloran interview, May 2, 2005), the union and the coalition were able to rely on the union’s significant internal resources to mount the campaign. The union was able to raise $1 million for the Vinson inquiry, and it had workplace representatives across the state that could lead the campaign locally. The political pressure on

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the coalition was not so significant as to require it to redress the imbalance in its uneven organizational relationships or to bring in coalition partners from outside the education community. We saw that even with union dominance, the public education coalition was able to secure substantial political victories. At the same time, weaknesses in the Australian political context influenced the organizing style of the coalition, in particular its decision to develop a multiscaled coalition. Like many Australian community organizations, the P&C was a strong public advocate for education, but it did not have a strong capacity to mobilize its membership. Consequently, the coalition relied heavily on the membership of the NSWTF. The strategic innovation of the public education lobbies allowed the coalition to activate the membership capacity of the union. Later, the local Vinson inquiry hearings were essential for generating a sustained mobilization that could put public education at the center of public debate. By creating the public education lobbies, the coalition was able to create a local people’s movement that could strengthen the coalition’s political influence in individual electoral districts and membership turnout in light of the relatively weak membership base in Australia’s community organizations. Overall, while there was significant diversity across the campaign, the public education coalition’s patterns of organizing, trade-offs, and success produced a type of coalition with some consistent features. It was a coalition driven by its common concern. The coalition privileged campaigns for public education as a simultaneous generator of organizational interest, movement building among union members, and public support. Local events, multiscaled internal union structures, and the establishment of public education lobbies facilitated a multiscaled capacity that could build media attention and create political influence. The coalition’s sustainability, however, was weakened by union-dominated organizational relationships. We can see how the strong common concern in the public education coalition enhanced the NSWTF’s power. The coalition helped the union set a public agenda for its political demands and helped it enhance its internal strength by encouraging the participation of a new layer of union members through a campaign that connected union interest to a social interest. This kind of union power emerged only when the coalition was organized in a way that was mutually beneficial for the union and its com-

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munity organizations. The interconnection of parent, principal, and teacher concerns helped open the union to a more comprehensive public education agenda than a single issue like wages. We can see a clear shift in union power by contrasting the 1999 salaries campaign, which focused on the salaries issue as an end in itself, with the Vinson inquiry, class sizes, and (to a lesser extent) the 2003 salaries campaign, which saw the union working in partnership to deliver public education reforms that reawakened its political influence.

Chapter 3

Living Wages and the Grassroots Collaborative in Chicago

It was a warm Saturday morning in July 2005. Chicago Temple, a downtown church, was overflowing with more than a thousand low-income African American and Latino residents. Outside there were lines of empty yellow school buses that had ferried in the crowd. Inside, the church floor was a disorganized rainbow, defined by the dynamic stripes created by different colored t-shirts — a strip of canary yellow on the right-hand side signifying the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH), a regal purple Service Employees International Union (SEIU) block of color down the left, a red bunch of boisterous Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) community leaders at the front. The noise was deafening. Voices across the hall were singing to the rhythm of hand clapping, “We’re fired up, we won’t take it no more; we’re fired up, we won’t take it no more.” Some people were standing; others were waving their arms. It was electric. As one speaker emphasized, “This is a gathering of the grassroots.” The Grassroots Collaborative, a coalition of ten union and community organizations in Chicago had turned out their membership to take back their city. The event was focused not on a single issue but on a multiplicity of concerns that touched the needs and priorities of the participating organizations and their members. The topics of speeches ranged from taking the military out of schools to making public transportation safer. The event also launched an important step in a long-run campaign to introduce a living wage for Chicago’s big-box retail workers in stores such as Wal-Mart, Target, and Home Depot. That day the collaborative released

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a postcard campaign in support of its living wage ordinance that would legislate minimum working conditions for all Chicago retailers. The postcard invited people to show their support for living wages by writing to their local aldermen to ask them to help the cause. The campaign had evolved out of citywide protests against Wal-Mart’s successful entry into Chicago in May 2004. The postcard campaign was a new tactic for the collaborative, part of a plan to strategize for a long-term political victory. The day marked an important step in a three-year battle for the collaborative to reregulate the working conditions of its mega-retailers. In this chapter I document a four-year campaign by the Grassroots Collaborative. I selected this case study because it features two campaigns that are representative of the two common ways coalitions are used in the United States: the coalition campaigned against an employer — in this case Wal-Mart — and the coalition work sought to advance political reforms for economic justice, in this example using a living wage ordinance. I argue that the coalition’s greatest strength was its remarkably strong set of organizational relationships. Unlike the single-issue public education coalition, it was a multi-issue coalition that selected the campaigns it worked on according to its organizations’ shared interest in building political power. The collaborative’s weaker point was its scale. It did not establish local broker organizations. It struggled to sustain local political influence, and the coalition did not involve organization members in coalition strategizing or event planning.

The Grassroots Collaborative in Context

Unions in the United States have suffered from the might of its capitalist class, whose unified influence on the state has been counterpoised to labor’s fragmented political and economic influence over most of its history. As the New Deal faded into memory across the twentieth century, the U.S. state withstood pressure for further wide-scale social spending, helping to stultify emergent welfare policies and creating fertile ground for a dramatic expansion in inequality, especially since the 1970s (Lichtenstein 1982; Archer 2007; Bartels 2007). Yet this hostile political context paradoxically embodied opportunities for strategies like coalitions. Community organizing thrived in this difficult environment, and while relationships with community organizations had been a fringe union strategy in the past, more recently the conjuncture of desperate times and

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experimental leadership reinvigorated interest in coalitions to tame capital and influence the state. Compared with the power of unions in Australia and Canada, the political power of U.S. labor has been weak. This is despite waves of politically active union movements. The Knights of Labor during the 1870s and 1880s and the Industrial Workers of the World at the turn of the century each agitated not only for the sectional interests of members but for the working class as a whole. Chicago was in the vanguard of much of this early political agitation (Guerin 1979, 53). It was the site of the greatest experimentation with labor parties, where the Knights of Labor’s eight-hourday agenda later connected with the Illinois state labor federation’s attempts to launch a labor populist party in 1894. But Chicago’s unions fell victim to significant state repression that helped fragment and undermine attempts to establish a U.S. labor party more broadly (Archer 2007). State subjugation intensified in the decade after the 1886 Haymarket bombings, where an unknown person threw a bomb as police tried to disperse a public rally held in support of the eight-hour day campaign. The bombing led to the death of eight police officers and at least four workers, and later the arrest, conviction, and execution of eight labor activists connected with the local anarchist movement. In this period, employers and the media regularly delegitimized Chicago union experimentation as threatening “anarchy,” further undermining attempts to build a labor party. Without their own party, unions ended up aligning with the Democratic Party. Moreover, at the turn of the century there was a decided unwillingness by the leaders of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) to engage in politics, at the exact time at which labor parties were forming in countries like Australia (Archer 2007). An enduring union identity emerged at this time. Known as “pure and simple unionism,” it embraced unions’ primary role as agents at the workplace, shunning political or social action. This interpretation of union purpose had some continuity with the American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations’(AFL-CIO’s) later strategy of business unionism during the 1950s to the 1980s. Business unionism flourished through an informal agreement with employers, by which employers offered contracts with steady wage and benefit improvements and unions secured a dues income in return for guaranteeing employers uninterrupted production for the life of the agreement (Perusek and Worcester 1995, 9). While the business unions of the mid-twentieth century also played an active role in politics, that role

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was confined to industrial concerns such as protecting prevailing wages or lobbying over “right to work” provisions in the Taft-Hartley Act (Dark 1999). Electoral processes governed by the NLRB became a precondition to union membership. This process of workplace balloting helped underpin the development of a commonsense position that providing industrial or social rights to all workers would harm union collective bargaining by encouraging “free riding” and create a disincentive for unionization. The tendency to pursue politics and collective bargaining strategies exclusively for the benefit of union members helped to characterize unions’ role as a special interest group inside the Democratic Party, where unions acted in the sectional interests of organized labor and not for workers as a whole (Edsall and Edsall 1991). Yet the dominance of business unionism was contested, most significantly during the economic crisis of the Great Depression. The successful organizing and political agitation that accompanied the rise of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), led not only to mass unionization (with unions exploding from three million to nine million members between 1932 and 1939) but also to an exploration of more adventurous strategies. Stewarded by John L. Lewis, with the support of many Communist-led CIO industrial unions, the labor movement agitated for several waves of political intervention. This included the National Recovery Act, which gave workers a right to create unions, and the more enduring Wagner Act in 1935, which provided mechanisms for the enforcement of labor rights through the NLRB and representation elections for unions (Zieger 1986). Political agitation was paralleled by attempts to explore relationships with community organizations, especially to buttress organizing and collective bargaining. For instance, Saul Alinsky, while more widely known as a community organizer, was also an early practitioner of coalition unionism. His Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council in Chicago built enduring relationships between the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee and the Catholic Church (Horwitt 1989). Obstacles to coalition building developed during the 1940s. Industrial regulations were skewed in favor of employers by restricting the activities of unions with the passage of the Taft-Hartley legislation in 1947, and many of the Communist radicals who had led coalition experiments on the fringes of the U.S. labor movement were purged from union ranks in the 1940s and 1950s. Despite this, several significant examples of coalition work continued through the 1960s; for instance, the New York hos-

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pital workers Local 1199 actively supported the civil rights struggles and worked in alliance with civil rights and religious organizations. Similarly, the United Auto Workers (UAW) supported the civil rights movement and funded several neighborhood-based community organizing experiments (Bok and Dunlop 1970). As I said, these efforts were exceptional, and the business union compact that dominated U.S. labor after the reunification of the AFL-CIO in 1955 was typically hostile to coalitions and the 1960s social movements. This tension was perhaps best epitomized on May 8, 1970, when a group of unionized construction workers attacked a student-led peace march in Wall Street. Unions’ narrow political identity contributed to their political isolation, particularly when a slowly declining labor movement confronted the escalating international reach of U.S. capital. For unions, the consequence was a state that was quite difficult to influence. New Deal political victories had built-in limitations. The right to organize at the workplace free from the state kept industrial regulation decentralized at the scale of the individual workplace. Waves of employer reaction, first through Taft-Hartley and later under President Ronald Reagan, allowed employers to limit the rights of labor and subvert the quasijudicial processes of the NLRB by turning them into delay mechanisms. Similarly, when it came to other social protections like universal health care, the political battle was not won. Even the progressive UAW made a decision not to push for universal health insurance. Instead, it pragmatically kept health care as a condition in the bargaining relationship because medical insurance could be secured from specific employers, whereas at that time it was seen as an unwinnable issue if staged as a fight against capital as a whole (Lichtenstein 1995). Instead, community-minded political intervention became a popular strategy of community organizations. Chicago’s Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council launched a style of member-based community organizing that soon became popular across the United States. It was characterized by organizer-led leadership development that assisted community members to build relationships and take direct action in defense of community interests (Sen 2003). In a political environment where state intervention in the economy was limited, community organizations became a means for redressing immediate welfare or social needs. Institutions like the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) that themselves had adapted community organizing from the tactics of radical CIO unions later came to train a generation of organizers and community leaders (Applegate 2007). From

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the 1960s a variety of national organizations dedicated to community organizing emerged. These included ACORN, the Gamaliel Foundation, People Improving Communities through Organizing (PICO), the MidWest Academy, and the Direct Action and Research Training center (DART). Chicago was a leading site for this kind of radical organizing and played host to a remarkable number of member-led community organizations from across this range of national institutions. When the globalization of capital accelerated in the 1980s, the lack of political and institutional support left unions vulnerable to collapse. Union membership, which was never strong in the United States, plummeted, shrinking from 29 percent of workers in 1973 to 16 percent in 1991. Likewise, many community organizations also retreated. Numerous social-movement organizations of the 1970s, such as the National Organization for Women, came to rely on less participatory forms of civil engagement, notably requests for donations and one-way correspondence in the form of mailed-out newsletters (Skocpol 1999). Yet at a more local scale, such as in Chicago, there was a continuity of direct action and member-led community organizing. These organizations offered significant potential as coalition partners with their capacity to make persuasive moral claims in the media and their ability to locally mobilize an active politicized membership. By the mid-1990s, the experience of union crisis came to be seen as an opportunity for renewal. The election of John Sweeney as president of the AFL-CIO signified a willingness to change strategies, which included an embrace of coalitions. At a national level the establishment of Jobs with Justice, the promotion of Union Cities, the SEIU’s founding of Justice for Janitors campaigns, and political movements around iconic issues like living wages helped cement a role for coalitions. Interest in coalition strategies continued despite a split at the AFL-CIO in 2005, where a group of unions led by the SEIU, and including the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), formed a rival union federation called Change to Win (CTW). CTW’s focus was on organizing new union members. When it was relevant to union growth, CTW encouraged coalition building. Despite this, in Chicago, during the period of the case study, SEIU and UFCW remained affiliated to the local union federation, the Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL). National political trends had a slightly different flavor in Chicago because they were influenced by a strong local Democratic Party. Chicago is a Democratic city, with the Daleys — first father and then son — having

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an almost unbroken record of control through a centrally controlled political machine (Royko 1970). In the boom period after World War II, the father Richard J. Daley provided strong support for the rise of business unionism, and benefited from local union support — particularly among the building trade unions. Yet the pressure from employers to provide more space for the free market brought schisms to the union-Democratic Party relationship. Mayor Richard M. Daley’s desire for Chicago to be a world-class site for business led to a shift in his relationships, and in the late 1990s the machine shifted away from the unions. As one union official explained, “city council workers didn’t have a contract for two and a half years. . . . The council had forged relationships with business that tipped the scales when you look at business over labor” (interview 15 with union staff person, September 14, 2006). While important informal political relationships lingered, particularly between the CFL, the building trades, and many of the city’s aldermen, unions have shown an interest in experimentation with coalition strategies to build political power and challenge employers. In contrast to organized labor, the political power of Chicago’s community organizations continued to rely on direct action and confrontation with the Democratic Party. For instance, in the 1990s ACORN showed a preference for sit-ins and demonstrations and attempted to form a new political party called the Working Families Party as an alternative to the Democratic machine.

The Emergence of the Grassroots Collaborative

The Grassroots Collaborative evolved out of a decade of issue-based coalition building in Chicago, with its organizing style sculptured by the practice, lessons, and relationships that produced Chicago’s first modern living wage campaign from 1995 to 1998. That campaign was organized by the Chicago Jobs and Living Wage Coalition. Its goal was to pass an ordinance at the city council. The ordinance would require companies receiving taxpayer funds, such as city contractors, to pay their workers a living wage of $7.60 an hour, the amount that would keep a family of four out of poverty. It was an intense and difficult campaign, involving mobilizations and knocking on doors in the wards, with victory finally coming through the coalition’s use of a state law that required salary raises for aldermen to occur six months before council elections. Connecting the living wage

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to the aldermen’s desire for a pay increase led to the passage of the living wage ordinance on the same night the council voted to give itself a pay raise. It was the challenges as well as the success of this first living wage campaign that fostered the emergence of the Grassroots Collaborative. According to legend, the collaborative began after the executive directors of the CCH, ACORN, and the Interfaith Leadership Project in Cicero were at a function at the Woods Foundation when John ( Juancho) Donahue from CCH turned to the others and said, “Why is it that we are only meeting now?” (interview 9 with community organizer, August 31, 2005). Donahue used his strong network of personal relationships to pull together the collaborative’s monthly breakfast meetings at Manny’s Café, a working-class diner just south of the Loop. Meetings ran on a relational basis, “trying to get a deeper sense of people’s program and agenda” (interview 1 with community organization executive director, July 21, 2005). Months of rumination by the leaders of community organizations led to six concrete lessons about coalition practice that sought to solve the problems that had plagued the first living wage campaign. These lessons established new customs for the collaborative’s coalition practice and would inform its later campaigns: • • • • •

You need to be able to turn out members to join the coalition. Respect the strengths of unions and community organizations. A coordinator makes coalition work easier. Timing is key for coalition success. Relationships are more important than issues for long-term coalitions. • Coalition decisions are made by staff directors. First, the collaborative participants had learned that coalitions needed to limit decision making to organizations that actually had power. The living wage campaign had an open collective decision-making structure “where everyone in the world was invited to the meeting” (Talbott interview, July 18, 2005). For some of the participants “it was the biggest error . . . organizations that could move numbers were very tired of being in rooms with people who couldn’t, where they were carrying the load and everybody else was having opinions” (ibid.). Thus the collaborative developed a “principle about turnout . . . a transparent process about what

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it takes to be a real decision maker. . . . You would have to move numbers of people and you would have to put some money on the table” (ibid.). While anyone could participate in coalition events, decision making was limited to organizations that made turnout pledges. Second, the collaborative learned to respect and understand the different strengths of unions and community organizations. It had proportionally more community organizations, but its community organizers were fully aware that unions are “big players . . . because they have large numbers of members” (interview 1 with community organization executive director, July 21, 2005). By only allowing organizations who had a track record of turning out members to become decision makers in the collaborative, the coalition created a space for unions that recognized their capacity. Organizers were also aware that even small unions are bigger than large community organizations and that it is important to balance the diversity of participation, as all of the partners had important, distinct contributions to make to the coalition as a whole (interview 17 with community organizer, September 15, 2006). Third, the collaborative believed that a coordinator could steady the development of coalition strategy by handling coalition reproduction. This would overcome the problem of participating organizations’ having to sacrifice internal capacity in order to maintain the coalition. Instead, a separate paid coordinator could take on the shared burden of calling meetings, consulting across the organizations, and organizing logistical support for joint events. This had been a weak spot in the living wage campaign. Madeline Talbott, the veteran lead organizer from ACORN, recalled, “some organizations were being drained because such a long campaign required so much effort. . . . We just did not have a continual way to build our organizations as we were waging the campaign” (interview, July 18, 2005). Fourth, the living wage campaign provided concrete lessons about strategy and timing. The living wage was won because the ordinance was attached to a political opportunity. One community organizer who had been involved in the collaborative from the start commented, “Timing was really critical and being aware of timing is really crucial, kind of anticipating” what will happen (Shurna interview, August 30, 2005). Fifth, the collaborative learned that relationships were more important than issues for long-term coalitions. Up until then, there was “a lack of trust,” and with the new collaborative, “we felt that if we could build some trust personally with each other and then get to know each other’s or-

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ganizations that we would stand a better chance of making a success” of future coalitions (Shurna interview, August 30, 2005). One of the leaders of a smaller community organization explained that the aim was to “build relationally” between the staff (interview 9 with community organizer, August 31, 2005). The goal that brought them together was “a vision of creating a movement in Chicago. . . . We came out of living wage but we were interested in an organized movement,” particularly one that reached across Latino and African American communities (interview 1 with community organization executive director, July 21, 2005). Consequently, the Grassroots Collaborative would not be defined by a single issue but would build issue campaigns out of negotiation and discussion at breakfast meetings and day-long retreats. These discussions created a space from which issues could emerge “depending on the difficulty of the fight” (Talbott interview, July 18, 2005). Sixth, collaborative meetings involved only the full-time staff, not the membership, of the participating organizations. Organizers openly acknowledged the limitations of having only staff participate. One staff leader recognized that “it violates all the rules of community organizing that says you can’t hold power for people and that they need to make decisions” (interview with community organization executive director, July 21, 2005). Despite this contradiction, this form of organizing became practically necessary to support the coalition’s work, helping it to “build trust . . . sustain relationships” and “make quick decisions” while providing an effective space to forge long-term relationships outside a crisis (ibid.). While the member organizations had a common goal of developing leadership amongst their members, the collaborative did not see itself playing a role in leadership development. In spite of that, because the organizers themselves were conscious of the problem of staff-led organizing, the collaborative felt its way through experiments with engaging the rank and file. For instance, the collaborative ensured that rank-andfile representatives were the major speakers at its events (interview 2 with community organizer, July 22, 2005). Accordingly, the collaborative could be distinguished by a strong set of organizational relationships, cultivated across the staffs of organizations that each had a strong turnout capacity. This value-based multi-issue coalition operated as a network of powerful progressives, able to coalesce around different issues when required. Sustaining this tight network, however, came at a cost. The coalition was not in a position to develop the organizations’ members. Members were mobilized and turned out to ral-

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lies and activities like door knocking, but they were not involved in campaign planning. Nor did the collaborative develop joint training or broker organizations that could have brought members together to learn from other members of the coalition. By 2006, the collaborative had ten participating organizations: two unions (SEIU Local 880, which in June 2009 became part of SEIU Healthcare Illinois and Indiana, and Local 73) and eight community organizations, including ACORN (whose members and organizers, since January 2008, became members of an organization called Action Now based in Illinois), CCH, Metro Seniors in Action, the Illinois Hunger Coalition, and the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council (BPNC). This case study documents two campaigns: the site fight campaign against Wal-Mart’s proposed entry into Chicago, which began in June 2003 and was followed by the big-box living wage campaign that ran until the end of 2006. But before this, between 2000 and 2003, the collaborative cut its teeth on a range of issues, working to support an amnesty for undocumented immigrant workers, fighting for the right to obtain a driver’s license regardless of immigration status, taking action in the state capital around budget issues, and campaigning to amend the original living wage ordinance. These turf battles strengthened the relationships between the partners and built their reputation in Chicago as a group that could deliver on its promises. These experiences would be crucial for their most difficult challenge yet.

Chicago’s No-Wal-Mart Campaign, July 2003 to June 2004

When Wal-Mart announced that it was planning its first megastore in the city of Chicago in July 2003, it created a widespread crisis and a potential opportunity for the UFCW, the key retail union. At the time, the UFCW represented 1.3 million workers in the retail, food, and packing industries across Canada and the United States (UFCW 2006). Wal-Mart was shaking the foundations of unionism in the United States. In the earlier Keynesian period the largest employer was the unionized General Motors. Now, in 2003, Wal-Mart was a new type of “template business,” setting low-road standards for nonunion employment (Lichtenstein 2006, 4). Its strident opposition to unions threatened the very viability of the UFCW; in 2003 and 2005 Wal-Mart shut down stores in Texas and Quebec when unions won recognition (Greenhouse 2003; Austen 2005). But

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this crisis was not without opportunities, as one younger UFCW organizer described it: “We are now faced with the biggest threat ever. . . . We either do this or we start putting our resumes together and help our members change careers” (interview 16 with UFCW organizer, September 15, 2006). In Chicago, the giant retailer was well prepared for the battle ahead. Since 2000, Wal-Mart’s growth strategy was to enter into “blue” (Democratic) areas and build stores within city limits rather than just in the suburbs (Olivo 2004; Yersk 2004). In 2003, Wal-Mart preemptively pinpointed the location of a Chicago target site. It employed a “place specific strategy” by selecting a spot on the economically depressed West Side of Chicago, where high unemployment among a largely poor African American community opened the possibility for Wal-Mart to cloak itself in the mantle of “economic development” (Yue 2003; Olivo 2004). Alderman Emma Mitts, the local representative, was approached by Wal-Mart in early 2003 about a store in the area, and from the outset she was its political champion (Coates 2005). As Wal-Mart was planning its move, the UFCW was best categorized as a traditional business union, focused on contract negotiations, protecting its “market share” (the number of union stores), and supporting member grievances. It had limited experience in coalition work (interview 8 with UFCW official, August 30, 2005). Yet a flurry of external circumstances, including pressure to campaign around Wal-Mart and later the union’s 2005 shift into CTW, initiated an internal restructure at the international level and an explicit commitment to union growth and new tactics to respond to the mega-retailer. Since 2002, the UFCW International had experimented with ad hoc campaigns against Wal-Mart (AFL-CIO 2002). Wal-Mart bred unease at all levels of the union, including in Chicago’s retail union UFCW Local 881, which represented 37,000 members (UFCW 881 2006). Anxiety spiked in the lead-up to the aborted retail strike in California in 2003, where WalMart’s presence drove down health care protection and wages across the unionized parts of the industry (interview 8 with UFCW official, August 20, 2005). When Wal-Mart announced its entry into Chicago, the UFCW Local 881 immediately proclaimed its opposition, but its business union tradition left it perilously unprepared, as one official who had been on staff with the union for more than a decade acknowledged: “Honestly, we thought we would put up a fight and see where it takes us” (ibid.). The UFCW cobbled together a strategy with the aim of fighting WalMart through the city council, calling on aldermen to vote against a zon-

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ing proposal that would allow Wal-Mart to build its store. The campaign’s public message was reactive — “We just wanted to stop them and hold on to our market share in Chicago” — which evolved into messages on placards that said “No Wal-Mart in Chicago” used at all the rallies and events during the Wal-Mart site fight campaign (interview 12 with UFCW official, September 14, 2006; Franklin 2004). The combination of Wal-Mart’s image as an iconic “bad employer” and the initial magnitude of the UFCW’s fight persuaded the union to cultivate some allies in its campaign. The union knew it “could not do it on our own. . . . even if we could have 10,000 members down at the city council, it would not make a difference” (interview 8 with UFCW official, August 30, 2005). To start, the union called on everyone it could find — sending out broadcast e-mails about open “coalition” meetings, assembling a motley crew. These unwieldy meetings did produce long lists of organizational supporters for the campaign but failed to translate into a strong commitment of hard numbers of protesters at rallies. This prompted the union to target a few partner organizations for more concrete support. Contact was made with ACORN, which had worked with the UFCW in the first living wage campaign (Talbott interview, September 15, 2006). Using this ad hoc connection, UFCW 881’s president asked ACORN to support its fight against Wal-Mart. For ACORN, an organization of low-wage and moderate-income people, an anti-Wal-Mart campaign presented a significant hurdle — ACORN members were initially opposed to campaigning against WalMart. ACORN’s decision makers were a rank-and-file executive board, and they were well aware that ACORN’s low wage constituency “went to WalMart, people loved Wal-Mart because they had low prices” (interview 18 with ACORN executive member, September 15, 2006). ACORN staff and key rank-and-file leaders began a member education campaign focused on Wal-Mart’s antisocial behavior, using examples that connected to the identity base of ACORN, such as “Wal-Mart’s discrimination against women” and “the persecution of immigrants when immigrant workers were locked in a store overnight” (interview 21 with community organizer, September 18, 2006). This education work recast member commitment to the campaign by linking Wal-Mart’s public actions to members’ own experiences. In early 2004, six months after the UFCW began the No-Wal-Mart campaign and as a result of ACORN’s reports to the Grassroots Collaborative, the collaborative decided to join the UFCW’s campaign. The decision

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was made at a collaborative retreat — a strategy meeting away from the city — where mobile phones were turned off and staff representatives could take stock of what they were doing and make joint long-term plans. Collaborative members decided to join the UFCW because they believed that the Wal-Mart campaign provided a strategic “opportunity to solidify our relationships with some unions because they were already engaged” (Solon interview, August 3, 2005). The UFCW seized upon the chance to work with the collaborative, as it extended the union’s capacity and legitimacy. Unlike an uncommitted room of organizational representatives, pledges from the collaborative packed a punch. It had members it could turn out. It also brought a different constituency of people to the campaign. One official explained it: “Unions are not the most progressive organizations and the collaborative brought a lot of credibility among a wider segment of the population” (interview 8 with UFCW official, August 30, 2005). For both the UFCW and the collaborative members, commitment to the campaign was uneven and required internal education. Aside from ACORN, the strongest education campaigns were among the unions, where Wal-Mart’s antiunion practices spurred an organizational interest in the campaign (interview 20 with SEIU Local 880 senior staff person, September 18, 2006). These education campaigns attempted to build a constituency of opposition to Wal-Mart through workplace meetings and education sessions. The UFCW engaged its members by getting them to write to local aldermen. Workplace organizers, who normally focused on contract negotiations, briefly turned into political campaigners. As one organizer who played a leading role in planning the campaign inside the union explained, “We sent our stewards and our union representatives out to the stores with a pad of notebook paper and just asked members to write letters . . . saying I work and live in X ward and I think Wal-Mart will hurt my job. And that was one of the most effective things that we did” (interview 12 with UFCW Official, September 14, 2006). SEIU Local 880 also raised awareness about Wal-Mart at member meetings. Local 880 was an unusual union: founded in 1983 by ACORN, it represented low-wage home-care and home child-care workers. It shared its offices with ACORN — acting in almost permanent coalition with that community organization. Several of Local 880’s members had formerly worked in retail and “made good spokespeople on the issue” (interview 19 with SEIU Local 880 senior staff person, September 18, 2006). These members personally knew the difference between a union store and a nonunion

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store. Their stories were shared with other members (interview 14 with SEIU Local 880 rank-and-file executive member, September 14, 2006). Several monthly union meetings “focused on what’s bad with Wal-Mart,” and then after the end of the meeting the union members “would go door knocking about Wal-Mart in the wards” (interview 19 with SEIU Local 880 senior staff person, September 18, 2006). There was, however, a marked difference between how organizational staff were involved in this campaign and how members were involved. In the UFCW, SEIU, and ACORN, staff led the decision to engage in the campaign against Wal-Mart and then dutifully committed to the education work required to build a constituency of support for the campaign. While members were politicized through an education program, they did not play a role in deciding how to organize the campaign. Instead, they were turned out to knock on doors or attend rallies through one-way communication, where members participated in preplanned events (interview 22 with organizer, September 19, 2006). This style of campaigning produced member involvement, but it was relatively passive. There were other weaknesses peculiar to the No-Wal-Mart campaign, rooted in the loose organizational relationships between the UFCW and the collaborative. There was a lack of central coordination. One union observer who joined the campaign later described it: “There was no one leading, there was no coordinated effort whatsoever” (interview 15 with union staff person, September 14, 2006). Without a conscious plan, the campaign was left swinging from event to event — tactic to tactic — with the goal simply being to attract media attention (interview 2 with community organizer, July 22, 2006). The lack of campaign planning infected other elements of the coalition and produced an inadequate message. When interviewed, organizers often grimaced at the phrase “No Wal-Mart,” condemning it as a “negative, reactive message” that did not explain why Wal-Mart was harmful, which was a problem because Wal-Mart’s bargains made the store popular (interview 24 with union organizer, September 20, 2006). This message was especially ineffective in the socioeconomically depressed areas that Wal-Mart had selected for its sites. One community organizer argued that “the message we were using was that Wal-Mart brings bad jobs, but people weren’t interested in fighting Wal-Mart because they were from communities without any jobs” (interview 2 with community organizer, July 22, 2005). The message was focused not on what Wal-Mart did but on who it was, and given the company’s huge resources and popular

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brand, the No-Wal-Mart campaign was having little influence on the store’s low-income consumer base. As several community organizers emphasized, compounding this message weakness was that the primary messengers were white union officials (interview 7 with a union organizer, August 1, 2005; interview 5 with a community organizer, August 19, 2005). These union spokespeople inadvertently buttressed Wal-Mart’s propaganda, which, as one community organizer explained, sought to “portray opposition to their stores as coming from racist trade unions who were trying to protect their jobs at the expense of jobs for the low-income black community” (interview 2 with community organizer, July 22, 2005). The argument about racist trade unions had some traction within the African American community, which had long felt excluded from construction jobs by some of Chicago’s building trade unions (Coates 2005). The No-Wal-Mart message and messengers reinforced a public image that the campaign was “white labor versus the black community” (interview 3 with union organizer, August 7, 2005). From the outset there were scale problems with the UFCW’s strategy, which the collaborative “bought into” when it joined the campaign (interview 2 with community organizer, July 22, 2005). The strategy was a site fight, in which the council was lobbied to block permission to build the Wal-Mart store, and this remained the same even when another Chicago Wal-Mart store on the South Side was earmarked at a council committee in early 2004. Lobbying the council would require demonstrating local opposition to the Wal-Mart development through public events and council hearings, combined with the direct lobbying of aldermen to corral a majority vote against the zoning proposal. The No-Wal-Mart campaign was having a greater impact against the South Side site than against the West Side store. At one level, this was because in the council, the store’s proponent, Alderman Mitts, actively cultivated support for the West Side zoning proposal. Usually the council unanimously approved their colleagues’ zoning proposals. Accordingly, Alderman Mitts “did her homework, she talked to her fellow members on the council,” attracting support on the basis that her area needed local economic development (interview 10 with alderman, September 1, 2005; Napolitano 2004). In contrast, according to one experienced alderman, Alderman Howard Brookins from the South Side “didn’t lobby his colleagues ahead of time” and he was not up-front about the nature of the Wal-Mart development (interview 11 with alderman, September 7, 2005). Publicly, several aldermen said they voted against the South Side proposal

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“to teach him a harsh lesson . . . for lacking respect for more senior council members” (Mihalopoulos 2004). In addition, at a local scale the collaborative had more organizational muscle on the South Side than on the West Side. Collaborative affiliates such as ACORN, SEIU 880, and the BPNC had their membership base on the South Side. This made it easier to mobilize members to events, such as weekend door knocking, and created a ready audience for a South Side Jobs with Justice public hearing. The South Side BPNC also undertook local outreach among small businesses in their neighborhood about the Wal-Mart threat (interview 4 with BPNC organizer, August 4, 2005). In contrast, on the West Side, the coalition was overpowered by WalMart’s local organizing. The company’s so-called “grassroots campaign . . . built a huge coalition of powerful West Side African American ministers” (Olivo 2004). Certainly some of Wal-Mart’s tactics were cynical. Company representatives “went to individual churches and known leaders on the West Side and offered them money. . . . They said ‘Reverend, we are here to identify some needs in the church’ and waved a check at them” (interview 5 with community organizer, August 19, 2005). Wal-Mart worked locally, hosting and attending a series of community meetings about its hiring policy and promising jobs and economic development to African Americans in the area (Olivo 2004). The collaborative was hamstrung in its organizing effort because it never had “time to sit and lay a foundation” at the local scale, particularly on the West Side (interview 3 with union organizer, August 7, 2005). It was “reacting” to a timetable set by Wal-Mart and had to move “very quickly” to build opposition to the store (interview 2 with community organizer, July 22, 2005). Consequently, a “strategic engagement of local communities and clergy, the folks that do hold power in those neighborhoods . . . a dialogue with those stakeholders didn’t really happen” (interview 22 with organizer, September 19, 2006). This omission was problematic because the types of organizations and communities on the West Side of Chicago were substantially different from the South Side communities the collaborative was familiar with. One organizer observed, “The poverty is greater, resources are more scarce and there is a much less organized community . . . that is mainly organized through churches, not community organizations” (personal correspondence with organizer, February 2009). As a result, the UFCW-collaborative campaign had to rely on the limits of its existing South Side resource base. For instance, ACORN and SEIU

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turned out staff and members to knock on doors. Yet this was limited to building community awareness, as one of the union organizers of this effort explained: “We didn’t organize them, we were mainly doing it for information to get the people aware that Wal-Mart was coming” (interview 6 with SEIU organizer, August 22, 2005). The failure to build a local constituency of supporters was a greater problem on the West Side, where “we were not specifically grounded and working with those folks in those communities . . . we were easily painted as outsiders” (interview 17 with community organizer, September 15, 2006). There was a significant opportunity cost in the coalition’s failure to invest in local organizing because it turned out that local constituencies heavily influenced the council. For instance, the BPNC’s work with South Side small businesses was decisive. One alderman explained, “A lot of aldermen on the South Side said they were being lobbied by their business owners in their neighborhoods who felt that Wal-Mart would pose a threat to their livelihood” (interview 11 with alderman, September 7, 2005). Moreover, a lack of local organizing on the West Side meant that the West Side council hearings were subject to racial politics. Wal-Mart was bolstered by the advocacy of local residents and “local African American religious leaders who would passionately talk about the need for jobs in their community” (interview 22 with organizer, September 19, 2006). This was in contrast to the No-Wal-Mart campaign, in which, despite some notable exceptions, “the people who were really speaking with an in-depth understanding were all white — whether they were researchers or labor representatives” (ibid.). As I see it, this local organizing gap was a side effect of the coalition’s decision to prioritize strong organizational relationships over building a multiscaled capacity. The deep, trusting multi-issue relationships underpinning the collaborative enabled it to take up the challenge of organizing against Wal-Mart, but they were not structured in a way that allowed the coalition to move a constituency in many of Chicago’s neighborhoods. Individual organizations like the BPNC were locally scaled, and their outreach work assisted the coalition’s campaign. Yet on the West Side, the collaborative did not have a reserve of local supporters that could counteract Wal-Mart’s local support base. To shift this, as one organizer noted, “we needed to be doing something different on the ground,” whether building a constituency of local supporters among its own organization members or among new organizations on the West Side (interview 22 with organizer, September 19, 2006). Identifying strategies to stimulate local

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support would continue to be a test for the collaborative in future campaigns. The collaborative knew it was on the brink of a loss. Fortunately it was only days out from the final vote when one of collaborative’s key organizers had a brainwave. Madeline Talbott, ACORN’s lead organizer, had been trying to work out a next step, and one morning while sharing her dilemma with another experienced organizer, she hit on an alternative strategy. Rather than bashing their heads against Wal-Mart’s rich armory, why not use the familiar territory of living wage campaigning to set new standards for retail in the city? Instead of trying to lock Wal-Mart out, they could use the council to drag Wal-Mart up to a higher road. Despite the weaknesses of the No-Wal-Mart campaign, the political opportunity of an ineffective alderman on the South Side, combined with the collaborative’s stronger organizational presence, tipped the balance in the vote, preventing the South Side Wal-Mart from gaining approval (Washburn 2004). Yet as the collaborative had fatefully predicted, Wal-Mart did secure its victory, with the West Side Wal-Mart easily gaining council support. Talbott’s light bulb moment in the midnight hours of the last campaign would set the collaborative on an ambitious track to again confront the largest company in the world, but this time its work would be painstakingly planned and wrapped in the morality of living wages.

Living Wages for Big-Box Workers, 2004 – 6

Since 1994, a living wage movement has developed in the United States. Its message has it roots in the progressive era at the turn of the twentieth century, when economic depression and burgeoning Catholic and radical unionism raised concerns about living wages among Irish immigrant workers. The term derives from Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical that called for a “just wage” (Figart 2004; Gertner 2006, 2). Community organizers in Baltimore first turned this into a potent political movement, initiating the first living wage ordinance in 1994, which raised the wages of workers whose jobs were covered by council contracts (Walsh 2000). Chicago joined this movement with its living wage campaign from 1995 to 1998, and organizations such as SEIU 880 and ACORN in particular regularly ran campaigns that used the language of living wages to advance the needs of their members and benefit society at large. The idea of a big-box living wage ordinance was an unprecedented

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extension of this original concept. “Big-box” is a term used to describe the largest retailers (whose stores look a little like big boxes). The ordinance sought to generalize the highest standard of large retailer stores in Chicago. Its aim was to adopt Costco’s employment standards as citywide big-box standards, including a $10 starting wage and financial support for employment conditions such as health insurance. This advance on the previous campaign received quick support from the collaborative and the UFCW. When Talbott presented the idea to a collaborative meeting in June 2004, organizers could see that it addressed two key weaknesses in the No-Wal-Mart campaign: its message and its scale. It was also clear that a living wage campaign would be another opportunity to build a progressive movement in Chicago and intensify the collaborative’s relationships with labor, consistent with its mission. For the SEIU in particular, the connection came from the union’s interest in city politics; the ordinance was seen as potential “benchmark legislation that could underscore what was happening in the city” (interview 13 with SEIU official September 14, 2006). Even though the issue of living wages did not overlap with the issues that many of the collaborative partners were focused on, the political effect of running the campaign did connect to their shared organizational interest in building social and political power. Consequently, the collaborative took center stage in the development of the strategy. Several coalition retreats were dedicated to developing a plan that consisted of running with a positive message, taking a living wage ordinance through the council, timing the campaign to line up with the next council elections, reemploying a staff coordinator, and investing in strategic outreach to enlist key allies to support the battle ahead. The living wage ordinance shifted the coalition’s common concern from the idea of “good jobs and bad jobs” to creating pressure for “all jobs to be living wage jobs” (interview 2 with community organizer, July 22, 2005). This was simultaneously a stronger public message and a more effective vehicle for generating member commitment. As an organizing tool, the living wage language was familiar to collaborative members, particularly ACORN and SEIU 880. Talbott from ACORN explained that given ACORN’s “history on living wages, our members knew what a living wage job was . . . there was deep support for a living wage” (interview, July 18, 2005). The issue of living wages was also a “positive, popular” public message. It allowed the collaborative to make arguments “about jobs with benefits” and creating “rights and safeguards” (interview 7 with community organizer, August 30, 2005). This proactive agenda helped put re-

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tailers on the defensive, and its popular enfranchising moral claim made aldermanic opposition difficult (interview 2 with community organizer, July 22, 2005; New York Times 2006). The citywide ordinance shifted the campaign from isolated fights against individual Wal-Mart stores to creating an issue that targeted the council area as a whole. In doing so, it shifted campaign activity away from the local, where the collaborative’s structure and organizational relationships were less developed, to the city, where its organizational relationships were strongest. One of the organizers active in crafting this new strategy explained, “It’s citywide; if Wal-Mart wants to bring ten stores into the city, it’s going to be a tough fight to win ten times basically on turf that Wal-Mart and their friendly aldermen pitch. . . . It would be starting out against us . . . so the great thing about the living wage is . . . it’s citywide so it’s strategically better for us” (interview 2 with community organizer, July 22, 2005). The scale shift required the campaign timetable to shift too. While there was energy arising out of the site fights, those with previous living wage experience were more cautious. Talbott emphasized the lessons about timing: “We had to wait until election year . . . we’d done it wrong before” (interview, July 18, 2006). Patience did not mean idleness. The collaborative used the long lead time to renew its organizational relationships and build new external relationships that could help leverage political power in the wards. Hiring a new coordinator was a first step straight out of the collaborative’s rule book. It opened more space for collective reflection and for implementing the new campaign strategy. In early 2005, the new coordinator intentionally built new relationships among local neighborhood organizations and unions. Ken Snyder, the coordinator, explained, “I did a lot of work going out to the local neighborhood organizations . . . identifying constituencies in their neighborhoods and talked to them about the living wage ordinance and finding out their level of interest” (interview, July 22, 2005). The coordinator’s accumulation of new living wage supporters required a new home, so in mid-2005 the collaborative broadened its relationships and formed the Living Wage Coalition. This temporary alliance of hand-picked organizations was led by the collaborative. Its coordinator was the collaborative’s coordinator, and most of the collaborative members temporarily regrouped under its organizing umbrella. The collaborative’s leadership was vital. One union representative who had recently joined the Living Wage Coalition commented, “Having a good

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facilitator is critically important because if you don’t have a centralized person or an organization who can really take charge of the housekeeping, contacting, it’s never going to happen. . . . Ken [Snyder] kept us on track and produced output for all of us” (interview 15 with union staff person, September 14, 2006). Despite the change, the coalition participants were still all full-time staff, not rank-and-file leaders, maintaining the collaborative’s model of decision making. The new structure married the organizational memory of the collaborative with the force of new faces with fresh ideas and forms of influence. New unions such as the UFCW, SEIU Local 1, and the CFL joined, along with new community partners. The participation of the CFL, who represented all the unions in Chicago, was a coup. It joined only months after the fracturing of the labor movement at a national level, when unions like the UFCW and SEIU had walked out of the AFL-CIO to form CTW. Yet this modest Chicago coalition reached across these divides to unite labor and in doing so brought its power into a new type of fight — a campaign for living wages for all retail workers that went beyond U.S. labor’s tendency to focus on union members alone. The CFL brought a new kind of power to the coalition. While it was not able to produce a strong turnout of members to rallies, its president had deep, trusting political relationships with dozens of aldermen. Historically, the CFL “had a great relationship with the city council . . . an open door over the last hundred years” (interview 15 with union staff person, September 14, 2006). While neoliberal pressures had weakened the council’s relationship with unions, there was a countervailing pressure on Mayor Daley at the time. Daley’s iron grip had loosened with accusations of corruption beginning in 2004 and mounting through 2006 (Mihalopoulos 2006). Consequently, the CFL’s political ties remained important, with the president maintaining the trust and support of many laboraligned aldermen. The realities of building a council majority challenged the collaborative’s theories on power, and some of their golden rules were revised. Representatives recognized the value of organized labor’s political relationships and in-kind support: How many people you can put into a room is important . . . but there was some valuable stuff being added that didn’t have anything to do with that . . . SEIU letting us use their phone bank, the Chicago Federation of Labor’s life long relationships with some of these aldermen. . . . It isn’t about put-

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ting people in a room . . . but they were probably responsible for a dozen aldermen that they were keeping on board. . . . It is power in the form of relationships rather than numbers or money. (interview 17 with community organizer, September, 15 2006, author’s emphasis)

The combination of the collaborative’s turnout capacity with labor’s relationships of influence was critical. Alone, neither labor nor the community organizations could have won a living wage ordinance — but combined they deployed unmatchable strength. With strong organizational relationships locked in, the Living Wage Coalition launched its postcard campaign with the aim of building popular awareness. During the following six months, willing organizations encouraged members to sign postcards that would be sent from those individuals to local aldermen as a symbol of their support for living wages. One organizer commented, “It was a critical step. . . . It went from where a pastor was interested to where the whole congregation could show their support” (interview 17 with community organizer, September 15, 2006). Postcards included address details and were used to map signatories by ward. The tactic simultaneously engaged members while producing leverage to lobby aldermen. The postcard campaign brought about a mass mobilization of living wage supporters in slow motion. The strongest participants were ACORN and SEIU 880, whose postcard collection was driven by an exceptional staff capacity that first reached out to members and then to the community at large. An SEIU 880 organizer involved in the postcard campaign explained that in late 2005 and early 2006 this outreach “kicked into gear. . . . We were running new staff trainings, and new staff would work on collecting postcards; there was a 50 – 50 split between talking to homecare workers and getting postcards signed. . . . They would be working a zip code, and after talking to members they would just knock up and down the block, go into restaurants and leave a pile to be picked up later” (interview 24 union organizer, September 20, 2006). SEIU 880’s significant commitment of staff resources was noteworthy. More than any other union involved in the campaign, it was prepared to deploy dozens of staff hours in pursuit of a “social interest” campaign. In explaining the reasons for this engagement, a union rank-and-file leader linked it to the identity of their membership as low-wage workers and the union’s commitment to living wage campaigning (interview with SEIU 880 rank-and-file steward, September 14, 2006). Union staff believed that

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their involvement in coalition decision making generated a desire to make the strategy successful (interview 40 with SEIU 880 senior staff, September 18, 2006). The collaborative’s strong organizational relationships successfully stirred the union’s commitment and capacity. Relying on staff to turn out the bulk of the postcards involved a trade off. The benefits of using staff were substantial: staff had to account to team leaders for producing quotas of cards, and unlike the union’s members, who often worked alone with limited contact with other members, the staff constantly had face-to-face member contact. Staff numbers could be intensified when required, producing thousands of cards in a short time. Yet relying on staff sidestepped an opportunity that the campaign could have provided to its membership. If members had been drawn into strategy meetings and given greater responsibility to deliver on the postcards, they might have learned many of the organizing skills that staff gained through this process, such as how to effectively explain the reasons for the campaign and agitate people to take action in support (interview 24 with union organizer, September 20, 2006). The strategic decision was to prioritize obtaining a large quantity of signed postcards. As impressive as this achievement was, it traded off a chance to qualitatively shift members’ own capacity to campaign. While the postcard campaign delivered political leverage for the collaborative, it was not translated into greater local coalition capacity. Between August 2005 and February 2006 the Living Wage Coalition collected 10,000 cards. The cards produced influence, with pressure radiating off a constituency of supporters in local wards. One organizer remarked, “We’d go to an alderman and say look you’ve got 356 postcards from your community that want you to support the living wage ordinance” (interview 2 with community organizer, July 22, 2005). Yet while names and addresses were collected, those signatories were never invited to participate in the campaign, either through local support organizations or through campaign activities (interview 22 with organizer, September 19, 2006). Unlike in the public education coalition, where groups of rankand-file members were encouraged to form local broker organizations that worked in tandem with the central coalition, the collaborative only used the political power that came from the postcard campaign. Its limited resources meant that it missed out on the opportunity to turn these supporters into more active campaign participants. Fueled by the momentum of the postcard campaign, thirty-three sponsoring aldermen introduced a new living wage ordinance into the coun-

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cil. The campaign moved into the public arena at the scale of the city. Monthly council meetings became opportunities to flaunt support for the ordinance. In March, it was community organizations; in April, the unions. In May, momentum spread to the immigration community through the March 10 Committee, a coalition of immigrant organizations, which had just organized two rallies of 300,000 people. These immigrant leaders agreed to meet with the Latino aldermen and seek their support for the living wage (interview 16 with UFCW organizer, September 15, 2006). Then in June it was religious leaders. Of all the identity groups, religious leaders were the most important. In the site fight campaign Wal-Mart had “God on its side” in the form of the West Side ministers. So for the living wage campaign the collaborative prepared. They worked with two bridge builders who were religious leaders, Jen Kottler from Protestants for the Common Good and Reverend Robin Hood from ACORN. These religious living wage organizers built an interfaith alliance organizing forty-five clergy to sign a public letter in support of the ordinance (Chicago Sun Times 2006a). As the campaign became public, the coalition’s common concern was potentially its weakness. The ordinance made a moral claim for living wages, but underneath that the living wage campaign was a cause without widespread member self-interest. This nascent problem was mitigated by the organizational histories of ACORN and SEIU 880 on living wages, effective mobilizing tactics by SEIU 880 staff, and most important, the escalation of the campaign to a “movement feel” that drew the coalition partners into a Chicago street fight. The most engaged organization in this campaign was ACORN, which “had built its name around living wages . . . and had a mobilized constituency that understood it and was willing to fight around it” (interview 21 with community organizer, September, 18 2006). Through ACORN’s involvement came SEIU 880 and its home-care and home child-care members. Yet turning out union members to living wage events did not happen automatically. It required the union to connect the big-box living wage concept to the lives of home-care workers. In March, SEIU 880 field staff “tried a general rap [phone call script] about living wages for the city [to turn people out to an event] and nobody came; they didn’t care enough” (interview 24 with union organizer, September 20, 2006). Rankand-file leaders were not involved in coalition decision making, and because these leaders were “so busy,” staff believed that mobilization messages needed to be “more connected” (ibid). The script changed. It

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began with questions about current workplace campaigns, then linked the home-care and home child-care workers’ identity as low-wage workers to the living wage ordinance, arguing, “If we can set a standard that big-box workers should earn $10 an hour, then it will make it easier to push wages up in our industry” (ibid.). For the staff, the results were immediate: “We went from a handful to thirty, forty, fifty members turning up” (ibid.). Mobilization increased because members’ fate was tied to the success of the ordinance. As the campaign flared into conflict at the May council hearings on the ordinance, participation deepened across the organizations. Like many proactively initiated campaigns, organizers lamented that early on the ordinance was not “taken seriously” by the council. Having no opposition made it hard to organize. But at the May hearings the retailers went from ignoring the ordinance to condemning it. “People left feeling pretty screwed, there was a lot of anger . . . but it was a change, people became bought in; it took an event like that to get them to say, okay, it is now when we have to decide whether we are going to dedicate the staff, money, and resources necessary to win a campaign” (interview 21 with community organizer, September 18, 2006). Everything changed after the hearings. Coalition meetings became regular, large, and long, and the coalition intensified its targeting of specific aldermen. Replacing the ad hoc media events of the No-Wal-Mart campaign was a systematic “plotting out of the fifty aldermen and who was on board and a strategy for how to influence those who were not” and how to keep those who were wavering (interview 17 with community organizer, September 15, 2006). The coalition activity moved to a multiscaled mobilization. Pressure in individual wards was galvanized in two ways — by individual organizations taking responsibility for particular aldermen and by a radical field and phone banking campaign that scorched the earth of dozens of wards simultaneously. It was a perfect alignment of organizational autonomy and coalition unity. In the first instance, Metro Seniors in Action, for example, targeted three aldermen with whom they had their own relationship. They put paid organizers in the field, organized constituency meetings of seniors, and lobbied for their own issues and the living wage ordinance (interview 23 with community organizer, September 19, 2006). It was, however, the field campaign that set the living wage campaign apart. It was Talbott’s idea. She connected the dots and realized that moving constituents in the wards was the key weapon in shifting aldermen.

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As she explained, “I went up to [a wavering alderman] before the [council] hearing and I said . . . we are going to have a meeting in your ward . . . and he looked terrified. He took a position in the hearing . . . just the threat of going into his ward moved him over to our side” (interview, September 15, 2006). The field campaign was funded by the unions and run by ACORN from early June to July 26. ACORN hired a team of staff organizers to go into twenty-five wards, producing a mobile hit-and-run unit, hitting doors and passing cell phones to supporters to call their aldermen and register their opposition. The breadth was unprecedented for a nonelectoral issuebased campaign — 25,000 doors were hit and 10,000 contacts were made in the eight weeks before the vote (interview 21 with community organizer, September 18, 2006). Notably, the campaign was undertaken and coordinated by ACORN staff, not ACORN members. There was good reason for this: the campaign was escalating toward the vote, and the priority was to produce political pressure, not develop the skills of members. But the decision to rely on staff built limitations into the strategy: it was dependent on having money to pay staff and on the staff not burning out under the intense workload. In parallel to the field campaign, the collaborative organized volunteers to use the SEIU state council phone bank to call constituents in targeted wards to ask them to contact their aldermen. The volunteers also tended to be staff people from the collaborative organizations. The field and phone bank cavalcade was then connected to an informal lobbyist team of CFL and UFCW representatives. Aldermen were first lobbied politely, and if more pressure was required, a firestorm was lit in their ward. One organizer described the scene: “We had the big union guys on the phones calling the aldermen and as soon as they heard someone was weak, they would call us and say . . . go to [this ward], or we have to send more into [that ward], and we would change the walk sheets and move that day” (interview 21 with community organizer, September 18, 2006). The power of this lobbying campaign was in its unpredictability: an alderman made a dubious commitment, and all of a sudden hundreds of phone calls would flood into his or her office from voting constituents demanding that they stiffen their resolve. Moreover, this pressure was occurring only months out from a city council election. It was the intermixing of soft “dinner conversations” with “moving num-

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bers in the field,” sometimes intentionally, and sometimes by coincidence, that eventually moved the ordinance out of committee and into the council for a vote. It was a dynamic mobilizing strategy. But it was not a multiscaled organizing strategy. As with the postcard campaign, it did not transform the supporters of the living wage into activists and connect them with ward-based organizations to build ongoing local pressure. Only in one ward was a local broker organization formed to fight for the living wage, and it was a short-term strategy done at arm’s length from the collaborative. A UFCW organizer with South Side organizing experience brought together a “team” of six member-based organizations in one ward. From May till July this group coordinated “door knocking, a lot of phone banking, talking to members in church and a press conference” focused on local issues such as a plant closure (interview 16 with UFCW organizer, September 15, 2006). Part of the local team’s power was that the locally scaled organizations were known to the local population and press and “were not going to go anywhere” (ibid.). This local organizing was one of the reasons why this ward’s alderman maintained his support for the living wage through all the council votes, even though that alderman was very close to Daley. In the weeks before the vote, a new media strategy supplemented the campaign. The coalition had faced very hostile local media. One organizer recalled, “The media was wholly against us, both in the editorial pages but also in some horrible, horrible coverage. . . . The Chicago Tribune wrote nine editorials against us and the Sun Times wrote six editorials against us” (interview 17 with community organizer, September 15, 2006). The collaborative knew it could not match the scale of this media attack or afford paid advertising in response. So its aim was to gate-crash pro-retail media events. To this end a couple of ACORN members took time off work to campaign full-time. Even so, the gap between staff strategizing and rank-and-file spokespeople led to a disconnect in the campaign’s media activity. This was because “members were not involved in planning the actions but were often the face of the actions” (interview 22 with organizer, September 19, 2006). One organizer recalled a press conference at city hall, which was led by a team of rank-and-file members who were giving their speeches when a representative from the mayor’s office came out and explained why the mayor wasn’t coming. This interruption required an off-script response:

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The person who was in charge of leading the action did not really have a response to it, because the prep work wasn’t really done. It felt like if that person and the other people who were speaking had actually truly been involved in thinking about the point we were trying to get out, then they would have been ready to handle anything that came out. . . . That action would have looked really different. (interview 22 with organizer, September 19, 2006)

This symbolized the gap in the collaborative’s scale. As this organizer explained, “It is not just outwardly how we look but how our internal processes work to make sure that people who are part of the campaign are learning new skills so they are not just bodies that come out to rallies” (interview 22 with organizer, September 19, 2006). Strategic decision making was the preserve of organizational staff. The collaborative did not organize in a way that exposed its membership to planning and campaigning decisions that could have allowed members to learn these strategizing skills. While the collaborative understandably prioritized winning passage of the ordinance, this limited the coalition’s ability to capitalize on the campaign by building ongoing membership capacity. As the vote drew close, tensions emerged between two unions’ political strategies. Two weeks before the council vote and outside its coalition work, the SEIU advertised three aldermanic trainings for anyone interested in standing as candidates in the 2007 elections. It sent shock waves through the city council. From an SEIU perspective, “it set a fire amongst the aldermen . . . it shook them up” (interview 19 with SEIU 880 senior staff person, September 18, 2006). Yet it upset the CFL, which had stretched the political capital of its aldermanic relationships to keep the ordinance alive. The SEIU’s tactics were a “different way of doing politics” that “looked like a threat,” which from the CFL’s perspective put at risk the relationships that the CFL had organized for the coalition (interview 25 with union official, September 20, 2006). Just before the vote, Mayor Daley publicly condemned the ordinance, but it was too little too late. The corruption scandals were biting, and the timing of the ordinance vote, six months out from the February 2007 elections, had worked like a charm in this uncertain political climate (Mihalopoulos 2006). While the machine increasingly looked as if it could not deliver for aldermen, the ward-based campaign “made it hard to vote against the living wage; it would be political suicide” (interview 17 with community organizer, September 15, 2006).

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And so, in a historic day for politics in Chicago, on July 26 — against the wishes and money of all the mega-retailers and the Daley machine — thirtyfive councilors passed the living wage ordinance. The night before and the day of the vote were a carnival of living wage activity, with a prayer vigil, a sleepover in the downtown First United Methodist Church, a dawn prayer service, and continuous rallies all day. But the morning after, the campaign was not over. The ordinance teetered, with retailers issuing press releases pushing the mayor to veto it. This countermobilization by retailers threatened a “retail flight” from Chicago (Chicago Sun Times 2006b; Mihalopoulos and Washburn 2006; Spielman 2006a, 2006b). Pressure was sharpest against aldermen who had development applications for retail stores under way (Davey and Barbaro 2006), but it did not sway popular opinion, which remained supportive of the ordinance (Fornek 2006). Mayor Daley made a string of public statements claiming that the living wage campaign was against the interests of African Americans, recycling the race card used in the No-Wal-Mart campaign (Ciokajilo 2006; Hussain 2006). On the question of race the coalition was vulnerable. While the collaborative’s living wage strategy had moved away from the problematic “white union versus black community dynamic” and had built considerable support among African American communities, some organizers reflected that its public messages did not contain a sufficient analysis of racial justice. For instance, one organizer argued that “we didn’t think about a media strategy that framed the issue as a campaign for racial justice; we thought that having an economic justice angle voiced by people of color was sufficient and it wasn’t. By not framing the fight as one for equity for African Americans and Latinos we allowed Daley to frame his efforts as doing so” (interview 26 with organizer, May 12, 2008). The collaborative underestimated the significance of race as a lingering issue. The mayor seized this opportunity to claim the high moral ground and use race to re-create divisions between the living wage campaign and West Side African American communities. Meanwhile, the coalition was showing signs of strain. It “kept doing what it was already doing,” but activity was slackening. The reliance on a staff-run multiward field operation rather than permanent locally scaled organizations made it difficult to keep up the pressure over a long period of time. Supervisors of the field campaign recognized that the staff were tiring, and organizations were being drained of resources (interview

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21 with community organizer, September 18, 2006). The same difficulties experienced in the first living wage campaign back in the late 1990s were now creeping into this campaign. On September 11, Mayor Daley announced he would veto the ordinance, and on September 13 he had a council vote that barely, but effectively, protected his veto. Three councilors shifted away from the living wage with a vote of thirty-one against the veto and seventeen in favor. This was one vote short of being a two-thirds veto-proof majority, the result of which was that the ordinance was extinguished. It was a loss but a win of sorts — this coalition had forced the mayor to use a veto for the first time in seventeen years, and when challenged he had been able to protect his veto by only one vote. The reverberations of the living wage campaign continued to be felt even after the veto that ended the ordinance. The coalition supported a successful push for raising the minimum wage in Illinois in November 2006. In February 2007, the collaborative helped raise the issue of living wages during the election through an advisory referendum that was on the ballot in three hundred precincts and received 80 percent popular support. Some of the coalition’s member organizations were involved in the council elections, targeting recalcitrant aldermen and using the living wage as a key reason to vote. This strategy transformed the council, removing seven hostile aldermen in the election and thereby reshaping the political environment. Although the collaborative did not win the big box living wage, it built a living wage political movement in Chicago. This was an enduring victory. Recasting the makeup of the council made progressive reforms easier to come by in the future. It also built public appreciation for living wages that could buttress future campaigns in the city, including wages campaigns for some of the collaborative’s union members. The collaborative’s relationships also endured, and through 2008 the coalition engaged in a period of reflection. Collaborative leaders explored the critical issues of organizing with a racial justice lens and considered strategies for undertaking deeper work in developing leaders. This period of honest internal evaluation of the coalition’s strengths and shortcomings offered the possibility of even stronger coalition work in the future. By 2009, the collaborative had re-engaged in social change campaigning, developing a new living wage ordinance in response to proposals for more Wal-Mart stores in Chicago.

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Reflections on Organizational Relationships and Coalition Success

The Grassroots Collaborative’s skillful coordination of the living wage campaign was a product of its strong organizational relationships. These were created through a culture of informal meetings and relationship building, with their durability anchoring a nimble campaign strategy that went head-to-head with Wal-Mart, other mega-retailers, and the Daley machine. The collaborative presents an opportunity to study the element of organizational relationships. One of the collaborative’s golden rules was that coalition membership was linked to organizational capacity. The ability to turn out members meant that participating organizations could deliver on their collective decisions. Initially, we saw that the collaborative’s understanding of organizational capacity was relatively narrow, based on “organized people” (“turning out members”) and “organized money” (“putting money on the table”). This was expanded for the living wage campaign to include the ability to move political relationships and provide in-kind resources. This U.S. case study shows that organizational capacity varies not only between organizations but also between countries. The capacity of community organizations to turn out members was significantly greater in this case study than in the Australian study. This resource was highly influenced by the history of U.S. community organizing that prioritizes leadership development and direct action. Successful coalitions translated organizational capacity into coalition strength through an effective structure. The collaborative learned two lessons about a coalition’s structure: strength was produced not by the quantity of organizations present but by the quality of their capacity and commitment, and a coalition needs centralized resources, such as coalition staff, to coordinate those relationships. The collaborative operated with a restricted membership, handpicking organizations based on a demonstrated capacity and commitment to building a progressive movement in Chicago. Likewise, the Living Wage Coalition identified strategic partners in the labor movement and the religious community that could make discrete contributions to winning the ordinance. Limiting membership to the coalition enabled groups to build trust. This in turn led them to share discrete forms of organizational power, such as the union’s political relationships, ACORN’s field capacity, the moral authority of religious leaders, and the collaborative’s ability to turn out its membership.

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Organizational commitment and trust were maintained through the management of the coalition coordinator. Snyder showed the important role that particular individuals play in coalitions. He took responsibility for executing the coalition’s collective wish to build a political strategy. This was significant because unlike in the public education coalition where the NSWTF’s direct interest in public education drove the coalition, the collaborative’s living wage ordinance was less intimately tied to or driven by a particular organization. Consequently the coordinator sustained organizational commitment to the campaign when interest levels waned. One organizer from a large community organization explained, “Ken gave us a goal and we went out and delivered it. I didn’t know much about it. . . . It was a trying phase of the campaign. . . . We just knew we had to keep it going” (interview 21 with community organizer, September 18, 2006). Similarly, Snyder’s role was to manage conflict when it arose, maintaining dialogue and facilitating compromises to ensure that parties did not walk away from the table. Essentially, the structure of the coalition strove to balance the perennial tension between autonomous organizational needs and coalition unity (Hyman 1989). This required managing the pressure for organizations to account to their own members as well as to one another. This was most effective when organizations were given the space to identify how they wanted to contribute to the coalition’s goals and were encouraged to do this in ways that simultaneously built their own power. For example, Metro Seniors held aldermanic forums on seniors’ issues and living wages at the same time. It is widely accepted that coalitions operate with some form of consensus decision making (Tufts 1998, 232; Johnston 2000), but we can see that methods for building consensus vary significantly between coalitions. For the collaborative, agreement was built on an “opt-in” model of decision making, where organizations that had an interest in a campaign bore the greatest responsibility for turning out their members. Organizations did not need to have the same interest in the coalition’s campaign issues. Rather, campaigns were chosen because they were strategically useful for building a popular movement or political pressure. Consequently, while there were never votes in the coalition and every organization could influence decisions, consensus did not require every organization to voice agreement to every decision. Instead, organizations whose capacity underwrote the campaign “carried more weight” (interview 15 with union staff person, September 14, 2006). In addition to broad coalition meet-

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ings, Snyder and a small group of key organizations, including ACORN, UFCW, SEIU 880, and CFL, met more regularly as the living wage campaign escalated to ensure that there was a constant involvement of core organizations in all the campaign decisions. For the collaborative, consensus did not mean that each group had an equal say; rather, decision making was influenced by each group according to its commitment and capacity. The informal influence of powerful organizations was offset by a recognition that decision making still needed to be “coalitional. . . . If you were a small group that didn’t have the ability to turn out very many people you still needed credit and a role” (interview 21 with community organizer, September 18, 2006). Finally, informal processes that bridge cultural and organizational differences between organizations strengthen coalitions. The collaborative handpicked organizations that had similar community organizing and turnout capacity. Several of the senior staff among the participating organizations had formerly worked at either ACORN or SEIU 880. This helped the coalition have a common language of organizing and a shared perspective on how to build power. Yet to win the living wage ordinance, the collaborative needed new allies. To diversify its organizational base, the coalition relied on a series of individual bridge builders (Rose 2000). These were people with experience inside the collaborative but also inside the religious or union networks that the collaborative needed to reach out to. In the religious community, the collaborative relied on two religious bridge builders who found building interfaith connections “a natural phenomenon“ (interview 20 with community organizer, September 18, 2006). Their experiences taught them to translate the campaign’s goals to the religious community, and they already had personal relationships with many of the pastors. SEIU 880’s head organizer, Keith Kelleher, was an important union bridge builder. His union organizing was based on the principles of community organizing, going door-to-door to sign up home-care and home child-care workers. Yet because he led one of the largest locals inside the SEIU state council, he was also able to help the collaborative connect to other SEIU locals. The collaborative increased the support it received from unions by expressing its community organizing in a language that was familiar to labor. For instance, in return for unions’ funding the field campaign, ACORN provided day-to-day statistical reports about who was being contacted and where. By expressing its field strategy in the form of a labor political campaign, ACORN ensured that its comprehensive strategy was well understood.

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TABLE 3.1 Understanding organizational relationships and structure Organizational culture and bridge builders

Organizational capacity and commitment

Coalition structure

Decision making

Winning outcomes

Strong capacity and commitment increased influence on decision makers

Inviting strategic coalition partners built coalition influence

Formal meetings and planning helped coalition impact decision makers

Bridge builders brought organizations with different types of power together

Supportive political climate

Strong organizations with diverse capacity increased influence

Sharing power by jointly planning strategies built coalition influence

Direct connection not claimed

Bringing together diverse organizations increased influence

Sustaining relationships

It was easier to sustain relationships when everyone brought capacity to the table

Standards for participation made agreement easier Coalition staff and offices helped

Opt in process for participating in campaigns sustained relationships

Bridge builders helped translate strategies between organizations There was a similar organizational culture

Building the capacity of participating organizations

Direct connection not claimed

Direct connection not claimed

Negotiating coalition agenda expanded the agenda of organizations

Bridge builders helped organizations learn new practices

I connect the specific measures of organizational relationships and coalition success in table 3.1. In terms of the other coalition elements, while the collaborative’s common concern was based on an enduring shared organizational interest in building progressive political power in Chicago, the coalition had to cultivate public and member interest in the issues on which it campaigned. We saw the coalition’s public messages transform from the negative No Wal-Mart to living wages, and in the process its campaigns shifted from

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being politically isolated to setting the agenda in the city. The living wage message was so successful that hostile retailers started calling the ordinance the big-box ordinance to avoid the potent language of living wages (Spielman 2006b). The campaigns demonstrated how a coalition could cultivate member commitment, with the No-Wal-Mart campaign requiring member education work inside ACORN, SEIU, and UFCW. Similarly, SEIU 880 showed how to expand member commitment when it linked the general living wage claim to members’ identity and interest as low-wage workers. At the same time, we saw the collaborative’s common concern diluted by the issue of racial justice, particularly when Mayor Daley used the issue of race to attack the coalition’s campaigns. On the whole, I think that the collaborative’s understanding of organizational self-interest was deeper than an overlapping concern for an issue. It was based instead on organizations’ shared desire to transform political power in the city. It was different from typical characterizations of coalitions that are defined by a single issue or at most based upon a discrete agenda, like health care or education (Tarrow 1994, 145). The collaborative’s capacity to sustain multi-issue relationships that moved from immigration to living wages showed how coalitions do not need to be based on a single agenda. They can move beyond the ebb and flow of a particular issue-based goal by renegotiating the issues they focus on over time. I found that the question of scale proved to be a challenge for the collaborative. In terms of political opportunities, the coalition worked ahead of the curve, having learned to escalate its political campaigns in line with the pace of electoral deadlines. The rushed work of the No-Wal-Mart campaign contrasted with the steady planning of the living wage ordinance. Pressuring the council also required multiscaled power, which was most successfully organized across the city rather than in specific wards. While the coalition sustained multiscaled mobilizations through door knocking, ward meetings, and phone banking, these mobilizations were built by citybased offices and made to happen by centrally employed staff. Unlike the work of the Australian coalition, these efforts did not extend to the establishment of a multiscaled structure. Overall, there was no doubt from the participants that this coalition was a dramatic success. I argue that success cannot be measured by policy victories alone but is evident in the sustainability of the Collaborative’s relationships and its ability to dramatically change its political climate.

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This sentiment was captured by one of its organizers: “This is it in Chicago, in terms of community-labor coalitions — this is the one that’s got the broadest labor participation and the broadest community participation and the highest-profile issue” (interview 17 with community organizer, September 15, 2006). In terms of coalition success, we saw that the collaborative’s long-term focus on building political power was more effective in shifting the political climate and sustaining relationships than in achieving individual political outcomes or internal organizational development. The collaborative prioritized these kinds of success because its strategy was informed by both the constraints it faced and the ambitious social and political change that it sought to achieve. The collaborative faced powerful corporate adversaries and a relatively unsupportive set of political institutions. Unlike the coalitions in Australia and Canada, this coalition contested power with the private sector, albeit a contest fought through the city council. The No-Wal-Mart campaign had to react to Wal-Mart’s ability to craft aldermanic allies and community devotees. While the living wage campaign had the advantage of organizing under the political radar in 2005, it faced significant obstacles in 2006 with threats of capital flight and almost universal opposition from the city’s media. Moreover, Chicago’s political institutions, and particularly the mayor, had distant relationships with the collaborative’s union and community organizations. Even where individual aldermen maintained relationships with the CFL, the Daley machine had become more closely tied to business since the 1990s. Moreover, the U.S. political context was generally hostile to unions, with the NLRB providing no useful assistance for union organizing in Wal-Mart or regulating the conditions of Wal-Mart workers. In response, the collaborative chose to prioritize building a certain kind of organizational strength, focusing on sustaining organizational relationships rather than investing in membership capacity. Organizers knew that sustaining relationships, even across different issues and campaigns, was a critical element for building a politically powerful movement in Chicago. This choice also played off a comparative advantage in the U.S. political context. This U.S. coalition had relatively strong community organizations with established leadership development programs that could be relied on to turn out members to coalition events. In terms of the coalition elements, I found that the collaborative placed primary importance on strong organizational relationships and structure.

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The coalition’s common concern served this strategy, with organizations committing to joint work based on shared values, a mutual interest in political power and a strategic plan. On top of this, the opt-in model for decision making allowed organizations to participate in campaigns according to their degree of organizational interest in the issue. The coalition’s scale also served this strategic alignment. The collaborative relied on individual organizations to be responsible for member development. The collaborative’s role was to mobilize that membership in pursuit of progressive political power. The coalition’s social-change program was remarkably ambitious for such a hostile climate, requiring a heavy investment of resources. This reinforced the strategic choices that characterized the collaborative’s coalition unionism. To win the living wage ordinance, the coalition had to build sufficient political momentum to demonstrate the viability of the ordinance to labor and other community organizations. It then had to prove there was popular pressure for the ordinance at the council. This repeatedly required the coalition to make strategic choices about its scale. To build pressure for the ordinance, the coalition focused on mobilizing the largest quantity of signatures or phone calls as a measure of its political power. Eventually, however, we saw that the choice to prioritize political influence in pursuit of social change forced the coalition to trade off its ability to develop new capacity among its membership. The collaborative’s strategic campaign planning and decision making was exclusively the domain of staff. I argue that this concentration had the effect of distancing the coalition’s work from the members of the participating organizations. Even though organization members were active participants, their involvement in door knocking or rallies did not shape how the campaign progressed. Strategic lessons were absorbed by organizers at collaborative meetings — such as how to mount political campaigns, the importance of timing, how to effectively communicate demands, the unions’ knowledge about politics, and the community organizations’ ability to turn the living wage ordinance into a tool of workplace regulation. While actively developing the strategic skills of the staff, the campaign had a limited effect on the skills of the membership. The collaborative’s limited scale also had ramifications for its political power. Because the coalition’s relationships were organized at the scale of the city, its campaigns were limited in their ability to make a political impression in specific wards. The collaborative worked with the resources

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it had, and so organizations with a ward-specific membership — like BPNC or Metro Seniors — took action in target areas. Yet I found that the collaborative struggled to cultivate political power beyond its membership base. This was evident in the No-Wal-Mart campaign, where the coalition remained an outsider on the West Side. It also meant that the collaborative did not have the space to capitalize on popular interest in the campaign. We can contrast this to the experience of the Canadian coalition, described in the next chapter, which used a petition campaign as an opportunity for creating permanent local organizations that exercised sustained political influence. The collaborative’s tactics were not organized in a way that sought to attract a more permanent volunteer base. I suggest that local broker organizations could have provided the coalition with space to retain interested individuals and members and to build their campaigning skills for the immediate campaign as well as for future campaigns. Yet the strategic focus on the city scale meant that the collaborative did not direct resources to setting up local broker organizations in wards. We saw the consequences of this, for if local broker organizations had been established early on in either the No-Wal-Mart or the postcard campaign, then those local groups could have increased the political influence of the collaborative during the living wage vote and the veto. Instead, the collaborative relied on centrally organized volunteers for phone banking or staff for the field campaign. These proved effective in the short term, particularly in the way they could be flexibly deployed across Chicago’s fifty wards. Yet we saw their capacity weaken over time as staff became tired or disengaged. We saw the opportunity cost of not building local broker organizations in the usefulness of the UFCW organizer’s local team experiment. This local team’s capacity to sustain political pressure went beyond that of the field campaign because it was rooted in a particular ward. Its neighborhood organizing contributed to keeping the local alderman loyal to the living wage cause. Overall, the collaborative’s coalition unionism was driven by the element of organizational relationships. The coalition brought together like-minded organizations for long-term campaigning. The capacity for frank reflection and strong personal relationships generated common concern and organizational commitment. Yet as in so many coalitions, we saw that the collaborative’s ambitious social-change goal forced it to trade off other benchmarks of coalition success. I found that the cen-

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tralized relationships that gave the coalition its trust and strength also mitigated its ability to generate multiple scales of influence and participation. All campaigns have limited resources and face political environments with comparative advantages. Playing to the strengths in its political context, the collaborative made the strategic decision to rely on its organization’s mobilization capacity rather than develop its own multiscaled power. To respond to Chicago’s hostile political structure, the collaborative chose to sustain a tight-knit space for strategic decision making. The collaborative’s alignment of coalition elements was skillfully suited to meet its challenging environment. Yet a multiscaled structure could have helped the coalition magnify its political influence as well as offer its participating organizations further opportunities for member development. The collaborative’s successful organizational relationships provided specific advantages for its participating unions, particularly the UFCW. The collaborative was able to provide the UFCW with supportive relationships with community organizations that added resources to a campaign that was in the union’s strategic interest. Both the No-Wal-Mart and living wage campaigns touched the UFCW’s desire to regulate the conditions of retail workers and place limits on nonunion retailers like WalMart. Yet the UFCW was not capable of running these kinds of campaigns on its own. We could see that these campaigns would only succeed if the UFCW’s vested interest in contesting a nonunion employer could manifest as a socially interested goal. The collaborative not only translated the vested interest of regulating Wal-Mart into a social goal of living wages for big-box workers but brought together the constellation of organizational power that could deliver this. The collaborative enabled the UFCW to access diverse constituencies and political strategies (like the field campaign) that it could not create on its own. The relationship with the collaborative also challenged the business union instincts of the UFCW. The living wage ordinance was not a traditional kind of U.S. labor ordinance, because if it had been successful it would have improved wages and conditions for both union and nonunion employees. The collaborative was responsible for broadening the union’s political agenda because only a socially interested ordinance that improved the conditions of all retail workers would be successful. The collaborative generated power for the UFCW because the coalition relationships worked in a positive-sum way. The UFCW showed a willingness to embrace a new type of workplace regulation. If it had been

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inflexibly committed to the idea of regulating only Wal-Mart or unionized employers, neither the collaborative nor the council would have supported the ordinance. Moreover, the coalition’s agenda and organizational relationships were sufficiently open to ensure that a variety of organizations had an interest in the campaign’s success. For the CFL and SEIU, interest was based on improved political power. For the community organizations it was about building a longer-term relationship with labor. For ACORN and SEIU 880, it was about extending their credentials as living wage organizations. The UFCW’s own interests were more successfully advanced because the coalition was able to collectively pursue the strategic interests of a variety of partners.

Chapter 4

The Ontario Health Coalition

Imagine compelling your opponent to count the votes for and against an issue that you favor and that they have resisted. Every time they count a vote, they are measuring how much support you have and how much opposition they face. By tallying all the ballots they are calculating how out of touch they are. Natalie Mehra, the coordinator of the Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) did exactly this. For some time she had intended to launch a citizens’ referendum in Ontario that would let people vote in support of public health care. In June 2005 she finally had her chance to organize a community plebiscite about a proposal to build a public-private partnership hospital in the area surrounding Niagara Falls. Out of the scores of organizations working on health care in Ontario, only the OHC had the ability to carry out the plebiscite. The OHC brought together numerous groups that were predominantly based in Toronto — yet its plebiscite campaign reached far beyond the city. The coalition was provincewide because it was linked to local health coalitions, like the Niagara Health Coalition, scattered across dozens of the province’s towns. In June 2005 in a community center in Niagara-on-the-Lake, government politicians counted the 12,700 out of 13,000 votes that opposed a public-private partnership hospital. The plebiscite seeded local awareness and galvanized the anger of the community, which demanded that the government should “build their hospital right.” Canadians once again had taken action to defend public health care, a national icon. Between 2001 and 2006, the OHC consisted of eight unions and a wide

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variety of community organizations, including seniors’ organizations, the left-nationalist Council of Canadians, and approximately thirty-five active local health coalitions situated around the province. Although established by the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL), the OHC operated at arm’s length from its participant organizations. Structurally it was unlike the public education coalition, which consistently remained under the control of the NSWTF, or the Grassroots Collaborative, whose strategies were spearheaded by community organizations. The OHC had a separate coalition office, staff, and a large number of diverse participant organizations, the most important of which were its locally based health coalitions.

The Ontario Health Coalition in Context

The Canadian neoliberal state — with the moderating force of a multiparty political system — has been somewhat open to popular influence. Unions and community organizations have made their mark on state policy. Yet in Canada, coalitions’ social-change victories are a more recent phenomenon than those in Australia — Canadian unions built a labor party half a century after their Australian counterparts. At the same time, progressive political power has been more successful in Canada than in the United States, particularly through Canadian unions’ participation in the New Democratic Party (NDP). The tendency for the NDP to achieve only minority-party status has meant that Canadian unions and community organizations have needed to mobilize public opinion as well as political relationships to achieve social reforms. This need for popular backing contributed to the development of Canadian coalition practice. In Canada, union political influence was initially complicated by political and geographic fragmentation. While independent, socialist, and syndicalist movements spread in unions from the 1880s and were prominent during the 1920s, the regionalization of these movements fragmented their influence on the state (Palmer 1992). Canadian union political activism was also tempered by the American Federation of Labor’s lack of interest in politics, because in the early twentieth century most Canadian unions were affiliated with U.S. labor (Babcock 1974; Irving and Seager 1996, 253). Consequently, early industrial regulation, such as the 1907 provision for compulsory conciliation, was established at the will of the state rather than the unions (Palmer 1992, 162 – 63).

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Leftist party formation accompanied economic crisis, with the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) forming in 1932. Economic downturn in the prairies in the 1920s and rising unemployment in the 1930s created common interests between farmers and labor, which in turn overlapped with an emerging urban socialism (McCormack 1977; Laycock 1990). This political alliance became part of a popular movement to pressure for state intervention to counter the Great Depression, a response that was slow to develop in 1930s Canada under Conservative and Liberal Party rule. Initially these parties were fixated on classical economic prescriptions such as surplus budgeting. Keynesian policies and industrial reforms followed only after those reforms had been adopted in the United States (Heron 1983). Collective bargaining rights emerged out of the political successes of the CCF and escalating industrial unrest during World War II. As a result, Canada’s policy of union recognition and enterprisebased collective bargaining remained more union friendly than similar industrial regulations in the United States (Heron 1989). Yet compared with that in Australia, the regulatory environment was more decentralized, with industry-wide workplace standards difficult to achieve (Irving and Seager 1996). The alignment of popular pressure through coalitions and CCF agitation became a feature of Canadian welfare state development, as the CCF and later the NDP were rarely a majority government. After World War II, the CCF-NDP’s minority party status sometimes fortuitously combined with the Liberal Party’s inability to win government outright, allowing the CCF-NDP to combine social movement and electoral action to influence the minority Liberal government (Chandler 1977). Reinforcing this development, the CCF consolidated its relationship with unions in the 1950s. By 1961, a newly united Canadian labor movement aligned itself with a political party. The CCF transitioned into the New Democratic Party, institutionalizing a labor party with formal union affiliation. This further legitimized union engagement in politics and spread through unions an ideological interest in social and political issues as well as industrial concerns (Bray and Rouillard 1996). Unlike the ALP, the NDP never adopted a commitment to socialism, nor did it entrench union control of its conferences (Archer and Whitehorn 1997, 50). The dual strategy of political pressure through the NDP and unions’ social agitation in the community successfully opened the state to popular influence — for instance, securing universal health care. Unions had prioritized winning universal health insurance in 1956, and this demand

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was buttressed by a Medicare regime that had been established by CCF premier Tommy Douglas in Saskatchewan Province (Maioni 1998, 128). This workable model for national health care received backing from a Royal Commission on Health Services, and in 1962 Douglas built further momentum by taking the health care campaign to the national government. NDP support was necessary but not sufficient to secure Medicare. It is important to note that through the 1963 and 1965 elections the Pearson Liberal government remained a minority government, with the NDP holding the balance of power (Taylor 1990). Yet winning national health insurance required the combination of popular pressure focused on the Liberal Party and union political relationships with the NDP. A health care charter campaign combined with the NDP’s representative role helped to create the conditions for passing the Medicare legislation in December 1966 (Maioni 1998). Canadian unionism became larger and more politicized in the 1960s as public sector unionism grew. Union membership expanded from 32 percent of employees in 1961 to 39 percent in 1979 (Bray and Rouillard 1996). Growth was accompanied by waves of militancy; for instance, strikes by the postal workers in the 1960s helped extend collective bargaining rights. Public-sector unions in particular developed strong relationships with new social movements, such as the women’s movement and peace movement (Kumar and Murray 2006). The growth of public-sector unions led to a “renationalization” of the union movement, as unions like the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) were not linked to U.S. internationals. Canadian unions’ identity developed a more activist and leftist ideological current than in the United States, exemplified by the 1985 split by the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) from the United Auto Workers under the rubric of social movement unionism (Yates 1993; Gindin 1995). Strong public-sector unions resisted neoliberalism when it emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, defending the Canadian state. For instance, the militant wing of the union movement, led by the postal workers, defied Prime Minister Trudeau’s wage freezes. These campaigns resulted in modest union density increases, contrasting with the declines in density in Australia and the United States during this period. Yet the resulting strike action was depicted negatively in the mass media and was said to have hurt the public more than the employer (Palmer 1992, 357). Coalitions emerged at this time as a new union tool of resistance to neoliberal policies. In 1983 in British Columbia, a double attack of anti-

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union legislation and mass sackings of frontline public-sector workers led unions to initiate Operation Solidarity, a union partnership with a broad set of community organizations working on the effects of social service cuts (Palmer 1992). Yet union dominance and debates over tactics diluted the contributions of community organizations, and the coalition was scuttled when several unions reached a compromise with government (Munro and O’Hara 1988; Palmer 1992, 368). Despite this, coalitions became an increasingly mainstream strategy across a union movement committed to protecting its welfare state and advancing social justice (Gindin 1995; Kumar and Murray 2006). For instance, another major coalition, the Pro-Canada network, was launched in 1987 against the Conservative Party’s free trade policies (Panitch and Swartz 2003, 157). These waves of coalition activity also supported the expansion of active and socially engaged community organizations. Powerful identitybased movements, particularly among women and around welfare issues, emerged through the 1980s. Several social movements were consolidated into sustained organizations; for instance, the Council of Canadians (CC) was founded in 1985 as a mass-based organization that opposed the economic agenda of corporate-led globalization, aiming to protect Canadian independence (CC 2007). Nonetheless, the Canadian state continued to implement neoliberal policies even when the NDP came to power in Ontario in the early 1990s. Unlike Australian unions, which formed a Prices and Incomes Accord with the Labor Party, Canadian public-sector unions actively resisted an NDP “social contract” that aimed to freeze wages during the 1990s recession. Tensions emerged between public-sector and private-sector unions during this period: many private-sector unions (excluding the CAW), disagreed with the public-sector unions’ campaign and called on all unions to support the NDP (Tanguay 2002). Coalitions became a somewhat controversial tactic in Ontario when the Conservative Harris government replaced the NDP government. Between 1995 and 1998, mostly public-sector unions (and the CAW) built city-based coalitions to organize “days of action” in response to Premier Harris’s extreme privatization and industrial relations reforms. A committee led by union and community co-chairs organized these political strikes and weekend protests. The political strategy, however, caused sharp divisions in the movement. An ideological fissure developed. On one side leaders of some public-sector unions and the CAW believed that a broadly based social movement was necessary to hold the Harris government and future gov-

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ernments to account. Against them, leaders of the NDP-loyal private-sector unions prioritized rebuilding political support for the NDP (Tanguay 2002). While the unions used the days of action to try to confront the shortcomings of pure electoral strategies, these short-lived mobilizations had a limited political effect and struggled to maintain the participation of the rank and file (Munro 1997; Panitch and Swartz 2003, 191). The days of action sparked greater interest in coalitions, but they were not a model of coalition success. At the turn of the century, Canadian unions experienced an increasing sense of crisis in bargaining power and density, albeit not as significant a collapse as that which occurred in Australia or the United States (Fairbrother and Yates 2003). By 2006, union density was still relatively strong at 30 percent; however, influence on state policies had become more marginal. This was particularly the case in Ontario, which was governed by Conservative and Liberal parties from 1995 till 2006 (when this case study ends). In this context, coalition unionism was identified as an important element in a broader appeal for union revitalization (Kumar and Schenk 2006). Coalitions continued to flourish, sometimes controversially, as an alternative or at least a supplementary source of political power, particularly for public-sector unions.

The Emergence of the Ontario Health Coalition

Health care is intimately tied to Canadian national identity. Tommy Douglas, the father of Medicare, was chosen as the “Greatest Canadian” ever in spring 2004 (Hutsul 2004; CBC 2007), and polls repeatedly show majority support for universal health insurance (Boyle 2001). Canada’s national health care system has two elements: universal health insurance called Medicare and the government financing of public hospitals and medical care, institutionalized through the 1984 Canada Health Act. National health insurance is enshrined through national legislation, and hospitals are primarily funded and run by provincial governments. By the early 1990s, the ideological and fiscal pressures associated with neoliberalism endangered the universality of Canadian health care. Conservative governments in particular focused on austerity and fiscal restraint. In Ontario, the result was a simultaneous $800 million cut to the health care budget and a 30 percent tax cut, which further reduced rev-

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enue for health care (Armstrong, Armstrong, and Fuller 2000). At the same time, federal budget cuts effectively halved the national health care subsidies provided to the provinces (Leduc Browne 2000, 16). These cuts caused a well-documented decline in care: in Ontario nine hundred acute and chronic beds were eliminated because of cuts to hospital funding (Government of Ontario 1998). Mehra from the OHC argued that the system was in crisis: “There were huge waiting lists for surgeries, cancer treatment centers were canceled; there was no planning for the future of the health system” (interview, June 29, 2005). In December 1995, in swift response to the Harris government’s threats of privatization, the OFL decided to reconstitute the OHC. The OHC was originally founded in 1980 by a group led by community health organizations that had championed the Canada Health Act, but by 1990 it had been disbanded (Harding interview, July 13, 2005; OHC 1980). The OHC was re-formed on a commitment to equal partnership between unions and community organizations, with a co-chair from each constituency (Harris, OFL interview, May 11, 2006). This structure mirrored the days of action coalitions. The formal recognition of community organizations in the coalition’s structure acknowledged the role they had played in founding the earlier version of the OHC, and it ensured that the coalition would have some independence from the large number of resource-rich unions who reconstituted the OHC in 1995. Joining the OHC were health care unions such as CUPE and the Ontario Public Sector Employees Union (OPSEU), as well as the two leading private-sector unions (which later began organizing in health care), the CAW and the United Steelworkers. They were later joined by the Ontario Nurses Association (ONA), the SEIU, the UFCW, and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation. Of those unions, this case study focuses on CUPE. At the time, they were the largest union in Canada, representing a variety of public-sector workers. CUPE saw itself as a social justice union with a history of engaging in coalition work, particularly against privatization (Ryan interview, May 2006). In the beginning, the OHC’s community representatives were mainly seniors’ groups, such as the umbrella organization, the Ontario Coalition of Senior Citizens. In 2000 they were joined by the Council of Canadians, a member-based advocacy group committed to progressive values and opposed to privatization. From its inception the coalition had a paid coordinator and an office. Initially, the primary decision-making group was an ever-changing open collective that met once a month. The early participants acknowledged

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that this structure was a limitation to the coalition. While the OHC organized a lot of events, its partner organizations, particularly the unions, did not have a significant ongoing commitment. Between 1996 and 2000, under the leadership of Lynn Simons, the power of the OHC expanded. The coalition made three strategic decisions that set it on track for its campaigns between 2001 and 2006 — benchmarking its common concern, tightening its organizational relationships, and building a multiscaled coalition structure. The OHC elaborated an agreed statement of vision. This included a somewhat radical policy that called for the elimination of the privatization of health care (OHC 1995). The statement became the baseline of the coalition’s common concern. Later, when one union raised objections to an antiprivatization campaign because it had union members in the private sector, the OHC pointed to the statement as a nonnegotiable policy (interview 7 with coalition participant, July 11, 2005). In 1997, the OHC ended its collective decision-making processes and vested authority in a representative administrative committee to try to regularize decision making. Up until then, the open collective structure had been problematic, as one early coalition participant recalled: “It was a disaster” because “individuals counted as much as CUPE with a million or so members” (interview 7, July 11, 2005). The new representative administrative committee had equal numbers of union and community organizations. Decision making still kept its collective form. The committee operated by consensus and steered away from majority votes. By enfranchising consistent representatives from a set number of important organizations through regular meetings, it simultaneously built a space for building trust and consensus across a diverse group of committee members. These innovations built a coalition structure that was at arm’s length from its participants. Steady rather than haphazard organizational relationships would make for predictable decision making, but the union representatives in particular were middle-ranking officials, not union leaders. These individuals soon became health care champions and bridge builders in their own union, working to build support for the latest campaigns. But while unions made annual financial contributions that covered the costs of the coordinator’s wage and a small budget for campaigns, the union-coalition relationships were distant. The statement of vision had worked out what the coalition would not campaign on, but it did not attract strong union interest and commitment, as the goals appeared broad and general.

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The OHC’s most audacious modernization during this period was to develop local health care coalitions. These evolved separate from the OHC, springing up in union cities like Windsor, Thunder Bay, Kingston, and Hamilton, where politicized union activists decided to join the health care campaign by holding actions and events at a local scale (OHC 1996, 1997). Although called local health coalitions, these bodies were more like volunteer groups. They were convened by union and community cochairs, who coordinated the participation of staff as well as rank-and-file union and community activists in particular geographic areas. In 1998 the OHC used a research grant to employ a staff person who organized health care hearings and developed more local coalitions (Michelle Lupa interview, October 28, 2005). The existence of local coalitions was necessary but not sufficient to build a local and provincewide coalition. To help coordinate between the groups, the local coalitions were brought onto the administrative committee (OHC 1999). Then in 2000, the OHC benefited from having a local health coalition representative, Mehra, apply for the position of OHC coordinator (OHC 2000). Mehra helped make the local coalitions the OHC’s primary campaign vehicle. She used her experience from the Kingston coalition to help set up more local groups, building what she described as “an infrastructure of local organizations . . . so we had a chance of winning in every area. . . . We would cover the whole geography” (interview, November 11, 2004). Thus, after five years, the OHC had developed a powerful multiscaled capacity, with local health coalitions mirroring the OHC in local towns across the province. It had a reliable set of organizational relationships, with a coordinator sitting above a formal group of decision makers from sixteen organizations. As I show through the case study, this coalition was weakened by its distant common concern, where organizational interest was relatively indirect, diminishing organizational commitment. Between 2001 and 2006 there were three phases to the OHC campaigns, each one distinct because of its focus on different issues or use of varying strategies. The first was the Save Medicare campaign; then came the public-private partnership campaign and finally a plebiscite campaign. In addition to these, the OHC undertook many other significant campaigns during these years. When I discuss union involvement, the stories concentrate on the work of the CUPE. I do not mean for this focus to detract from the deep participation and involvement of a wide range of unions and unionists in the OHC. I chose this union because it was the

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most active union overall, playing a leading role in the public-private partnerships campaign. Examining the changing role of this union over time allows for a focus on the possibilities and limitations of coalitions for union power.

Saving Medicare, April 2001 to November 2002

On April 4, 2001, the Canadian government created the Romanow royal commission to examine the future sustainability of the public Medicare system; it was led by the former Ontario NDP premier Roy Romanow (Chrétien 2001). The royal commission responded to and sought to manage growing political pressure in favor of privatization. Senator Michael Kirby, a Conservative member of Parliament and board member of the private Nursing Home Extendicare, had recently initiated a Senate inquiry in January 2001 to query the public health system, and there was also a string of provincial health inquiries in Alberta, Quebec, and Saskatchewan (Fraser 2001; Kirby and Le Breton 2002). Similarly, in late 2000 and early 2001, Ontario’s premier, Michael Harris, began a concerted media campaign advocating privatization as an alternative to an inadequate public system (Mackie 2000; McCarten 2001). For the OHC, the royal commission was both a threat and an opportunity. It was a space the privatization lobby could use to try to break universal health insurance, but OHC participants suspected that the commission could also be used to build a movement that could fortify Medicare (OHC 2002e). Polling backed public health care (Brennan and Boyle 2001), and talk of weakening Medicare conjured up images of the unpopular United States private health insurance system (Leduc Browne 2000; Rosser 2001, 4). In February 2001, Mehra called a special administrative committee meeting and proposed that the OHC needed to do “something extraordinary” to save Medicare (Mehra interview, June 29, 2005). The solution was a sweeping canvassing campaign organized around the Romanow Commission. The plan was the idea of Ross Sutherland, a member of the Kingston Health Coalition (KHC) and a CUPE union steward. He suggested that the OHC should go door-to-door in defense of Medicare, using the “electoral strategies” of lawn signs and door knocking in a nonelectoral setting to get petitions signed and to “talk to people” (Sutherland interview, July 12, 2005). Sutherland was a bridge builder

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between the Kingston coalition and CUPE, and he used his position in CUPE to meet with CUPE Ontario’s president, Sid Ryan (ibid.; CUPE 2001). For Ryan, Sutherland’s idea affirmed his belief that unions need to “build community influence” using “direct strategies like doorknocking” (Ryan interview, May 8, 2006). Embracing a canvassing strategy was “not a difficult leap,” according to CUPE’S OHC administrative committee representative, given the “obvious connection between [members’] jobs and community services” (Allen interview, July 5, 2005). As Michael Hurley, the president of CUPE’s hospital bargaining unit (CUPE-OCHU, Ontario Council of Hospital Unions) explained, because CUPE was the largest health care union, it had a “primary interest” in health care, “more so than other unions,” because the union’s future was tied to health care (interview, May 10, 2006). CUPE’s Health Care Council backed the novel campaign proposal, and then CUPE instigated approval for the provincewide canvass at the OHC’s administrative committee. Other members of the committee were broadly receptive; door knocking was a familiar technique for organizations used to electoral campaigning (Tarrow 1994). Yet adapting an electoral tool to a nonelectoral situation “had never been done, it was a totally new way to organize and broaden support” (Mehra 2005). Building a campaign budget was difficult because the OHC lacked a reliable financial base (Allen interview, July 5, 2005). The coalition depended entirely on donations from its member organizations. So the administrative committee representatives leveraged “goodwill” with the individual unions, enabling the OHC to “beg and borrow” to make up its campaign budget (interview 11 with coalition participant, October 27, 2005). More than $100,000 was raised and spent on short-term campaign staff, lawn signs, ribbons, leaflets, and petitions. In addition, many union locals and labor councils subsidized the purchase of campaign materials for their local areas (Vermay interview, May 9, 2006). Unions also paid for several union workplace stewards to come out of paid employment and work full-time on the campaign (Mehra interview, June 29, 2005). This bold campaign’s clout came from the fact that it simultaneously ran locally and provincially. The coordinated work of fifty local groups produced political pressure that was provincewide. Between January and May 2002, the OHC coordinator and several employed staff planned parallel activities with local groups across the province. The climax would be a coordinated local canvass, launched after a series of escalating local events, including meetings, assemblies, and community outreach (Mehra 2005).

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To build consensus for this plan, a CUPE staff person proposed a provincewide “assembly” in December 2001 that could “engage the local coalitions” (Mehra interview, November 11, 2004). There was, however, a limit on the decision-making role of the assembly because a draft action plan had already been debated and agreed to by the administrative committee before the assembly was held (interview 9 with local coalition participant, July 13, 2005; participant observation at 2005 OHC Assembly, October 29, 2005). While there was extensive consultation with the local groups before the assembly, it was difficult to balance the decision-making power of the administrative committee and individuals at the assembly. One local coalition participant who had traveled a significant distance to attend the assembly noted with some frustration that much of what was discussed “was really decided before” the event (ibid.). This reflected a tension between the need for the coalition to be accountable to the organizations funding it and the need to be open to the engagement of new participants at the same time. It encapsulates one of the challenges of decision making across multiple scales. A successful canvass hinged on the OHC’s local coalitions. Regional canvassing training sessions allowed local coalitions to plan and build their canvass to suit the conditions of their particular city. Key volunteers from local coalitions attended these meetings, and then ran their local canvass. An effective canvass also required the group to expand its volunteer base. Local groups were encouraged to do this through ad hoc events and an open decision-making structure (OHC 2002f). Drop-in offices and subgroups were established for organizing publicity, outreach, and logistics (Mehra interview, June 29, 2005). The local scale of these coalitions allowed groups to generate media and awareness, consistent with a provincewide timetable of events (Daily Mercury 2002b; Daily Mercury 2002a; Muhtadie 2002). Locally, these coalitions thrived on volunteers’ taking ownership over the campaign, which sometimes displayed a dash of parochialism. For instance, a Kingston health activist described it as follows: “Kingston is very independent. . . . People regularly changed campaign materials if they came from Toronto. . . . They really wanted to have control of the campaign” (interview 8 with local coalition participant, July 12, 2005). This process not only increased the activity inside local health care coalitions but gave birth to dozens of new local coalitions across the province (OHC 2002a, 2002f ). Union involvement in the local canvass was somewhat limited. Unions could be relied on for financial support, but few unions provided volun-

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teers; “They gave us money, they put some staff on full-time release to support the canvass, and union staff gave time to the local committee” (interview 9 with local health coalition participant, July 13, 2005). Assistance, however, “didn’t run deep to union activists or members” (ibid.). Union participation increased, however, when there were individuals with union relationships to drive it, exemplified by the bridge building work of an active union co-chair or regular union attendance at meetings. In Durham and Kingston, rank-and-file bridge builders like Patty Route from OPSEU and Ross Sutherland from CUPE connected their local coalition to workplace activists. Where the local coalition did not have strong union participants, as in Brampton, union engagement was minimal (interview 6 with participant from Brampton Health Coalition (BHC), July 7, 2005). Other factors that explained variation in union participation included where the health campaign fitted among the list of priorities. Frequently “busy union activists were unable to participate” (interview 1 with union staff person, July 4, 2005). Sometimes, union leaders resisted participating because they did not sufficiently trust the coalition volunteers — for example, when one coalition volunteer was not given permission to make phone calls to a list of union members to find volunteers for the canvass (interview 9 with local coalition participant, July 13, 2005). Union training played a role in influencing union participation. In Kingston it was noted that among all the unions “the CAW were very good at getting their members out . . . because of their [union] education” (interview 8 with local coalition participant, July 12, 2005). There was more union support for the campaign at the provincial and national scales, where union resources were concentrated and staffers were available. Nationally, private-sector unions were asked to “contact major private-sector employers and industry leaders to publicly support Medicare” (Mehra interview, May 8, 2006). The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) and the CAW were key participants, with the CAW successfully lobbying the Big Three auto manufacturers (General Motors, Ford, and Daimler Chrysler) to publicly support Medicare (CAW 2002; Payne 2002). The unions zeroed in on the employers’ direct interest; a publicly funded health care system meant that health care was not an employer cost, as it was in the United States (CAW 2002). In this way, union leaders used their economic power and industrial relationships to leverage an ad hoc alliance with business that championed the Medicare cause. The OHC unions also unveiled workplace education campaigns, which

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yielded uneven success. During April and May organizers and stewards circulated leaflets at workplaces. Some unions, such as CUPE and CAW, kicked off workplace training and outreach strategies. Internal union education work occurred when the union had interested workplace leaders (interview 1 with union staff person, July 4, 2005). This was difficult because union stewards were often responsible for both union business, such as grievance handling, and coalition campaigning. For one union staff person, the upshot was that “the same people were being called on to do union work as well as coalition work,” and “these professionals were overworked because of the shortage of health care workers” making it hard for them to find time to be active (ibid.). The Medicare campaign needed to register at the national scale to influence the findings of the national Romanow Commission. In October 2002, the Canadian Health Coalition (CHC) provided in-principle support for a national canvass (CHC 2001). This upscaling of the provincial campaign was inspired by Ontario’s successful door-knocking operation, as well as from the OHC’s strategy of helping to seed new canvassing operations in other provinces through peer-to-peer relationships with organizers across the country (interview 11 with coalition participant, October 27, 2005). One participant explained, “We are all on e-mail together so people were requesting materials and designs. . . . It ended up being a national campaign pushed from the provinces” (ibid.). The Medicare campaign also demonstrated popular support through media publicity. This included demonstrations at the three royal commission hearings in Ontario and a substantial two thousand-person National Medicare Day rally in Toronto in May 2002. These actions were “energizing” for participants but were often quite small (interview 10 with former OHC employee, October 26, 2005). This trend continued, with the OHC often struggling to rally its supporters and capture media interest at Toronto-based events. Despite the hive of activity, the Medicare campaign’s common concern was its Achilles’ heel. At OHC meetings, representatives tussled over how to frame the campaign. A few wanted to concentrate on the perils of privatization, yet consensus settled on the icon of Medicare. The positive slogan of “yes national public Medicare” connected to the symbol of Canadian national identity, and organizers believed that this would lead to success when canvassing. There was, however, a defensive quality to the message, and it did not project an agenda for health care. One former OHC employee who had got involved after the campaign had kicked off believed that “save Medicare conveyed a position of weakness and plead-

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ing instead of making a specific demand” (interview 10 with former OHC employee, October 26, 2005). Save Medicare sought to preserve the status quo. Yet the status quo was riddled with problems, such as public anxiety over long lines at hospitals. Save Medicare also did not clearly connect the campaign to the threat of privatization of health care delivery; the leaflets and door-knocking script did not draw the dots between how the privatization of hospitals could destabilize the health care system, even if Medicare remained (OHC 2002d). The breadth of the coalition’s organizational relationships contributed to the campaign’s cautious common concern. One local health coalition representative who was involved in the debates by phone hookup explained that the process of assembling consensus across a diverse group meant that the coalition’s agenda was often a lowest-common-denominator consensus — it meant “that we were never able to solve that forward-looking question of how do we gain ground back” (interview 8 with local health coalition participant, July 12, 2005). Nevertheless, even with these difficulties, the campaign was a success in that it shifted public policy and involved hundreds of thousands of Canadians. Between January and May 2002 the OHC collected a remarkable 170,000 signatures on Medicare petitions and knocked on more than 250,000 doors (OHC 2002c). Romanow released his report on November 28, 2002, and to the credit of the OHC and the health care campaigners across Canada, the report “created a consensus to save public health insurance” (Allen interview, July 5, 2005). Yet this victory was bittersweet as it forewarned of future health care policy challenges. The report did not rule out a role for private providers in the public system, especially in hospital support services, and thus kept the door ajar for public-private partnerships to be the next battleground.

The P3 Campaign, August 2002 to July 2004

Public-private partnerships (P3s) were first proposed in December 2001 when Ontario’s Conservative health minister, Tony Clement, announced two new P3 hospitals in Brampton and Ottawa (OHC 2003d). P3 hospitals are operated by for-profit private providers who build the hospital and run the nonclinical services, then lease the hospital back to the public to provide clinical services (CCPPP 2007). Of all the partners in the OHC, CUPE was the most directly affected

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by the P3 announcement because it represented nonclinical hospital workers, such as cleaners, orderlies, and support staff. The union was abreast of possible threats to the industry and knew that in the United Kingdom the introduction of public-private partnerships had damaged the employment conditions of nonclinical staff and coincided with a rise in hospital mortality rates (interview 13 with CUPE-OCHU staff person, May 11, 2006). If P3s became a new model of hospital operation, they risked undermining the employment conditions of CUPE members more directly than unions that represented clinical staff such as OPSEU and the ONA. Accordingly, CUPE made an internal decision to prioritize political action, to “be less exclusively focused on the bargaining conundrum . . . and more focused on the P3 policy” (Allen interview, July 5, 2005). Faced with this crisis, the OHC was a key ally for CUPE. The OHC’s mission was to oppose privatization, and thus CUPE and the OHC shared a mutual interest in eliminating P3s. Moreover, in contrast with the Medicare campaign, CUPE’s leaders had prioritized this issue as central to its own interests. Yet common concern had to be negotiated. While the OHC was opposed to P3s, it would not fight the campaign focused on how P3s affected jobs. Instead, the OHC sought to translate CUPE’s interest in opposing P3s into a broader health care message. By being at arm’s length from the vested interests of the union, Natalie Mehra helped CUPE connect P3s to the public debate over privatization. The OHC began the P3 campaign in the two cities where the P3 hospitals had been proposed, and its capacity was shaped by the presence of volunteers in those cities. The Brampton Health Coalition (BHC) had a tight-knit organizing group, many of whose volunteers had previously been active in the Council of Canadians. The group solidified after the Brampton P3 hospital was announced. This organizing base provided a space where OHC and CUPE leaders could work productively together. In May, CUPE’s president Ryan attended a small BHC photo opportunity outside the local hospital, and in August Hurley, the head of OCHU, spoke at a BHC forum. The activity accelerated with simultaneous rallies on October 16. BHC’s organizing strength created a local arm for the OHC’s campaign, with the OHC and BHC working locally to build the rally and organize for union activists to travel in from Toronto. This was in stark contrast to the Ottawa event, where the OHC struggled to find a local organizing base. Consequently, the two thousand-person event in

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Brampton overshadowed the hundred or so activists who turned up in Ottawa (OHC 2002b). The Brampton P3 campaign also had its challenges. The local activists struggled in the face of hostility from local conservative politicians and the media: Brampton was a “conservative town” with little memory of political struggle (interview 5 with BHC participant, July 7, 2005). There was also widespread community awareness support for a new hospital. The local politicians and media exploited this conservative place consciousness. For instance, local Conservative members of Provincial Parliament (MPPs) attempted to frame the BHC as outsiders. As one local retiree health activist explained it, the politicians said “that we were a small group of people that were trying to block the hospital . . . that we were trying to stop this badly needed hospital from coming” (ibid.; Jeffrey 2004). Furthermore, in a place where union struggle was unfamiliar, the MPPs labeled the BHC “a bunch of union people.” One older BHP member explained, “From this bunch that’s a pretty dismissive term . . . it’s derogatory” (interview 6 with BHC participant, July 7, 2005). At this local scale, a key weakness for the BHC was its relationship with the town’s unions. The unions worked with the BHC through local officials, not workplace stewards. One local activist who had attempted to undertake union outreach during the P3 campaign argued that the BHC had formal support “from a core group of union officials . . . but when you tried to get the large bulk of the membership involved it was very, very difficult” (interview 6 with BHC participant, July 7, 2005). Similarly, many of the local coalition activists had limited experience in working with unions, suggesting that they identified with the “middle class” (interview 11 with coalition participant, October 27, 2005). Employers sought to exacerbate divisions between clinical and nonclinical workers — for instance, telling nurses they wouldn’t be affected by the P3. Without a person to act as a bridge builder between the BHC and the unions, it was difficult to challenge these divisive tactics, and the BHC was unable to build sufficient trust with the local unions to work with union members directly. Beyond Brampton, the OHC knew that it could not win this fight locally because the source of P3s was the provincially scaled government. From this realization came the idea of provincial tours, where the OHC could fill its provincewide structure with centrally driven cross-province activity. The OHC’s local coalitions created the infrastructure for this style of campaigning. A senior CUPE official who became active in the P3 campaign noted that “the health coalition is really decentralized; its strength

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is that it has got chapters everywhere. . . . We thought that we would begin to draw public attention by doing tours” (interview 13 with CUPE-OCHU staff person, May 11, 2006). The plan was that these tours would increase in intensity in the lead-up to the October 2003 provincial elections. The inaugural P3 tour featured Maude Barlow, a high-profile antiprivatization crusader from the Council of Canadians. Regional tours aimed to create media opportunities, apply local political pressure, and spread awareness about P3s in the lead-up to the election. The tour was funded by CUPE, which to them made more sense than spending money on alternative awareness tactics like paid media advertisements. “In a huge media market like Ontario . . . we spend a million dollars buying television ads . . . and it’s gone in two weeks. . . . So how do you try to get media all across the province? Compared to what we would have had to do to get a comfortable amount of paid media advertising, the OHC activity was perfect and it allowed us to put a focus on the issues” (Hurley interview, May 10, 2006). Additionally the tours were also an organizing tool for the OHC and for CUPE. For the OHC, the tours activated its local health coalitions, who helped organize locations and the crowd. CUPE was able to connect the tours to its union locals and use this as an opportunity for engaging its members in the P3 campaign. A combination of factors led to CUPE organizing the largest number of union participants at these local meetings. CUPE’s decentralized local structure meant it had union locals with resources located in many of the cities where the tour visited. Added to this was the support of the union’s leadership. The tour included Hurley, the president of CUPE’s hospital council. His involvement helped engage the locals by encouraging the local president to prioritize union participation. One organizer who closely observed CUPE’s local organizing explained, “For most locals the priority is grievances and direct issues like bargaining. . . . Having Michael there meant they actually had an organized approach to getting people out to the meetings. They booked off [released from work] people to phone through their lists” (interview 11 with coalition participant, October 27, 2006). While the tour was provincewide, it was not deep. P3s were not an issue of common concern that registered deeply outside Brampton and Ottawa. One health care activist from an industrial town commented that “it was impossible to get public attention because none of our hospitals were going P3” (interview 8 with local coalition participant, July 12, 2005). Fur-

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thermore, it was a mobilization that harnessed the opportunity of local organization, but the strategy struggled to build local organization. One OHC employee who had previous experience in other social movements explained that “local groups found it hard to keep people invested because . . . they did not have a lot of ownership” (interview 10 with OHC employee, October 26, 2005). The multiscaled coalition provided a useful structure for both bottom-up and top-down activism, a remarkable 100,000 P3 postcards were signed, but the campaign also exposed the limits of top-down initiatives: they could leave local groups with a lack of local control and commitment. In mid-2003, with the upcoming provincial elections set for October 2, the P3 campaign sought to make health care an election issue. Local activity was planned in electoral districts (“ridings”) that were only marginally Conservative, such as the ridings in Brampton. The OHC’s challenge was to vote out the pro-P3 Conservatives. The electoral campaigns were locally run; local coalitions planned activities such as door knocking, community outreach, and media events. The key message focused on P3s, with a logo emulating a no-smoking sign, featuring the acronym P3 with a red line through it (OHC 2003b). As before, the coalition supplemented local activity with provincewide awareness, this time touring a novel prop — a Trojan horse. This fourteenfoot wooden beast was used to suggest that P3s were a Trojan horse that would destroy the public health system from the inside out. The OHC was assisted by CUPE, which helped fund and organize the tour. Their leaders paraded the horse around the province, visiting more than forty locations with local rallies and press, aiming to raise awareness in the lead-up to the elections. The campaign reflected a tight integration between the union and the OHC, in which CUPE was able to overcome the distant common concern that usually categorized the OHC’s relationships with its administrative committee partners. The close relationship with the OHC produced two powerful outcomes for CUPE. The coalition continued to build public opposition to P3s while helping to engage union members who were motivated not only by their own interests but by the value of public health care. The OHC’s socially interested antiprivatization frame touched union members’ values around health care. According to CUPE, this message attracted the participation of a different group of members — the kind of members who engaged while “they are prepared to say their work is valuable. . . . They don’t like doing that as much. . . . They feel better about it when

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there is a social benefit from that advocacy” (Hurley interview, May 10, 2006). This socially interested, or “sword of justice,” message did not build member commitment in the same way as a bargaining campaign would have, but it increased member participation on an issue where selfinterest was hard to communicate. P3s would erode CUPE work standards over time, but at this stage they were proposed in new work sites, not for existing members. The P3 message engaged members’ values and commitment to health care even if their working conditions were not currently under threat. Although the OHC and CUPE’s P3 work had helped to overcome the OHC’s weak common concern, this relationship was causing strain inside the coalition. CUPE’s strong commitment to the P3 campaign destabilized the kind of consensus decision making that the OHC was used to. CUPE was conscious of this. As one senior official commented, “There was some organizational jealously as other unions or groups within the OHC felt that CUPE was getting too much attention or that CUPE’s campaign ideas were being implemented not as they liked. . . . That is so sensitive” (interview with CUPE-OCHU staff person, May 11, 2006). Others, however, were more blunt, arguing that CUPE was threatening to create a competitive culture: “One of the strengths is that we are a group of organizations that have come to a consensus about what the issues are . . . and when you start highlighting individual organizations you are saying something different” (Harris interview, May 11, 2006). Indeed, Irene Harris from the OFL argued that CUPE undermined the coalition’s spirit of consensus because “the strength of the coalition is that we are all in this together. It is not that one is bigger or smaller or richer or poorer than the other; the strength is in the collective voice” (ibid.). This tension revealed the costs associated with altering the kinds of consensus that a coalition uses to structure its relationships, because increasing the mutual interest connection between CUPE and OHC threatened the breadth of relationships across the coalition. Dwindling consensus led to an open clash when the OHC had to negotiate its allegiances in the lead-up to the provincial election. The OHC is a nonpartisan group, making public statements about issues, not parties. Yet the P3 campaign took on a political edge when the coalition debated “how harsh or how pointed should we be of our criticisms of the Liberals in the lead-up to the election” (interview 3 with CUPE staff person, July 4, 2005). The OHC opposed the Conservatives, but the Liberal Party, the likely alternative government, was very unclear about whether

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it would revoke P3s if it won power. Inside the coalition CUPE pushed to create “a majority but not a consensus . . . a feeling that at the end we had to hit them [the Liberals]” (ibid.). There were fights, with debate exposing political divisions inside the coalition. Several unions were more interested in “kicking out the Conservatives” than in criticizing the Liberals (Harris interview, May 11, 2006). Similarly, several of the seniors’ groups were concerned about antagonizing the Liberals, although they did not express opposition to the idea of getting a promise from the Liberals to stop the P3s (interview 16 with seniors’ organization representative, May 12, 2006). CUPE pushed for a direct campaign against the Liberal Party, at first on its own. President Ryan made a point of condemning the Liberals at the CUPE convention in May, provoking the opposition leader, Dalton McGuinty, to make his first statement opposing P3s. Then in September, CUPE and Mehra from the OHC jointly attacked the Liberals in the media. Mehra and Hurley had been studying the Liberals’ financial plan. They convened a press conference to declare that the Liberals’ proposal had “no financing for infrastructure. . . . They were not going to stop the P3s because if they were, they would have to budget for it” (Mehra interview, May 8, 2006). Yet the event was controversial. Harris from the OFL was “upset about the OHC’s critique of the Liberals on the newswire“ (interview 2 with representative from a seniors’ organization, July 4, 2005), and some seniors’ groups disagreed with the tactic, one lamenting that “we were so busy saying how bad the Liberals were” (interview 16 with seniors’ organization representative, May 12, 2006). Mehra was forced to call an emergency meeting to settle things down, and through face-to-face discussions her actions were supported by most of the participants (interview 2 with a representative from a seniors’ organization, July 4, 2005). The election was a landslide against the Conservatives, but it was a shortlived victory (Quinn 2003). On November 21, 2003, the new premier, McGuinty, announced that the P3 hospitals in Brampton and Ottawa would go ahead (OHC 2003a). While the Liberals used ambiguous language, the substance of their proposal was that the nonclinical and construction work for these hospitals would continue to be performed by private contractors (Lawton and Funston 2003; Office of Premier of Ontario 2003; OHC 2003c). According to the OHC, there was nothing “materially different” (Allen interview, July 5, 2005). A former Conservative minister agreed: “Despite the doublespeak . . . it looks pretty identical to

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the deal that [Conservative minister] Ernie Eves announced here two months ago” (Lawton and Funston 2003). The Liberals would prove a more elusive adversary than the Conservatives. One CUPE representative compared them in this way: “The Tories have a fairly straightforward class struggle approach — we are going to kick the workers in the head . . . whereas these guys tried to wrap themselves in the banner of public ownership. They’ll deny, deny, deny that they are privatizing hospitals, but they are doing the privatization and cutbacks quite effectively” (interview 3 with CUPE staff person, July 4, 2005). The Liberals’ chameleon language would test the OHC, because its public message had been symbolized by the word “P3” with a red line through it. Furthermore, the election victory gave the Liberal government some momentum, and in early 2004 it privately moved forward on an infrastructure policy called Building a Better Tomorrow that sought to expand the use of P3s (Caplan 2004). These external difficulties intensified the coalition’s internal rifts. Many described 2004 as the OHC’s most difficult year. Strategies were hard to settle on. CUPE wanted to surge ahead with a P3 campaign while several other unions “wanted access to government” and were not keen on another battle (interview 10 with former OHC employee, October 26, 2006). These tensions broke out in a proxy war over a speakers’ list in the lead-up to the OHC’s privatization rally in April 2004. Before OHC events there was a familiar process of “speakers’ hell,” a jostling among the unions for a prominent place on the bill (interview 11 with coalition participant, October 27, 2005). The OHC traditionally dealt with this by pulling speakers’ names out of a hat (Mehra interview, May 8, 2006). This time the unions lobbied the co-chairs to try to get the OHC to prioritize union speakers over community speakers. When some of them did not get their way, they criticized the OHC in their rally speeches (interview 10 with former OHC employee, October 26 2005). It was the ugly side of union dominance. One community representative reflected that “there was a lot of ego in some of the union leaders involved,” and another noted that it was an example of “the salaried union people running their own agenda” (interview 15 with a seniors’ organization representative, May 10, 2006). After the May budget the P3 threat appeared more serious. In response, on May 27, Ontario’s major “social movement” organizations convened a press conference in Toronto to condemn P3s (OHC 2004). Meanwhile there was a “relentless creating of events” with P3 provincial tours during

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the spring and summer (Mehra interview, May 8, 2006). The breadth of these tours left OHC resources spread very thin. The campaign was primarily sponsored by the OHC and CUPE, with only a couple of committed local coalitions engaged. It was hard to build interest. For some, the campaign felt unwinnable: “The privatization agenda seemed to be going ahead like a steamroller” (interview 10 with former OHC employee, October 26, 2005). There was also a lack of ownership over these events. A local coalition participant explained that the OHC “is fairly good at manufacturing events that keep people involved, but you can only do it so many times if it is not real, if it is not focused on action that really results in something” (interview 14 with local coalition participant, May 11, 2006.). As the government’s P3 plans escalated, the OHC was losing momentum. The government released the P3 plan Building a Better Tomorrow in July 2004, and building work on Brampton Hospital began on October 22 (Divell 2004; Smitherman 2004). In Brampton, a small team from the BHC protested the commencement of construction, but they began to harbor doubts about their ability to stop the privatization: “We stood out there and all these important people were inside the fence. . . . We got cold and tired. . . . We were left feeling nobody came, kind of dejected” (interview 5 with BHC participant, July 7, 2005). The BHC activists explained that it was hard to sustain participation in the face of campaign losses: “It became increasingly difficult because the hospital was going ahead. . . . People got burned out” (ibid.). Yet in other towns, the P3 fights began to get more active. For instance, in Peterborough the local coalition preemptively campaigned to stop its hospital from becoming a P3. Additionally, the OHC campaigns had attained some electoral success, with the NDP publicly opposing P3s.

Plebiscites, July 2004 to January 2006

In this final phase, the OHC was well aware that despite the tours and the election campaign, P3s were spreading. Mehra thought the campaign needed to go local since P3 hospitals would have their greatest impact on the communities that surrounded them. So at a July 2004 strategy meeting she brought up the idea of a plebiscite. She was inspired by a campaign in Australia’s Latrobe Valley, where locals had held their own referendum to stop a P3 (Mehra interview, June 29, 2005). The plan was for plebiscites to move around the province and focus on specific P3 hos-

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pitals — contesting them one by one by demonstrating popular, local opposition. The Niagara area was selected as the first target because it had a strong local group. It also offered an unusual opportunity for union engagement because of a recent local jurisdictional battle for union recognition at Niagara Health Systems between CUPE and SEIU. While the OHC would never play a role in an internal union dispute, interunion conflict stirred up union activism in the lead-up to the plebiscite. The competition stiffened the resolve of SEIU’s and CUPE’s local leaders to participate in the local campaign (interview 17 with SEIU representative, May 12, 2006). One senior union official commented that “it kept them involved because no one wanted to be the one to walk away” (interview 12 with CUPE officer, May 8, 2006). Conversely, another union, OPSEU, which was not involved in the jurisdictional fight and was engaged in union bargaining at the time, struggled to get local unionists to participate. Organizational interest was the mother of local union participation. Local bridge builders were critical for the success of the local group. Sue Hotte was a Niagara Health Coalition (NHC) co-chair and a lay executive officer of the local labor council. She was trusted by both SEIU and CUPE and was able to hold “the warring factions apart” (interview 4 with NHC participant, July 6, 2005). Her union background assisted the NHC with its union outreach, gaining agreement for the plebiscite to be voted on in work sites, including schools, auto plants, and hospitals. Hotte used her union organizing experience to foster volunteer participation by putting people to work in meetings, allocating activists to subgroups that were responsible for different plebiscite tasks. For the local group, the planning process was not ideal — centrally set timelines were considered “inappropriately short” for building local capacity. One Niagara campaigner reflected that “you need more time to be able to develop good community ties; we didn’t really have the time to get to all the organizations . . . go to their membership meetings” (interview 4 with NHC participant, July 6, 2005). Nevertheless, among others, CUPE took up the opportunity of a sustained campaign at a local scale. The effect was a deeper commitment to the coalition. CUPE’s representative on the administrative committee explained, “It’s gone from where CUPE’s involvement went through me. . . . Now CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions and the hospital locals put significant time and resources into the coalition campaign” (Allen interview, July 5, 2005). Participation in the NHC helped trigger opportunities for politicization among CUPE members: “In the

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health coalition [CUPE] members are likely to encounter progressive people who have an analysis about trade, public services. . . . Working with socially progressive people, I think it politicizes” (Hurley interview, May 10, 2006). Locally, the NHC changed the P3 campaign’s message into a positive public demand that focused on “building the hospital right.” The NHC knew their town needed a new hospital, so they “did not want to come out looking like they didn’t want a hospital” (interview 4 with NHC participant, July 6, 2005). They also did not want to focus on politicians. They just wanted to focus on “building it right . . . and saying what we want is a 100 percent publicly funded hospital” (ibid.). The prescience of this new public message was confirmed in May, two weeks before the plebiscite, when the semantic Liberals decided to change the name of P3s to “alternative finance and procurement mechanisms” (Ministry of Public Infrastructure Renewal 2005). The NHC’s slogan created its own clear agenda and was unaffected by the change in government language. Niagara’s plebiscite pilot worked, with 98 percent of the votes cast demanding that the hospital be built right. This new slogan traveled as eight more plebiscites were held during 2005 and early 2006. Across those campaigns, place and local coalition capacity were critical for success. It was easier for the coalition to build broad participation in smaller towns, with the greatest number of votes on a per capita basis cast in North Bay and Woodstock rather than the industrial town of Hamilton. Between North Bay and Woodstock, Woodstock had a larger turnout supported by a more stable coalition base of two experienced CAW activists. Hamilton was a challenge, with its large size and small coalition struggling with logistics (interview 18 with coalition representative, May 13, 2006). Over time the plebiscites also had to battle against increasing government and media hostility as the coalition’s opponents became better equipped at how to react. The plebiscite strategy reset the OHC’s course, renewing its local coalitions as it collected almost 100,000 votes against P3s. More than 90 percent of the voters wanted their hospital “built right.” It was reminiscent of the Save Medicare campaign but more concentrated in the depths of its organizing. The plebiscites not only built a political stage for challenging the P3 agenda and activated local residents in opposition to local health care reforms but engaged the coalition’s unions at both the provincial and finally the local scale.

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Reflections on Scale and Coalition Success

The campaigns of the Ontario Health Coalition illustrated how a stable, semi-independent coalition could defend a national institution like health care by deftly generating a supportive political climate while building organizational strength across multiple scales. I use the coalition’s strong but ever-changing scale to explore this coalition element and how it shapes coalition success and weakness. The OHC repeatedly used the opportunity structures available in the Canadian political system to leverage influence over health care policies. Opportunity structure refers to how social and political arrangements, including election cycles, political parties, ruling class cleavages, and the relative openness of the state, influence social movement activity (Tarrow 1994; Jenkins 1995). The OHC’s Save Medicare campaign seized the opportunity the royal commission created by building a movement that popularized Medicare. The commission helped the OHC generate participation in its canvass because it presented volunteers with a chance to influence a decision maker. Conversely, the OHC had mixed success in making use of the 2003 provincial election to thwart public-private partnerships. The OHC made P3s an issue in the election and a decisive issue in places like Brampton. The election removed the Conservative Party, which had initiated P3 hospitals, and the OHC cultivated a political ally in the NDP, which prominently denounced P3s in the lead-up to the election. This pressure, however, did not divide or shift the Liberal Party, which continued to support the Conservatives’ P3 policy. The OHC also manufactured its own political opportunities to help generate popular awareness ( Jenkins 1985). The repeated provincial tours generated media stories, and the more sustained local plebiscites symbolically enabled the coalition to rouse and then measure community opposition to publicprivate partnerships. One of the OHC’s greatest challenges was that the Canadian health care system was shaped by decisions made by politicians and administrators at almost every geographic scale, from the hospital in a local town to the national government. In order to influence these different decision makers, the OHC needed to adapt its scale and give priority to particular scales. This is because coalitions are most effective when they concentrate their activity at the scale, or scales, at which their target decision maker reproduces its power (Tattersall 2008). Sometimes this means influencing politicians, which required the OHC

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to act simultaneously at the scale of the provincial government, where policy decisions were formed, as well as at the scale of individual political electorates. Marginal, “swing” electorates are a space of maximum influence, as they are the places where government is determined. The OHC was aware of these scales of influence in the 2003 election strategy. The coalition supported local coalitions like the BHC to run campaigns in specific ridings, while the OHC simultaneously targeted the leaders of the political parties. Meanwhile, maintaining the cross-provincial organizational relationships was crucial for the OHC, because those provincially scaled relationships resourced and coordinated activity at other scales. At other times, the scale of health care decision making led the coalition to place intense pressure on the “spatial fixes” that operated in the health care industry. A spatial fix is a situation in which capital is tied to a specific geographic place because of constraints in the production process or consumer market (Herod 1997, 2001). Hospitals are constrained because they provide human services to a mostly local population, and public-private partnerships require capital to build hospitals and make a profit in that local place. The OHC drew on the proximity between the proposed P3 hospitals and their surrounding populations to generate opposition to individual public-private partnerships. At first, in places like Brampton, popular opposition was mobilized through conventional campaigning such as public forums, publicity, and rallies. Later the plebiscites zeroed in on the people living around a hospital and invited them to cast a vote. This exercised tremendous political pressure on politicians, particularly in places like Niagara, where the MPPs were the ones to count the ballots. The OHC also had to “scale up” — for instance, to influence the national Romanow Commission (Castree et al. 2004). Acting at a national scale required a simultaneous process of cultivating support from other provincial health coalitions that could activate parallel provincial canvasses, combined with the support of the CHC. Somewhat paradoxically, the process of scaling up also involved the OHC scaling down in order to reach a sufficiently large population of people that could prove that Medicare enjoyed popular national support (Herod 2001; Ellem 2005). More precisely, the success of the OHC’s Medicare campaign came from the coalition’s ability to take action at multiple scales simultaneously (Tattersall 2007a, 2008). Across these different scales, significant resources were concentrated at the local. The local was important, because it could deliver signed petitions, and it was also a space for more

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permanently increasing the capacity of the health care movement. To capitalize on this, the OHC deployed resources to “broker” a more sustained infrastructure at the local scale, by forming and nurturing “local broker organizations” (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001, 142; Martin and Miller 2003, 152). As with Sydney’s public education coalition, the Ontario Health Coalition built agents for coalition campaigning at a local scale. These broker organizations were an open space for union rank-and-filers and community volunteers to come together and develop a parallel campaign strategy and build social pressure in particular towns in support of the coalition’s campaigns. Local coalition activity connected the political influence of the coalition to member involvement ( Jonas 1998) because it was based in places where individuals could participate in the coalition. The local health coalitions extended the reach of the OHC’s health care campaigns into towns across the province and in doing so attracted a much deeper participation than the OHC could have organized through its central coalition alone. Coalitions are sometimes rightly criticized for substituting member engagement and participation for horizontal relationships between organizations (Clawson 2003). The local health coalitions opened up a vast space for individual participation that helped overcome the tendency for centralized control. They were frequently cochaired by local union staff or stewards, and some of their most active participants, such as retired teachers or local NDP members, were outside the OHC’s direct networks. Local broker organizations enabled the coalition to go deep as well as broad. The local health coalitions increased the capacity of participating organizations by enhancing the campaigning skills of organization members. They exposed members to coalition campaigns, which helped expand member political consciousness and their organizing and strategizing skills. Members developed as they were brought into relationship with different organizations and were responsible for developing plans for social action. If we consider the campaigns overall, we can see that the longer-term Medicare and plebiscite campaigns facilitated this exchange most effectively. Instead of a familiar program of demonstrations and rallies (like the days of action), broker organizations redefined what it meant to campaign. They initiated hundreds of thousands of conversations about Medicare and then later led a symbolic community vote to build hospitals right. Moreover, it was the local volunteers who were in charge of making these campaigns happen.

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The broker organizations magnified the OHC’s political influence. The Brampton coalition, for instance, coordinated local forums, organized local residents to lobby candidates, and generated media attention, all contributing to the removal of Brampton’s pro-P3 Conservative Party MPP. The local coalitions augmented the OHC’s political impact by responding to the place consciousness of a particular area. In union cities like Kingston, broker organizations built support from local unions through bridge-builder activists (Markey and Nixon 2004). In conservative cities like Brampton, the broker organization was a local agent, which worked to diffuse hostility to the P3 campaign by marshaling residents. Instead of acting as Toronto-based outsiders, the BHC relied on local legitimacy for its successful campaign against the Conservative MPPs. The combination of thirty-five local coalitions meant that the OHC was able to craft provincewide political influence, either through rapid moving tours or through sustained plebiscites. The sustainability of these local broker organizations greatly relied on the OHC’s dedication of resources. There was a significant investment of time by the coordinator, who mentored and supported local activity. This was combined with training and planning sessions and with hosting annual assemblies that gathered input from local volunteers. The capacity building required to sustain the local coalitions reproduced what Turner (2007) has described as an ongoing “social justice infrastructure,” where localized institutions with a capacity for movement building fortified health care campaigning and generated a supportive political climate for social change (see also Nissen 2005). The link between the specific measures of a coalition’s scale and coalition success are outlined in table 4.1. In terms of the remaining coalition elements, the OHC formed tightknit organizational relationships through its administrative committee. This regular, formal network was much better suited to building trust between the parties than was the come-one-come-all collective that initially ran the OHC (Tattersall 2007c). The administrative committee, however, still represented a broad array of organizations. On one hand, this was a strength, as it brought together very diverse organizational interests. Yet it was counterpoised to the “less is more” philosophy of the public education coalition and the collaborative. Consequently, achieving consensus and building trust were more of a challenge for the OHC over time. The administrative committee consisted of staff people representing most of the unions, reflecting and creating a degree of orga-

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TABLE 4.1 Coalition success and scale Opportunity structure

Multiscaled coalitions

Local broker organizations

Winning outcomes

Opportunities were used to maximize influence and participation

Action at multiple scales increased coalition influence

Local broker organizations built and sustained local political influence

Supportive political climate

When coalitions created their own opportunities they spread awareness and support for the campaign

The ability to take action at multiple scales increased public support for the overall agenda

Local broker organizations provided an infrastructure for future progressive campaigning and agenda setting

Sustaining relationships

Direct connection not claimed

Relationships were strongest across the same scale, but these were enhanced when members were involved at other scales

Direct connection not claimed

Building the capacity of participating organizations

Opportunities made campaigns winnable, which helped engage organization members

Multiscaled coalihelped drive participation and transformation inside participating organizations

Local broker organizations politicized organizational members and developed their campaigning skills

nizational distance between the unions and the coalition. The regular monthly meetings and the consensus style of decision making meant that the individual representatives developed a strong degree of trust, as they were collectively responsible for the operation of the coalition. These relationships incubated organizational learning (Rose 2000, 196; Obach 2004; Hyman 2007); for instance, the coalition transformed tactics like rallies into radical canvassing and plebiscite campaigns. A critical ingredient of the OHC’s organizational relationships was the role of a particular individual, its staff coordinator. Mehra juggled the competing tasks of managing the administrative committee, mentoring and

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building the capacity of the local coalitions, and planning nuanced strategies to try to win tough health care campaigns. Much of the OHC’s independent authority came from her initiative, good judgment, and experience as a local health care coordinator. The critical importance of Mehra’s role helps demonstrate that coalition success can rely heavily on the work of the organizer (Alinsky 1971). This was summed up by one of the seniors’ representatives who had been involved in the OHC from the beginning. Her observations echoed those of other respondents: “The importance of the coordinator is extremely, extremely important and I just can’t over emphasize how valuable Natalie Mehra is to the coalition . . . her energy, ability to analyze and to synthesize opinion so we can then agree” (interview 15 with a seniors’ organization representative, May 10, 2006). Common concern proved to be more of a challenge for the OHC. I argue that the OHC faced two difficulties in its effort to build deep organizational commitment. First, the breadth of organizations often required campaigns to be framed as a compromise, which in turn meant that the public messages of the coalition were framed negatively rather than positively. It was easier for this disparate group to “save Medicare” or “stop P3s” — finding common ground in the status quo or what they opposed — than to agree on a vision for the health care system. The lack of precision in this broad common concern led to conflict when political claims were translated into an electoral context. Most notably, CUPE’s desire to condemn the Liberals in the 2003 election conflicted with other groups that did not want to focus on the Liberals. Second, the negatively framed campaigns tended to ask organizations to commit on the basis of their values rather than their interest. The appeal was to save Medicare as a national icon rather than because their organization had an interest in its continuance — for instance, in order to prevent the U.S. employer model of health care from being thrust on union bargaining. This resembles what Frege, Heery, and Turner (2004) describe as an “integrative coalition,” in which unions offer unconditional support for socially interested campaigns. We can see from the limits of the Medicare campaign that there is a shortcoming to this type of coalition. While the appeal to a union’s values was sufficient to engage a degree of financial and staff support from union leaders, it did not lead to mass member participation in the campaign. Without an interest-based connection, a social message was insufficient to generate significant union commitment.

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The limits of an integrative coalition can be contrasted to CUPE’s interest in the P3 campaign. When CUPE’s belief in public health combined with its interest in publicly run hospitals, a coalition developed in which the union’s leadership worked to draw members into the health care campaign. While a moral claim is a powerful public message, I argue that a coalition’s effectiveness will be limited unless its common concern connects with the organizations’ and members’ values and interests. The OHC’s achievements underscored the complexity and tension that lie at the heart of coalition success. During the five-year period, the OHC’s policy victories were comparatively modest. It helped save Medicare but struggled to stop the spread of P3 hospitals. Yet OHC participants continually argued that the OHC had not only produced a successful health care movement but also led its contemporaries as one of the most successful coalitions in Canada. One experienced union representative on the administrative committee explained coalition success in these terms: “I judge success on the number of participants I can engage. The campaign may not win, but if it engages people and gets people involved you don’t need to win, but put a position forward and work with other people on common goals. Work with them so they feel passionately about it, they may get involved later . . . they get hooked. These sort of engagements are what make wins happen” (interview 3 with union staff person, July 4, 2005). While the OHC struggled to achieve policy victories, it was successful in other ways. Its campaigns shifted the political climate in support of public health care and its work generated new kinds of organizational strength. According to my definition of coalition success, we can see that the OHC’s multiscaled coalition structure successfully balanced the two kinds of organizational strength — that it sustained relationships and enhanced member participation through its local broker organizations. It did this in a way that was more pronounced than in the Australian or United States case studies. This multiscaled structure was not static. It dynamically varied between being locally and centrally focused. This depended on the degree to which the OHC campaigns vested responsibility in the organizational relationships at the center or in the local coalitions at the periphery. This was a key strategic choice. We can see that how it changed over time reflected competing preferences for social change and capacitybuilding outcomes, inspired by the coalition’s political context and goals.

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I argue that the Save Medicare campaign embodied the most productive balance between building organizational strength and creating social change. That campaign accelerated the OHC’s ability to grow capacity at the local scale and to ignite volunteer participation, which enlivened the local health coalitions. The campaign’s focus on Medicare ignited a massbased campaign because the issue was so closely aligned with Canadian nationalism. The strategic goal was to capture this popularity as a medium for influencing the Romanow inquiry. The social-change strategy was simultaneously focused on building organizational strength, because building the local health coalitions in turn made the groups more effective at collecting petitions. Organizational capacity was further enhanced by the OHC’s decision to train the volunteers at the local scale so those local groups could be responsible for managing campaign activities during the five-month canvass. While there was provincial coordination, by and large the local groups orchestrated the campaign. In contrast, the relentless tours of the P3 campaigns led to multiscaled activity with greater attention given to social change than to generating organizational strength. We can see that it was much more difficult to campaign on public-private partnerships than Medicare, especially because there was little public knowledge of what they were or their effect on health care. The OHC’s strategic decision was to prioritize raising awareness, with the hope of fostering popular opposition that could influence the 2003 elections. To do this the coalition made plans at a central scale to organize ad hoc events that crisscrossed Ontario. The tough political context — in particular the lack of popular knowledge about P3s — restricted the choices that the OHC had to build the P3 campaign. The strategy also had its limits, which were identified by the OHC participants. They noted that “manufactured” events over time led to dwindling participation and occasionally to burnout. In yet another variation, the plebiscite campaign invested heavily in specific places to achieve a social-change outcome. The strategy was conceived to maintain action and momentum in an environment where there were few political opportunities from government. It selected locations in places with planned P3 hospitals and where local coalitions had some existing capacity, with the aim of expanding that base at the same time that it organized a community vote. It was not entirely “locally run”; the strategy was repeated later in other locations across the province, and this was part of its strength. It meant that individuals from other local coalitions traveled to places like Niagara not only to help but also to learn from

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their peers about how to run their own plebiscite later. The social-change effects of this strategy were less measurable than in the Save Medicare campaign, as the strategy did not produce a change in government policy, but it helped develop a political climate opposed to P3s. The often-competing priorities for campaigning and capacity building reflected a tension in how the OHC balanced responsibility for campaign management and implementation. I argue that multiscaled campaigns necessarily embody conflict between participation and coordination. Inevitably decisions are made that not all participants get to shape. For the OHC, coordination tended to be left to the organizational relationships at the provincial scale because they provided the financial and staff resources that reproduced the coalition. The OHC sought to mitigate this imbalance by bringing local coalition representatives onto the administrative committee and by holding assemblies that were open to all participants in the health care movement. In terms of the coalition elements, the OHC was defined by a dynamic tension between its organizational relationships and its scale. This became a trend where campaigns were centrally coordinated and locally implemented. The advantage of this strategy was that the coalition could have an impact upon provincial and national policies, yet it also constrained how the coalition could build capacity. The capacity-building limits were strongest when the social-change outcomes were more difficult to achieve, for instance, during the P3 campaign. The way in which the OHC structured its provincially scaled organizational relationships had implications for how the coalition negotiated its goals. Organizations came together founded on a philosophy that all the organizations were equal and that decisions must be based on achieving consensus between the parties. We can see how this tension was simultaneously productive and destructive for the OHC and repeatedly defined the limits of the coalition’s capacity. The need for consensus separated the coalition’s decision making from any individual organization. Compared with the public education coalition, where the interests of the teachers’ union shaped the coalition’s goals, the OHC shared much more ownership among a larger group of organizations. Building consensus helped the coalition frame its issues as socially interested claims. One participant explained that the OHC “is not perceived as a front for unions protecting their jobs in the health care sector. . . . It gets across that it is a genuine group that works in the interests of the public” (Sousa interview, July 2005). This was striking in

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the campaign against P3s. If CUPE had exercised the kind of dominance that the NSWTF had over the public education coalition, then the P3 campaign could have easily succumbed to narrow interest and simply linked the concern of privatization to what it meant for hospital jobs. Instead the OHC’s consensus decision-making processes forced open the formulation of this demand. The local coalition campaigners and community organizations required the coalition to consider their interests, which focused the campaign’s message on how hospital care would be affected by profit making. By ensuring that the union alone did not control the agenda, the pressures of consensus decision making helped to connect a social interest to this goal. Yet consensus decision making negatively affected the OHC’s common concern. The OHC’s desire to reach consensus on issues required coalition goals to be set according to the shared interests across organizations. Consequently, the issues tended to be negatively rather than positively framed, because they could only find agreement on what they all opposed, their lowest common denominator concerns, rather than on a shared vision for health care (Bleyer 1992). Relying on consensus decision making prioritized maintaining organizational relationships at the expense of formulating a stronger common concern. This trade-off limited the coalition’s ability to generate deeper organizational interest. For instance, when the P3 campaign did activate the direct interests of one union, CUPE, tension developed between the organizations. The idea of CUPE’s paying for resources and provincial tours in the name of the coalition broke the OHC’s conventions. It placed the OHC in a catch-22 situation: if it used CUPE’s resources, it would anger parts of the coalition that worried about special treatment; yet to forgo these resources limited the OHC’s power in the P3 campaign. The kind of consensus used by the OHC constrained the coalition’s ability to engage specific organizational interest because to do so threatened the sustainability of the coalition’s organizational relationships. The kinds of coalition success prioritized by the OHC were also influenced by the Canadian national context. The popular-movement style of the OHC is reminiscent of the social-change strategies that unions and coalitions have used in Canada since World War II, and this continuity tells us something about how political power is built and exercised in and against the Canadian state. Canadian unions and community organizations have long relied on strong social-movement credentials. Predating the onslaught of neoliberal policies, Canada’s limited laborist experiment

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— the NDP — rarely gave its unions or progressive organizations access to state policymaking. Welfare state reforms like Medicare and collective bargaining regulations were influenced by the degree of social pressure that could be mobilized against the state and to a lesser extent were supplemented by the electoral power of the NDP, particularly when the NDP held the balance of power (Garton and McCallum 1996). Political influence was made more difficult with the onset of neoliberalism and policies like privatization and free trade, but the historic need for popular pressure saw Canadians adopt coalition strategies comparatively early in the 1980s. In light of this, we can understand the OHC’s decision to prioritize organizational strength building over social-change victories as a reaction to two contradictory features of the Canadian political context. At one level it was a response to the challenge of achieving political influence in a three-party state. The OHC’s lack of insider relationships with Conservative and Liberal provincial governments meant it prioritized sustaining a broad-based set of organizational relationships. Paralleling the political strategy enunciated by the OFL’s James Turk during the days of action, the OHC aimed to have built a “broadly based social movement that would hold any party or government to account” (1997, 176). Sustaining strong relationships between organizations was seen as a strategy for building a different kind of political influence. Likewise, the formation of broker organizations provided multiscaled political influence that allowed the OHC to shape who got elected and to influence MPPs outside elections. Local political pressure was particularly important in an environment where the NDP was unlikely to form a government because it required influencing Liberal MPPs both when they were in government and during elections. In addition, the broker organizations responded to gaps in Canada’s civil society by building a more reliable capacity to mobilize supporters. Canada’s community organizations had a relatively modest member turnout capacity, and Canadian unions did not regularly prioritize mass participation in OHC events. Consequently, the OHC’s broker organizations provided a means by which the coalition built its own relatively autonomous mobilizing potential. This strategy had a geographic dimension to it because influencing Ontario politics required the OHC to have a physical presence in regional and rural areas. This was challenging because of the sheer geographic scale of that province. Local health coalitions enabled the OHC to sustain events and activity across Ontario and

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allowed the coalition to build the capacity of union locals, local community organizations, and even local political party volunteers where required. Overall, the organizing style and kinds of success the OHC achieved reflect a coalition shaped by its scale. It was the multiscaled structure of the OHC that set it apart, facilitating sustained health care mobilizations through its local health groups despite the challenges it faced in turning back privatization. The OHC’s organizational relationships were also productive with its broad administrative committee and strong coordinator. Yet the breadth of this colossus came at a cost — its common concern. It struggled to formulate goals that built a proactive agenda for health care reform. This kind of coalition unionism was powerful for a union like CUPE. The OHC’s socially interested umbrella helped communicate a message that aligned CUPE’s vested interest in opposing public-private partnerships with a social sword-of-justice claim about the future of health care. Most poignantly, the OHC’s scale shifted how the union was able to campaign. This emerged early on when the OHC proposed an alternative strategy to rallies: a provincewide canvass around health care. The variety and scope of campaigns escalated with the cross-provincial tours and the plebiscite. The OHC effectively created new “repertoires of contention” for union action because of its multiscaled structure, which allowed it to undertake political action and mobilizations in a coordinated way across the province (Tarrow 1994). CUPE was able to harness this multiscaled capacity because of its own multiscaled structure, through its union locals dotted across the province. Consequently, not only was CUPE able to engage in new forms of campaigning but over time its membership became involved in these campaigns, providing a space for its rank and file to lead union action. CUPE’s members learned about P3s from their participation in the local coalitions, and then through the plebiscites the OHC provided a space for union locals, officers, stewards, and members to become active health care campaigners. The new skills and relationships that unionists gained would be valuable in future union and health care campaigns. CUPE would not have had these opportunities but for its decision to work in a coalition that included, but also went beyond, its own interests. These kinds of coalition resources developed only because of a shared commitment by this union, and other unions and community organizations, to build a piece of health care campaign infrastructure for the long

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haul. It was only because of this long-term commitment to health care campaigning that the OHC built local health coalitions. CUPE was able to work with the OHC to expand its ability to advocate and engage its membership because the OHC was built with a broad commitment to an equitable health system from the start. The formation of a positive-sum coalition, where CUPE’s needs were met in concert with the needs of others, was the reason why this coalition was able to sustain itself and maintain local health coalitions in ways that increased CUPE’s power and resources over time.

Chapter 5

Power in Coalition

Coalitions are a dynamic and potent strategy capable of achieving social change and expanding the power of the organizations that participate in them. In this chapter I identify some common principles of coalition success by comparing the effects of strategic choice and national context across the case studies. I also focus on unions and on how long-term, positive-sum coalitions can assist unions to win on issues and revitalize their power in the face of a political and economic environment that continues to be challenging. By drawing out these lessons, I build a picture of why coalitions are powerful but also what constrains them.

Principles of Strong Coalitions

The case studies exposed some common themes about coalition strategic choice. My “most similar” methodology, which studied coalitions in three relatively similar liberal market economies, made it possible to compare how the strategic choices of coalition organizers influenced coalition success. Five coalition strategies repeatedly affected coalition success (or failure) across the case studies, suggesting that strong coalitions share some common characteristics. Less Is More When it came to generating organizational participation in coalitions, “Less is more” was a consistent theme. Defying the popular conception

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that long lists of coalition partners make for powerful alliances, across the case studies it was easier to build strong coalition relationships when coalition membership was restricted and there were fewer organizations making decisions and sharing resources. All the coalitions traded “breadth” for “depth,” with organizers choosing to engage a smaller number of organizations. In Ontario and Chicago this decision stemmed from negative experiences with come-one-come-all coalitions, where broad networks of organizations with uneven levels of commitment had left a few organizations carrying a disproportionate burden for the work of the coalition, seeding a destabilizing resentment. Open coalitions were also more likely to resort to lowest common denominator positions in order to find agreement on issues or strategies (Tattersall 2007c). Reducing the number of organizations helped the coalitions collectively negotiate campaign priorities and commitments and build a unity of purpose. This was clearest in New South Wales, where the highly successful Vinson inquiry was organized by a coalition of only two organizations. Less became more when organizations were obliged to make accountable commitments to their coalition partners in return for their participation. This developed in Chicago, where turnout and financial contributions were required as a condition of participation. Likewise in NSW, the P&C was obliged to make a financial contribution to the Vinson inquiry even though it had a substantially smaller financial base. In the same way, all the organizations on the OHC administrative committee made financial contributions to cover the costs of the OHC staff. Investments in shared resources, such as coalition coordinators, increased the stability of coalitions. In Ontario and Chicago, coordinators helped make meetings happen; they negotiated tension and mitigated organizational dominance. In NSW, without a coalition coordinator the public education coalition relationships were dominated by the NSWTF, whereas in Ontario the OHC coordinator moderated union influence. Coalitions also did more with less. Once relationships were established, organizations invested in regular formal meetings and in building strong informal relationships. We saw personal connections foster strong organizational relationships through the collaborative’s breakfast sessions and the OHC’s regular monthly meetings. In contrast, the public education coalition’s meetings were ad hoc and always initiated by the NSWTF. The principle of less is more informed the kinds of organizations that coalitions sought as partners. Repeatedly, coalitions were stronger when they were strategic about bringing in powerful organizations. For instance,

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the Grassroots Collaborative in Chicago identified specific unions and religious organizations as partners because of their political relationships and social legitimacy. Across the studies unions were strategically important. They repeatedly provided coalitions with substantial financial and in-kind resources. In Ontario and Chicago, where the political context was particularly challenging, a large number of unions in the coalition helped increase the coalition’s power. Individuals Matter Somewhat paradoxically, coalitions succeeded or failed depending on particular individuals and their capacity for effective leadership. Coalitions relied on organizational leaders, individuals who embraced coalitions inside of organizations and coalition coordinators. Coalition success was affected by these individuals’ ability to act as bridge builders and broker relationships between organizations, as well as their skills as campaign strategists. When organizational leaders directly participated in coalition decision making, the coalitions were strongest. In the public education coalition and the collaborative we saw that having leaders around the table made it easier for coalition decisions to attract organizational commitment. Conversely, in the OHC, where unions in particular were represented by staff rather than the leaders themselves, coalition decisions became highly contingent on internal union processes. This often resulted in the OHC’s campaigns becoming more of a peripheral concern to many of its participating unions. The talents and experiences of the leaders around the table enhanced coalition success. In Chicago, Madeline Talbott’s skill in running living wage campaigns and her familiarity with unions was a critical resource for the living wage strategy. Similarly, in New South Wales, Maree O’Halloran’s experience with the 1999 salaries campaign and her personal desire to do “something different” ensured that the Vinson inquiry was launched and sustained. Leaders were encouraged by agitators in their ranks. Certainly Gary Zadkovich’s report on social movement unionism, the western Sydney unionists’ vision for public education campaigning, and Ross Sutherland’s advocacy for a Medicare canvass all reinforced bold leadership. Likewise, the coalition coordinators’ distinct skills affected success. Natalie Mehra’s experience in the Kingston Health Coalition informed

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the OHC’s decision to maintain the local health coalitions after the Medicare campaign, and her previous work with unions during the days of action helped the coalition navigate tensions. Similarly, Ken Snyder maintained campaign discipline during the long living wage campaign in Chicago. Yet the fact that coalitions regularly relied on individuals showed their vulnerability, because when leaders or coordinators change, a coalition’s capacity is affected. In Australia, the change of leadership at the P&C reduced that organization’s commitment to the coalition. Similarly, OHC representatives feared the day when Mehra would leave. The Chicago coalition had a broader spread of engaged, strategically minded leaders, yet they too were reliant on Talbott’s instincts and experience. To Wield Self-Interest with a Sword of Justice Coalition goals were most potent when they connected the mutual selfinterests of participating organizations with a sword of justice. Rather than self-interest and social interest operating in conflict, a coalition’s goals were most influential when the shared interests of organizations combined with the social legitimacy of public interest. Organizational interest was necessary but not sufficient: it failed to generate enough public pressure for change. The NSWTF salaries campaign and the No-Wal-Mart campaign each had deep union interest, but in the media that organizational interest was demonized as a narrow vested interest. Conversely, coalitions with a social interest but limited organizational commitment struggled to engage organizational resources. The Save Medicare campaign delivered a noble message, but the OHC struggled to attract union participation as a priority over day-to-day union concerns. We saw coalitions overcome this problem when vested interest was united with a sword of justice (Flanders 1970). Self-interest and a sword of justice intersected when organizational commitment was based on mutual interests — for instance, when the NSWTF salaries campaign turned into a campaign with the P&C for fully funding the education budget, or when the OHC’s anti-P3 campaign overlapped with CUPE’s concerns about the impact of P3s on workplace conditions. But it was most effective when shared organizational interests were connected to an underlying moral, value-based framework. For instance, the living wage message turned around the political isolation of the No-Wal-Mart campaign by em-

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bracing religious and historical values, which also intimately connected to the collaborative’s interest in changing politics in Chicago. Common concern was dramatically more powerful when it was positively framed. Proactive demands like reduced class sizes or living wages consistently helped coalitions to change the political climate. Positive messages expressed a sword of justice more successfully than did negatively framed demands. The OHC’s anti-P3 campaign and the collaborative’s No-Wal-Mart campaign prevented these coalitions from putting forward a broad solution to the problems they identified (Snow and Benford 1992). An important factor in effectively carrying the message of justice was who carried the message. Having spokespeople separate from the union was a source of strength: the OHC legitimized CUPE’s anti-P3 campaign, Tony Vinson added credibility to the NSWTF, and ACORN spokespeople legitimized the UFCW’s interest in a big-box living wage. What’s more, the alignment of social and self-interest also enhanced member commitment. Support for the Vinson inquiry arose out of an interest in stopping school closures and then spread because it appealed to teachers’ professional identity and their classroom experience. The living wage campaign first engaged SEIU 880 because of its values and identity as a living wage organization. In order to successfully generate member commitment, however, the union connected its belief in living wages to members’ specific interest in a new wage floor of $10 in Chicago. To my mind, the alignment of social and self-interest was best balanced by the public education coalition because it was able to connect specific surface demands like reducing class sizes to the broad call for improved public education. The Timely Exercise of Power through Conscious Planning While it may seem obvious, it is worth emphasizing that coalition campaigns were always more successful when rolled out as long-term plans that were mindful of electoral and legislative opportunities. Coalition actions consequently became strategically focused on building political pressure and informed how the coalition was able to deploy the power it derived from its collective organizational resources. We saw this in the Vinson inquiry, the living wage campaign, and the Save Medicare campaign, each of which had a disciplined approach to planning and securing political victory. Success relied on escalating the campaign in advance of elections

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(or the royal commission). This sometimes required sustained activity across a broad geography, like the Vinson inquiry hearings or the collection of living wage postcards, or the simultaneous coordination of campaign activities in multiple locations, such as the Save Medicare canvass. Planning made it easier for the coalition to be in charge of its political timetable. While the coalition could strategically react to its adversaries (like organizing a media stunt), these reactions did not take over the campaign. Coalitions could calculate how to deliver pressure depending on the various types of power at the table. Thus the living wage campaign divided up lobbying, field, and mobilization strategies; the Save Medicare campaign relied on local coalitions supported by the resource base of unions; and the Vinson inquiry evolved into a public alliance that combined mobilization, media, and lobbying work. Generating Participation and Political Influence with Local Broker Organizations Local broker organizations were locally based groups of rank-and-file unionists and community organization members established by centrally organized coalitions. These organizations strengthened coalitions by providing an internal opportunity for developing organizational members as well as cultivating political influence. They stratified coalition decision making by opening the coalitions to the contributions of members, thereby providing a mechanism for bottom-up planning that could complement top-heavy strategizing among organizational leaders. In Canada and to a lesser extent in Australia, local broker organizations created a space for rank-and-file unionists and community volunteers to come together and develop a parallel campaign strategy at a local level. The local activity matched the provincial strategy, exposed partner organizations to a new range of issues, and increased member participation. Local broker organizations also provided a space for rank-and-filers to expand their campaigning skills. Members shifted from being passive participants to coalition strategists as they were brought into relationship with different organizations and were responsible for developing action plans. The lack of broker organizations in Chicago meant that the coalition had a limited developmental impact on its organizational members, and it also made it harder for the coalition to sustain its multiscaled work. Local broker organizations made it possible for coalitions to stratify their activity, enabling them to sustain influence against individual polit-

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ical representatives. In Sydney and Toronto, education lobbies and health coalitions generated political pressure through local forums, organizing residents to lobby political candidates and undertake media events. Likewise, the team of organizations brought together by the UFCW organizer in Chicago helped maintain aldermanic support for the living wage. Without a local broker organization on the West Side of Chicago, the No-WalMart coalition was accused of being interlopers without an understanding of local concerns. Broker organizations required resources to sustain them. In Canada, we saw the OHC’s broker organizations last longer than the public education coalition’s because the volunteers were actively mentored by the OHC coordinator. The kind of support offered also mattered; member education was greatest when the coordinator helped the local group build its own campaign plan. By contrast, when strategies were centrally developed, local participation was more difficult to sustain.

Strategies for Strong Coalitions

In summary, coalition strategic choices vary, and organizational objectives and context place limits on long-term coalition work. Sometimes a longterm coalition may not be the right strategy. By comparing these longterm coalitions we can see that if organizations want to establish successful, sustained relationships, then there are several choices that are likely to prove powerful. Each of these lessons related to the coalition elements and measures that I introduced in chapter 1 and explored in the case studies. Organizational relationships and structure are more powerful when union and community organizers recognize that less is more and individuals matter. Common concern is stronger when it traverses organizational selfinterest and a sword of justice. A coalition’s scale, and therefore its ability to influence public decisions and build participation, is strengthened by conscious planning and local broker organizations that can generate popular influence across various scales of power. To underscore the relationship between these five lessons, the coalitions’ elements, and the definition of coalition success, I have summarized the findings about coalition elements from the case studies in table 5.1 to show how they produce coalition success. Note that the five lessons are common features of successful coalitions. The elements not only provide a mechanism for assessing how coalitions

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TABLE 5.1 Coalition elements and coalition success Common concern

Organizational relationships and structure

Scale

Winning outcomes

Shared organizational interest drives commitment to the campaign; a sword-of-justice message builds community support

Relationships between strategic and strong organizations are facilitated by effective meetings and bridge building

Stratified coalitions operate at multiple scales to mobilize political pressure

Supportive political climate

Organizational interest, values, and member ownership are aligned; swordof-justice message and messenger can create public support

Diverse coalitions between unlikely, strategic partners help to shift the political climate

Multiscaled coalitions plan campaigns to win on issues as well as shape the broader political climate

Sustaining relationships

Organizational interest sustains relationships. This is assisted when it overlaps with member interest

Less is more: strong participating organizations who are accountable for their commitments Individuals matter: bridge builders and coalition staff

Relationships at the same scale are strongest

Building the capacity of participating organizations

Mutual interest agenda broadens organizational vision, engages new members, politicizes existing ones

Negotiating issues and bridge builders help organizations learn to reshape their agenda

Local broker organizations help organization members develop campaigning skills, and politicize

change over time but help us identify the kinds of strategic choices that support strong coalitions. Moreover, it is implicit in my findings that coalition organizers can learn strategies across borders. Coalition strategy is not intrinsically nationally specific. The practice of organizations’ building relationships and

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identifying concerns upon which they agree is fairly universal. Moreover, the case studies themselves reveal that learning across borders is common. Zadkovich’s trip to Canada and the United States helped inspire the NSWTF’s coalition unionism. Tactics were also shared across borders when Mehra appropriated the idea of a plebiscite from Australia’s LaTrobe Valley. The suggestion that these findings can be generalized, however, comes with a qualification. These five principles operate at the level of strategic choice, not tactics. I argue that it is not that an independent inquiry or a statewide canvass will necessarily be successful in another context; rather, I distinguish methods of coalition building that may be usefully exchanged. The principles are transferable lessons about how to build relationships and improve coalition strategy. Indeed, in the conclusion I explore how some of these lessons can strengthen future coalition practice. These five lessons are not the only findings that emerged from the case studies. While strategic choice is a vital ingredient for strong collaboration, we should not reify organizational strategy as a source of power out of its context. The national political setting sometimes limited and sometimes enhanced coalition power across the case studies, affecting their ultimate success.

Coalition Differences across Borders

The three coalitions were differently affected by distinct opportunities and challenges that lay in their national political contexts. Of course, deciding to compare similar countries makes these findings suggestive rather than conclusive. While the cases uncovered important differences between these similar liberal market economies, I maintain that it is uncertain whether factors like state openness or union-party relationships will be as significant in Europe’s coordinated markets or in different developing countries (cf. Frege, Heery, and Turner 2004; Turner 2007, 15; Greer 2008). With that caveat in mind, the important national contextual features across these liberal market economies included the openness of the state, the types of relationships between unions and political parties, and the character of a country’s civil society organizations. These contextual factors influenced the form coalition success took. They also led coalitions to emphasize particular ways of working in an attempt to overcome per-

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ceived challenges faced in their political context. To summarize the discussion that follows, in table 5.2 I compare the kinds of success achieved in the different countries using the definition of success established in chapter 1. I list the four types of coalition success and then use shorthand descriptions to say whether this goal was achieved (yes) or not achieved (no) or whether the results were mixed (mixed). In examining national political context, we are investigating variables that sit beyond the control of coalitions yet influence their behavior. State openness or strong relationships between unions and political parties provide opportunities for coalitions to more easily achieve social change; their absence may limit coalition success. Similarly, the history and character of unions and community organizations influence coalition practice and the constitution of coalitions. We have seen that national history affects unions in particular: the extent to which a country’s unions are familiar with coalition practice may promote future coalition practice (Tattersall, 2009b). Yet unions can defy these traditions. Unions may turn to coalitions as a source of power in times of crisis where the perception of a threat pricks union self-interest and compels strategic innovation. The cumulative and dynamic effects of a country’s social and political circumstances can lead to different patterns of coalition success. In the case studies, we saw that structural opportunities, such as the relative openness of the state, centralized political cultures, and strong union relationships with political parties, were associated with coalitions’ successful achievement of policy outcomes. A history of social democracy and state openness, most evident in Australia and less so in Canada, provided a political space more receptive to coalition advocacy. We saw the Australian coalition secure a new policy victory around class sizes and that the Canadian coalition was able to harness a canvassing campaign to save Medicare. The specific attributes of the state also mattered. For instance, where progressive political parties were in power, they created opportunities for policy influence. It was not the existence of a specific relationship between the union and the party that was decisive, but rather how the presence of a progressive party opened the state to influence. Coalitions successfully influenced the ALP government in NSW and the Democraticrun council in Chicago, where representatives were open to lobbying and negotiation. In contrast, the OHC’s potential for political influence in Canada was extremely limited without a political party open to it or its unions. Nevertheless, supportive union-party relationships still required

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TABLE 5.2 Coalition success across the case studies Social change

NSW Chicago Ontario

Organizational strength

Winning outcomes

Shifting the political climate

Sustained relationships

Increasing the capacity of participating organizations

Yes Mixed Mixed

Yes Yes Mixed

No Yes Yes

Mixed No Yes

active public campaigns; for instance, the close relationships between the CFL and labor aldermen had to be coupled with a field campaign, and the Vinson inquiry was necessary to strengthen the public education coalition’s access to government. Coalition policy victories were assisted by a centralized political culture and disadvantaged by a decentralized one. In Australia, the public education coalition’s adversaries were state-scaled and included the premier, minister for education, and the Department of Education and Training. Centralization allowed the public education coalition to focus on influencing those powerful individuals through cascading public and private events, having already built generalized awareness and momentum for its agenda through inquiry hearings across the state. A decentralized political culture in the United States, specifically the Chicago mayor’s ability to veto a decision that had previously gained widespread council approval, presented significant advantages to the collaborative’s adversaries. Paradoxically, the lack of a binding party caucus gave the aldermen the autonomy to decide how to vote, and this had its advantages for the coalition: by threatening the electoral viability of an alderman, the collaborative could directly influence his or her vote. Conversely, we saw that the less open the state and the more difficult the coalition’s structural environment, the more likely coalitions were to focus on successfully sustaining their organizational relationships. A hostile political context also tended to result in coalitions with more organizations, and particularly multiple unions. Structural pressures also affected the kind of decision making that emerged. The collaborative exemplified this, cultivating trusting relationships over years and then strategically expanding those relationships to bring in additional labor and religious partners to the living wage campaign. Likewise, the hostile con-

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text influenced the collaborative’s decision to require organizations to commit to member turnout, leading to an opt-in style of consensus decision making. The broad-based relationships of the OHC were designed to provide political influence that could shift both progressive and more conservative governments, and in turn the OHC sought to treat its diverse organizations equally, producing a type of equality-based consensus decision making. Each of these coalitions involved a large number of unions that provided political and financial resources. In contrast, the NSWTF did not focus on sustaining relationships and did not choose to draw in additional organizational supporters (say, from the wider union movement) because it was not necessary to win policy outcomes. The public education coalition’s relatively open political context also correlated with decision-making processes that were dominated by the NSWTF, producing a dominated form of consensus decision making. An open state did not determine whether policy victories were achieved or the political climate was changed. Rather, state openness became a potential obstruction that could be dynamically resisted through alternative strategies for building coalition strength. I believe this kind of dynamic strategy was exemplified by Canada’s OHC. It responded to a particularly difficult political environment by prioritizing strong organizational relationships and building local broker organizations to magnify its political influence against hostile political parties. Consequently, even with a relatively unsupportive state, the OHC’s broad relationships and deep participation through its local health coalitions helped it save Medicare. When we turn to the question of civil society organizations, we see that in each context, the coalitions were driven by organizations with a strong membership base. In Australia and Canada, unions played a leadership role in turning out members to events and providing financial resources. In the United States, large membership-based community organizations were in a position to play a leadership role in the coalition in relation to turnout and political strategy. In Australia and Canada, more modest community organization capacity did not constrain coalition success. Instead, coalitions dynamically responded to any lack of capacity by developing new mobilizing structures. Local broker organizations that relied on union or community activists countered a lack of centralized community organization power by creating a new space for activating members. Conversely, the fact that individual U.S. community organizations had their own membership development

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capacity allowed the collaborative to strategically harness this resource rather than building member capacity itself. This contextual advantage allowed the collaborative to rely on strong organizational relationships as a substitute for building a multiscaled structure. National context helped shape the degree to which unions sought to engage in coalitions. The communist party’s involvement in Australian unions and the rise of Canadian leftist nationalism and union resistance to neoliberalism meant that both of these labor movements were familiar with coalitions. We saw unions initiate the coalitions in Canada and Australia. In the United States, the dominance of business unionism provided a less fertile base for unions’ initiating and leading coalitions. SEIU 880’s community organizing credentials allowed it to buck the traditional role unions have taken in that country, playing a leading role in the collaborative. Yet a history of coalition practice was not the only motivation for unions to participate in coalitions; crisis also encouraged coalition development. While a crisis in union power or density was likely to encourage unions to participate in a coalition (Tattersall, forthcoming a), the extent and perceptions of crisis varied between the countries. These different experiences of union crisis influenced the degree to which unions participated in coalition. Perceptions of crisis operated at two levels, in specific unions as well as across the movement (Cooper 2001). For individual unions in the United States, the crisis was about union density and bargaining: the UFCW feared that Wal-Mart would force union stores to close and drive down the ability to bargain in those stores. In Australia the crisis was about bargaining power in a salaries campaign against the state government. In Canada the crisis was more an ideological resistance to neoliberal transformations in health care policies, which later became connected to workplace conditions with P3s. Specific experiences of crisis dovetailed with national debates about union revitalization, which were most advanced in the United States, where there was 12 percent union density. Discussion about the need for union revitalization was more developed in Australia than in Canada. Union density in Australia had fallen more sharply over the 1990s, and the ACTU had begun pushing for union reform through union education programs and conferences as early as 1994 (Cooper 2003; Fairbrother and Yates 2003). The combination of national and local crisis influenced the degree to which unions participated in the coalitions. Crisis provoked business unions to collaborate. In Chicago, the UFCW initially played a leader-

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ship role in the coalition despite limited experience. Crisis also provoked unions that had previously relied on political relationships to join coalitions. The straining of the CFL’s relationship with the mayor created an interest in coalition work. Conversely, in Canada, less intense perceptions of crisis correlated with less intensive union engagement, which shifted once health care campaigning became linked to workplace conditions. In Australia, strong debate about union crisis combined with the turmoil of the 1999 salaries campaign helped inspire a culture of union reform that initiated the public education coalition (Zadkovich 1999). Overall, national context played a role in influencing coalition success and coalition strategies. In particular, it shaped the ability to achieve policy victories and the kind of organizational relationships and participation that developed in particular coalitions. Yet it is important to note that political context did not determine the fate of coalition success (Turner 2007, 11). The decision to form local broker organizations or strategically build coalition structures showed us how context provides a dynamic point of resistance against which coalition innovation can take place.

The Possibilities and Limits of Coalition Success

Throughout the case studies, I found that different types of coalition success existed in tension with each other. The ultimate coalition would achieve policy victories, shift the political climate, sustain relationships, and build the capacity of organizations. But we did not see a coalition like this emerge. Indeed, my case studies unearthed how some coalition goals were repeatedly achieved at the expense of others — for instance, in situations where organizers had to trade off building organizational strength in order to achieve social change. None of the case studies achieved all the four benchmarks of coalition success (outcomes, political climate, sustaining relationships, organizational capacity) because none of the coalitions were able to maintain strength across all of the three elements (common concern, organizational relationships, scale). By demonstrating similar coalition strengths and weaknesses over time, the case studies show us how difficult coalition success is to attain. The coalition elements usefully describe some of these limitations. For instance, the public education coalition was driven by common concern and had weak organizational relationships. Yet the NSWTF’s domination of

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these relationships was not a problem that needed to be overcome because it produced the resource base for the coalition. Without NSWTF dominance it is unlikely that the Vinson inquiry would have been funded. Similarly, the OHC’s negatively framed common concern allowed a wide variety of organizations to strike common agreement. Its weak common concern was a vehicle for its diverse organizational participation. Likewise, the collaborative’s singularly scaled relationships facilitated collective strategizing that might not have been as rapid or as intense but for the long relationships between those leaders. While there might be possibilities for dynamically improving coalition practice, there are also limits to coalition success. Moreover, I believe that, rather than seeing each of these three case studies as one of a kind, we can observe distinct parallels between the type of coalition practice seen in the case studies and the work of other coalitions found in secondary literature. I argued that coalitions can be defined by a particular coalition element. This finding can enhance our understanding of the possibilities and limits of coalitions more broadly across different places with different organizations. Take the public education coalition with its strong common concern and its tendency toward union dominance. It shared striking similarities with many of the coalitions that have been developed by the Justice for Janitors campaigns organized by the SEIU in the United States (and parallel campaigns for cleaners run in the United Kingdom and Australia). Justice for Janitors campaigns are primarily designed to organize new union members through pressuring the owners of building companies. The goal is to get building owners to consent to unionization as well as minimum workplace standards for cleaning contractors that operate in their premises (Savage 1998; Rudy 2001; Clawson 2003). Coalitions have been used to build public legitimacy for the campaign and social pressure against the building owners, with alliances frequently formed by the SEIU with immigrant organizations, faith groups, and community organizations like ACORN. Like the public education coalition, the Justice for Janitors campaign is defined by strong common concern that uses language like living wages to bring public attention to the plight of low-wage workers. Workers are often organized off-site, through meetings connected with these community organizations, providing a multiscaled capacity not unlike the public education lobbies used by the public education coalition (Savage 1998). Justice for Janitors campaigns have also successfully improved the political climate for winning immigrant rights and in Los An-

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geles, for instance, have been credited for spreading awareness about immigration that led to the AFL-CIO’s Immigrant Freedom Rides and the 2006 immigrant mobilizations (Frank and Wong 2004; Moody 2009). In these campaigns, however, unions have often struggled to build sustainable relationships with community partners beyond the organizing drives because they tended to dominate decisions about campaign strategy (Tait 2005). The pattern of coalition behavior identified by the coalition elements in the public education coalition can be paralleled with other major coalitions, like the Justice for Janitors campaign. In a corresponding way, the collaborative’s coalition practice, driven by strong organizational relationships, closely resembles the types of union-to-union coalitions seen in central labor councils, like the Canadian Labour Congress, Unions NSW, or the Los Angeles County Federation. Central labor councils have strong organizational relationships — with unions working together based on a broad strategic commitment to furthering their institutional needs, collective political power, and common industrial interests (Ellem and Shields 2004). Their agenda is necessarily broad, with internal decision-making processes allowing them to renegotiate issue priorities while sustaining relationships. Like the collaborative, central labor councils tend to have singularly scaled relationships, with a more limited capacity to develop the rank and file. Their contact with the rank and file comes through individual union affiliates rather than through local cross-union membership structures (like a broker organization). And finally, the multiscaled coalition work of the OHC, while remarkable, was also not exceptional. The possibilities and limitations of its coalition practice paralleled, for instance, the work of the Walk against the War Coalition in Australia in 2002 – 3 (Tattersall 2007b, 2007c). The Walk against the War Coalition developed a multiscaled structure, with up to twenty-five local peace groups inside Sydney and around New South Wales between January and April 2003. It also had a strong but broad set of organizational relationships with up to sixty organizations participating. Like the OHC, its common concern was framed as a negative demand: “Stop the war and bring the troops home.” These demands activated an immediate popular engagement in the campaign, comparable to the engagement in the Save Medicare canvass. In spite of this, however, deep and sustained rank-and-file union participation did not emerge. Organizational diversity hampered coalition decision making by creating difficulties in building consensus between the organizational partners and led to the use

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of a narrow range of tactics. This coalition was not sustained over the long term, lasting only six months. Yet it was successful in other ways, organizing the largest demonstration in Australia’s history on February 16, 2003. For me, some questions remain. Is a stronger coalition practice possible? Can coalitions work in ways that powerfully embody all the coalition elements and achieve all the four kinds of success? To what extent can the limits of coalitions be overcome? Certainly the contextual pressures that we saw narrowing strategic choice in the case studies show that simply suggesting that coalitions try harder is not helpful. Yet the fact that coalitions were able to creatively construct new strength over time indicates that there are avenues for change. We can see possibilities for stronger coalition practice in the dynamism of the coalitions in the case studies. These coalitions exercised strategic choice, overcoming (even briefly) some of their weaknesses. Thus the OHC built a direct interest connection with CUPE and a positive slogan about “building hospitals right” even though it tended to have a weak common concern. Likewise, the public education coalition enlisted Tony Vinson as a kind of coalition coordinator who helped balance the coalition’s uneven organizational relationships, even though the NSWTF tended to dominate. Similarly, the collaborative’s scale benefited from the emergence of the South Side broker organization even though it tended to be singularly scaled. The coalitions also dynamically responded to their contextual environment by creating new possibilities, like the local broker organizations in Australia and Canada and the collaborative’s golden rules about coalition building. We also saw the coalitions trying to overcome some of the tension between “campaigning versus capacity-building” by investing in capacity building outside specific campaigns. After all, if social-change campaigning tends to narrow the kinds of organizational strength that a coalition achieves, then a break from campaigning can help rebuild a coalition’s capacity. The collaborative spent several years building relationships before it launched a campaign, and the Vinson inquiry slowly built an agenda around public education before it focused on winning specific united demands from the state government. Patient relationship building underpinned the coalitions’ later success. Similarly, we saw that union education and leadership development aimed at building the skills and capacity of union leaders and members supported capacity building. For instance, in the year after the living wage campaign, the Grassroots Collaborative spent considerable energy on internal training and

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development, and likewise the NSWTF’s school representatives were such capable campaigners because of that union’s comprehensive internal training program. It is possible that additional capacity-building strategies might have been feasible in these coalitions. For instance, what if the public education coalition had invested in building the capacity of the P&C? Could that have made its organizational relationships more balanced? Or what if the collaborative had built local ward-based broker organizations? In a similar vein, the community organizing cum coalition-building practice developed by Saul Alinsky and the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) argues that strong broad-based coalitions require approximately three years of capacity-building before they engage in social-change campaigning. The IAF calls this “power building,” in which organizers work with religious, union, and community organizations to cultivate relationships, identify leaders, and engage organizational leaders and members in joint training and planning before an agenda is developed and the organization is publicly launched (Alinsky 1971; Gecan 2002). There are, however, limits to coalition capacity building. As the collaborative found, eventually you have to “break bread” and test the relationships that have been cultivated. You can’t just build capacity forever. In this process, tensions between capacity building and campaigning are likely to reemerge. Conversely, coalitions sometimes build organizational strength most effectively in the context of a campaign rather than in a dedicated period of capacity building. The OHC’s health coalitions were built through the Medicare and P3 campaigns, and it is unlikely that they would have been as successful but for its health care fight. We can see another possibility for stronger coalitions when organizers learn from their peers. The principles I outlined at the beginning of this chapter, such as the importance of restricting the organizations that join coalitions and employing coalition coordinators, are a useful starting point. Sometimes coalition organizers do not experiment with particular strategies because they have not thought of them. For instance, the idea of a public education coalition coordinator never emerged during the public education campaign (interview 11 with NSWTF officer, May 2, 2005). Learning from other coalitions and organizers, as Zadkovich learned about social movement unionism, is another way to enhance the possibilities of coalition success. Yet coalitions cannot throw off the shackles of history or context, and there are limits to the outcomes that they can achieve. Most clearly, national and local political environments limit coalition success. As we saw

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in the U.S. and Canadian case studies in particular, a hostile context constrained the kind of social change achievable. A hostile context may also require coalitions to substitute campaigning for capacity building in order to achieve social-change victories. Second, the strategic objectives of individual organizations may permanently limit coalitions. This was more obvious in Australia, where the close connection between the public education coalition and the internal union strategies and resources of the NSWTF meant that the union had a desire to control the coalition. The union’s strategic objective placed a limit on how the public education coalition could produce different forms of coalition success, particularly sustainable organizational relationships. Indeed, the way in which unions approach coalitions can restrict their scope. For instance, success will be constrained if coalitions are built in a zero-sum way, by which community organizations are used to serve the interests of unions rather than to develop a more mutual partnership. The challenges of positive-sum coalitions versus zero-sum coalitions can make a qualitative difference in the kind of power that unions can build from working in coalition.

Coalitions and Powerful Unions

Coalitions have a particularly important impact on unions. This is especially clear in light of the challenges unions face with falling density, organizational sclerosis, declining control over work practices, increasing social isolation, and reduced political influence. I found that long-term coalitions across different political contexts achieved social change by generating political pressure and built organizational strength. This strength came from increased member participation; for instance, in Australia the public education coalition engaged a new layer of union members that had lain dormant through previous industrial campaigns by inviting them to participate in a coalition-run inquiry. Strength also came from learning new ways to influence decision makers, as we saw in Chicago, where the UFCW borrowed from the strategic capacity of the collaborative to translate a defensive strategy against Wal-Mart into a popular movement for living wages in all large retail stores. That coalitions may strengthen organizations holds particular promise for unions. Coalitions may provide a means for reestablishing unions’ ability to exercise political influence and control over work practices. Likewise, civil society relationships may reverse unions’ social isolation and re-

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shape their organizational capacity. In these ways, coalitions may be a source of union revitalization. It is critical to note that we saw unions win social change and enhance their organizational strength by working in coalitions that were long-term and remarkably mutual in the way in which they planned and executed their goals. Across the case studies, unions gained more power from working in coalition when they had less direct control over the coalition. Thus for the public education coalition it was the Vinson inquiry and not the salaries campaign that had the greater political impact on government; similarly it was the Living Wage Coalition and not the No-Wal-Mart campaign that most aggressively challenged Chicago’s retailers. This finding runs counter to much of the common wisdom about coalitions. Popular union conceptions are that coalitions are a means to supplement union goals, that community organizations are an add-on to union power and strategy. This approach sees relationships with community organizations in a zero-sum framework, where the purpose of a coalition is to enable “power for” unions through a transfer of resources from community organizations to unions. We did see examples of this kind of instrumental power in the case studies. Community organizations helped unions mobilize people to attend rallies in Chicago, run media events and lobby in Sydney, and build public awareness in Toronto. These kinds of instrumental support, however, paled in comparison with the deeper exchange of power that occurred when the relationships and campaign goals were more mutually constructed. I would argue that a more powerful way for unions to organize in coalition is to work to build positive-sum relationships. This is where community organizations build “power with” unions (Kreisberg 1992; Chambers 2003). In contrast with the way community organizations provide support for union goals, positive-sum coalitions enable unions and community organizations to jointly craft issues and campaigns that work to build each other while also meeting each other’s direct interests. We have seen that when coalitions operate in a way that generates reciprocity of decision making and a mutuality of interest, organizations are much more likely to share power, resources, and skills for the long haul. Transactional “power for” coalitions, or what Frege, Heery, and Turner (2004) describe as “vanguard coalitions,” are easily severable. They may allow a union to obtain short-term support from a community organization, but the assistance is not likely to last because there is little motiva-

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tion to sustain the relationship. Organizations do not have to share power; they need a reason to do so. The reason can be based on an interest in an issue, as in Sydney and Toronto, or it may be based on a broader organizational interest, say, to rebuild political influence, as in Chicago. When a union cultivates a relationship with a community organization based on the organization’s self-interest, that community organization is likely to strengthen its commitment to joint work. We saw the impact of mutual interest in Chicago, where unions went from asking community organizations to participate in union rallies to instead jointly planning a living wage ordinance. Positive-sum coalitions of unions and community organizations provide several sources of power for unions. Across the case studies, unions benefited from their coalition relationships in quite different ways. Not only were the case studies different because each embodied distinctive combinations of the coalition elements, but this variation also corresponded to the specific kinds of union power that the coalition elements produced. In my analysis, unions gain power from working in coalition in three different ways, each of which correlates to the strong presence of one of the coalition elements (Tattersall forthcoming a). Strong common concern helps broaden a union’s vision and thereby builds the political agency of unions. This develops when a coalition assists a union to set out a public agenda by articulating its vested interests as a social interest (a sword of justice) or where participation in a coalition helps a union to politicize union members. We saw the power of the NSWTF enhanced by the public education coalition and in particular the Inquiry into Public Education. The coalition generated political influence for union issues such as class sizes and salaries. It activated union members who had not previously been engaged by industrial work but who were committed to taking action around their professional identity. This broader understanding of union purpose made it easier for the NSWTF to build relationships with parents and principals. The coalition expanded the union’s political influence and member politicization because the coalition’s common concern went beyond the sectional interests of the union and connected to the interests of parents and the broader public. Yet as the common concern changed, so did this political power, with the agenda-setting capacity falling away during the salaries campaign. When a coalition has strong organizational relationships and structure, unions gain public legitimacy and enhanced power from the shared resources. We saw this most clearly in Chicago, where the collaborative’s

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strong relationships allowed its living wage campaign to harness the lobbying relationships of labor, the field campaign of ACORN, and the strategic planning work of the coalition as a whole. This coalition’s open and trusting relationships produced a climate where organizations were prepared to share power. This collective resource benefited the union specifically because the work of the collaborative was in its strategic interests. The UFCW was directly affected by the issue of living wages, and the SEIU was directly interested in building political influence in the city. A coalition’s scale can provide unions with opportunities to increase the campaigning skills of union leaders and members. For instance, the OHC engaged unions like CUPE in unfamiliar campaign strategies, such as a canvass, provincial tours, and plebiscites. These campaigns were successful because they broke the mold of the traditional union response to political threats, which was to organize rallies. The coalition’s local broker organizations provided a resource base for catalyzing new forms of member participation that left lasting skills among the union stewards and members who participated. The union was able to take advantage of this multiscaled campaign opportunity because it was a multiscaled organization, with locals that matched the local scale of the health coalition across the province. I argue that these three types of union power represent three ways in which unions can take up the challenge posed by Flanders (1970) and wield a sword of justice. In arguing this I revisit Flanders’s understanding of union power. He implied that there was a “choice” for unions, between acting in their vested interest or acting with a sword of justice. My argument moves beyond this dichotomy. My findings suggest that coalitions are most powerful when these two factors are combined, when vested interest coincides or is expressed as a sword of justice. I found that powerful unionism, through a connection between vested interest and a sword of justice, can develop in three distinct ways. First, mutual relationships create space for social legitimacy by offering an antidote to union domination. By connecting union self-interest with other organizations’ interests, unions can align their own vested interest with a broader public interest. Intense collaboration opens up vested-interest decision making by exposing it to the rigor of debate and negotiation. Second, a shared agenda connects vested interest to social interest by opening up campaign goals to broader constituencies and bringing in nonunion advocates to promote these concerns. Third, innovative campaign strategies become an antidote to predictable repertoires of contention, adding new activities that can surprise opponents and wield new

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types of influence. In these three ways, as Turner (2001) argues, coalitions play a central role in union revitalization. Coalition participants, and in particular union organizers, will make decisions about the kinds of union power they build. They are strategic choices. Across the case studies, we saw how context and objectives shaped the way coalitions prioritized and achieved different kinds of power. But the central principle was that more mutual, reciprocal, and creative relationships qualitatively enhanced the kind of power unions gained from coalitions. When unions simultaneously enhanced the strength of their community organization partners, there was a cumulative expansion of resources across the coalition, as well as an increase in power for unions. This builds on the work of Voss and Sherman (2000), who suggest that union leaders with social movement experience are likely to advance union reform. I argue that union participation in coalitions, under certain circumstances, can also be a trigger for union revitalization. Beyond the internal renewal of unions, we can see that coalitions also produced political power in the interests of unions. This kind of political power was unlike the insider influence associated with union affiliation with labor parties. The coalitions generated a potentially more short-term and temporary exercise of political pressure that was limited to moving specific issues and agendas, as opposed to a sustained institutionalized influence over the broad policies of a political party. Nonetheless, that pressure had a qualitatively different effect on the state than did labor strategies, as the coalitions were able to shift the decisions of a broader class of politicians. Thus in Canada, the Save Medicare campaign shifted the Liberal Party, and in Australia the public education coalition enlisted the support of the conservative opposition as well as the ALP. Beyond the traditional strategy of union-party relationships and labor parties, coalitions potentially provide a supplementary (or in the case of the NSWTF, an alternative) source of political power for unions. Moreover, when coalition strategies are used in concert with union-party relationships, they can strengthen those relationships. For instance, in Chicago traditional lobbying was coupled with direct action in individual aldermanic wards, with the result that Democratic aldermen were more likely to support the coalition’s policy reforms. Coalition success is far-reaching but complex. While I identify several core principles that produced powerful long-term relationships, the constraints of political and national context often force coalition organizers to trade their desire for stronger organizations to pursue social change.

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Yet coalitions mitigated some of these tensions. The dynamism of crosscoalition learning and the frequency with which the coalitions in my case studies produced new strategies in response to hostile contexts showed that coalitions have the potential to build new social agendas and help regenerate civil society. For unions, I argue that the different coalition elements work to produce positive-sum resources that reinvigorate their relationships, agenda, and campaign capacity while rebuilding their political power.

Conclusion

The Possibilities of Successful Coalitions

Coalitions are important if unions and community organizations seriously want to transform the political and economic climate by building a strong civil society. Nurturing powerful collaborations is integral to turning around the isolation of unions and mobilizing sufficient political pressure to create fundamental social change. We saw in the case studies a realistic picture of what solidarity between organizations looks like. These coalitions demonstrate the considerable impact of long-term coalitions. The elements of coalitions are the building blocks that help explain how coalitions can deliver social-change outcomes while simultaneously strengthening their participating organizations. Although national and local contexts shaped specific coalition opportunities, the case studies identified transferable principles about coalition practice. One important theme was that coalitions were consistently dynamic, with organizers forced to adapt to the pressures of achieving social change by focusing on building particular kinds of organizational strength at the expense of others. At its core, a coalition is truly successful only if it has created organizational strength. Coalitions are strategically limited if they win political reforms in ways that sacrifice the power of their organizations. Coalitions play a role in rebuilding civil society by sustaining relationships between the organizations, as this creates a ready network of future allies (Nissen 2004; Dobbie 2009). Likewise, civil society is strengthened when a coalition develops the skills or political awareness of organizational members. In the case studies, we sometimes saw these strategies emerge as a creative

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response to a blockage in power, as in the Canadian local health groups, and at other times new types of strength surfaced from campaign reflection and evaluation, like the Grassroots Collaborative’s golden rules. Political crisis also led to a renewal in organizational power, as in the NSWTF 1999 salaries campaign. Yet social-change pressures could block a coalition’s ability to build organizational strength, for instance when a constrained legislative timetable and hostile political environment compelled the Grassroots Collaborative to rely on existing staff capacity instead of building a multiward coalition structure in Chicago. Coalitions build organizational capacity to achieve social change, and the coalitions in the case studies successfully achieved lasting reforms in education, health care, and workplace relations. Yet success should not be viewed in terms of policy outcomes alone. Momentum for widespread changes in the political climate ricocheted through the government and the local community when the coalitions’ campaigns shifted the political climate as well as winning specific issues. The three campaigns successfully reregulated their environment. While coalitions can be used in employment and political battles, they are particularly versatile as political instruments. This was even the case in the hostile climate of the United States, where Wal-Mart was contested not through a head-to-head clash with the corporation but by using popular pressure against political representatives to fashion regulations that constrained how employers in the industry operated. In the language of labor geography, the coalitions were a tool to rescale the free market. By developing new regulations or by rehabilitating public institutions, the coalitions created spatial fixes on capital that served the local population and the coalition’s participating organizations (Herod 2007). Yet we saw that the coalitions themselves had limits, and because of this there was strong variation across the case studies. The decision to prioritize particular outcomes (such as social change or organizational strength) reflected a strategic decision by organizers to focus on distinct coalition elements such as common concern, organizational relationships, or scale. Despite the variation, each coalition similarly embraced reciprocal, positive-sum relationships that created a source of power for unions. Instead of a mercenary understanding of union power, by which unions are seen to benefit from coalitions because community organizations hand over resources, sustainable union strength emerged from the quality of the organizational relationships. Genuine union power is realized when a “culture of exchange” develops between organizations. I used the coalition el-

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ements to identify three kinds of union power. By sharing common-concern goals, unions broaden their agenda, enhancing their ability to make political claims. Unions benefit when they share resources with community organizations through strong organizational relationships. Through an exchange of campaign strategies and capacity, coalitions help unions battle the government and employers.

Building Power in Coalition

I used these findings to argue why coalitions are likely to persist as a tool for social and political change. I also considered implications for union strategy, purpose, and theory. Coalitions have the potential to help build new social visions by crafting creative political demands that meet multiple interests. Contrast the successes of the living wage campaign and the public education coalition with the difficulty that most civil society organizations face in making positive new political claims. The success of neoliberal ideology in creating a commonsense agenda around free markets has frequently circumscribed the ability to build alternative agendas. These coalitions’ mutualinterest, sword-of-justice demands run counter to social democracy’s retreat into “new labor” and its acceptance of the free market. They contrast to the pervasiveness of “no” coalitions that are clear about what they are against but not what they are for. In a vain hope to set an agenda, progressives have often resorted to a modernized version of vanguardism, where groups of self-proclaimed experts or “think tanks” project new political treaties. Worthy, rapid-fire web-based campaign organizations like MoveOn.org, the One campaign, Avaaz.org, and GetUp.org.au are often limited by this vanguard culture where only small campaign teams concoct political campaigns that are then broadcast over e-mail. But good ideas are best converted into effective social-change strategies when they are located in and emerge out of mass-based constituencies, not simply because of their merits. The very process of finding common concern between coalition partners makes for demands that are more politically resonant than those that are formulated in isolation. In light of this, coalitions are an ideal space for incubating new political visions, grounded in the experience of the communities that unions and community organizations represent. Coalition campaigns may be a harbinger of more powerful political demands as long as these relationships are forged with a genuine commit-

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ment for sharing an agenda. An example of this emerged in the labor movement in Australia in the months after the 2007 election of a national Labor government. The change of government created a political opportunity for achieving paid maternity leave. Dozens of organizations started campaigning to influence a major national inquiry into the issue. A wide range of policies were advocated, stretching from a fourteen-week scheme backed by business and the national union body, the ACTU, to a twelve-month proposal from an eclectic network of pediatricians, health professionals, and children’s organizations. In March, Unions NSW, backed by a conference of three hundred union delegates, launched a campaign for six months’ paid maternity leave. Despite a series of successful public events, by July a consensus was coalescing around a fourteen-week scheme. Dissatisfied, several union and community organization leaders started a coalition for the groups that advocated more ambitious maternity leave plans. Initially, Unions NSW had assumed that the coalition should be called the Six Month Coalition, but robust exchanges between the lead partners in the coalition made it clear that the demands had to focus more on what the groups agreed on rather than conflicting ideas around the length of leave. These discussions produced a new public message, demanding a system of paid maternity leave that would help Australian babies have the “best possible start in life.” This frame solidified public pressure for a bolder paid maternity leave system, with the national inquiry recommending, and the Australian government eventually adopting, a system of eighteen weeks’ leave. The coalition left behind a network that could cultivate new policies around families, work, and children, like promoting better child-care measures and work-family balance. The coalition’s legacy was a shift in community expectations about paid maternity leave, evident when the conservative Liberal Party leader embraced a six months paid maternity scheme in March 2010. A coalition’s agenda-setting potential requires all the parties involved to be committed to crafting a positive message. This is not always possible. When a forward-looking consensus cannot be found, coalitions are necessarily constrained in their ability to set an agenda. We saw this limitation in 2007 – 8 in Sydney when the state government proposed to privatize electricity generation. Almost immediately, discussions commenced between unions and environmental organizations about the possibilities of a joint campaign. These were made tense because of irreconcilably different views about the future of energy generation and disagreements about how to respond to the need for a new power generator. Unions took the position that the priority was to build a publicly owned power station

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and were prepared for that to be coal-fired, as that was the cheapest solution. Environmental organizations disputed the need for new power and argued that if a power station was required, it had to be built using gas, not coal, because of coal’s greater impact on climate change. In the end, the only common ground between the groups was their opposition to privatization (and even here consensus was not reached across the environmental organizations). A lack of common concern around a positive agenda prevented the groups from building an alternative vision for the future of energy production in New South Wales. Economic instability, such as that sparked by the 2008 global financial crisis and economic downturn, is likely to open up new opportunities for coalitions to set a political agenda. We saw this in the success of two IAF coalitions from Washington State. These coalitions were significantly more effective in advancing a policy that created jobs and reduced carbon emissions after the economic crash in late 2008, when their program was lauded as a centerpiece of the state’s stimulus package. Many years before, a government-funded plan called Sustainable Works had emerged as a surprising solution to an array of seemingly contradictory concerns identified by the Spokane Alliance, a broad-based coalition of unions, religious organizations, and community organizations in rural Washington State. In 2001, the coalition had initiated public listening assemblies, which operated as participatory town hall meetings, where union and church members alike voiced the pressures they were facing in their lives. The issues included union concerns about baby boomer retirement and the need to train a new generation of workers. Local church congregations were worried about high school dropout rates and the need for creating good jobs in the local area so that kids did not need to leave Spokane to earn a living wage. At the same time Spokane’s Catholic bishop had written a pastoral letter about the spiritual importance of ecology. This eclectic collection of values and interests led the alliance to begin work on a “jobs and the environment” strategy. At first, the alliance looked at the feasibility of creating jobs through energy retrofits for nonprofit organization buildings. This was then linked to the desire to train young workers, and in 2002, the alliance agitated for programs to train building contractors in how to undertake retrofits. These ideas merged when the local education association and construction unions teamed up to campaign for school retrofits to be completed by graduating school students employed as apprentices under union standards. This agenda grew further after Seattle’s Sound Alliance’s founding assembly in June 2008, when the

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Senate majority leader committed to funding three pilots to retrofit housing stock. It was, however, the financial crisis that swiftly accelerated the rollout of this vision: the climate change cum jobs creation scheme became the primary focus of the state’s economic stimulus package. The economic crisis provoked the state to intervene in the economy, significantly enhancing the successful implementation of this coalition’s creative agenda. My findings about organizational relationships have implications for why certain forms of coalitions are more successful than others. The most striking of these is the “less is more” principle. A common instinct in coalition building, and the subject of much training about coalitions, encourages would-be coalition organizers to brainstorm large numbers of organizations that might have an interest in an issue and then automatically considers them as potential players at the table (Bobo, Kendall, and Max 2001). I caution against this. Instead, the strategic selection of would-be coalition partners should examine more than an organization’s interest. It should also consider an organization’s capacity and likely commitment. An assessment of organizational capacity must be sophisticated, not simply a function of its organizational size or even turnout capacity. As the Grassroots Collaborative in Chicago learnt, simple formulas based on narrow notions of “organized people” and “organized money,” while common, are a relatively crude assessment of organizational power. The collaborative’s identification of religious representatives suggests that “whom organizations represent” may be another form of organizational capacity. For instance, in 2010, the Sydney Alliance was an emerging broad-based coalition with partners from a diverse array of unions, religious organizations, and community organizations. If the alliance had considered only turnout capacity or financial resources when identifying potential partner organizations, then the coalition would have consisted overwhelmingly of unions and religious organizations. This would have been problematic because leaving out smaller community and religious organizations would have excluded many culturally and linguistically diverse communities. Coalitions like the collaborative and the Sydney Alliance demonstrate how the strategic selection of organizational partners helps coalitions build political momentum and social legitimacy. The need for prudence about the number of organizational partners presents challenges when creating highly diverse coalitions. As I explained in chapter 5, if a highly diverse coalition is brought together, cultivating

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trusting relationships is likely to require intensive capacity-building work before campaigning is undertaken. Some may see a dissonance between the demands of patient coalition building and the shock-wave style of organizing often associated with social movements. Social movements trade on the electricity of an issue — war, civil rights, the environment — and use the issue to generate participation and political power. In emergent social movements, an organizer who only works patiently fails because the issue rather than the organizer is building the movement. In those circumstances, creating opportunities for participation and then consolidating that participation is the optimal strategy. Some of the lessons about coalition building apply: for instance, the Australian 2005 – 7 “Your Rights at Work” campaign sparked a labor social movement around dignity at work by creating dozens of local broker organizations, called rights-at-work committees, in regional towns and inside metropolitan cities across the country. While freewheeling social movements may look spontaneous, the lessons about organizational relationship building can tell us a lot about their strengths and limits. For instance, as I noted in chapter 5, in 2003 the Walk against the War coalition was powerful and broad, with organizations spanning the political spectrum. Yet it was beset with contradictions. While it successfully coordinated some of the largest mobilizations in Australia’s history, it was severely constrained by its diversity. The only joint activity decision makers could agree on was to host rallies. When controversial events were organized, consensus evaporated into majority votes, and organizations began stacking meetings with allies rather than working in good faith. This social movement coalition was short-lived because organizations with highly diverse interests, values, and cultures were unable to identify agreed goals and sustain relationships after mass-based interest in the issue waned (Tattersall 2007b, 2007c). In a very different light, we may also apply the findings on organizational relationships between unions and community organizations to understanding coalitions operating with constituencies beyond these groups. This could include coalitions involving researchers or employers. Reynolds’s (2007) study of regional power building in the United States suggests that partnerships between coalitions and research bodies (socalled think-and-do tanks) are important for building a “high road” economy. High-road local economic development captures union interest by promoting unionized employment while generating employer participation through collaborations that seek government subsidies for high-

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skilled employment. Although partnerships between labor and management are often counterpoised to the idea of social movement unionism, there are examples of these strategies coming together to promote successful economic development (Greer, Byrd, and Fleron 2007). The concepts I developed to analyze coalition unionism can be used to analyze the strengths and limits of coalitions that include business. For instance, as Greer, Bryd, and Fleron (2007) explain, in Buffalo, New York, an employer-union coalition was spearheaded by researchers who acted as bridge builders and coalition coordinators, brokering relationships by identifying common interests. The high-road social infrastructure that developed consisted of two coalitions, one union-business coalition and one union – community organization coalition. The need for two coalitions emerged from their limited overlapping organizational interests. While business and unions had a common interest in high-skilled job creation, only unions and community organizations had an interest in other aspects of the high-road agenda, such as a living wage ordinance. My findings about coalitions also identify the potential brittleness of employer-union relationships. Since employer-union coalition relationships are almost exclusively between individual leaders with a personal and experiential commitment to working together on public policy, as coalition personnel change, the relationships are vulnerable and may fall away. My case study findings about scale expose some significant challenges that coalitions and campaigns face, particularly when their social-change goals require multiscaled coordination. Most obviously, coalitions will be more powerful if they cultivate the active participation of organization members. Indeed, the local broker organizations that emerged in NSW and Ontario may have a more general application. These multiscaled structures involved organization members in campaign planning. They provided opportunities for members to lead and learn from each other while working in pursuit of coalition goals. I argue that they could be a generalizable vehicle for bottom-up coalition participation. While multiscaled campaigns are vital for contesting political power, they are hard to sustain. We saw in the Ontario study that tensions easily emerge between the scales, especially with the competing desires for top-down coordination across a broad scale (like a province or a nation) and the importance of bottom-up ownership and meaningful campaign work at more local scales (Weinbaum and Lafer 2002). This tension is very common in nationally scaled political campaigns and is frequently unresolved. A case in point is the Wake-Up Wal-Mart campaign that

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sought to build a national movement against Wal-Mart. At the height of its activity in 2006 – 7 it coordinated days of action at Wal-Mart stores such as postcard signings and pickets, scheduling events around iconic shopping days like Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. While these campaign plans were logically designed to build national momentum, they vested all the campaign decision making inside the Washington Beltway. Ironically, the Wake-Up Wal-Mart campaign and the Chicago living wage campaign were not in regular communication. The weakness of this multiscaled campaign mirrored the pitfalls of the OHC’s P3 tours. These lessons about multiscaled coalitions are applicable to the coordination of nationally scaled campaigns. Multiscaled campaigns are likely to be more powerful if they are sustained by relatively distinct campaign organizations at each scale that have their own plans, bridge builders, and campaign momentum at that scale, as well as being coordinated at a state or national scale. The community organizing techniques used in the 2008 Obama presidential election are an example of how a campaign can create space for effective multiscaled campaign planning. Despite intense national coordination, observers argued that the campaign was genuinely successful at combining “bottom-up-AND-top-down” organizing techniques in how it harnessed volunteers, undertook voter persuasion, and got out the vote (Exley 2008). Obama field organizers contrasted their work to the traditional Democratic electoral campaigns in which the volunteers were kept separate from the paid staff who “did the thinking.” Instead, the Obama campaign focused on volunteer recruitment, guided by the philosophy of “respect, empower, include.” Every field organizer’s main task was the identification and testing of numerous neighborhood team leaders and activity coordinators. Team leaders were then trained in how to identify other leaders, creating a cascading army of volunteers who were allocated specific voter-contacting responsibilities. Volunteer training created a high level of awareness and ownership over how to undertake voter contact, and observers noted that it allowed volunteers to shape the techniques of a canvas to the peculiarities of a particular area. This was possible because unlike the workers in most U.S. election campaigns, nearly all of the Obama volunteers lived where they canvassed rather than being parachuted in from outside. Moreover, by giving these leaders responsibility for undertaking voter contact, the campaign gave them the space to plan how to carry out this work. It was this “feeling of control that unleashed more power” (2008). The success of this multiscaled structure was that it

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handed over responsibility to identified trained volunteers while coordinating across regional, state, and national scales. National political coalitions and campaigns such as those around climate change, need to take seriously the need for positive-sum multiscaled coalitions and multiscaled organization. Single national demands will be insufficient to sustain local participation or campaign momentum. Instead, stratified but coordinated campaign goals and organization are more likely to produce sustained engagement of organizations and individuals. Similarly, national coalitions or national organizations are insufficient for building a national movement. National coalitions need to work in tandem with state and local coalitions. For instance, a national greenjobs campaign needs local coalitions like Seattle’s Sound Alliance to act as local bridge builders that can connect the issue to local communities. This local coalition can translate more abstract national demands into winnable demands that directly touch the interests of local unions and religious and community organizations. The local coalition can, in turn, generate support for a national green-jobs agenda by winning incremental changes and building a local constituency of green-jobs supporters. Multiscaled campaigns are likely to be more successful if they can be positive-sum. This means relaxing the desire for centralized coordination to the extent that this allows local scales to determine campaign goals and plans, and pursue more regionally specific agendas that mutually benefit a national campaign. My findings suggest the importance of future research into the vexed question of how coalitions can engage the state. While a century ago labor and social democratic parties were created to provide a mechanism for unions to influence the state, today these parties have institutionalized and distanced themselves from their movement origins. Coalitions frequently find themselves agitating against social democratic parties. An emerging question is if and how insider union relationships with political parties can affect coalition strategies and coalition success. This issue did not strongly emerge in these case studies, because in “laborist” Australia, the NSWTF bucked the trend, having never built a close relationship with the ALP, and in Canada the Liberal and Conservative parties held the balance of power in their own right. Yet the potential contradictions and the creative potential of insider and outsider political relationships for coalitions are worth further exploration (cf. Hauptmeier and Turner 2007). For instance, in Australia between 2001 and 2007, Labor for Refugees, an organization of union and rank-and-file ALP members,

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actively worked in coalition with refugee advocacy organizations and church groups. The insider connections of key unionists in Labor for Refugees and the opportunities of ALP conferences became a point of leverage for pressuring the ALP to shift its refugee policy. In this case political insider relationships dovetailed with union willingness to work in coalition, harnessing political party processes as an opportunity to expand coalition power. It is important to recognize that these strategies are also likely to produce conflict and tension for unions, particularly when coalitions are seeking to influence progressive political parties, especially at election time. Frequently, coalitions and unions minimize public agitation against social democratic parties when elections approach for fear that public discord could risk the election of more conservative governments. We saw this in the relatively muted campaigns around health care and employee free choice during the 2008 U.S. presidential election, and in the collective restraint by unions about the content of industrial relations reform during the 2007 Australian federal election campaign. Even so, I found in the case studies that political agitation linked to electoral timetables is a very effective means of securing progressive social reform. In the class-sizes and living wage campaigns, elections exposed political parties to popular opinion. Yet herein lies a contradiction. A coalition strategy of public agitation sits in stark contrast to the restraint and reliance of quiet influence associated with union relationships with political parties. We saw this in Ontario, where the use of confrontational coalition tactics toward a social democratic party during an election lead to conflict inside the union movement between public sector and “pinkpaper unions.” These potential challenges are likely to be most profound in places like Australia (or the United Kingdom), where ongoing internal party relationships with progressive parties have delivered real outcomes for unions and their members. The way in which these tensions could and do play out is an important area of future research as it defines another potential limit on coalition practice.

Implications for Unions and Industrial Relations

The challenge to unionism posed by declining membership density, hostile employment relations, and strained political party relationships has led to the creation of new strategies and a renewal of old ones. Coalition

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practice can assist unions to reconstruct their political environment while reinvigorating their organizational capacity. By implication, coalitions not only present a powerful response to political and economic crisis but challenge our understanding of a union’s role and power. By identifying the sources of power that emerge from coalition practice, my findings unsettle traditional industrial relations understandings of the purpose of unions and the role of collaboration. Employment relations theorists, and particularly U.K. pluralists and American systems theorists, focus on unions as actors inside the industrial relationship (Chamberlain 1951; Dunlop 1958). They have tended to ignore the possibility that collaboration with community organizations could be a source of power in workplace relations (Dabscheck 1994; Bellemare 2000; Jones 2002). Yet coalition campaigns that traverse broad professional or public concerns, if successful, can directly increase the power of unions to bargain at work. We saw this in particular for public-sector unions, such as the NSWTF and CUPE, which used socially interested campaigns to strengthen their ability to advance claims against their public employers. The private-sector UFCW also reregulated workplace conditions with the support of community allies. Consequently, I suggest that coalitions are a strategy that is highly relevant to modern industrial relations. The political focus of these coalition campaigns also challenges the assumption that a union’s role is simply about collective bargaining and representing member grievances. Using coalitions, the unions in these case studies successfully undertook political activity not simply to shape their employment relationships but, most important, to change public policy and the political and economic environment. The effectiveness of coalition practice raises the question of the legitimate purpose of unions. Is it confined to the industrial relationship, or is there also a broader political or social role? In a period of unions’ diminishing social legitimacy and organizational crisis it may be most effective for unions to broaden their purpose and campaign on a wider set of social demands. By campaigning on a range of issues of mutual interest both inside and beyond the employment relationship, unions can achieve victories that affect the conditions of their members, build their political power, and increase their campaigning capacity. Not only are these gains important, but they can also feed back into a union’s ability to contest the employment relationship. Furthermore, the pursuit of political power is even more important fol-

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lowing the global economic downturn. Limited economic growth and rising unemployment make union political activity even more potent. Uncertain economic times reduce the effectiveness of collective bargaining because corporate bankruptcies, plant closures, and offshoring mean that protecting job security overtakes unions’ ability to press for improved workplace conditions. In such an environment, government intervention becomes an increasingly viable target for union action. This may include campaigns for strengthening social institutions like health care or education, as described in the case studies. Conversely, political action could focus on the state’s role in generating employment (such as industry planning for green jobs) or state support for social and employment benefits like paid parental leave or retirement income. In periods of economic distress, extending union action to these “social wage” benefits is likely to be strategically important for advancing the conditions of union members and working people more broadly. My findings about coalitions present a concrete strategy for unions to break out of a narrow union identity and embrace a more political and social role. Instead of constraining legitimate union action to the employment relationship, coalitions provide a mechanism for unions to link their vested interests in workplace improvements to socially interested political claims. Coalitions help unions successfully achieve political goals. I suggest that coalition unionism may contribute to an alternative discussion about who the economy should be working for. The collapse of the finance markets in 2008 reinforces the importance of regulation and economic management. Yet the spiral of plant closures and unemployment that define economic downturn has the ability to leave unions in a narrow reactive mode. There are, however, more constructive spaces for political leadership. Coalitions may assist unions to move beyond reaction and to pursue social concerns around public institutions, a sustainable economy, and worker protection through political campaigns that reinvigorate the role of the state and regulate the marketplace. Beyond the social-change potential of coalitions, my findings also have implications for internal union reform and strategy. By acting on socially interested demands, unions might be able to engage a new constituency of active members. By campaigning on issues other than wages and conditions, such as those raised during the Vinson inquiry hearings, unions attracted different kinds of membership participation. This has consequences for participation in unions. Union scholarship and union leaders often assume that industrial concerns are the most effective issues for

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generating union engagement. Yet when it comes to coalitions, I found that a much broader range of issues can lead to membership participation (Ellem 2003). This parallels evidence from the Australian Your Rights at Work campaign, in which union organizers discovered that the campaign’s focus on broad interests such as workplace dignity and the next generation’s rights at work led to activity among a different constituency of union members. This opens up an important area of future research. It would be useful to explore the kinds of issues that lead to member commitment more broadly and the extent to which they overlap with union member identity. For instance, the NSWTF’s Vinson inquiry tapped into people’s professional identity. It would be helpful to investigate how and when the gender or ethnicity of a union’s membership supports member participation in coalition campaigns by linking this work to union revitalization scholarship on organizing “nontraditional” union members (Needleman 1998; Milkman 2000; Fine 2005a; Yates 2006). In establishing the importance of scale in coalition success, we can also recognize the geographic dimensions of union organizing and revitalization. Coalition scale was important in two ways. Political influence was enhanced when coalitions were multiscaled; and coalitions that had established local broker organizations, like the local health coalitions or public education lobbies, more easily generated rank-and-file union engagement and development. This highlights the potential importance of local union structures and multiscaled union organizing. The local is vital for unions. It is where workers live, feed, house, and educate themselves and where they can lead decision making (Wills 2001). Renewing local union structures can enhance campaign skills that help union members act strategically. Indeed, a consistent challenge for coalitions in the case studies was a lack of local union capacity. Renewing the local base of unions has the potential to improve coalition practice as well as enhance union strength. Unfortunately, there are examples of unions moving away from local unionism. A trend in the United States has been to consolidate union locals, amalgamating city-based local structures into large multistate “locals.” While this strategy allows a union to coordinate across a broader scale, I suggest that it also reduces opportunities for local worker participation in union strategic decision making, which was found here to be an important tool for revitalizing member participation in unions. Indeed, the vitality of local activity in the case studies suggests that stronger, not weaker, local union structures may be a critical reform that can contribute to re-

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newing the organizing base of unions. Strong local unionism may have the potential to build member participation and skills, foster union growth, and enhance political influence in local areas. Yet local action, while necessary, is not sufficient for challenging employers or politicians. Employers are increasingly global, and unions, like coalitions, need to be capable of acting at multiple scales. I found that it was the combination of local and multiscaled capacity that produced coalition success, and it is potentially this same combination of scale that is critical for unions. My findings about scale are timely, given the increased attention in union literature and practice to the role of scale in union organizing. The globalization of capital has provoked much debate about the most effective scale of union activity. Most attention has been on the need to renew and build new global union strategies (Peck 1996; Castree et al. 2004; Bronfenbrenner 2007). Yet others emphasize the strategic importance of the local in globalization (Herod 2001; Levesque and Murray 2002). Similarly, interest in local organizing strategies has emerged in research on nonunion workplace organizing, such as worker centers or “community unions” (Cranford and Ladd 2003; Fine 2005a, 2005b). In Australia, experimentation with local union strategies was critical in the dramatically successful 2005 – 7 Your Rights at Work campaign. This campaign defeated the national conservative government and led to the removal of its regressive industrial relations policies. Central to this political change was the formation of dozens of local groups located in marginal (swing) electoral districts across the country. These groups were similar to the broker organizations of the OHC or the public education coalition, but the participants were mainly union activists, organizers, and concerned community members. Localized union structures like these may be an important vehicle for renewing unionism in the future. Local union structures may have potential as a permanent strategy for local union member engagement and development, political influence, and union growth. Yet coordination between localized organizing strategies and more centralized industrial or political strategies will be vital for their long-term success. Moreover, the challenges of developing issues of common concern that can inspire and energize participation in these broker organizations will also be a test for engaging a movement that can enliven these local organizations. The potential for successful coalition unionism has implications for an understanding of the power of union collaboration more broadly. Union

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collaboration is most powerful when it is connected to internal union interests and is sustained by reciprocal trusting organizational relationships. This may enhance our understanding of other forms of union-to-union collaboration. For instance, elsewhere I adapted my findings about coalitions to explore global union collaboration, with the example of the SEIU’s global partnerships unit and its alliance with the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) (Tattersall 2007a). I explored the potential of global union alliances by using my approach to coalitions — for instance, identifying that bridge builders helped to support a successful global union alliance by translating political context and culture. The potential versatility of these findings is useful given that union collaborative strategies are a site of increasing experimentation. We see this in the trend toward stronger global unionism, as well as in changes to central labor councils, such as the split within the AFL-CIO and the subsequent formation of Change to Win. My finding about how coalitions can create political power reinforces the role of political action in union revitalization. Not only do I suggest that political strategies are important, but I identify coalitions as a potential adjunct to the strategy of union relationships with political parties. As I noted above, while coalitions may be used in ways that constructively enhance traditional union-party relationships (like the case of Labor for Refugees), they also have the potential to work in conflict with union-party relationships (like the “pink paper” debates in Ontario). Further research would be useful. It could investigate under what circumstances coalitions and union-party relationships can be productive or destructive. It may consider factors such as the degree of union movement unity or disunity around these strategies, with unity likely to lead to a more productive coexistence of coalitions and party relationships. It could investigate the role of union leadership or whether particular issues are likely to influence how these strategies coexist, and also how coalition practice is affected by the structure of the social democratic party itself and its role in government or opposition. My findings apply to coalition unionism in liberal market economies, and it is an open question whether they are useful for understanding union revitalization and coalition unionism in other industrialized or developing countries. Certainly Turner (2007) argues that while different political economies significantly affect whether coalitions are likely to emerge as a strategy, there are similarities in the practice of coalitions across countries. Similarly, Greer (2008) found that neoliberal deregula-

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tion combined with conservative political representation has led to the development of social movement unionism in coordinated market economies like Germany. It is likely that the elements of coalitions I have identified will be useful in other settings because they are focused on how organizations build relationships rather than on context-specific factors. Further research could consider if this is the case, and examine the effect that different political and economic environments have on how the elements interact and produce coalition success. It is possible to build powerful coalitions that achieve social change, rebuild civil society organizations, and revitalize unions. Coalition success, however, is a constant challenge. Building organizational strength is frequently hard to sustain when pitted against the desire for social-change victories, particularly in hostile political contexts. But, as a strategy for increasing the political power of civil society and promoting a peoplecentered vision for social change, coalitions can help transform the current economic and political environment. Coalitions are not a panacea, but they are an important tool for promoting new political solutions. When they are practiced in a reciprocal and respectful way, coalitions support powerful unionism.

References

List of Interviews

The interviews described in the introduction are listed below, grouped by case study. Only interviews that were cited in the text are listed. Named interviews are listed in alphabetical order, followed by anonymous interviews in the order in which they were undertaken. The process of documenting names followed the human ethics agreement at the University of Sydney, where the preference is to allow interviewees to be anonymous and to be cited in the text only when this has been explicitly requested. Chapter 2: The Public Education Coalition in New South Wales NAMED INTERVIEWS

Bloch, C. (2005). Retired NSWTF official, March 26, Wollongong. Brownlee, S. (2005). P&C president, March 18, by phone Gavrielatos, A. (2005). NSWTF deputy vice president, February 1, Sydney. Irving, J. (2005). Assistant secretary, schools, February 1, Sydney. O’Halloran, M. (2004). NSWTF president, December 20, Sydney. O’Halloran, M. (2005). NSWTF president, May 2, Sydney. Scott, G. (2005). PPA former president, March 9, Sydney. Simpson, S. (2005). Former NSWTF president, April 12, Sydney. Vinson, T. (2005). Head of Independent Inquiry into the provision of Public Education in NSW, March 3, Sydney.

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References

ANONYMOUS INTERVIEWS

Interview 1 (2004). NSWTF senior official, December 20, Sydney. Interview 2 (2005). NSWTF official, February 2, Sydney. Interview 3 (2005). FOSCO representative, February 17, Sydney. Interview 4 (2005). Principal representative, February 25, Sydney. Interview 5 (2005). Parent representative, March 3, Sydney. Interview 6 (2005). Former minister for education, March 30, Sydney. Interview 7 (2005). P&C representative, April 13, Sydney. Interview 8 (2005). FOSCO representative, April 13, Sydney. Interview 9 (2005). NSW Senior union official, April 18, Sydney. Interview 10 (2005). Department of Education and Training official, May 4, Sydney. Interview 11 (2005). NSWTF senior official, May 2, 2005.

Chapter 3: Living Wages and the Grassroots Collaborative in Chicago NAMED INTERVIEWS

Shurna, E. (2005). Chicago Coalition for the Homeless executive director, August 30, Chicago. Solon, A. (2005). Metro Seniors in Action executive director, August 3, Chicago. Talbott, M. (2005). ACORN Illinois executive director, July 18, Chicago. Talbott, M. (2006). ACORN Illinois executive director, September 15, Chicago.

ANONYMOUS INTERVIEWS

Interview 1 (2005). Community organizer, July 21, Chicago. Interview 2 (2005). Community organizer, July 22, Chicago. Interview 3 (2005). Community organizer, August 3, Chicago. Interview 4 (2005). BPNC community organizer, August 4, Chicago. Interview 5 (2005). Community organizer, August 19, Chicago. Interview 6 (2005). SEIU 880 staff person, August 22, Chicago. Interview 7 (2005). Community organizer, August 30, Chicago. Interview 8 (2005). UFCW Official, August 30, Chicago. Interview 9 (2005). Community organizer, August 31, Chicago. Interview 10 (2005). City of Chicago alderman, September 1, Chicago. Interview 11 (2005). City of Chicago alderman, September 7, Chicago. Interview 12 (2006). UFCW union official, September 14, Chicago. Interview 13 (2006). SEIU official, September 14, Chicago. Interview 14 (2006). SEIU 880 rank-and-file executive member, September 14, Chicago.

References

185

Interview 15 (2006). Union staff person, September 14, Chicago. Interview 16 (2006). UFCW staff person, September 15, Chicago. Interview 17 (2006). Community organizer, September 15, Chicago. Interview 18 (2006). ACORN executive member, September 15, Chicago. Interview 19 (2006). SEIU 880 senior staff person, September 18, Chicago. Interview 20 (2006). SEIU 880 senior staff person, September 18, Chicago. Interview 21 (2006). Community organizer, September 18, Chicago Interview 22 (2006). Organizer, September 19, Chicago. Interview 23 (2006). Community organizer, September 19, Chicago. Interview 24 (2006). Union organizer, September 20, Chicago. Interview 25 (2006). Union organizer, September 20, Chicago. Interview 26 (2008). Organizer, May 12, Chicago.

Chapter 4: The Ontario Health Coalition NAMED INTERVIEWS

Allen, D. (2005). CUPE researcher and OHC administrative committee representative, July 5, Toronto. Harding, M. (2005). Former OHC Coordinator, July 13, Toronto. Harris, I. (2006). OFL, May 11, Toronto. Hurley, M. (2006). CUPE-OCHU president, May 10, Toronto. Luppa, M. (2005). OHC former employee, October 28, Toronto. Mehra, N. (2004). OHC coordinator, November 11, Toronto. Mehra, N. (2005). OHC coordinator, June 29, Toronto. Mehra, N. (2006). OHC coordinator, May 8, Toronto. Ryan, S. (2006). CUPE Ontario president, May 8, Toronto. Sutherland, R. (2005). KHC and former CUPE steward, July 12, Kingston. Vermay, C. (2006). CAW staff person and administrative committee representative, May 9, Toronto.

ANONYMOUS INTERVIEWS

Interview 1 (2005). Union staff person, July 4, Toronto. Interview 2 (2005). Seniors’ organization representative, July 4, Toronto. Interview 3 (2005). CUPE staff person, July 4, Toronto. Interview 4 (2005). NHC participant, July 6, Toronto. Interview 5 (2005). BHC participant, July 7, Brampton. Interview 6 (2005). BHC participant, July 7, Brampton. Interview 7 (2005). Coalition participant, July 11, Toronto. Interview 8 (2005). Local coalition participant, July 12, Kingston. Interview 9 (2005). Local coalition participant, July 13, regional Ontario.

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Interview 10 (2005). Former OHC employee, October 26, Toronto. Interview 11 (2005). Coalition participant, October 27, Toronto. Interview 12 (2006). CUPE officer, May 8, Toronto. Interview 13 (2006). CUPE-OCHU staff person, May 11, Toronto. Interview 14 (2006). Local coalition participant, May 11, regional Ontario. Interview 15 (2006). Seniors’ organization representative, May 10, Toronto. Interview 16 (2006). Seniors’ organization representative, May 12, Toronto. Interview 17 (2006). SEIU staff person, May 12, Toronto. Interview 18 (2006) Local coalition representative, May 13, regional Ontario.

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Index

Action Now (U.S.), 73 AFL-CIO (U.S.) business unionism and, 65 coalitions and, 9 – 10 Grassroots Collaborative and, 67, 68 Immigrant Freedom Rides, 157 Industrial Union Department, 17 split with Change to Win, 68, 84 Union Cities Program, 9, 21, 68 Alinsky, Saul, 66, 159 American Federation of Labor (AFL) (U.S.), 65 American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) (U.S.), 7 Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) (U.S.) big-box retailers and living wage campaign, 81 – 82, 85, 87, 89 – 90 Grassroots Collaborative and, 63, 67 – 68, 69, 73 No-Wal-Mart campaign, 75 – 77, 79 organizational relationships and, 94, 96, 98, 103 Australia community unionism in, 18 early coalition practices in, 7 – 8, 9, 10 environment for unions in, 6 – 7, 34 – 38 Labor for Refugees, 175 – 76 national contextual factors, 30–31, 150– 55

paid maternity leave campaign, 169 private electricity generation and, 169–70 see also Public education coalition in New South Wales Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) context for coalitions and, 10 Prices and Incomes Accord of, 7, 35 – 36 Union Organising and Working for a Fairer Australia, 9 Australian Labor Party (ALP), 7 common concern and, 60, 175 – 76 in government in New South Wales, 38 historic and political significance for coalitions in Australia, 34 – 36 Vinson inquiry and, 42, 45, 49 Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council (U.S.), 7, 66, 67 Baker, Bev, 39 Barlow, Maude, 121 Big-box retailers, Chicago living wage campaign and, 63–64, 81–93, 97–99, 102–3 Brampton Health Coalition (BHC) (Canada), 116, 119 – 20, 126, 130, 132 Brighton Park Neighborhood Council (BPNC) (U.S.) emergence of Grassroots Collaborative and, 73 No-Wal-Mart campaign, 79, 80 organizational relationships and, 101

204

Index

Brogden, John, 49 Brookins, Howard, 78 Buffalo, NY, employer-union coalition in, 173 Builders Laborers’ Federation’s Green Bans (Australia), 8 “Building capacity,” as measure of coalition success, 23, 24 Grassroots Collaborative, 97, 99 Ontario Health Coalition, 133, 135 – 36 possibilities and limits of coalitions success, 158 – 60 power and, 149 public education coalition in New South Wales, 57, 58 Business unionism, 6, 65 – 66, 69, 74, 102, 154 Canada community unionism in, 18 early coalition practices in, 8, 9, 10 environment for unions in, 6, 105 – 9 national contextual factors, 138 – 39, 150 – 55 see also Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), 107, 108 – 9, 110, 116 – 17 Canadian Health Coalition (CHC), 117 Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), 9, 10 Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) OHC context and, 107 OHC emergence and, 110 OHC plebiscites and, 127 – 28 public-private partnership campaign, 118 – 26 Save Medicare campaign, 113 – 17 scale and, 135, 138, 140 – 41 Change to Win (CTW) (U.S.), 68 big-box retailers and living wage campaign, 84 No-Wal-Mart campaign, 74 Chase, Bob, 33 Chicago. See Grassroots Collaborative Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH), 63, 70, 73 Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL), 68 living wage campaign, 84

organizational relationships and, 96, 99, 100 – 102, 103 Chicago Jobs and Living Wage Coalition, 69 Clement, Tony, 118 Coalition unionism, 17 – 31 civil society and social change, 166 – 68 community unionism and, 17 – 21 constraints on success and need to prioritize, 28 – 29 elements of, 11, 21 – 22 future research areas, 179 – 82 measures of union success and, 22 – 28 national contextual factors, 29 – 31, 150 – 55 opportunities in economic downturn, 10 – 12 political power and, 168 – 76 political power, union purposes, and industrial relations, 176 – 79 possibilities and limits of success, 22 – 25, 155 – 60 power and, 23 – 24, 146 – 147, 160 – 65, 168 – 76 principles of strong, 142 – 48 strategies for strong, 148 – 50 trade offs and, 28, 48, 50, 60 – 61, 80, 86, 100, 101, 138, 155 Common concern coalition union possibilities, 167 as element of coalition unionism, 11, 21– 22 Grassroots Collaborative 82, 87, 97 – 98 Ontario Health Coalition and, 111, 117, 119, 121, 134, 137 – 38 possibilities and limits of coalitions success and, 25 – 26, 155 – 60 power and, 29, 55 – 57, 145 – 46 principles and strategies for strong coalitions and, 146, 148 – 50 public education coalition in New South Wales, 48, 54 – 62 see also Mutual self-interest Common identity/common interest, community unionism and, 18 – 20 Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers (CEP) (Canada), 116 Communist Party of Australia, 7 – 8, 34 – 35, 38, 154 Community unionism, 17 – 21

Index Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) (U.S.), 66 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) (U.S.), 18 Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) (Canada), 106 – 7 Cornfield, D., 15 Costco, 82 Council of Canadians (CC), 108, 110 Cranford, C., 19 Daley, Richard J. Jr., 84, 91 – 93, 98 Daley, Richard J. Sr., 69 Democratic Party (U.S.), Chicago unions and, 65, 66, 67 – 68 Direct Action and Research Training (DART) (U.S.), 68 Donahue, John, 70 Douglas, Tommy, 107, 109 Economic instability, union political power and, 170 – 71 Electricity privatization campaign in Australia, 169 – 70 Ellem, B, 18, 19, 21, 130, 157 Federation of Parents and Citizens (P&C) (Australia) common concern and, 57 – 61 common interest and, 19 emergence of public education coalition, 39 teacher salaries campaign, 32, 51 – 54 Vinson inquiry, 43 – 45, 48 Federation of School Community Organizations (FOSCO) (Australia), 47 Fine, J., 19, 23 Flanders, A., 3, 56, 163 Fraser, N., 56 Frege, C., 25, 134, 161 Gamaliel Foundation, 68 Gamson, W., 56 Gavrielatos, Angelo, 33, 44 Grassroots Collaborative, 5, 63 – 103 context of, 64 – 69 common concern, 82, 87, 97 – 98 emergence and practices of, 69 – 73 living wages for big-box retail workers

205

campaign, 63 – 64, 81 – 93, 97 – 99, 102 – 3 national contextual factors, 99, 100, 150 – 55 No-Wal-Mart campaign, 63 – 64, 73 – 81, 97 – 99, 101, 102 – 3 organizational relationships and success of, 70 – 71, 72 – 73, 77 – 80, 83, 85, 94 – 98, 101 – 2 possibilities and limits of coalitions success, 155 – 60 power and, 84, 93, 160 – 65, 171 principles and strategies for strong coalitions, 142 – 50 scale and, 78, 80, 90 – 91, 98, 100 – 1 social change and, 167 Greer, I., 173, 181 – 82 Harris, Irene, 123, 124 Harris, Michael, 113 Heery, E., 25, 134, 161 High-road local economic development, 172 – 73 Hood, Robin, 87 Hotte, Sue, 127 Howard, John, government of, 36 – 37 Hurley, Michael, 114, 119, 121, 124 Illinois Hunger Coalition, 73 Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) (U.S.), 67, 159, 170 Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) (Australia), 37, 50 – 53 Interfaith Leadership Project (U.S.), 70 Japan, community unionism in, 18 Jobs with Justice (U.S.), 68 Justice for Janitors (U.S.), 68, 156 – 57 Kelleher, Keith, 96 Kingston Health Coalition (KHC) (Canada), 113 – 14 Kirby, Michael, 113 Knights of Labor (U.S.), 65 Kottler, Jen, 87 Labor for Refugees (Australia), 175 – 76 Labor Council of New South Wales, 34, 35. see also Unions NSW

206

Index

Leadership, importance of effective, 144 – 45 Leo XIII, Pope, 81 Less is more principle, 27, 132, 142 – 44, 171 Letterhead coalitions, 11 Lewis, John L., 66 Living Wage Coalition (U.S.), 83 – 86, 94 Local 1199, New York. See New York Hospital Workers Local 1199 Local broker organizations, 57, 101, 139 – 40, 147 – 48, 173 Lukes, S., 23 McGinty, Dalton, 124 Medicare (Canada), campaign to save, 107, 109, 113 – 18, 129, 131, 134, 136 Mehra, Natalie coalition power, 144 – 45 OHC emergence, 110, 112 plebiscites, 104, 126, 150 public-private partnership campaign, 119, 124 Save Medicare campaign, 113 organizational relationships and, 133 – 34 Metro Seniors in Action (U.S.), 73, 88, 95, 101 Mid-West Academy, 68 Mitts, Emma, 74, 78 Mutual self-interest, 25 – 26, 160 – 65 Grassroots Collaborative, 87, 100, 162 Ontario Health Coalition, 199, 123 public education coalition in New South Wales, 47, 55 Sword of Justice and, 145 – 46 see also Common concern National contextual factors coalition success and, 150 – 55 in coalition unionism, 29 – 31 in study of coalition unionism, 14 – 16 National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) (U.S.), 6, 66, 67, 99 New Democratic Party (NDP) (Canada), 105 – 9, 129 New South Wales Teachers Federation (NSWTF) common concern, 48, 54 – 62 emergence of public education coalition, 38 – 42

historic and political context of public education coalition, 33, 35 national contextual factors, 150 – 55 organizational relationships, 44 – 45, 49, 57 – 59 possibilities and limits of coalitions success, 155 – 60 power and, 38 – 39, 160 – 65 principles and strategies for strong coalitions, 142 – 50 scale, 43, 44, 57 social change, 167 state election campaign, 46 – 49 teacher salaries campaign, 1, 49 – 54 Vinson inquiry, 42 – 46 New York Hospital Workers Local 1199, 7, 66 – 67 Niagara Health Coalition (NHC) (Canada), 127 – 28 No-Wal-Mart campaign, 63 – 64, 73 – 81, 97 – 99, 101, 102 – 3 Obach, B., 25 O’Connor, James, 17 O’Halloran, Maree coalition power, 144 emergence of public education coalition, 39 teacher salaries campaign, 50, 54 Vinson inquiry, 43, 44, 46, 48, 49 Ontario Coalition of Senior Citizens, 110 Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL), 105, 110, 123 – 24 Ontario Health Coalition (OHC), 5, 104–41 context of, 105 – 9 common concern, 111, 117, 119, 121, 134, 137 – 38 emergence and composition of, 109 – 13 national contextual factors, 30 – 31, 105 – 9, 138 – 39, 150 – 55 organizational relationships, 111, 118, 123, 132 – 34, 137 – 41 plebiscites, 104, 126 – 28, 131, 136 – 37 possibilities and limits of coalitions success, 155 – 60 power and, 136, 160 – 65 principles and strategies for strong coalitions, 142 – 50 public-private partnership (P3) campaign, 118 – 26, 129, 136 – 37, 138

Index Save Medicare campaign, 107, 109, 113 – 18, 129, 131, 134, 136 scale, 112, 114 – 15, 117, 120, 126 – 27, 129 – 32, 135, 137, 139 – 40 social change, 167 Ontario Nurses Association (ONA), 110, 119 Ontario Public Sector Employees Union (OPSEU) OHC emergence and, 110 OHC plebiscites, 127 public-private partnership campaign, 119 Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation, 110 Operation Solidarity (Canada), 108 Organizational relationships coalition union possibilities, 167, 171 – 73, 181 community unionism and, 18 – 20 as element of coalition unionism, 11, 21 – 22 of Grassroots Collaborative, 70 – 71, 72 – 73, 77 – 80, 83, 85, 94 – 100, 101 – 2 of Ontario Health Coalition, 111, 118, 123, 132 – 34,137 – 41 possibilities and limits of coalitions success, 25, 26 – 27, 155 – 60 power and, 29, 162 – 63 principles and strategies for strong coalitions, 142 – 44, 148 – 50 public education coalition in New South Wales, 44 – 45, 49, 57 – 59 Paid Maternity leave campaign, in Australia, 169 People Improving Communities through Organizing (PICO) (U.S.), 68 Power, 23 – 24 coalition unionism and, 168 – 79 common concern and, 29, 55–57, 145–46 measures of coalition success and, 23 – 29 organizational relationships and, 29, 162– 63 scale and, 29, 163 unions and, 61 – 62, 84, 102 – 3, 140 – 41, 160 – 64 Place, community unionism and, 18 – 20 Plebiscites, of Ontario Health Coalition, 104, 126 – 28, 131, 136 – 37 Positive-sum coalitions, 2, 29, 161 – 62, 175

207

Presidential election campaign, 2008 U.S., 174 – 75, 176 Prices and Incomes Accord (Australia), 7, 35 – 36 Primary Principals Association (PPA) (Australia), 40 Pro-Canada network, 108 Public Education Alliance (PEA) (Australia), 46 – 49, 57 Public education coalition in New South Wales, 32 – 62 common concern and, 48, 54 – 62 emergence of, 38 – 42 historic and political context, 34 – 38, 60 – 61 organizational relationships and, 44 – 45, 49, 57 – 59 scale, 43, 44, 48, 57 state election campaign and, 46 – 49 teacher salaries campaign, 49 – 54 Vinson inquiry and, 42 – 46, 55, 56 – 59, 61 Public Education Fund (Australia), 41 Public School Principals Forum (PSPF) (Australia), 40 Public-private partnership (P3) campaign, of Ontario Health Coalition, 118 – 26, 129, 136 – 37, 138 Reagan, Ronald, 67 Refshauge, Andrew, 50, 51 Reynolds, D., 5, 9, 22, 27, 172 Romanow, Roy, 113 Romanow Commission, 113, 117, 130, 136 Route, Patty, 116 Ryan, Sid, 114, 119, 124 Save Medicare campaign, of Ontario Health Coalition, 107, 109, 113 – 18, 129, 131, 134, 136 Scale coalition union possibilities, 167, 173 – 76, 179 – 81 as element of coalition unionism, 11, 21 – 22 of Grassroots Collaborative, 78, 80, 90 – 91, 98, 100 – 1 of Ontario Health Coalition, 112, 114 – 15, 117, 120, 126 – 27, 129 – 32, 135, 137, 139 – 40

208

Index

Scale (continued ) possibilities and limits of coalitions success and, 25, 26, 27, 155 – 60 power and, 29, 163 principles and strategies for strong coalitions and, 148 – 50 of public education coalition in New South Wales, 43, 44, 57, 48 Secondary Principals Council (SPC) (Australia), 40 Self-interest. See Mutual self-interest Service Employees International Union (SEIU) (Canada), 110, 127 – 28 Service Employees International Union (SEIU) (U.S.), 63, 181 Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 880 (U.S.), 146, 154 big-box retailers and living wage campaign, 81 – 82, 84 – 88, 91 emergence of Grassroots Collaborative and, 73 No-Wal-Mart campaign, 76 – 77, 79 organizational relationships and, 96, 98, 103 Sherman, R., 164 Simons, Lynn, 111 Snyder, Ken, 83, 84, 95, 96, 145 Social movement unionism, 8 Socially interested unionism, 7 – 8 Sound Alliance (U.S.), 170 – 71, 175 Spokane Alliance (U.S.), 170 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), 17 “Supportive political climate,” as measure of coalition success, 22, 23, 24, 149 Grassroots Collaborative, 93, 97, 99 Ontario Health Coalition, 133, 135 public education coalition in New South Wales, 57, 58 – 59 “Sustainable relationships,” as measure of coalition success, 23, 24, 149 Grassroots Collaborative, 97 Ontario Health Coalition, 133 public education coalition in New South Wales, 49 – 50, 58, 59 Sutherland, Ross, 113 – 14, 116, 144 “Sword of justice,” 3, 29, 163, 168 common concern, 26, 56, 148, 162 Ontario Health Coalition, 123, 140 mutual self-interest, 145 – 46

Sweeney, John, 68 Sydney Alliance (Australia), 171 Taft-Hartley Act, 66, 67 Talbott, Madeline, 71, 81, 82, 88 – 89, 144, 145 Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) (U.S.), 181 Turk, James, 139 Turner, L., 14, 25, 132, 134, 161, 164, 181 Union Organising and Working for a Fairer Australia (ACTU), 9 Unions academic interest in coalitions, 9 coalitions and internal renewal and political power, 160 – 65 early collaborative practices of, 7 – 10 limited vision of role of, 6 – 7 power and, 61 – 62, 84, 102 – 3, 140 – 41, 160 – 64 unfriendly environment of, 5 – 6 see also Coalition unionism Unions NSW, 4, 52, 157, 169. See also Labor Council of NSW United Auto Workers (UAW) (U.S.), 17, 67 United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) (U.S.), 68 big-box retailers and living wage campaign, 82, 84, 89, 90 No-Wal-Mart campaign, 73 – 77 Ontario Health Coalition and, 110 organizational relationships and, 96, 98, 101 – 3 United States early coalition practices in, 7, 9 – 10 environment for unions in, 6 – 7, 63 – 69 national contextual factors, 150 – 55 see also Grassroots Collaborative United Steelworkers (Canada), 110 Vanguardism, 168 Vinson, Tony, 32, 33, 42, 48, 52, 58 Vinson inquiry, 42 – 46, 55, 56 – 59, 61 Voss, K., 164 Wake-Up Wal-Mart campaign, 173 – 74 Walk against the War Coalition (Australia), 4, 157, 172

Index Wal-Mart, 63 – 64 No-Wal-Mart campaign, 63 – 64, 73 – 81, 97 – 99, 101, 102 – 3 Wake-Up Wal-Mart campaign, 173 – 74 Watkins, John, 46 “Winning outcomes,” as measure of coalition success, 22, 23, 24, 149 Grassroots Collaborative and, 97 Ontario Health Coalition, 118, 133, 135

209

public education coalition in New South Wales, 49, 58 Woods Foundation (U.S.), 70 Working Families Party (U.S.), 69 “Yours Rights at Work” campaign (Australia), 37, 172, 179, 180 Zadkovich, Gary, 40, 144, 150, 159