Win More Union Organizing Drives

This book is about how unions can improve their ability to win union organizing drives. Here are examples of the ideas you'll find in this book: "If you do all the work for your committee then you are cheating them out of the lessons they need to learn about how to stand together and win." - Chapter Four, Building Inside Committees "What is written on a leaflet isn't as important as who is handing it out and whose picture is on it." - Chapter Five, Communicating Our Message "Recognize card signing for what it is. Card signing isn't the organizing drive itself - it is a stage of the campaign necessary to get the union that you help build legally recognized." - Chapter Six, Card Signing Campaign "Union organizing isn't about cards - it's about relationships. House calls allow you to build the relationships needed to win the election, strike vote and first collective agreement." - Chapter Seven, House Calls "The best protection working people have isn't the labour board, it is each other. " - Chapter Eight, Winning the Boss Fight "Very few people actually join a union for the sake of trade unionism itself. It isn't that they've always wanted to be a union member and finally the chance has come. It is almost always the concrete conditions they face at the workplace. Your job as an organizer is to help find these concrete conditions and find the triggers which will make the difference in a vote." - Chapter Nine, Using Bargaining Surveys "If a union is built from the outside, then it doesn't belong to the workers from the very beginning - and if they didn't build it, they aren't very likely to keep it either." - Chapter Ten, Acting Like a Union "The more time an employer spends on responding to your external campaign, the less time they have to interfere in the process dealing with whether or not workers should join a union." - Chapter Eleven, The External Campaign "The greatest factor in winning a vote isn't the tactics you use on the day of the vote, but what you have done every day up until the day of the vote." - Chapter Twelve, Winning Elections "Great follow-up systems are systematic. They don't rely on an organizer remembering to pull open a file from an unsuccessful campaign. They maintain the relationship 24/7, not just when the organizer runs out of organizing leads." - Chapter Thirteen, Followup Campaigns "People want to contribute. They want to be a part of something. They want to have ownership. These are all things that people can get by being a member organizer that they can't get from attending a membership meeting." - Chapter Fourteen, Involving Members in Organizing Drives