Unions can mobilise to influence the issues the next election is fought over – and its outcome

By Dan Whittle

Ahead of LabourList’s Unions Takeover on Friday to celebrate May Day, Dan Whittle – the Young Fabians’ Trade Union Liaison – assesses Labour’s relationship with the Unions.

In the 1930s the world faced the Great Depression which in the US brought the labour movement, the Democratic majority in Congress and the President into a tight alliance. The union congress leader John Lewis campaigned hard for Roosevelt’s re-election in 1936, following his injection of public funds into the economy.

Today, as in 1936, there is an important opportunity for unions to help their members through influencing the issues at the next election, and its result.

Unions can organise to win the next election for Labour, supporting the campaign to grow our way out of the recession, not cut our way out – but are both partners willing to make the necessary changes?

60% of union members in America said they voted for Obama when polled in 2008. In the last general election in the UK, only 46% said they voted Labour. Union density in the US is only around 12%, whereas in the UK it is more than double that, around 28%.

With a year to go before Gordon Brown must call a general election, these figures alone make a very strong case that of all the lessons the Obama campaign can teach the Labour Party, the most important might be to strengthen their work with the unions.

And it’s clearly not just the personal effect of Barrack Obama. The Democrats are consistently receiving 15% more support from unions in general elections than the Labour Party. In 2004 61% voted for Kerry. In 2001 Labour won only approximately 2% more of the union vote than they did in 2005.

In the UK, where 28% of the working population are union members, that extra 15% , could easily make the difference at a general election – it equates to hundreds of thousands of votes. There is no doubt lessons can be learnt in the UK, but they cannot be seamlessly replicated. Some will work better, others won’t work at all.

Unions in the US can mobilise the vote. 10 million doors knocked, 27 million worksite leaflets distributed, 70 million phone calls and 57 million union direct mail letters. Union members contacted other members in an independent campaign about issues that was built on years of political education.

In the US, unions realised long ago that donations to political parties did not deliver the influence they needed, because business could outspend them. The currency common to American and UK unions, and one that all political parties understand is that of an activist base. Membership of all political parties in the UK is less than one quarter of what it was in 1964. With UK unions being the biggest voluntary organisations in the country and UK political parties shedding members, the organisational contribution unions can make becomes more significant.

UK unions which are not affiliated to the Labour Party have tended to leave campaigning at election time to the Labour affiliates.

Though a proportion of union members here as in the US are uncomfortable with dues being spent on Party politics they do expect their union to campaign and deliver on workplace issues.

The lesson from the Obama campaign is that it is essential non-affiliated unions take a role in campaigning on issues agreed across the movement, educating their members about these issues and encouraging their members to vote – all activities that can be done whilst remaining party neutral.

In Australia in 2007 unions were credited with doing exactly that. As a result of their campaign the share of voters concerned about industrial relations issues grew from 31 per cent to 53 per cent in the two years to June 2006, with around three fifths of voters backing Labor’s ability to handle the matter over the Liberal Party.

An independent study concluded that seats targeted by the ACTU produced significantly larger swings, and their campaign appears to have added to Labor’s margin of victory.

Delivering a pro-union government is just the first step in the process though. Election day was “just the beginning”. The American AFL-CIO now have a much increased activist base who are lobbying senators of both parties to pass pro-worker legislation. It’s working too – America has a programme to grow it’s way out of the recession with investment in green jobs campaigned for by the unions.

And in terms of growth overall, union membership grew from 12.1% to 12.4% according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

So what do unions, and the Labour Party in the UK have to learn from the Democrats and US unions?

I’ve worked with trade union officers from the UK and US to put together a paper for the Young Fabians, which I hope goes some way to answering that question.

To be published online on Thursday 30th on the Young Fabians website. The paper will follow the Wednesday night Young Fabians event: “Will there be a British Barack Obama?” and be part of our celebrations of Obama’s 100th day in office.

It will ask some tough questions of both the Labour Party and the unions, and encourage the necessary changes that need to be made so we can work together as effectively as the Democrats and US unions did last year.

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1. Student Unions – the co-operative hubs of tomorrow