By Becky Wright, Executive Director, Unions 21 | 4 min
In its simplest description, a union can think of an operating model as the practical application of how the union builds capacity and uses that for leverage.
David Weil talks about capacity within his book Strategic planning for unions and broadly breaks it down into four key areas:
Culture
Structure/infrastructure
Staff
People.
These four areas would be familiar to any membership organisation. Yet, unions are unique in that our capacity should be geared towards allowing the union to win and enforce collective gains/bargaining and to be a relevant actor in labour markets and society.
For unions therefore, we can break these down into more practical terms:
Culture
How open are we to learning and accountability? How are we living the values of the trade union movement in how we are engaging with each other across the organisation, from our democratic process and executives through to everyday staffing interactions? This requires us to think about looking at metrics like density, participation, bargaining wins and member satisfaction, as well as continued learning throughout the organisation.
Structure
A huge area, starting with the union being very clear on who it represents and why, at what level it can or aspires to bargain and a clear understanding of the legal context of unions. This filters down into how activists are organised as well as the staffing complement. What is the union’s approach to the bargaining cycle as well as to handling of disciplinaries and grievances? Furthermore, other systems and processes that support the application of these practical needs such as CRMs, case management comms channels and data dashboards feature in this.
Structure also encompasses the way dues are set, collective and distributed, alongside other financial investments and resource allocation.
The structural element of governance and democracy is here, with the everyday arrangement of elections, conferences, audit and compliance.
Staff
Directly, how the union delivers for members through effective advice, casework, bargaining, training etc. How members engage with their union through communications. Jobs we previously had might not be right for today or even tomorrow.
People
This relates directly to what membership model we have and how this relates to activism and membership. Ensuring there are members who are representative of the workforce, that they pay dues, are advocates and are kept engaged in the everyday work of the union.
Why should we care about operating models?
Think of your operating model as the engine room of your union. It’s simply how we organise ourselves to build power and deliver for members. While every organisation has one, unions are unique as our model must be geared not just for efficiency, but to ensure that we have leverage.
It is making sure that we have the right people in the right place at the right time with the right job. It is having the right culture that enables the union to adapt with its external circumstances. It is the power to make sure that we have the right structures in place that reflect workers and their labour market. Lastly, we have the right people active in our unions who fully represent our members and potential members.
Over the years we have worked with many unions in many different contexts and we have learnt that the wrong, or unworkable, operating model means that unions are not able to effectively run campaigns, handle casework or ensure membership rise. Member subs will be spent inefficiently, with replicated work or with work focus differing across the union.
For example, if a union just solves a lot of problems but doesn’t have a path to escalate, it means it will be harder to grow membership or activism. Without a bargaining plan, there will be stalled outcomes or outcomes that are not grounded in member need.
Another way to think of this is to see your operating model as if you’re building a house:
Imagine then, that you are building a house from scratch. How do you start that? You dig the foundations. This is what will give your structure its ultimate strength to weather any storms. This is how you should see your membership: it is the base from which to build your union. We then have two ‘walls’; the activism of our members and our engagement and communications with them, ensuring it is a two-way dialogue rather than a broadcast. Lastly, our roof is the collective wins that we achieve either through collective bargaining or through campaigning (or even a combination of both, they’re not mutually exclusive).
Our forthcoming report, Culture and unions, will look at this metaphor as the prism by which we assess the effectiveness of the union as well as the individual concepts themselves.
