The Unite, the largest United Kingdom trade union, is campaigning directly to organise thousands of student workers across tertiary campuses in the UK. The Working Students Campaign (‘WSC’) is an innovative way of organising a new generation of workers, and is something that should be implemented by the Australian Council of Trade Unions. The campaign basically involves allowing students to join Unite on-line for £10 per year, and organising students into campus societies who can campaign for respect, rights and better conditions in the workplace while using the collective resources of Unite.
The WSC is an important organising campaign on many levels. Firstly, it follows one of the basic truisms of union organising; the more people you ask to join the union, the more members a union will sign up. One of the reasons many young people do not join unions or have a limited understanding of the role of trade unions is that no one has asked them to join or explain the principles behind trade unionism. It is the duty of unions to make the effort to sign up new workers, especially younger workers, not make the assumption that workers will find them out and join. The WSC means more people are asked to join the union, and so more people end up joining. Pretty simple, but so far this does not distinguish the WSC from any organising campaign.
Secondly, the target demographic of the campaign is strategically important. Without new young people joining a trade union then the days of our movement are limited by mortality. The ongoing strength of our movement depends on organising new members, training new activists, and passing on the leadership of the movement to a new generation. So perhaps there is merit in targeting industries where there is a higher ratio of younger workers such as retail, fast food, call centres etc. This is important but in itself insufficient as without an already established activist base such campaigns would be precarious at best. Thus students must also be accessed off of their work sites, and given the broad-based nature of tertiary education, campuses are a vital place to organise students.
Campuses have the advantage of being a place where students feel comfortable and have the space in which to talk and listen without worrying about the watchful eye of the employer. The casualised nature of much student related work means that organising students through the campus disconnects union membership to the particular job or jobs they may be working at any one point in time. The student joins at the campus and remains a member for the length of their studies. This in itself cuts out the problem that organising young students can often feel like attempting to round up grasshoppers. The other advantage of the WSC is it taps in to a students sense of identity a lot better. Very often young people are not going to primarily identify as a casual fast food worker, but perhaps instead as a student, or better yet a combination of a few different aspects of their life. With a well-designed website, accessible membership fees and a recognition of this diversity of identity the WSC campaign is able to tap into a young person’s sense of being a ‘working student’.
Overall this is a highly sound strategy which involves turning one of the negative aspects of the neoliberal agenda into a positive for progressive activism. Cut-backs to higher education have led to students bearing a greater burden of their own educational costs, as well as sometimes supporting themselves through their studies. There is a core group of working students now waiting to be organised.
In the second part to this post will look at how this campaign can be adapted to the Australian context, and also improved.
