Lessons in Organising has vital lessons for anyone who is interested in building trade unions with strong rank-and-file participation, finds Orlando Hill

I must start this review with a disclaimer. I am a NEU school rep, and a member of my District Committee. I am proud of the work the National Education Union has done. With almost half a million members, the NEU is the largest single-sector trade union in the UK, and the largest education union in Europe. It saw its membership grow during the pandemic, and it continues growing as it takes industrial action. Surely teachers have lessons which they can share with other trade unions.

The four authors are not simply academics looking from the outside. They speak from within the movement. They are rank-and-file activists with a passion for organising. Ellie Sharp in this year’s national conference confessed to being a ‘nerd’ when it came to organising.

It might seem strange that teachers should have lessons on organising a trade union. After all, teaching is usually presented as a vocation rather than work. Teachers, similar to health workers, are identified as members of the professional class. Managers use this to urge teachers to ‘go the extra mile’. Collective action is condemned as ‘unprofessional’. In this context, teachers can never work hard enough, and the boundaries between what is considered work and what is not is blurred. Any attempt to draw clear boundaries around work time is seen as ‘uncaring’ or ‘unprofessional’.

The authors could have used a clearer and more inclusive term such as educators or education workers. The decision to use the terms teacher, teaching and teacher trade unionism is deliberate. It is the act of teaching that the political right considers dangerous and is determined to attack.

However, education cannot be restricted to teaching. By using the terms teacher and teaching, there is a danger of isolating teachers from other workers in education such as the support staff. Education is much more than what happens in the classroom. It is not just ‘teaching’ that the political right considers dangerous. It is education.

Teachers as workers

But I agree with the book’s simple starting point. Teachers are workers, and the school is a workplace. All those who work in education should be in the union. If you are in the building, you should be in the union.

Teaching has to be seen as a part of a labour-intensive industrial sector (financed by taxes) where there is a drive to push down costs and increase output. Therefore, teachers must recognise themselves as part of the working class that suffer the same kind of exploitation. Teachers are workers engaged in a labour process that seeks to exploit their labour for the benefit of the process of accumulation of capital.

Teaching plays a crucial role in the accumulation of capital. A teacher’s function is to equip future workers with the required skills. Also, it is to play an ideological role of promoting values, attitudes, and dispositions that employers look for in their workforce. However, this does not go uncontested or unchallenged. Teachers do not act simply as functionaries. That is why schools are always a site of struggle. The state will try to control the content of what is taught and how it is taught. That is why the struggles over teachers’ work can never be restricted to pay and workload but must address the purpose of education.

Whether they like it or not teachers (like any other workers) are immersed in a struggle for the control of their own labour. Like any other category they need to organise. The problem is that workers do not push back spontaneously. Waiting for economic conditions to deteriorate is a miscalculation.

Electing left-wing leaders to senior positions is important, but not enough. Along with the election of these leaders, there needs to be ‘a corresponding growth in organisational participation, strength, and political consciousness among broad layers of the membership’ (p.23). That is easier said than done. Even committed left-wing activists can succumb to the ‘individualised model of “heroic leadership”, where the officer solves problems and issues on behalf of colleagues, as opposed to building collective leadership where issues are resolved collectively’ (p.23). Furthermore the pressures of everyday life, especially among women who disproportionally undertake domestic labour and caring role, create structural obstacles for full trade-union participation. In the NEU women make up 76% of the workforce, but only 40% of local branch secretaries.

These obstacles were raised even higher by the neoliberal restructuring of education that started under Thatcher and continued with New Labour. Although the Blair government disrupted much of the Thatcherite agenda, it did not break away from the wider project of ‘centralised curricula, standardised testing, open enrolment, devolved management and budgeting, and a version of “independent state schools” – i.e., academies’ (p.59).

Strategies

The authors identify three different strategic responses to neoliberalism: rapprochement, resistance, and renewal (mobilisation).

Rapprochement is an approach that seeks to work within the system and accepts the rules of the game. It does not rule out strike action, but sees conflict as a sign of a system that has broken down rather than as structurally inevitable. This response can describe the attitude that most trade unions had during the post-war period when the welfare state was expanding.

The strategy of resistance stands in opposition to the neoliberal restructuring of education and social partnership. But it is essentially reactive and negative. The union organisation is left unaltered. The authors recognise that this strategy can work, but only when commitment is high. But when commitment is low, trade unions are not able to defend even the most basic rights. There is no strategy for building union power.

Rapprochement is unacceptable, and resistance on its own is not enough. The book argues that what is needed is an organisational renewal with focus on the active building of union power, ‘deepening of union democracy, a focus on workplace organisation, a reculturing of the organisation to ensure the full participation of women, Black, disabled and LGBT+ members and a strong focus on member education and activist development’ (p.40).

The authors ground their analysis on Gramsci’s notion of war of movement and war of position. The war of movement is one of direct confrontation. The state will ‘deploy multiple strategies… – including a deliberately engineered recession … privatisation, militarised policing, and the use of the law to curb both union power and the right to protest.’ The authors are referring here to Thatcher in the 1980s, but you would be forgiven for thinking that they were referring to Sunak in 2023.

A war of position occurs when the ruling class, secure in its position, engages in an ideological struggle to win broad support or at least tacit acceptance to the present status. Individualism, ‘traditional notions of the family, and conservative ideas about patriotism and nation are all promoted as the norm’ (p.140). It seems that at present, the ruling class is engaged in both a war of movement and position.

The book argues that ‘the labour movement needs to engage in its own war of position alongside its readiness to engage in the war of movement’ (p.140). The war of position prepares the movement for the war of movement. The war of movement strengthens the war of position.

For anyone engaged in organising the labour movement, this book is essential reading. It is well written and engaging. It provides case studies that can used as a guide. Buy the book. Read it. Give it as gift and see you at the picket lines.