One of the things that we’re (rightly) proud of at my union is the level of service we provide members when they ring seeking assistance. I don’t have a lot of experience with other unions, but, from what I do know, it does seem like we do a good job. And there is plenty to assist them with: mostly, child protection allegations, staff conflict and flexible work arrangements. These all end up taking up a lot of our time, and its not unusual for organisers to raise their concerns about doing too much servicing and not enough organising.
This was the basic wisdom of the role – at least from my perspective – until a couple of weeks ago. We were lucky enough to have Kristyn from Reveille come and speak to us about the values, mission and structure of the union. It was good, but quite standard, fare until we started talking about our priorities, and something that Kristyn said stuck with me: often, if you spend too much time servicing, it’s because you are not organising enough. Or your workplaces aren’t organised enough.
And that really got me thinking. We always struggle to have Reps in every school – I mean, often our Reps are fantastic, but there’s not enough of them for every school we’re trying to organise. And that means we often say things like, ‘It’s not a big deal being a Rep, it’s not particularly onerous’ or ‘We’ll do everything, you just need to organise a meeting.’ But perhaps that’s part of the problem. Perhaps, as part of having a well organised workplace, we actually need to ask more of our Reps, and more of our chapters. And, as part of this, we need to empower them to take more action on their own behalf: perhaps, the answer, as Kristyn rightly point out, is left servicing, but more organising.
This fits in nicely with something that I’ve always believed in: that is, education of members is at the heart of what it means to be a unionist and an activist. We want people to take action, but often, the first step in taking action is being educated about your rights.