The Politics of Organisation
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Dave Spooner (GLI) talks about the definition of organising, highlighting some of methods used in the International Labour movement.
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The Politics of Organisation
- 1. The politics of organising and education
- 6. Oscar Olsson
- 8. Paulo Freire
- 9. All education to be based on actual needs and experiences of workers All workers have knowledge to bring to education
- 10. Active Learning
- 12. “The active learning approach to trade union training requires that courses should begin by drawing on the experience, skills, knowledge, attitudes and objectives of participants… through working collectively. As part of this process, participants are encouraged to apply the results of their course work to their local and/or industrial environment.” ILO Turin Centre, 1993
- 15. MEANWHILE…
- 16. Saul Alinsky
- 17. “The building of many mass power organizations to merge into a national popular power force cannot come without many organizers. Since organizations are created, in large part, by the organizer, we must find out what creates the organizer. This has been the major problem of my years of organizational experience: the finding of potential organizers and their training” Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, 1971
- 21. • Professional trained organising teams • Strategic targeting of employers and sectors • Time-limited campaigns • Application of ‘leverage’
- 22. ORGANIZING MODEL Other US Unions Change to Win Coalition UK “ORGANISING ACADEMIES” DENMARK …. AUSTRALIA Global Union Federations GERMANY AFFILIATES Donor Agencies
- 23. TRENDS • Increased investment into professional organising departments • Union development priorities: from worker education to organiser training • Decline in TU education. Closure of union colleges. • Adaptation of “new organising model” to local industrial relations and political context? • New demand for political education?
- 24. “It is absolutely essential for our stewards and activists to be fully engaged in all aspects of organising, rather than separate Organising Units, To do this meaningfully they have to understand why companies do what they do, and how global capital works. If we maintain an insular, reactive approach, we will consistently lose” Jenny Formby, Unite the Union.
Editor's Notes
- NB – not talking about vocational training or general adult education provided by trade union organisations. What are the key influences on trade union education? Necessarily a British perspective – but important because of the UK trade union influence around the world. Nevertheless, it would be good to hear from others their sense of the influences on TU education.
- Party Political Instruction An auditorium of the training center of the Moscow City Council of Trade Unions. 1977. Unions as transmission belts of policies from the party to the workers
- University extension to the working classes Albert Mansbridge, founder of the Workers’ Educational Association in 1903.
- Modern parallel – the GLU
- Study Circles Oscar Olsson – originator and/or advocate of study circles method
- Australian study circle The concept and practice of the study circle appeared in the late nineteenth century. Narodnaya Volya, a Russian populist organisation, made extensive use of them in the 1870s.[4] The concept was taken up by the Georgian Social Democrat group Mesame Dasi in the 1890s. A youthful Joseph Stalin was involved in leading some of these.[5][6] The concept later developed in early 20th century Sweden as a part of the activities in popular movements, such as the temperance and the workers' movements. Oscar Olsson was a prominent proponent of them. Since these movements' participants were working class or small farmers the study circles were important in relation to these classes' growing political power in the early 20th century. The issues that were studied were already from the early period broad - it could be as well political and social issues as literature or even school topics. The population as a whole were generally literate as early as the 17th century, and therefore literacy training was not an important concern as a topic for study circles. Other nonformal educations as folk high schools and popular lectures were already present, when study circles were developed and there were various kinds of connections between these different forms of studies open for adults with only compulsory shooling as formal education. Study circles arose with ambitions to create an educated citizenry.[7] In Sweden today study circles are a mass phenomenon and have broad national support. Around 300,000 study circles have been reported each year since the 1970s.[8] National educational associations receive annual subsidies from the national government and work with folk high schools (folkhögskolor), university short courses, correspondence study and distance learning, allowing citizens to understand and participate more fully in their communities and nation. The Swedish study circle model was successfully transplanted into American culture, most notably in the National Issues Forums (sponsored by the Domestic Policy Association in Dayton, Ohio) and the Bricklayers and Allied Craftsmen's Study Circle Program which began in 1986
- Paulo Friere – Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) – critical pedagogy. Christian Socialist Brazilian Workers Party The way students are taught and what they are taught serves a political agenda Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Portuguese: Pedagogia do Oprimido), written by educator Paulo Freire, proposes a pedagogy with a new relationship between teacher, student, and society. It was first published in Portuguese in 1968, and was translated by Myra Ramos into English and published in 1970.[1] The book is considered one of the foundational texts of critical pedagogy. Dedicated to what is called "the oppressed" and based on his own experience helping Brazilian adults to read and write, Freire includes a detailed Marxist class analysis in his exploration of the relationship between what he calls "the colonizer" and "the colonized". In the book Freire calls traditional pedagogy the "banking model" because it treats the student as an empty vessel to be filled with knowledge, like a piggy bank. However, he argues for pedagogy to treat the learner as a co-creator of knowledge.Spread Since the publication of the English edition in 1970, Pedagogy of the Oppressed has achieved "near-iconic status" in America's teacher-training programs, according to Sol Stern. A 2003 study looking at the curricula of 16 schools of education, 14 of them among the top in the country, found that Pedagogy of the Oppressed was one of the most frequently assigned texts in their philosophy of education courses. Such course assignments are a large part of the reason the book has sold almost 1 million copies, which is a remarkable number for a book in the education field.[5] Influences The work was strongly influenced by Frantz Fanon and Karl Marx. One of Freire's dictums is that: "there neither is, nor has ever been, an educational practice in zero space-time—neutral in the sense of being committed only to preponderantly abstract, intangible ideas." According to later critics, heirs to Freire's ideas have taken it to mean that since all education is political, "leftist math teachers who care about the oppressed have a right, indeed a duty, to use a pedagogy that, in Freire's words, "does not conceal — in fact, which proclaims — its own political character".[6] During the South African anti-apartheid struggle, ad-hoc copies of Pedagogy of the Oppressed were distributed underground as part of the "ideological weaponry" of various revolutionary groups like the Black Consciousness Movement. In the 1970s and 1980s the book was banned and kept clandestine.[7]
- CUT in Brazil Workers encouraged to think about their experiences, then devise preliminary theories and analyses about their work. Labour educators took those theories and analyses, formalised them, then presented them back to the workers. Then repeated the cycle. Two key principles: All education to be based on the actual needs and experiences of the workers All workers have knowledge that they bring to the educational experience, which needs to be recognised and valued.
- “Learning through doing” Emphasis on process over content Democratic engagement by participants Facilitator, not Instructor Small group work Discussion exercises Case studies Role-play
- TUC CTUC
- Quote from Active Learning Methods in Workers’ Education, by Mel Doyle and Enrico Cairola, ILO Training Centre, Turin. 1993?
- ITS ICFTU Education Conference 1994
- NB Education manuals collectively produced in workshops Early 90s – spread through the GUFs NB Nearly all GUF GSs British and used to TUC education methodology
- Saul Alinsky – training for community and labour organisers
- Andy Stern: how to reverse the decline in union power – organise!