Five Reasons Not to Get Involved with Your Union (but Why You Should, Anyway)

In the labour movement, employer attacks, the end of contract terms, and strikes are what we call "capacity building" events. When on strike, a union rolls out its command structures, and all hands must be on deck, so to speak. Strikes build awareness of both the issues and the union, and members start getting more deeply involved -- many for the first time.

However, when the strike (or other critical event) is over, newly engaged members often drift away, and the union moves back to its steady state of die-hards-only. This is too bad, because I would argue it's far more important for union members to be engaged between contract terms, doing outreach work that could possibly mitigate strikes.

So why do new activists fade away? Here are five common objections I've heard union members raise when explaining why they don't stay involved:

•   Union involvement is time-consuming.
•   To influence decisions, you need to be with the "in crowd."
•   Political work can make one a target of personal attacks.
•   Being labelled an "activist" can hinder your career.
•   Unions are ineffective and impossible to change.

Are these objections reasonable?

A union die-hard might say all of the above objections are merely excuses, based on misinformation. Perhaps that's true on some level. But these objections are nevertheless worth examining because, if there is some truth to them, it might lead us to solutions. Let's take a look:

Is union work time-consuming? It can be, and this is probably the biggest reason union members fail to remain engaged. At the apex of my union involvement (as table officer for a BC Teachers' Federation local, and editor of a professional journal) I attended plenty of late-night meetings, and often worked on weekends and holidays. But one can always ration one's involvement by not getting involved in too many things at once, and many activists have managed to balance their lives this way.

Do you need to be in the "in crowd?" The answer depends on the health of one's union. In healthy unions, leaders encourage new members to get involved, embrace open debate and new ideas, and are not obsessed with protecting their positions. But other unions -- perhaps most unions -- are cliquey and factional. As an example, my union local has what you might call an old guard, focused largely on the past, and a new guard who formed because they got tired of new ideas being blocked. Sometimes new guards become old guards, old guards become really old guards, even newer guards get started, and so on. In any event, yes, there can be "in-groups" in unions, and most unions seem to have them. But not all such groups are necessarily hostile to new people.

As a union activist, could you be the target of internal political attacks? In short, yes. Although many union politicos are exemplary in their respect for fair play, I can confirm that negative campaigns and vicious tactical maneuvers are just as common in unions as they are in the larger political sphere. Some unions are worse than others, and it all depends on the personalities involved. So yes, standing up in your union could make you a target -- but not necessarily.

Will being a union activist hinder your career? In my workplace, I am aware of some in management who negatively target shop stewards, but that seems to be the exception. In many cases union volunteers are respected by management, and I see no systemic evidence that union involvement hinders one's chances for advancement. In fact, some of the skills you gain through union involvement may be transferable to the workplace, and smart managers understand this.

Are unions ineffective and impossible to change? To be sure, a small union local can't change the world -- so get over it. But we can make incremental improvements, if not to the outside world, then certainly to the internal structures of our unions.

Ignore the objections and get involved

Following from this last point, I will admit that during my years as a union activist I often thought I was wasting my time: that as an "agent of change," I might have done better to join the Republican Tea Party to convert them to the ideology of Karl Marx. By this I mean that many unions are deeply resistant to change, and in some cases even reactionary.

As an example, I once brought forward a motion for our local to make a public statement in support of WikiLeaks. Needless to say, the motion was defeated, and one of the main arguments put forward was that because unions are secretive and should remain so, we should respect government secrecy! And this point was made without even a hint of irony.

Sadly, where unions should be providing a good example and an antidote to the irrationality and arbitrary power we find in the larger political system, sometimes they are merely a microcosm of that system. Nevertheless, while this may at times be disheartening, it is no reason to stay out of the fray. As a union activist I've seen positive change happen -- of the two-steps-forward-one-step-back variety. Which is a pretty good record, if you think about it.

As an example of such progress, in recent years a determined group of BCTF activists (of which I am part) advocated successfully to build support, within our union, for divestment of weapons stocks from our pension. We saw it as incompatible with our role as teachers to benefit from the sale of armaments. This might sound like an easy sell, but it wasn't: there was opposition within the BCTF to such considerations.

But after years of campaigning (yes, it did take years -- I estimate five years of the most organized phase of our campaign) and fine-tuning our strategy, we succeeded in changing the culture, to such an extent that "ethical investing" is now viewed as common sense among BCTF activists. The "one step back" here is that we still haven't divested weapons stocks from our pension. That will take cooperation from other public sector unions, which haven't come around to our way of thinking.

Just as we advocate for improvements to be made by our national and provincial governments, we should advocate for improvements to be made within our labour unions -- especially so that they can have a more effective, positive role in those larger political structures. The thing to emphasize here is that we probably can have some influence in improving our unions, despite the many barriers we face. That's because unions have smaller overall populations, and are therefore easier to be influenced by a small group of activists.

To be sure, workload, in-group/out-group dynamics, political retribution, and conservatism are serious barriers to involvement. But they won't go away if we don't get involved. Many hands make light work, and when we invite rational actors to our union table, they can help change the culture. So despite the barriers, there really is every reason to get involved in your union -- and you should. To borrow the slogan of talk show host Thom Hartmann: "Tag, you're it."