Union Voices: Tactics and Tensions in UK Organizing

The book contains well over a decade of intensive research on union organizing strategy, campaigns, and activist development that is simply unparalleled. ... The primary strength of this book is its exhaustive examination of organizing within the confines of UK union renewal. Here, the book situates itself among leading labour renewal research in the UK, US, Canada, and Australia. -Steven Tufts, Labour/Le Travail (Fall 2013)

Through their enormous wealth of longitudinal data, the authors provide a nuanced analysis and a more complex evaluation of union organizing than has any previous work. Offering the reader 'thick' descriptions, this comprehensive study is accessible to academics and practitioners alike. ... [T]he authors do a remarkable job of explaining the intricacies in an accessible way and disentangling the complexities for a broader audience. ... Union Voices should be on the shelf of every academic and practitioner interested in understanding the opportunities and challenges of union organizing or in the future of the British labor movement more broadly. -Maite Tapia, ILRReview (January 2014)

Union Voices is the definitive account of the emergence and spread of union organizing strategies in the UK in the decade following the founding of the TUC Organising Academy in 1998. Sustained efforts both more and less successful to revitalize a demoralized, beaten-down labor movement make for a remarkable chapter in the long history of British trade unions. Based on hundreds of interviews and hours of participant observation, this book sets a high bar for the rich qualitative research and analysis of contemporary workplace, economic, political and social issues at a critical moment in history. -Lowell Turner, Cornell University

Union Voices is a compelling and significant contribution to the comparative literature on the organizing potential of labor unions. A well-designed examination of labor unions organizing in a highly difficult time, it provides both historical depth and contemporary relevance. -Immanuel Ness, Brooklyn College Graduate Center for Worker Education, City University of New York

Melanie Simms, Jane Holgate, and Edmund Heery make a strong and convincing case that organizing activity became a central axis of union strategy for reversing or slowing down the stark decline in union membership and influence. This book is the culmination of a research project on organizing that lasted more than a decade; one of its major strengths is the range of evidence it brings to bear on its subject matter. -Chris Howell, Oberlin College

Organizing has become a central tenet of trade union renewal in countries as diverse as the United States, the Netherlands, and the UK. This book is the most systematic effort to date to evaluate and explain the experience in the case of the UK and is written by leading experts in the field of labor relations. It contributes by pointing to how such developments need to be located within a new democratic and social imagination if they are to seriously locate trade unions at the center of worker experience and employment regulation. -Miguel Martinez Lucio, University of Manchester