On 15 September a new kind of coalition is launching in Sydney. Its called the Sydney Alliance and while it may be new to the general public, it is very familiar to the 36 member organisations that are involved. Together – we have been building this coalition since 2007. It was then that I returned from the United States and Canada where I had not only learnt about how to build coalitions differently (as written about in Power in Coalition) but had seen community organising in action in places like Seattle (Sound Alliance) and London (Citizens UK).

I approached Unions NSW with the idea of setting up a broad based coalition that didn’t start with specific issues, but rather with the ambitious desire to reconnect and bring together a united community voice. We would rebuild relationships between and within all the major community-based organisations – churches, unions, temples, schools, community organisations, mosques – and together we would train community leaders, find out what people cared about then move to action to fix those issues and improve the lives of people living in Sydney.

We began organising, and by November 2007 we had 13 organisations and $130 000 of committed funds. A year later we had 22 organisations and $1 million. And today we have 36 organisations, having trained 1300 community leaders and listened to 6500 people.

We launch with an agenda for the common good based on what we heard across the city. We heard that people are frustrated getting around (so we are working on transport), that people aren’t getting along (so we are working on social inclusion) and people are falling through the cracks (so we are working on community care and health).

The coalition is exciting as it puts into practice many of the lessons documented in Power in Coalition.

While we have lots of partner organisations, we still take “less is more” seriously – asking those partners to do a lot for their involvement. They make financial commitments and people commitments in order to be involved, and organisations are selected based on their strategic contribution to building a broad based people’s organisation that can stand for the whole of Sydney.

Individuals have been vital. Not only the positional leaders, but champions inside of those organisations, as well as thousands of trained leaders who run core teams, working groups, regional groups and our issues work.

We work on mutual self-interest – but it is organisation’s interest in reviving their own organisations that is the core reason for new organisations to join. While unions and churches might not have a lot in common – many share the need to involve more young people and invigorate their volunteer base.

Planning has been critical. Indeed we have been planning our launch for four years! It has been timetabled to coincide with a new government in NSW. We didn’t want to be a part of an election but launch in a period where we can truly be about providing people with a way to have their say beyond just voting.

Scale is vital – we are organised across the city as well in 10 regional areas of Sydney – Parramatta, Penrith, Gymea, Bankstown, Marrickville – just to name a few. We bring together people locally as well as coordinate people and organisations across the city.

The founding assembly is just the start. But it is a testament to the book that these ideas are not just words on a page, but that the lessons can be applied in practice.

This article appeared in the Canadian progressive e-newsletter Rabble.ca:

Social movement campaigners rarely get the chance to write up their own history. But in a new internationally comparative book on labour-community coalitions — called Power in Coalition — the successful strategies of Canada’s Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) take centre stage. The OHC is one of three coalitions whose campaigns are documented as part of a grounded study of what makes community-based coalitions successful and what makes them fail.

It’s a good time to reflect on the power and possibilities of these coalitions given the current challenges faced by progressive politics in Canada. Weak leadership from centre-left party politics invite community-based movements to increasingly play a role in setting the agenda for public debate. Yet, social movements themselves have been struggling to build a progressive agenda beyond specific mobilizations and issue-based organizing.

The Ontario Health Coalition’s experience is instructive, given that it has sustained relationships between a diverse array of unions and community organizations over the past 16 years. Part of its success lies in its defense of Medicare — a Canadian national icon. But its longevity is equally attributable to its development of sophisticated movement-building strategies that allow it to span the province of Ontario.

The OHC’s most distinctive strategy is its ability to create a movement that is simultaneously local and provincial. It is what I call a multi-scaled coalition, where it has both a provincial steering committee supplemented by local town and city based coalition partners scattered across the province.

This multi-scaled structure is embedded in a generation of social movement campaigns that pre-dated the OHC. The health coalition learned from the Days of Action of the 1990s and its strategy of regional mobilization. The practice of building permanent town-based health groups began the late 1990s, when the Harris government’s privatization threats led to the opportunity of a province-wide study into the state of health care. As the study was conducted, wise organizers built local health coalitions while engaging regional communities in a conversation about the crisis in health care. This gave birth to a movement that could move an agenda in local towns as well as across the province.

Building local coalitions turned the challenge of Ontario’s expansive geography into a strength. Organizers realized that provincial political influence could not be organized in Toronto alone, so it built a structure to match the complexity of the province. These local coalitions in turn have spurned a variety of different tactics in the fight to defend public healthcare.

In response to the 2001 Romanow Royal Commission into Medicare, the OHC worked with local coalitions to coordinate a mass support campaign to Save Medicare. They translated the traditional techniques of electoral campaigning to an issue based campaign, and coordinated a canvas that went door-to-door across the province, organized by local activists town-by-town. A province-wide assembly of community leaders signed off on a strategy that was then implemented locally, where teams of union and community activists hatched plans to raise awareness through media stunts and coordinate door-knocking and petition signing in their neighborhoods.

By acting locally through a coordinated provide-wide campaign, the OHC was able to collect over 250,000 signatures in defense of Medicare. This public pressure, sustained over an eight-month campaign, was responsible for the Royal Commission’s positive embrace of Medicare, pushing back the pressure to privatize.

For the OHC, this robust coalition structure built a platform for tactical innovation. When public-private-partnerships began to loom large in late 2002 with the proposed P3 hospital in Brampton, the coalition could experiment with a different kind of multi-scaled campaigning. At first, the OHC was able to build a local movement in Brampton led by retired teachers, union activists and members of the Council of Canadians. This was then supplemented by provincial supporters who joined a large mobilization in the town. But the coalition could also zoom out and build awareness about P3s by holding events and activities in dozens of other towns.

Later in 2005 the OHC’s local coalitions provided opportunities for another creative strategy — plebiscites – community-initiated referenda. By then, the health coalition knew it was struggling to maintain momentum against public-private-partnerships while also being aware that most communities remained hostile to the idea of health care privatization. So, to capitalize on this conjuncture it developed a strategy where local health coalitions could run a community vote on whether their local hospital should stay in public hands or be subject to a public-private-partnership. The referenda provided an opportunity for mass awareness raising, participation and engagement in a campaign and hundreds of conversations about health care. But it was only possible because a hub of local activists in towns as diverse as Niagara-on-the-Lake, Thunder Bay and Hamilton could initiate and co-ordinate these popular votes.

Local health coalitions have been a critical plank to the power of this coalition, as they have created spaces to build and co-ordinate mass mobilization through local organization. Unlike rallies, which can have a transitory impact on public debate, the local coalitions have been an organizational anchor that have built different local campaigns while also being a space for training and developing community leaders who can strategize, plan and execute powerful social movement action.

While these local coalitions have set the OHC apart, in my research into coalition strategies across three countries, I have found them to be a strategy that can travel. In Australia, a public education coalition** similarly set up local public education lobbies of teachers, parents and school principles who organized locally in partnership with a centrally co-ordinated Inquiry into public education. The very successful 2005-2007 Your Rights at Work campaign in Australia learnt from the OHC’s experiences when it began to build local union committees in marginal electorates (ridings) to complement centrally coordinated rallies. Similarly, the 2008 Obama Presidential campaign harnessed the power of multi-scaled campaigning, where it gave networks of volunteers the freedom to determine how to build a get out the vote effort — in stark contrast to the traditional command and control strategies that have previously characterized U.S. electoral campaigning.

It takes a lot of reflection and innovation to sustain a coalition over 16 years and that is exactly what we have seen from the large team of committed staff, volunteers and organizational leaders across the Ontario Health Coalition. They have learned from their successes and their mistakes, and the book identifies some of the trials and tribulations encountered by a multi-scaled coalition.

Thanks to the OHC’s open-minded creativity, coalition organizers in Canada and across the world can learn from this coalition’s experimentation. Multi-scaled coalition organizing can inspire other coalitions to identify new possibilities for how they too can build mass participation in coalitions and reinvigorate our social movements so we can deliver on the promise of progressive politics to improve the lives of the majority.

This is a video of the speech Amanda Tattersall gave at the 10 year anniversary of the Grassroots Collaborative in Chicago in September 2010. It talks about the lessons that this coalition learned about how to build a powerful coalition, and looks at the story and legacy of the big box living wage campaign.

On Tuesday September 7, the Ontario Health Coalition hosted a launch for Power in Coalition in downtown Toronto. It was a lively discussion around the possibilities and challenges of coalitions. Speakers included Amanda Tattersall, author of Power in Coalition and Natalie Mehra the Coordinator of the OHC (see photo).

Discussion focused in on the key strength of the OHC – the fact it build a multi-scaled coalition structure that operated both across the province through meetings of provincial community organizations and unions, as well as locally though now fifty local health coalitions doted across Ontario. Mehra underlined the importance of this structure – as it has repeatedly enabled the coalition to build a mass movement.

This is in contrast to the struggles of many progressive coalitions in Canada which have declined in recent years (such as movements around women’s rights, poverty and privatization) – despite the passionate support for social justice in Canadian society more generally. Coalitions offer real hope for rebuilding progressive power in Canada, but as the speakers emphasized – these coalitions need to build their power carefully and sustainable. The Ontario Health Coalition, featured in Chapter 4 of Power in Coalition provides some ideas for how this can be done.

On September 1, the Grassroots Collaborative celebrated its 10 year anniversary, and at that event the Collaborative launched Power in Coalition, which features a case study from this powerful labor-community coalition. I was at the launch and gave the following speech:

Chicago’s powerful coalition: 10 years of the grassroots collaborative

I want to take you all back five years to a warm Saturday morning in July 2005. Chicago Temple, a downtown church, was overflowing with more than a thousand low-income African American and Latino residents. Outside there were lines of empty school buses that had ferried in the crowd.

Inside, the church floor was a disorganized rainbow, defined by the dynamic strips of color created by different shades of t-shirts. A block of canary yellow on the right-hand side signified the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, a regal purple Service Employees International Union (SEIU) block of color marked the left of the hall. A red bunch of boisterous Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) community leaders were positioned at the front.

The noise was deafening. Voices across the hall were singing to the rhythm of hand clapping, ‘We’re fired up, we won’t take it no more; we’re fired up, we won’t take it no more.’ Some people were standing; others were waving their arms. It was electric.

As one speaker emphasized, ‘This is a gathering of the grassroots.’ You had turnout our your membership to take back your city.

This is the kind of power we are celebrating here tonight.

For the past 6 years I have traveled the English-speaking world looking at, and talking with, different labor-community coalitions – in the United Kingdom, across the United States, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Just about everywhere I go I share stories and lessons from the power and practices of the Grassroots Collaborative.

This journey produced a book about how to build powerful coalitions. And the work of the collaborative takes center stage as the US case study in that book.

Tonight is about celebrating the distinctive labor-community power that you have built. There were lessons that you learned and rules that you practiced.

When the common wisdom said that coalitions were powerful with lots of people – that bigger is better. You said no, and limited your participation to those who understood the discipline of building power.

When the standard practice was that you use coalitions for single-issue campaigns. You said no, and became a multi-issue coalition so you could build a long-term shift in political power in Chicago.

When everyone thought that coalitions were all about frenetic activity and campaigns. You said no, and focused first on building relationships before you started working on issues.

And, when others said working across community and labor can be hard. You said we know, but you understood that real social power and political change requires it – and so you made it work, and continue to make it work.

What a magnificent display of community power these strategies have delivered. They were exemplified by the 2005-6 big-box living wage campaign.

It was tough times in 2003 when Wal-Mart first came to town and started beating up on the progressive community. But thankfully, as the grassroots collaborative, you had build a space of trust between leaders which became a place for creative thinking. You were prepared to think politically about how to challenge corporate power. You turned a reactive campaign against Wal-Mart into the powerful moral claim of a living wage ordinance.

And your work was not rushed, but a steady disciplined build of power. You built a base of new relationships with labor and new relationships with churches. You then developed a fifty ward strategy to move your agenda, using postcards to identify voters and build a constituency of support. You shared what each of you do best – Action Now was in the field, labor walked the halls of city council, community organizations targeted key aldermen and your member leaders did the media.

Individual organizations on their own would not have been able to move a radical ordinance like this, but combined you were a formidable force for change.

The mix of labor and community power meant you rocked the Mayor, passed the ordinance, led to a threatened capital flight by mega-retailers, forced a veto, then some of your politically active partners then punished the hostile aldermen at the following council elections.

Your legacy was a new terrain in Chicago. Illinois’s minimum wage has been increased to the second highest in the country. And this year, Wal-Mart came to the table to negotiate wages and conditions with labor. This is an unprecedented win in this country –your work forced them recognize you.

You shifted the political climate in Chicago and you sustained your coalition while you did it

It is a pleasure to be with you at this ten year anniversary to celebrate the victories and the power you have built. And it has been a delight to write up your story for an international audience. You have harnessed many of the lessons of labor-community power that I have seen from across the world:

• less is more when building a long term coalition
• powerful coalitions set an agenda rather than react to others
• coalition power is about building your organizations and shifting the political climate as well as winning social change

You have inspired me. Having seen what you built I returned to Australia to initiate a long-term broad based coalition called the Sydney Alliance. We too are a multi-issue, handpicked coalition that is spending years building relationships and trust before working on issues. We don’t move to action till next year, but I do hope that at some point there may be a chance that we might work together as we continue to learn from each other.

I wish you well. Know that your legacy lives as it teaches others to build labor-community power and challenge the forces of reaction with a clear sighted vision for cities and communities that deliver opportunities, support and prosperity for residents and working people.

‘If unions are to maximise their influence in the 21^st century they must build alliances with other organisations around economic, social and ecological concerns effecting humanity. This book shows it is possible to build the necessary coalitions to achieve this end.’

Jack Mundey, instigator of the 1970s Green Bans movement in Sydney

‘At last a scholar/activist who understands that coalitions are not merely a way of advancing union goals! Building on three successful coalitions in Australia, Canada, and the United States, Amanda Tattersall identifies three main mechanisms that lead to successful coalition formation between unions and community organizations: identifying common concerns, building organizational relationships, and finding the right scale. She shows how unions can transcend the narrow corporatism of ‘business unionism’ to return to the social movements they once were in a world that has become more complex and more indifferent to the needs of both workers and communities.’

Professor Sidney Tarrow, Cornell University

‘Amanda Tattersall’s book is the most insightful study of coalitions to date. It is not your typical gauzy view of coalition building, but offers a clear-sighted, practical road map to building more effective labor-community coalitions and in turn an opportunity to transform the labor movement.’

Jeff Blodgett, Executive Director, Wellstone Action

‘Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how to build the power of working people in a changing world, Amanda Tattersall’s book is at once timely, practical, inspiring and challenging. Combining analysis of action with useful theory, it provides an important new tool for activists everywhere—in unions or beyond them—who want to build sustained and sustaining coalitions that have the potential to change the world.’

Professor Barbara Pocock, Director, Centre for Work + Life, University of South Australia

‘Power in Coalition is a rare book by an even rarer writer — an organizer with extensive practical experience and a respect for the complexity of reality who also appreciates the importance of theory and the presence of useful patterns.  Here you have the best of both worlds, practice and theory, woven together smartly, in clear and accessible prose.’

Co-Director, Industrial Areas Foundation/Senior Organizer Metro IAF

‘A fascinating insight into the potential for coalitions to restore the balance of power between governments and the communities they are supposed to serve.’

Julian Burnside AO QC

‘Amanda Tattersall shows that coalitions, though hard work at times, are the best means we have to rebalance power, beat poverty and injustice, and build a future that includes all of us, especially the weakest.’

Tim Costello AO, CEO, World Vision Australia

“Here is a book that looks at the lessons we all learned during the Big Box Living Wage campaign of 2006, as well as strategies from community labor coalitions in Australia and Canada as well.  I don’t know of a more incisive and useful critique of coalition building.  Amanda Tattersall has managed to identify the general rules we should be employing in the next big struggle, even as she tells an exciting war story of working families winning against the odds.”

Madeline Talbott, Lead Organizer Action Now and leader in Chicago’s Grassroots Collaborative

The Chicago-based labor-community coalition the Grassroots Collaborative formed 10 years ago at Manny’s cafe just South of the Loop. It started with a bunch of executive directors from some key community organizations and a few labor union leaders coming together to really get to know each others interests. From these modest beginnings, where the conversation ranged from how to build better to coalitions to how to challenge politics in Chicago came their landmark big box living wage ordinance.

I first met with the Collaborative in 2005, and came to my first breakfast meeting at that time. They were in the early stages of preparing the living wage ordinance – building the base ready for a fight. They had been doing lots of one-to-one meetings with community-based organizations and labor unions across the city, and had developed a postcard campaign to build awareness about this radical idea of a living wage ordinance for big box workers.

A year later in July 2006, they passed the ordinance – to the shock of the Mayor and the large retailers. It was a well planned, well timed campaign that shared power and resources that made it happen. Organizations activated their strengths – action now was in the field knocking on doors, labor unions walked the halls of city council lobbying aldermen, different community organizations moved targeted aldermen they had established relationships with, members of these organizations did press around the ordinance. And it worked a charm.

But politics in Chicago is never easy, and a threatened capital flight by the retailers helped encourage the Mayor to veto the ordinance in September – the first time in 17 years he had used his veto. But while they may have not won the battle, the Collaborative’s campaign shifted politics in Chicago. The campaign was timed to coincide with the February Council elections and 7 hostile aldermen lost their seats.

The shift in the goal posts  is evident many times over – the increasing of Illinois’s minimum wage and the fact that Wal-Mart came and sat down with labor unions this year when it wanted to build a second store in the city. This is a huge shift. Wal-Mart has traditionally played a strategy of ignoring unions – yet strong labor-community coalition work has brought Wal-Mart to the table. And the workers there will benefit – being paid above minimum wage – again a precedent set in a political climate where the success of coalition power is felt even after a campaign has been waged.

So, on Tuesday it was great to sit down and have breakfast with the collaborative team. And tonight, i will be launching Power in Coalition with them at their 10 year anniversary.

On Wednesday 25 August 2010, Power in Coalition was launched in Washington DC at an event held at the AFL-CIO. Below is an extract of my talk. It can also be downloaded as a PDF: AFL Presentation Five Principles for building Powerful Coalitions.

In Power in Coalition, I argue that not all coalitions are made equal. While alliances between unions and community organizations are an important and useful strategy for social change, their power and success varies greatly depending on the strategic choices of those involved.

The most successful coalitions are ones that seek to achieve social change goals (such as individual victories and shifting the political climate) at the same time as they strengthen the organizations that participate in them. Yet these goals can be somewhat illusive. In the book I found that most coalitions, at different times, end up trading social change goals for strength goals – for instance by burning relationships with community or union partners in order to win a particular policy reform.

The book establishes FIVE PRINCIPLES for building strong coalitions that were consistent across different places and different times.

1. Less is more

Coalitions are more successful when organizational membership is restricted and there are fewer groups making decisions and sharing resources. Instead of long lists of partners, in Power in Coalition long term coalitions traded breadth for depth and sought to build a narrower agenda that more deeply engaged the commitment of their members and leaders.

A “less is more” approach helped avoid lowest common denominator positions where coalitions end up a “mile wide and an inch deep” and tend to only be able to agree on what they are against rather than what they are for.

But the strategy of “less is more” runs counter to typical coalition practice. Too often “coalition power” is thought to be created by the number of organizations that can be fitted on to a letterhead or press release. But in the Toronto and Chicago case studies, it was only when the coalitions restricted membership that they built sufficient trust to keep organizations at the table working together.

Similarly in Sydney, a remarkable coalition of public education allies built an unprecedented independent public education inquiry, staging hearings across the state, mobilizing parents and teachers in dozens of local communities and won $250 million reforms to public education through a reduction in class sizes for young children. And it was won by a coalition of two organizations – the teachers union (NSW Teachers Federation) and the Federation of Parents & Citizens.

Less is more requires coalition organizers to be strategic with “the less.” There is a need to identify partners that have the right mix of power, interest and potentially, unpredictability. Power must not be defined narrowly. It does not only include “organized numbers and organized money” but also diversity. After all, if the coalition can’t stand for the whole of the constituency it claims to represent then it has a limited ability to act (Tattersall 2010, 171).

With less people around the table there is then an incentive to do “more” together – in particular to focus on building close, respectful public relationships between the individuals involved that explore their personal and organizational interests. In Chicago, this took the form of informal breakfast meetings at a south side diner where people got to know each other over several years before they started campaigning together.

2. Individuals matter

Despite coalitions being defined as an alignment of organizations, alliances can live or die depending on effective leadership from individuals, in particular:

1. organizational leaders
2. champions inside of organizations
3. coalition coordinators/staff

For each of these people the most important qualities are an ability to build bridges across different kinds of organizations and the ability to act as campaign strategists.

In the case studies, it made a difference when leaders directly participated in coalition decision making. Their participation was a sign of their commitment as well as facilitating quick and strong decision making in the coalition. Contrast the public education coalition which consisted of a table of positional leaders with the Ontario Health Coalition which was a table of staff. Sydney had much greater success at maintaining organizational commitment and tapping into significant organizational resources than in Toronto where the arm’s length relationship with the leadership made it difficult to engage the unions.

Strong leaders were frequently supported by champions in their ranks. In Sydney and Toronto, staff organizers helped leaders guide the formation of coalition relationships.

Coalition coordinators were also critical for holding together organizational relationships and strengthening the coalition. In Chicago, a coalition coordinator helped the coalition stay the course over an eighteen month campaign plan, and in Toronto the coordinator’s personal experience in a local health coalition motivated her to support and mentor local organizing. These coordinators helped smooth over differences between organizations, and sought to mitigate union dominance when it arose. In contrast, in Australia where there was not a coalition coordinator, the relationships were more unstable and fell away over time.

3. To Wield Self-Interest with a Sword of Justice

This principle is about the kind of issues that coalitions work on. It requires a coalition to simultaneously pursue issues that feed the direct strategic needs of their organizational partners while those issues also need to be connected to a sense of communal justice, or the public interest.

Organizational self-interest is necessary but not sufficient to build a strong coalition. In Canada, the health coalition sometimes struggled to connect with union self-interest. Medicare, abstractly framed as a national icon, was a challenge to prioritize as an issue of importance above the noise of bargaining and contract campaigning. At the same time, self-interest alone has limited political impact. In Sydney the contract campaign by the teachers, and in Chicago, the UFCW’s anti-Wal-mart campaign were dismissed by the media and politicians as unions just acting for themselves.

The key ingredient for opening up self-interest to public interest, or the common good, is the capacity to negotiate mutual self-interest. This is where organizations identify discrete but shared interests that allow them to pursue their own goals together. The public education alliance found a mutual self-interest in the issue of reduced class sizes. Teachers had an interest in smaller classes because it made their workload more manageable, and parents had a related but different interest in that smaller class sizes were shown to improve educational outcomes for their children.

There is an immense creativity, and unpredictability, in mutual self-interest. It is a space where new ideas and campaigns can be created based out of an innovative exploration of shared need and power. For instance, in Chicago, an anti-Wal-Mart site fight was translated into a campaign for a living wage ordinance for retail workers

Coalition campaigns can more successfully shift the political climate when they are positively framed demands, rather than negatively framed “no campaigns”. Consequently the Ontario Health Coalition struggled to set an agenda for positive health care reforms while working on the issue of “no-public private partnerships.

Coalition campaigns were most successful when they combined a broad narrative with specific demands. Successful broad public interest narratives included references to living wages, public education or Medicare, as they were iconic moral claims. But to be powerful these slogans needed to be linked to specific surface demands that linked these abstract claims to member interests – for instance the public education campaign was made concrete when linked to a specific policy around reducing class sizes. The big box living wage campaign actively engaged other union members, such as SEIU homecare workers, when it was explained that winning a wage raise for retail workers could help homecare workers in their next contract fight.

4. Timely exercise of power through conscious planning

In Power in Coalition successful sustained coalitions had long term plans to build then exercise power against decision makers. The Sydney public education coalition had a two year plan that included an independent inquiry, with reports released periodically in the lead up to the political opportunity of a state election. Similarly the Chicago living wage campaign was timed to move its ordinance six months out from aldermanic elections. This meant that the threat of popular election encouraged councilors to vote for the ordinance, and, even when the ordinance was vetoed by the Mayor, coalition partners could use the election cycle to react. Which they did. As a consequence 7 hostile aldermen were removed in the 2007 elections.

Disciplined planning ensured the coalitions could deliver political pressure rather than just reacting to the media cycle.

5. Multi-scaled coalitions

In the same way that one organization cannot win on its own, most issues cannot be solved at a single scale. Political and economic power is multi-scaled – traversing the local, regional, state, national and international, and to be most effective coalitions frequently need the versatility to act at multiple scales.

In the case studies, coalitions were most effective at acting at multiple scales when they supported the establishment of local city or neighborhood coalitions. These local coalitions (or broker organizations) helped enhance their organizational strength and their political influence.

For instance, in Canada, the Ontario Health Coalition established 40 coalitions around the province so it could run a campaign that collected hundreds of thousands of petitions and then move issues in a coordinated way across the province. These local town based coalitions were led by union members, retired teachers and community activists, providing a space for organizational members to build their skills and capacity to campaign.

But there are specific ingredients for successfully managing multi-scaled coalitions.

First, there is a need for a feedback loop between the different scales. It is not just about setting people up locally to run a state or national agenda, there needs to be local control. In Canada, when the OHC began coordinating tours through the local coalitions to raise awareness about public private partnerships, most of the strategy was developed in Toronto. While successful at first, the cycle of holding event after event had diminishing returns and participation at these events fell away.

The Canadians did come up with a partial solution to the feedback loop, which was ensure local coalitions were represented on provincial steering committees in the same way organizations were.

Second, there is a need for local coalitions to have some relative autonomy – to pursue local demands in conjunction with national/state demands. In Canada, the local coalitions were most successful when state action was driven by locally relevant and locally planned strategy. For instance, a plebiscite campaign was run around hospitals threatened with privatization – where communities one at a time were asked to vote in a referendum. These campaigns were planned and executed by the local groups, and this higher degree of control stimulated significant local participation and commitment.

This is a cursory glance at some of the findings about strong coalitions. These ideas are elaborated in much more detail in Power in Coalition, in particular in Chapter Five.

Reference

Tattersall, A. 2010. Power in Coalition: strategies for strong unions and social change. Cornell University Press: Ithaca.

Power in Coalition identifies several universal lessons about coalition practice that provide a guide for building sustainable, reciprocal and powerful coalitions. These are not only applicable to relationships between unions and community organisations. In an article published in Brofenbrenner’s edited book Global Unions, Tattersall directly connects findings about coalitions to how and when global alliances between unions may be strong (or weak).

An extract from that chapter is available here, and the book can be bought from Cornell University Press.

The first case study in Power in Coalition begins in Sydney with the education campaigns of the public education coalition. Born out of tensions between teacher unions and government, the education coalition was at its most successful when running an independent inquiry into public education – called the Vinson Inquiry (Vinson Inquiry Report). This report allowed the coalition to set the debate on education, leading to major public policy victories – including a $250 million program for reducing class sizes for young school students (from Kindergarten to year 2).

Central to the public education coalition was the large, democratic and resource rich NSW Teachers Federation (http://www.nswtf.org.au/). However, the coalition would not have had its success without the union’s strong partnership with school parents and principals.

Chapter Four of Power in Coalition examines a series of health care campaigns run by the Ontario Health Coalition. It is a broad coalition, involving over 9 unions, seniors organisations, the council of canadians as well as numerous local health coalitions based in towns and cities across the Province. The case study features the Save Medicare campaign from 2001-2 and the sustained campaigns against public-private partnerships in hospitals since 2003.

For more information on the Ontario Health Coalition visit Ontario Health Coalition website.

the living wage campaign at city council

The Chicago case study features the Grassroots Collaborative, a multi-issue coalition dominated by community organizations and involving two Service Employees International union locals. Find out more about the collaborative at www.thegrassrootscollaborative.org.

The study documents the collaborative and the United Food and Commercial Workers struggle with Wal-Mart in Chicago, first through the “No Wal-Mart” campaign from 2003-2004, and then through the big box living wage campaign from 2005-6.