Hidden away beneath this week’s headlines of Royal Commissions and ICAC inquiries was a quiet win for the state’s retail workers and their families. It was a victory achieved when the NSW Government gave up its push for new laws that would have seen more Sydneysiders having to work on the Boxing Day public holiday.

This result was despite earlier Government assurances to business that there would be trading on Boxing Day in 2012 and the enabling legislation having already passed the Legislative Assembly.

So what changed the dynamic? It was ‘community organising’.

The strategy and people power marshalled by the Sydney Alliance and the Take the Time coalition was the decisive factor in getting the O’Farrell Government to back off.

Who and what are the Sydney Alliance? We are a broad and diverse coalition of more than 50 of the city’s largest religious organisations, unions, and community groups who started coming together in 2007 and launched in 2011. Our agenda is not driven by political interest. The Sydney Alliance is a non-party political organisation. Rather our agenda is discerned by consultation among partner organisations who acknowledge that our self-interest lies in our shared interest for the common good of Sydney.

The Take the Time Coalition – an initiative of the retailer workers’ union, the SDA, approached us earlier in the year to see if the issue of public holidays was one that was of interest to our members. It most definitely was. Last year when the Sydney Alliance listened to over 6500 of our members, work/family balance came up as a high priority.

Like many civil society organisations members of the Take the Time coalition were concerned that on their own, it would be hard to get a hearing from Government, let alone a positive result about the changes to the Boxing Day public holiday. We in the Alliance knew that many of our religious and community partners would be interested in the issue of public holidays too – and we thought that by working together, we could make a difference.

One key point of influence was the cross benchers in the NSW Legislative Council, particularly the Christian Democrat leader the Rev. Fred Nile. Rev. Nile had previously expressed concern about encroachments on family time. We also knew that Rev. Nile was once a shop assistant himself. Another shift in how we could influence the outcome came when responsibility for the public holiday legislation had passed to the Treasurer (and new Minister for Industrial Relations) Mike Baird. Mr Baird had a strong connection to issues around family time, and was very open to talking with religious organisations – as he had previously trained to be an Anglican Minister.

So, the Sydney Alliance helped the Take the Time coalition to organise a delegation of top religious and community leaders to meet with the Treasurer. It was a very interesting meeting. As community organisers, the Sydney Alliance tells stories and asks lots of questions. At that meeting the Treasurer shared his own stories of working in retail when he was young, and how hard it was for him to negotiate time off. In the meeting he expressed genuine concern for this issue.

Nevertheless, at the Sydney Alliance we know it is power that changes decisions, not just concern or sympathy. So, with one more sitting session of the NSW Parliament to go in 2012, we organised to have a Work/Life Balance Forum on the first day of the last session on Tuesday 13 November.

Our plan was to showcase the broad community support for keeping public holidays as they are, and to show our own power to influence key decision-makers. So we invited Rev. Nile along and asked him to publicly declare not only that he would vote against the Retail Trading Amendment, but also to champion our cause.

That Rev. Nile agreed to attend was powerful enough. We informed the Treasurer of this, and invited him to attend as well.

Having marshalled our forces on the result we wanted, the breakthrough came. At 10:40am, 20 minutes before our Work/Life Balance forum with Rev. Nile was due to start, the Treasurer called the Sydney Alliance and told us that he was going to pull the legislation from the Parliament.

Rev. Nile received a standing ovation when he addressed the 150-plus members of the Work/Life Balance forum. It’s fair to say there were a number of people in that room who would not have expected to find themselves in that situation.

In that room were Catholics, Anglicans, Uniting church members, and I might add a few atheists, Christian youth reps, retail workers, migrant resource centres – just to name a few. We were a motley diverse mob.

But this was no coincidence. We built powerful relationships based on clear thinking about what it would take to stop the passage of this legislation, and we won. Boxing Day was saved as a public holiday for local families.

But it doesn’t end there. Civil society is only flexing its newly-found muscles. At the Work/Balance Forum we saw over 100 people commit to getting more involved in working for family time. I’m sure we will need all those people and more because the strong lobby group – the Retailers Association – has already come out to push for 24 hour trading!

But with wins like this week’s, the lobbyists at the big end of town are now on notice. Civil society is coming back.

Dr Amanda Tattersall is the founding coalition director the Sydney Alliance. She will be speaking on a Sydney Ideas panel on Friday 16 November to launch the Social Justice Network at the University of Sydney. http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2012/why_social_justice_matters.shtml

Sydney alliance claimed its first successful negotiation with nine candidates, ranging from top liberal and labor councillors, all agree to create new drop off zones in front of all the major medical centres in Liverpool.

It worked because it was run, led and directed by local parishioners, unionists and community organisation leaders.

The issue was surfaced in a listening campaign run in March 2012 where locals kept recounting horror stories of getting fined for taking elderly loved ones to the doctors.

The assembly of over 250 people crammed into st xaviers school hall in lurnea to urge the councillors of all stripes to do the right thing by the residents. That pressure was maximised by the fact the council elections are less than two weeks away.

Labor, independent and liberal candidates agreed to bring this matter to the council at the first meeting after the election. That meeting is usually for formalities, but this time they will also work to resolve this issue.

This win is the first in a broader strategy of going deep to make change. The alliance has listened to what is going on for people in the suburbs, and now certainly and firmly, this massive coalition of 52 organisations with over 500000 members is bring about positive community change.

Tuesday night will see a similar assembly in st Mary’s arguing for ether lighting around the station. These events are all part of an escalating campaign to showcase the power of diverse relationships and organised citizens at the city assembly at the end of October.

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.

Politics in the UK is at a crossroads. The government has presented its vision of a radical overhaul to public spending. A community-based movement involving unions and community organisations is building opposition to this agenda – with the major rally on Saturday 26 March.

But like all coalitions between different community-based organisations, the challenge is how a coalition like this can go from holding a one-off mobilisation into a sustained movement that builds an alternative vision for how the United Kingdom should be governed.

A new book, Power in Coalition, identifies a series of strategies for building strong coalitions. These lessons are based on the experiences of three long-term coalitions in the Canada, US and Australia. Here, four useful lessons are identified for those keen to develop and achieve a people-centred vision for the UK.

1. Less is more

Against much conventional wisdom, smaller coalitions tend to be more powerful in the long term than larger ones. A smaller number of organisations who share a greater commonality of values or interest in an issue, and have a higher degree of commitment to engage their membership and resources, and are better placed to work together for the long term than a very broad and diverse network that only has a lowest common denominator of common interests and commitment holding it together.

The campaign against the cuts, up until now, has followed the “bigger is better” model of coalition building. This broad based strategy was designed to coordinate a diversity of voices. It makes sense that its first public demonstration is about expressing that diverse unity of purpose.

But, if it is to successfully develop new policy agendas the campaign must identify new ways of bringing organisations together. Highly diverse coalitions find it very easy to identify what they are against, but frequently struggle to say precisely what they are for – let alone develop winnable, actionable issues on which they can seek to make change.

This “movement for alternatives” could begin to canvas concrete policy alternatives by coordinating smaller action groups working on specific issues. Indeed, the campaign could act as a clearing house for pairing mutually interested groups on new policies (think unions and climate change groups working on a green jobs strategy), then it could be a very effective space for not just “resisting” change, but presenting concrete alternatives.

The grassroots collaborative in Chicago who waged a fight for a big-box living wage gives us a guide for how to make this work. It brought together a relatively small network of organisations – just 10 – but each had the ability to turn out their membership base. They also had a commitment to building solid relationships, and actually spent considerable time in breakfast meetings getting to know each other relationally before developing a common agenda.

When it came to working on issues, the foundation of strong relationships and trust allowed the coalition to let a power analysis and scrutiny of strategic opportunities drive its priorities. So over time the coalition moved from issues like an amnesty for undocumented workers to state budget issues to living wages, not just because these issues were always rigidly the number one for each organisation, but because they were the most strategically likely to be won at the time. There was a give and take – and a recognition that winning on one strategic issue, even if it wasn’t your issue, might make it easier to win on your issue in the future.

2. Focus on building relationships as well as holding events

The campaign against the cuts could play a key role in cultivating stronger relationships across its diverse network at the same time as it works on issues.

Activists are always “crazy busy” with the latest campaign or issue. But there is a difference between working hard and smart. We sometimes need to sharpen our sword – and build more resources and power in our networks – as well as working with what we have.

Face-to-face relationships are vital. While new movements like Uncut must be commended for their innovative tactics around corporate taxation – lasting social change will require strong bonds of trust between people and community-based organisations. Only there can collective action be sustained and long term strategies conceived.

Community based organisations spend a lot of time asking people to do things, or planning how to do stuff together, rather than really knowing why we are all doing this in the first place. But knowing why we do what we do, and lifting that up to be central in how we work together, can help stimulate our long term dedication.

Bridge builder staff and activists help build stronger relationships. The staff employed both by coalitions like the Grassroots Collaborative and the Ontario Health Coalition actively built this relational culture. They helped organisations that had very distinctive ways of working to build an understanding across their differences. They negotiated tensions.

3. Pursuing agenda setting demands rather than just saying no

When attacked by shrinking budgets, unemployment and reactionary racism, it is often easiest to mount campaigns that “say no”: no to war, no to public sector cuts, no to education cuts.

But, we need to be conscious of the limits of “no” campaigns. These campaigns still dance on the terrain of the person we are saying no to. They rarely are able to set an agenda for the kind of economy or society that works for us.

The March 26 rally is called “Rally for the Alternative talks about the need for government growth and investment as a strategy to deal with budgetary challenges. However, developing a concrete winnable alternative vision is a real challenge. It not only takes a commitment to a positive agenda around growth and investment, but the identification of specific, winnable policy alternatives that can be suggested and won. Only then would the coalition be successfully shifting the political climate in the UK.

In researching coalitions, I repeatedly found that coalitions that pursued new demands – like the public education campaign for reduced school class sizes for young children or living wages – were the most successful at shifting the political climate to be more supportive of progressive issues. For instance, in Canada, an anti-privatisation campaign had in-build limitations for setting a new direction for the health care system. In the media and public mind, there was a popular recognition that the health care system was in crisis and needed changing, and while the coalition was able to voice its opposition to negative reforms, they did not provide their own vision for the kind of reforms they would like. It made it difficult to sustain public support for their campaign, and allowed their opposition to get the upper hand.

4. Make the coalition work locally, regionally and across the country

To build and move an agenda, successful coalitions need to take action at multiple scales – across the nation, our cities and in our suburbs.

For example, in 2001-2 the Ontario Health Coalition built a multi-scaled coalition around health care – where a set of provincial organisations came together in Toronto, and then supported the building of dozens of local health care coalitions in regional cities like Kingston, Niagara and Thunder Bay. The health care movement was able to reach across the diverse geography of the province because activists, organisations and leaders located in different towns and cities anchored the coalition.

The coalition was most successful when local town-based coalitions had some autonomy to determine “how” they ran the campaign – and could structure activity based on their local idiosyncrasies and strengths. They were weaker when they were told what to do by leaders in Toronto. The coalition as a whole was at its best when the local groups had enough control to mix local campaigns, such as a campaign around a specific hospital privatisation, with a broader provincial agenda around health care.

The anti-cuts campaign is already working with different regional centres, and groups in London. But how can this coalition build and sustain a national movement over the coming years through linking local and national activity?

One possibility is that the campaign develops a broad umbrella narrative about policy alternatives that are connected to local issue based campaigns and actions. This is like what happened with the 2005-7 Your Rights at Work campaign in Australia. This campaign built around industrial relations leading up to the 2007 Federal Election. In this campaign individual union contract or organising campaigns were defined as being about “Your Rights at Work.” This fed bottom-up energy into a nationally consistent agenda because Your Rights at Work became tied to specific and meaningful local struggles, as well as a broader national political agenda. Of course, the national campaign still had key national demands and messages, but they became concrete when linked to specific local campaigns. We can see this already with specific campaigns around local cuts to libraries or health clinics. Sustaining the local by linking it to a national narrative may help to counter a risk, which is that the campaign against the cuts remains just a slogan, rather than being used to build a consensus around common public policy goals.

Successful multi-scaled coalitions also provide space for local city and state based coalitions to feed-up strategies to the national scale. The Ontario Health Coalition managed this by providing the local groups with a seat at the table. The coalition’s Administrative Committee not only included province wide organisations but many of the most active local groups – so they could have their discrete needs and ideas voiced as part of the broader strategy.

These strategies may help the campaign think through how it can provide meaningful voices for regional groups, and ensure that it isn’t a conversation from the top down

It is a time for coalitions and collaboration in the UK, but most importantly, these formations need to be powerful. It is hoped that these lessons may be helpful in thinking through how to sustain powerful coalitions and build a new progressive economic and social agenda.

From 16-18 February, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) have been hosting a national meeting of their municipal employees – under the title “Building Community.” They have gathered together over 400 people  – including local stewards, presidents and staff to discuss the challenges faced by public sector workers in Canada and globally, and strategies to build  progressive reforms for the public sector and support for public sector workers.

On 17 February, I was invited to address the conference to talk about how strong coalitions can provide a powerful strategy. I talked about the how the imbalance between the power of the market, government and community is the root cause of many of the issues that pubic sector workers are facing, and that coalitions – particularly sustained intentional relationships between powerful community-based organisations – can provide avenues for real hope and social change.

I shared the experiences of the NSW Teachers Federation of the public education alliance, and then identified the five principles of strong coalitions. An article about strong coalitions was distributed at the conference and can be downloaded here: CUPE: principles of strong coalitions.

In last week’s New Yorker, James Surowiecki has penned a pessimistic picture of unions in the US – declining numbers of union members and the lowest popular support for the labor movement on record. He makes the case that union demise in today’s recessionary economy sits in contrast to the depression era, where the adventurous tactics of growing unions were widely applauded.

He argues that the lack of popular support for unions could be a death spiral: as the public’s embrace of unions has consistently correlated with successful labor organizing, its absence could make a revival near impossible.

From a national perspective, despite hard working attempts to revitalize and grow unions, Surowiecki rightly points out that the statistics haven’t improved. But the reports of the labor movement’s death are greatly exaggerated: the statistics show the need for a dramatic change in direction for unions.

Unions need to end vested interest, narrow union claims and action – where unions act only for themselves and at the expense of public needs. As Surowiecki and others note, the political environment is presenting unions with an opportunity for something new. In the battles around public sector wages freezes and the school reform unions can do things differently.

They can take inspiration from the story of an Australian union who faced the same difficulties a decade ago. In the late 1990s, the school system was going through a reform process that included closing inner city schools. The union was struggling to respond – the Murdoch tabloid press was slaughtering the teachers union in its contract campaign.

Attacked as dunces, the union decided to change how it engaged with its members, the school community and the general public. Instead of just saying “no” to reforms, continuing to talk about teacher wages and defending the status quo, the union formed a coalition with parents and launched an independent inquiry into public education. The coalition hired an expert education professor as its inquiry head and then travelled the state for a year collecting stories from teachers, parents, school principals and the wider community about their frustrations with schools – and most importantly – their concrete suggestions for how to improve them.

The hearings turned into a series of reports and 92 policy solutions. These policies were then prioritized into 6 united demands identified by a coalition of teacher unions, parent and school principal organizations.

Cleverly, the inquiry and its reports were timetabled with the electoral cycle in mind. Hearings were held eighteen months out from the next election. The reports started being released six months before the election. Then the union – with its coalition of teachers and principals – took action to secure its reform vision for public education.

Instead of resisting government reforms, the union worked in coalition with community organizations to shift public opinion on the question of what school reforms were needed. The inquiry found classroom sizes to be a real concern, so they ran a campaign to reduce them for Kindergarten to Year Two children. They won. Both major political parties – the equivalents of Republicans and Democrats – endorsed a $250 million reform proposal in the lead up to the 2003 election.

Today, US unions will need a similar change in strategy in order to rise to the challenges they face. The scapegoating of public sector unions and attacks on social spending will require a community-wide response. Successful coalitions between unions and community organizations will be part of the solution. But, they are no magic bullet. Coalitions will need to be combined with a community-minded unionism that is prepared to think differently about how it contests public policy, how it takes public action and how it sets an agenda.

Community-minded unionism has been successful in US history and oversees. It is happening locally and regionally in the US. It is needed on a broad scale today.

Across the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, 2010 exposed the limits of progressive politicians, and a growing cynicism about politics generally. Minority governments were elected in the UK and Australia. In the US the Democrats were routed in the mid-term elections and the Republicans were shaken up by the Tea Party.

It was only two years ago that Obama popularised a sense of “hope” and “belief” in politicians. Similarly in Australia in 2007, the “Kevin 07” election led media pundits to proclaim a new dawn for social democracy.

How times change.

They key lesson of 2010 is that we cannot rely on politicians to deliver us “the change we need.” If we want better outcomes on health care, public services or workplace justice, people need to be continuously present in the political process. Hope comes from our ability to set the agenda and place pressure on government to deliver what we need.

But it would also be disingenuous to suggest, “the people united will never be defeated”.

There are many ingredients for building a powerful people’s movement. One is building successful and strong coalitions between civil society organisations like unions and community organisations. There are many lessons about what it takes for community-based coalitions to be strong. Here are a couple of lessons drawn from the new book Power in Coalition.

1. A positive agenda

Successful community coalitions know what they want, not just what they are against.

London Citizens – a powerful broad based coalition of over 200 religious organisations and civil society organisations – did this in 2010 with their successful campaign around immigration detention centres. At a citizens’ assembly in May 2010 just before the National Elections, Citizens UK won commitments from all the prime ministerial candidates around a new immigration policy. Their success came from developing a specific and actionable policy around detention – that all children must be removed from immigration detention facilities by Christmas. The clarity of their demand was an essential part of their victory.

Cultivating a positive agenda is often very difficult for community-based coalitions. It is easier to build relationships around what we are against rather that what we are for: saying no to “Walmart”, resisting “cuts to services” or opposing privatisation.

Yet it is only when we proclaim an alternative agenda that we start to build a new political climate for social change that is consistent with out values. In Chicago between 2003-7, a coalition called the Grassroots Collaborative did exactly this when they turned a campaign against Walmart into a campaign for living wages for retail workers. By developing specific actionable policy alternatives, people can be active in the political process.

2. Less is more

Coalitions with handpicked strategic partnerships are more powerful than come-one, come all conglomerations.

Social movement organisers often have an instinct that “more is more” – the more people and organisations you have around a table, the more power you have. But anyone who has spent time trying to make decisions and develop social change strategies in such a space knows that this practice has limitations. The 2003 Walk against the War Coalition in Sydney was built in this way – 60 organisations who had so little in common that all they could agree on was to hold more rallies. And over time the tension between the groups grew, pulling the coalition apart after 6 months.

Smaller is better. Again in Sydney it was a coalition of only two organisations – school teachers and parents – that built an independent inquiry into public education that ran for 18 months that led to them winning a $250 million policy for reducing class sizes.

The lessons is that there is a trade off when it comes to building coalitions. If you want to be diverse – then slow and steady wins the race. You need to spend time building relationships, trust and leadership before taking action. Coalitions like London Citizens, the Sydney Alliance, the Grassroots Collaborative and coalitions that are part of the Industrial Areas Foundation follow this lesson. They have spent years building before working on issues.

If, however, you want to move straight to taking action on issues – then a smaller network of organisations is critical if you want to work together for any length of time.

Sure – you can call a diverse group of people to come to specific events or rallies – like the One Nation Working Together Coalition in Washington in October 2010 or the Coalition of Resistance rally in the UK in March 2011. But those coalitions will be fragile long term.

If 2010 was the year that we learnt that politicians aren’t the answer, lets make 2011 the year that people make waves by building successful coalitions that can take action for the common good.

Published in R@W News by Amanda Tattersall:

When she spoke last month at the National Press Club, the new ACTU President Ged Kearney outlined an ambitious plan for the national union movement. It calls for a broadening of our membership, our agenda and our capacity to campaign.

The speech outlines a vision for unions – where unions not only extend industrial protections for workers but embrace a broader political and social agenda that includes job security, infrastructure that makes communities work and responds to the ageing workforce.

The big question that meets this ambitious vision is how? How can unions successfully move a broad based social and economic vision this century?

To achieve this vision, the strategy will require unions to work in coalition with other community-based organisations. It cannot be done by unions alone. Unions will need to build powerful and successful coalitions run locally, across cities, states and the nation.

Last century, the union movement relied on a close relationship with the ALP and a large membership base to deliver reforms such as Medicare and Superannuation. Alongside this, unions won workplace and social reforms through community-based campaigns – like the famous urban environmental Green Bans run by the NSW Builders Laborers Federation and resident action groups.

But times have changed.

Unions do not have as many choices about the strategies they can use to influence public debate. When unions were strong, Left and Right unions were able to debate the merits of working inside the ALP structures or working with community organisations.

Today, with membership levels half that of the 1970s and an economy that has globalised, unions struggle to have their voices heard. The Labor Party rarely initiates worker-friendly workplace reforms without pressure from below– after all the Fair Work Act was a legacy of the three year Your Rights at Work campaign.

Internal union campaigns used to reach the majority of the population when unions represented 50% of workers. At 19%, shifting community opinion requires a broader strategy.

A broad-based community strategy is vital over the next three years given our precarious minority government. Community support from across our cities and regions will be required to build a worker-friendly legislative agenda.

And usefully there is widely held support from community organisations and unions for many of the issues that Kearney outlined.

Community-based organisations are also concerned by a poor transport and infrastructure, the ageing population and job insecurity.

But to be powerful and successful, community campaigns need to be run by a network of community partners – not just by unions acting alone. As Kearney notes, politics these days is too much a product of single voices and single interests. Unions too need to acknowledge that they are often perceived in public debate as acting for their vested interests. At one level, this is nothing to be ashamed of, if it wasn’t for unions who would campaign for the wages and conditions of workers?

But, when it comes to political advocacy, unions need to be able to articulate their own interests as part of the common good – as a sword of justice that defends public interest as well as their own needs. And the only way to do this is to work in strong, reciprocal coalitions with other community-based organisations.

The NSW Teachers Federation knew this when they decided to build a Public Education Inquiry (Vinson Inquiry) to develop a new agenda for education in NSW between 2001 and 2003. They invited the Federation of Parents & Citizens to work with them because they knew that to be independent the inquiry needed to include more voices than just teachers. It was a recipe for success with the coalition winning a $250 million reduction in class sizes after eighteen months of campaigning.

The same goes for the agenda setting campaigns that the ACTU hopes to pioneer.

There are other lessons from the successes of the NSW public education coalition. Working with community partners does not mean working with hundreds of other organisations and building large, long letterhead coalitions around issues. The public education coalition ran the Vinson Inquiry with just two organisations. Less is often more. Strategic, tight, mutually interested coalitions are more powerful for winning long-term social change than loose groupings of large numbers of organisations that can only agree on lowest common denominator reforms.

Finally, strong coalitions are also about working at multiple scales. We can’t win new infrastructure or job security from Canberra without building strong city-based and town-based community campaigns. These local campaigns need to capture the interest of local members of parliament and state governments.

Unions know this well – the Your Rights at Work campaign was multi-scaled – organised through dozens of local Rights at Work committees around the country as well as through union meetings. It was in these local committees that union members were able to participate and help shape the campaign and feel a part of that broader agenda.

Imagine if the union member survey that the ACTU is initiating led to the formation of local campaign groups that were able to support winning new worker-friendly reforms. But, effective multi-scaled campaigns aren’t easy – there always needs to be give and take between the local, city, state and national. But it is vital if a genuinely powerful movement is to be built.

Kearney is right, unions need a broader agenda and need to grow and sharpen their campaign capacity to do it. The key strategy that brings these three elements together is strong and powerful coalitions between the union movement and community organisations.

Amanda Tattersall is Deputy Assistant Secretary at Unions NSW and author of Power in Coalition published by Allen & Unwin, available now in bookstores.

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.

As published in the SMH’s National Times

There are signs that the timidity of Federal politics may be turning with the announcement that both sides of politics will support a feasibility study into a bullet train for the Australian eastern seaboard.

While commonplace in Asia and Europe, this would be revolutionary here. It would reduce the number of planes in the sky and be a welcome antidote to commuter chaos. A bullet train could make the journey from Campbelltown to Sydney’s CBD 10 minutes, Tullamarine to Melbourne 5 mins or the central coast to Sydney 20 minutes.

But the chances of this idea happening are very slim if left to the politicians.

We can anticipate a significant negative reaction from the airline industry. The Melbourne-Sydney flight path is the third busiest in the world, and it won’t be given up without a fight. And, like in the 1980s, the project could get bogged down in debates about the route the train line takes.

The hope for the bullet train lies in the fact that it could be championed by a highly unusual coalition of organisations that all have an interest in better transport.

But, some important lessons about coalition building will need to be kept in mind if such an alliance is to be successful.Planning will be key. This is a very long-term project and will need to maintain popular and political support through multiple electoral cycles and probably a variety of different state and federal governments. Of critical importance will be the period before elections. That was the case for a community coalition in Brooklyn, New York in its successful campaign for a major piece of public infrastructure – the development of 3000 affordable homes. The coalition cultivated support from Democrat and Republican mayors over a 10-year period by timetabling escalating public pressure in advance of mayoral elections.

A multi-scaled coalition will be essential. This can’t be won just in the cities of Melbourne or Sydney. It will require national coordination but also the ability to actively involve residents in places like Campbelltown, the Central Coast, Canberra, outer Melbourne and other regions. Like the Ontario Health Coalition in Canada or the Your Rights at Work campaign in Australia, regional groups of local community activists could come together to build community support and maintain political pressure.

A Bullet Train Alliance would need to focus on handpicking organisational partners that shared a direct interest in this long term project. To broad or too open a coalition would likely fail. This was a lesson learnt early on by the Ontario Health Coalition in Canada, where a very larged network of organisations struggled to agree on specific policy reforms or on strategies to achieve them until they limited participation to a group of 16 interested and powerful organisations.

At the same time diversity will be essential – the issue of a bullet train has many different constituencies. Winning such a radical reform will require all these constituencies to be drawn in. Involving diverse groups was essential for Chicago’s 2003-7 living wage coalition. It cultivated new relationships with African American churches and labor unions as well as community organisations, because only with that diverse alignment of people and interests could the living wage ordinance be passed.

When it comes to a bullet train a diverse alliance based on mutual interests could include:

• Resident groups and Councils in South West Sydney, outer Melbourne and the Central Coast, for whom a fast train provides a way to take pressure of commuting times. As Julian Disney argues, residents in these areas spend 2-3 working days per week traveling at enormous costs to their families.

• Unions for whom a bullet train provides another way to deal with the issue of work-family balance and working hours. An eight hour day can’t be reinstated without dealing with how people get to and from work, especially as commuting times are getting worse. A recent survey found that the average daily commute in Sydney has increased from 79 minutes in 1999 to 81 minutes in 2007. In addition, building this train line would be a massive investment in jobs in a period of unstable employment.

• Urban planners and housing advocates who know that the commuting crisis in our metropolitan cities is a key strain on affordable housing. Adam Farrer from the NSW Housing Association has argued that land release is not enough – affordable housing strategies require transport solutions that make housing accessible to jobs. A bullet train could help by making the CBD more accessible to the suburban fringe.

• Environmental advocates who could champion a bullet train because it would actively reduce emissions caused by cars and airlines. Transport accounts for 13.5 per cent of Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions. Of that the greatest emissions come from road transport and secondly airline transport.

• There are would also be key allies in the business community including those involved in civil construction and tourism

For those excited by the prospect of a bullet train the challenge is clear – we need to develop a diverse, long term community coalition if we want this idea to become a reality.

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.

As published in ABC’s Drum Unleashed in Australia:

So now the Tobacco industry have decided to join the latest Australian trend – forming coalitions between organisations to win public support. This follows the painstaking construction of the Gillard-Green-Wilkie-Oakshot-Windsor coalition.

In Power in Coalition – a book released this month by Allen & Unwin – I examine what it takes to build powerful coalitions. But my focus is coalitions between civil society organizations like community organisations, unions and religious organisations rather than big Tobacco and political parties.

Regardless, many of the lessons I identify can help us understand these new political alignments.

The key finding is that not all coalitions are powerful and successful. Coalitions are not a magic bullet for political influence. There are ingredients and strategies that if present or absent are likely to lead to success or failure.

One lesson heralds a warning to the Gillard coalition – “less is more”. Coalitions with highly diverse partnerships are vulnerable to collapse because it makes it difficult to find consensus and agreement over time. I found that coalitions with a smaller number of partners tended to be able to sustain relationships more effectively than highly diverse coalitions that often had to rely on lowest-common denominator positions.

While less is more may worry the politicians, I think it actually provides opportunities for citizens. Precarious political alliances are likely to be a boon for community coalitions and social advocates. A little political instability may provide a welcome space for popular movements to build attention for important issues like climate change, congestion and transport or work/family balance.

Another lesson spells a welcome warning for the carcinogenic coalition. I found that to be successful, coalitions needed to work on issues that were both in the interests of the coalition organisations and wielded a sword of justice (or connection to the public interest). Without a public interest connection, coalitions struggled to influence public debate.

When it came to community coalitions, this weakness was apparent when they just said “no” – no to education cuts or no to privatization. Even though saying no demonstrated resistance, it struggled to effectively build momentum for an alternative vision for how to respond to social and economic challenges. In contrast, when a community coalition presented a new agenda – like reducing class sizes to improve public education – it was far more successful in winning its issue and building a supportive political climate for progressive social change.

When it comes to the Tobacco Alliance – shining a sword of justice is going to be tough. That is not for want of trying. They are spinning hard to project “neutral language”, after all their PR firm is called the Civic Group and the toxic alliance is called the Alliance for Australian Retailers. They do have an advantage over most people-centred community coalitions – the billions of dollars these corporations can funnel into a campaign. But their greatest vulnerability is their reactive message. Their argument is a “no” argument – “it just wont work so don’t do it.” It sounds like every other no coalition and will struggle to set an agenda when weighed against the health costs of smoking that are in the public interest.

It may be the year of the coalition. But for those passionate for progressive social change know that what is important is how coalitions between organisations are built and sustained. Genuine social change takes painstaking, people-centered, smart strategising and movement building, not just the penmanship of cynical spin.

Amanda Tattersall, author of Power in Coalition

Its difficult times for progressives in the United States with Tea Party reaction, state budget deficits, escalating foreclosures and unemployment. So it is an inspiring step to see a multitude of over 170 organizations coming together in the One Nation Working Together coalition to demand the change that was voted for in 2008. At the moment – this network’s immediate goal is a mass mobilization in Washington on October 2 2010 (known as “10-2-10”).

But like all coalitions between different community-based organizations, there is the question of if and how it can work to build change for the long haul –through the November elections, and for years and decades to come. If the history behind the Team Party movement teaches us anything – a sustained effort is needed to build a progressive movement for change.

In a new book, Power in Coalition, I identify a series of strategies for building strong coalitions. These lessons are built from the experiences of three long-term coalitions in the US, Canada and Australia, as well as my experience as a union and community organizer. These ideas may prove useful as this new progressive network begins to build up steam. I have pulled out four lessons that may guide how One Nation Working Together can build a sustained progressive coalition capable of social change.

1. Less is more – be explicit about who you want at the table cause big is not always better

Perhaps controversially, and certainly against much conventional wisdom, I found that smaller coalitions tend to be more powerful long term than larger ones.

A smaller number of organizations who share a greater commonality of values or interest in an issue, and have a higher degree of commitment to engage their membership and resources, and are better placed to work together for the long term than a very broad and diverse network that only has a lowest common denominator of common interests and commitment holding it together.

But coalitions have to be fit for purpose – and the purpose of One Nation Working Together is to coordinate the breadth of progressive voices to speak about an alternative vision for America that counters the current right wing drumbeat. It makes sense that its initial formation is broad based and that its first public demonstration is about expressing that diverse unity of purpose.

But, if it is to successfully help coordinate policy agendas nationally it may need to identify more complex ways of working than just having a seat for every group at the table. Collectively, broad issue priorities could be identified. But, cultivating strategy for specific policies like the Employee Free Choice Act, housing and foreclosures, financial regulation, withdrawing troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, or clean jobs, is probably best done by parts of the whole. For instance, smaller coalitions of interested groups could work on specific issues in the name of One Nation Working Together, rather than this work being organized by the whole.

However, working out which issues get prioritized and worked on will also take some solid relationship building between the parties. Often coalitions get stuck when organizations focus first on their own narrow needs – such as around a particular issue – rather than recognizing how their long-term interests are met by building progressive power more broadly. Pursuing issues that have political opportunities or openings – such as around education reform – might prove the most potent for all progressives. Wins here may create momentum for other issues later on.

The grassroots collaborative in Chicago who waged the big-box living wage fight in 2005-6 provides us with a guide for how to make this work. It brought together a relatively small network of organizations – just 10 – but each had the ability to turn out their membership base. They also had a commitment to building solid relationships, and actually spent considerable time in breakfast meetings getting to know each other relationally before developing a common agenda.

When it came to working on issues, the foundation of strong relationships and trust allowed the coalition to let a power analysis and scrutiny of strategic opportunities drive its priorities, rather than just being directed by an organization’s concern for particular issues. So over time the coalition willingly moved from subjects like an amnesty for undocumented workers to state budget issues to living wages, not just because these issues were always rigidly the number one for each organization, but because they were the most strategically likely to be won at the time. There was a give and take – and a recognition that winning on one strategic issue, even if it wasn’t your issue, might make it easier to win on your issue in the future.

Indeed, a base of solid relationships is critical to sustaining long term coalitions ….

2. “Working Together” on building relationships as well as working on politics and the issues

One Nation Working Together is in a unique position to potentially cultivate stronger relationships across its diverse network at the same time as it works on the issues.

Every organizer I know is always “crazy busy” with the latest campaign or issue. But there is a difference between working hard and smart. We sometimes need to sharpen our sword – and build more resources and power in our networks – as well as working with what we have.

Building deeper relationships amongst people we work with, but don’t know well, is one way to sharpen that sword. Progressives spend a lot of time asking people to do things, or planning how to do stuff together, rather than really knowing why we are all doing this in the first place. But knowing why we do what we do – sharing the story behind our commitment – and lifting that up to be central in how we work together, can help stimulate our long term dedication as well as help us collectively focus on what is important (like being stronger together) rather than just promoting our own organization’s needs.

Key to this is coalition staff who can act as bridge builders. The staff employed both by the Canadian and Chicago coalitions actively built this relational culture. They helped organizations that had very distinctive ways of working to build an understanding across their differences. They negotiated tensions. They identified gaps in their networks and sought to build new relationships. In Chicago, staff helped cultivate a culture at meetings where it wasn’t all business talk – where time was intentionally spent getting to know each other better.

Relationship building can feel unproductive when the challenges and threats are so immediate. But relationship building is critical to building power. And strong relationships are a catalyst for creative policies, strategies and tactics.

Indeed, I found repeatedly that a base of strong relationships helped coalitions successfully pursue agenda setting policies …

3. Pursuing agenda setting demands rather than just saying no

When attacked by shrinking budgets, unemployment and reactionary racism, it is often easiest to mount campaigns that “say no”: no to war, no to racism, no to education cuts. These campaigns have their place in fighting the conservative slide.

But, as organizers we need to be conscious of the limits of “no” campaigns. These campaigns still dance on the terrain of the person we are saying no to. They rarely are able to set an agenda for the kind of economy or society that works for us.

One Nation Working Together has begun with this positive vision in mind. The spirit of coming together to campaign for the change that we voted seeks to be agenda setting. However, one of our challenges is that this “change” was never really defined – rather it was aspirational but not driven by specific policies. The coalition is seeking to take that energy and build a new economic and social vision, one where people and their needs are at the center, not just the interests of profit and practices of competition.

For future work, a disciplined commitment to positive, agenda setting issue-based campaigns will be critical. And, progressives have already shown a capacity to initiate new policies having won a new agenda on health care, and crafted new agendas around employee free choice.

The importance of positive campaigns is reinforced by the lessons in Power in Coalition. I found that coalitions that pursued new demands – like campaigns for reduced school class sizes for young children or living wages – were the most successful at shifting the political climate to be more supportive of progressive issues. In contrast, “no” campaigns were easily wedged by political leaders. For instance, in Canada, there were built-in limits to how a campaign against privatization could set a new direction for the health care system. In the media and public mind, there was a popular recognition that the health care system was in crisis and needed changing, and while the coalition was able to voice their opposition to negative reforms, they did not provide their own vision for the kind of reforms they would like. It made it difficult to sustain public support for their campaign, and allowed their opposition to get the upper hand.

4. Make the coalition work inside and outside of Washington DC

To build and move an agenda, successful coalitions frequently need to take action at multiple scales – across the nation, the state, the city and in our neighborhoods.

For example, in 2001-2 the Ontario Health Coalition built a multi-scaled coalition around health care – where a set of provincial organizations came together in Toronto, and then supported the building of dozens of local health care coalitions in regional cities like Kingston, Niagara and Thunder Bay. The health care movement was able to reach across the diverse geography of the province because activists, organizations and leaders located in different towns and cities anchored the coalition.

The coalition was most successful when local town and neighborhood coalitions had some autonomy to determine “how” they ran the campaign – and could structure activity based on their local idiosyncrasies and strengths. They were weaker when they were told what to do by leaders in Toronto. The coalition as a whole was at its best when the local groups had enough control to mix local campaigns, such as a campaign around a specific hospital privatization, with a broader provincial agenda around health care.

One Nation Working Together is working with different cities and states to mobilize for October 2. But beyond the October demonstration, how this coalition can build and sustain a national movement through local activity, and how local local-cum-national relationships are managed will be critical for the coalition to sustain its network and agenda.

One possibility is that the One Nation Working Together provides a broad umbrella narrative that is connected to local issue based campaigns and actions. This is like what happened with the 2005-7 Your Rights at Work campaign in Australia. This was an extraordinarily effective campaign built around industrial relations leading up to the 2007 Federal Election. In this campaign individual union contract or organizing campaigns were defined as being about “Your Rights at Work.” This fed bottom-up energy into a nationally consistent agenda because Your Rights at Work became tied to specific and meaningful local struggles, as well as a broader national political agenda. Of course, the national campaign still had key national demands and messages, but they became concrete when linked to specific local campaigns. Building a narrative within which local campaigns can operate helps to counter a risk, which is that One Nation Working Together could be reduced to just a slogan that does not have public policy content beyond an electoral strategy, rather than being used to build a consensus around common agendas.

Successful multi-scaled coalitions also provide space for local city and state based coalitions to feed-up strategies to the national scale. The Ontario Health Coalition managed this by providing the local groups with a seat at the table. The coalition’s Administrative Committee not only included province wide organizations but many of the most active local groups – so they could have their discrete needs and ideas voiced as part of the broader strategy.

Again, post-October, it could prove useful to provide a seat at the table for the network of state and city based One Nation Working Together groups to participate in developing the coalition’s national, and more local, strategies.

It is a very important period for progressive politics in America, and it is the time for different organizations at a local, state and national level to cultivate stronger relationships. As it was put Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director of the Center for Community Change, at one of One Nation Working Together’s early meetings, “Raise your hand if you can push your part of the agenda all by yourself.”

We need collaboration, but we need to collaborate powerfully. I hope some of these lessons may be helpful in thinking through how to sustain powerful coalitions and build a new progressive economic and social agenda.

Published on Tuesday 21 September in the West Australian:

The CEO of BHP has surprised us by signaling his support for a carbon tax and a future beyond coal powered electricity that leads, rather than follows, the rest of the world. Its bolder talk than what we have seen from either of the major political parties.

Mr Kloppers’ decision to play a role in the climate change debate demonstrates how the complexity of a hung parliament may provide more opportunities for leadership from outside of it ranks. It also opens the possibilities for how diverse coalitions on the issue of climate change could take Australia to a more climate friendly future.

To date, on the whole, the community-coalitions on climate change have been fairly ineffective. Most formed in reaction to the national political debate around the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme – and their purpose was either to support or oppose that policy.

But coalitions are far more likely to achieve social change and influence political debate if they lead a new policy agenda. There are two reasons for this. Focusing on new policies allows organisations to come together to advocate for policies based on their  own needs and self-interest, while also suggesting policy changes that serve the public interest.

When it comes to successful coalitions, self-interest is key. After all, Mr Kloppers is not talking about a carbon tax because he is a nice person. He is advocating for it because he recognizes that sooner or later a price on carbon is inevitable, and that his business would be better able to predict, respond and plan for it if his company is part of leading the change rather than reacting.

His decision to engage with climate change policy throws down a challenge to organisations worried about climate change. His proposal, while very constructive, also has its limits. For instance, he doesn’t support the tax revenue being used to fund new technologies for renewable energy and he opposes an Emissions Trading Scheme. On the other hand, his participation in the climate change debate is powerful – Julia Gillard has already signaled that she might consider a Carbon Tax as part of a climate change policy mix.

Some in the climate change movement have played an unconstructive role in the climate change debate so far. Arguments that we needed a 20% cuts in emissions in Australia, no matter how right they might be, proved powerless to the rise of climate skepticism that Tony Abbott cultivated at the beginning of this year.

Now there is an opportunity for some practical coalitions around a carbon tax. To be successful this will require some open-mindedness on all sides. It wont be about forming a coalition where everyone agrees with everything – but rather creating a coalition based on some core policies – like the importance of a carbon tax.

But, to achieve policy change the coalition will need to be diverse. While BHP has shifted interest in the Labor Government, other constituencies like unions will also be influential. Similarly, the Greens and independents will also need to support this policy for it to pass. For them, the voices of the environmental movement will be crucial too. An unusual business-union-community alliance could help lead this debate – but it will need to follow some of the lessons about what it takes to build powerful coalitions.

Amanda Tattersall book Power in Coalition was launched in Perth last night.

On Friday 17 September, I traveled to Adelaide for the first Australian launch of Power in Coalition.

The event was sponsored by SA Unions and held in Imprints Bookstore in the centre of the city. Despite it being a cold night, there was a great crowd who turned up – a mix of union organisers, community organisation workers, academics and interested social change campaigners.

The  bookshop was full, entertained during the night by the occasional excitable chants of passers by down the street.

Janet Giles of SA Unions opened the night, relaying her experience of strong coalitions – not only with the work of the Your Rights at Work campaign but a long standing coalition around Asbestos in Adelaide. That coalition followed one of the lessons in Power in Coalition – less is more – where a diverse but  mutually interested group of lawyers, researchers, unions and community advocates have been coming together for years. They first built relationships to share their knowledge and perspectives on the asbestos issue, and now they are beginning to work jointly on specific outcomes like victims rights. Janet reflected that the relationship building phase of the coalition was key to its success – and so unlike the usual practice of unions which is to try to just organise the next rally!

John Speor from the Australian Institute for Social Research was next. He talked about his personal experience in coalitions from the 1980s and 1990s – particularly his work firstly against electricity privatisation and then the Coaliton for a Better Deal. That alliance was a diverse group of organisations – student groups, community organisations, migrant organisations and unions – coordinated by SA Unions. It too followed a key lesson from Power in Coalition, which is the importance of making positive agenda setting claims rather just running “no” coalitions. This coalition had plenty of success, including the fact that it was sustained for a long time – lasting around five years.

John also spoke about the need for new and better coalitions right now in South Australia – particularly given the major cuts to the public sector announced in yesterday’s state budget. It was an inspiring call, and after the speeches some initial discussions were had between those in the room about how this could happen.

I then spoke about some of the stories from Power in Coalition, including why I became interested in working in coalitions as a union organiser with a social movement background, and then telling the story of Chicago’s grassroots collaborative and its campaign for living wages for retail workers.