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.

On Friday 17 September, I spoke with James Carlton about Power in Coalition.

Click here to hear the interview.

The election of the minority labor government is an opportunity for creative unions to form clever alliances with community organisations to increase the influence of both. A blueprint for creating unions-community coalitions is the essence of a timely book having its national launch in Adelaide tonight.

NSW Unions organiser Amanda Tattersall’s book “Power in Coalition; strategies for strong unions and social change” has been published by the prestigious Cornell University.

It’s the first book of its kind, and shows when coalitions are likely to succeed and when they’re likely to fail” SA Unions secretary Janet Giles says.

Ms Giles is not stranger to the idea of powerful unions and community coalitions, as one of the driving forced behind the hugely successful Your Rights at Work campaign she helped crystalise an alliance between unions and grassroots community organisations that delivered three crucial seats at the 2007 federal election to precipitate a change in government.

“It shows that when you get it right, the results can be spectacular” Ms Giles says.

“This book is about creating effective advocacy and powerful voices – and we have a prime opportunity in Australia for unions to re-emerge onto the national stage with more vigour than we’ve seen in years” Ms Giles says.

Author Amanda Tattersall says the current hung parliament is a not-to-be-missed opportunity for unions and community organisations to form powerful alliances to achieve social change.

“In a climate where the rising power of capital has created a hostile environment for unions, characterized by aggressive employers, unfriendly government and declining union membership, unions have had to re-evaluate their roles and objectives. The result has been novel strategies that have re-energised unions’ role as the champion of the worker, through coalitions or alliances with community organizations” Ms Tattersall says.

Media Note: Launch 6pm tonight, Imprints booksellers, 107 Hindley Street City. Amanda Tattersall 0409 321 133 (except 12-2pm when enroute to Adelaide)

How can we change things in an age in which governments are fixated on the bottom line and conventional protest rallies have lost their punch?

Can the political opportunities presented by a new minority government be harnessed by community-based movements for real social impact and change? In Power in Coalition, Amanda Tattersall argues that political opportunities are a critical ingredient in the success of community-based coalitions.

Coalitions can be important tools for social change and union revitalisation. What makes them successful? What causes them to fail? Community organiser Amanda Tattersall has written the first internationally comparative book to examine successful coalitions between
unions and community organisations in three countries. It documents the stories of the public education coalition in Sydney, Toronto’s Ontario Health Coalition fighting to save
universal health care, and Chicago’s living wage campaign run by the Grassroots Collaborative. She explores when and how coalitions can be a powerful strategy for social change, organisational development and union renewal.

Power in Coalition is essential reading for unionists, community activists, and anyone passionate about social change.

‘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

‘If unions are to maximise their influence in the 21st century they must build alliances with other organisations around economic, social and ecological concerns affecting humanity. This book shows it is possible to build the necessary coalitions to achieve this end.’ –  Jack Mundey AO, instigator of the 1970s Green Bans movement in Sydney

Amanda will tour Australia from 17-29 September 2010. She is available for interview.

Please visit http://powerincoalition.com/category/newsroom/launches/ for a full list of public events

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amanda Tattersall is Deputy Assistant Secretary of Unions NSW and founder and Director of the Sydney Alliance. She is also co-founder and chair of GetUp and an Honorary Associate in Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney.

PUBLISHED: September 2010
IMPRINT: Allen & Unwin
CATEGORY: Politics
ISBN: 9781742374567
RRP: AUD $35.00
CONTACT: Tiffany Rae ph (02) 8425 0149, email tiffanyr@allenandunwin.com

Please contact Tiffany Rae for review copies, extracts and interviews.

More praise for Power in Coalition
‘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

‘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

On Thursday September 9, the Metro Vancouver Allliance (MVA) along with Simon Fraser University hosted a launch for Power in Coalition at Simon Fraser University. It was a great crowd, with over 70 people attending in an overflowing room (with many having to take a seat on the stairs). Metro Vancouver Alliance is an emerging broad based coalition of religious organizations, unions and community organizations committed to building community power and improvements to the city of Vancouver.

The night consisted of a talk about the book, traversing the three case studies of public education in Sydney, health care in Toronto and living wages in Chicago. Then, short speeches about why alliances are important from  from three representatives from the MVA – one from each of the different constituencies. There were dozens of engaged questions from a very diverse crowd – students, unionists, community activists, small business organizations and religious leaders.

Earlier that day I spent time with a group of labor leaders talking about the experience of setting up the Sydney Alliance and discussing lessons for their experience in Vancouver, and on the Friday I met with the team of leaders from MVA who planned their next steps for building their broad alliance in Vancouver.

@ Todays Workplace: September 3 2010

AFL-CIO presentation: Five Principles for building Powerful Coalitions Click here to see the post at Today’s Workplace: a workplace fairness blog.

@ Wellstone Action: August 31 2010

August 31 2010, posted by Erik Peterson. Check it out here. Wellstone Action is all about building power, and the organizations we partner with are equally hungry to build power together.  One critical way is by building effective coalitions.

@ Talking Union: August 31 2010

Check it out  and the discussion at the Talking Union website Five principles for building powerful coalitions

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.

Ontario Health Coalition Featured in First Internationally Comparative Study of Coalitions Between Unions and Community Organizations

Amanda Tattersall’s book, “Power in Coalition: Strategies for Strong Unions and Social Change”, now available from Cornell University Press

TORONTO, Sept. 2, 2010 – Amanda Tattersall, an Australian organizer and labor scholar, provides a practical framework for what makes coalitions a key tool for union revitalization and social change in her new book, “Power in Coalition: Strategies for Strong Unions and Social Change”, published by Cornell University Press. As the first internationally comparative study of coalitions as a strategy for unions, community organizations and social change, this book contributes new, practical frameworks and insights that will help guide union and community organizers across the globe. It is now available for purchase online through Cornell University Press at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu and Amazon at www.amazon.com.

The Ontario Health Coalition is featured as the Canadian case study in Tattersall’s internationally comparative research. Other campaigns include public education in Sydney and living wages in Chicago. The lessons are grounded in real experience, creating practical strategies for challenging the political and economic climate.

“We’re honored to have the work of our broadly-based coalition recognized in this international study,” states Natalie Mehra, director of the Ontario Health Coalition. “Over the last 15 years, we have built one of the most diverse labour-community coalitions in Canada that has repeatedly defended the role of public health care. We hope our experiences can help to build coalitions in other jurisdictions and aid in promoting a progressive vision of human development that embraces equity, environmental sustainability, peace and justice.”

Tattersall’s North American book tour will include stops in Toronto and Vancouver during the week of September 6th. For more information, please visit: http://powerincoalition.com/category/newsroom.

“This book arose out of my own experience in coalition building and community organizing,” says Tattersall. “We need strong and successful coalitions to empower the necessary community voice and response to issues such as climate change, health care, urban planning and transport. This book uncovers strategies for how coalitions can be an engine room for civic advocacy and social change, offering people real hope that common working people can be powerful again.”


Tattersall’s experience as both a community organizer and researcher translates into presenting strategies that will work well on the ground. Since writing the book, Tattersall has used its findings to organize, starting the Sydney Alliance, which now has 28 member organizations as partners. The Alliance is following the lessons documented in the book.

For more information, visit http://powerincoalition.com.

Availability
“Power in Coalition: Strategies for Strong Unions and Social Change,” which retails for $21.00 USD, is available for purchase online at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu and www.amazon.com.

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About the Author

Amanda Tattersall is an Australian community organizer and a researcher with an international focus. She is currently the founder and director of the Sydney Alliance, a broad based coalition of unions, community organizations and religious organizations. In addition to having served as the president of the National Union of Students’ New South Wales (NSW) branch, Tattersall also founded Labor for Refugees and co-founded www.getup.org.au – an Australian web-based campaign organization with over 300,000 members. Having worked as a union organizer, Amanda is now an elected official: Deputy Assistant Secretary with Unions NSW, Sydney NSW’s central labor council representing 600,000 workers.

Tattersall completed a PhD on coalition unionism at the University of Sydney featuring case studies of coalitions from Sydney, Chicago and Toronto. She completed her research as a visiting fellow at Cornell University’s Industrial and Labor Relations School, living for two years in the United States and Canada.