Varieties Of Social Unionism: Towards a Framework for Comparison

In academic and activist debates about union renewal, the replacement of business unionism with social unionism is seen as central to the labour movement's short- and long-term survival. Social unionism, generally understood to involve both engagement with social justice struggles beyond the workplace and methods of union activity beyond the collective bargaining process, is claimed to increase the labour movement's organizing capacity, bargaining power, and social and political weight. However, despite its increased importance, social unionism's various meanings, strategies, and implications remain relatively unexamined, and very different approaches are often lumped together. Using concepts from social movement theory, this paper proposes an analytical framework for systematically comparing different concrete manifestations of social unionism. In particular, social unionist initiatives vary according to 1) the ethos or collective action frame used to rationalize union activity; 2) the repertoire or strategic means used to act on that ethos; and 3) the internal organizational practices and power relations which shape who is involved in defining and carrying out union goals and initiatives. I argue that whether social unionist projects are able to reach immediate instrumental goals as well as generate renewed working class / movement capacity is shaped by both the mix of frame, repertoire and organizational practice as well as the relationship between these three. The paper therefore asserts that the category "social unionism" must be more nuanced, and calls for a more explicitly comparative and multi-methodological approach to reveal such complexity.