Organising and diversity in banking and insurance: reflections on the approach of UNIFI

Following UNIFI’s creation in 1999, a considerable emphasis has been placed on organising within the new union’s agenda. Faced with declining membership, including lower density in the major banks, UNIFI urgently sought to recruit members in non-traditional areas, and committed itself to organising ‘in order to build the democratic structure of the union and more effectively combine its twin resources, lay and paid, into the growth and development of the union’ (UNIFI 2000a). Whilst UNIFI’s creation brought opportunities for reflection and innovation about growth and sustainability in the context of membership losses, the effects of business reorganisation and globalisation created imperatives to develop and implement a strategy for renewal. This turbulent context, and UNIFI’s attempt to marry both ‘organising’ and ‘partnership’ approaches, provides an interesting case study given recent debate on union renewal in Britain (see, for example, Ackers and Payne 1998; Heery 2002; Kelly 1999; Wills 2004a). This chapter examines the implementation of organising in UNIFI during 2000-2, first at national level and second at the workplace level, where the latter include, in UNIFI’s view, the ‘new’ fastest-growing banking workplaces, namely contact (call) centres. However, we focus in particular on the extent to which UNIFI has sought to integrate a diversity perspective into its approach to organising, and the efficacy of doing so, for previous studies on mobilisation and organising principles have largely neglected the diversity perspective (Mantsios 1998; Wajcman 2000; cf. Holgate 2004b). Whilst Kelly (1998) has questioned whether so-called ‘new’ movements and identities will strengthen or reinforce trade unionism, Colgan and Ledwith (2002a) emphasised their significance in the search for new union democracies and union renewal, and Heery et al. (2000c) have suggested there may be evidence that the organising and equality agendas are developing in tandem either because underrepresented groups promote organising and/or because unions bolster their equality agendas to attract ‘non-traditional’ members.