ABSTRACT
Coalitions are important if unions and community organizations seriously want to transform the political and economic climate by building a strong civil society. Nurturing powerful collaborations is integral to turning around the isolation of unions and mobilizing sufficient political pressure to create fundamental social change. Coalitions build organizational capacity to achieve social change, and the coalitions in the case studies successfully achieved lasting reforms in education, health care, and workplace relations. The challenge to unionism posed by declining membership density, hostile employment relations, and strained political party relationships has led to the creation of new strategies and a renewal of old ones. Employment relations theorists, and particularly UK pluralists and American systems theorists, focus on unions as actors inside the industrial relationship. The potential for successful coalition unionism has implications for an understanding of the power of union collaboration more broadly.
