A New Game Plan
for Union Organizing

If unions expect to regain their former strength and increase their collective bargaining power, they’ve got to adopt new strategies, because the present ones don’t work well enough. There’s obviously something wrong in the way most unions conduct their organizing campaigns, because their membership rolls continue to decline, even though they spend millions to reverse the trend.

This series of eight articles on union organizing by Harry Kelber contains some fresh ideas, including a detailed plan on how to involve a union’s most precious and largely neglected asset — its own members — in order to multiply the number of campaigns and win more of them.

Kelber is the author of “A Training Manual for Union Organizers,” which hundreds of organizers have bought and are using in their campaigns. His pamphlet, “Why Unions Are Good for You and Your Family,” (also in Spanish) has sold more than 100,000 copies, because unions have found it a valuable tool for reaching out to unorganized workers.

As a college professor of labor studies for 25 years, Kelber has taught classes in union organizing for hundreds of would-be labor leaders. His organizing experience dates back to 1933, when he unionized the second largest food market in Brooklyn, New York.

Kelber will post his articles every Monday.