Comprehensive campaign
A comprehensive campaign is labor union organizing or a collective bargaining campaign with a heavy focus on research, the use of community coalition-building, publicity and public pressure, political and regulatory pressure, and economic and legal pressure in addition to traditional organizing tactics.
The comprehensive campaign is a labor tactic primarily used in the United States, where labor unions lack many of the legal protections accorded their counterparts in the European Community and where cultural norms against unions are not as strong. However, as globalization increases and capital and labor become more mobile, employers outside the U.S. are adopting American union-avoidance tactics, and comprehensive campaigns are becoming more common in Europe and Asia.
Comprehensive campaigns are not commonly used in the United States due to their cost and the organizational expertise they require. However, they are gaining popularity in the U.S. labor movement, and many unions claim to be building comprehensive campaign capabilities.
Definition of a comprehensive campaign
Community campaigns
The comprehensive campaign is an evolution of labor union tactics, a process which has been ongoing in the United States since the 1960s. The identification of "good organizing practices," which arose out of a wave of labor union organizing in the 1930s and 1940s, was no longer proving effective for a variety of reasons.Innovations in grass-roots community organizing, developed outside the labor movement in the 1960s, offered American unions a new way with which to exercise power vis-a-vis employers. In 1971, radical activist Saul Alinsky published Rules for Radicals, a book which outlined the new strategy of the "community campaign." Activists believed that suburbanization, the rise of multinational corporations, economic dislocation and the alienating effects of modern life had eroded communal norms against corporate greed and misbehavior. By rebuilding a sense of community by uniting existing organizations into new coalitions, or creating new organizations and then educating the coalition members about various causes, these activists believed they could alter the balance of power in their communities. The concept of the community campaign was quickly transferred to the labor movement.
Community campaigns frequently use the strategy of labor-community coalitions, or coalitions between unions and community organizations. Coalitions have varying forms and success, depending on the context in which they are organized and the strategies used to build them.
Corporate campaigns
As employers learned about the techniques of the community campaign and discovered sophisticated ways to neutralizing the advantages it gave a union, labor unions expanded their repertoire of tactics as well.The corporate campaign was developed to augment, and sometimes supplant, the community campaign. The corporate campaign identified and influenced members of a company's board of directors, or the company lenders, customers and/or suppliers. The goal was to uncover conflicts of interest, inefficiency, waste, fraud, or mismanagement and use this information, either publicly or privately, to win economic leverage over an employer and achieve the union's goals.
Again, employer adaptations undercut the effectiveness of the corporate campaign. Additionally, labor unions found it less expensive to build community coalitions, and relied more heavily on staff-driven corporate campaigns. Many union activists also argued that the publicity generated by a rowdy shareholder meeting, for example, or an embarrassing report about conflict of interest on a board of directors, supplanted the community campaign by building the necessary community pressure. These arguments proved incorrect. But declining union fortunes made it difficult to employ the staff and resources necessary to build full-fledged community campaigns. More and more unions came to rely on the corporate campaign even as it became less and less effective.
Comprehensive campaigns
The comprehensive campaign combines the elements of the community campaign and corporate campaign, but is much more far-reaching. Bob Harbrant, then-president of the Food and Allied Service Trades Department of the AFL–CIO and an early theorist of comprehensive campaigns, argued in 1987:At the heart of the comprehensive campaign is research concerning the company and a broad-based community campaign which disseminates this research. The comprehensive campaign seeks to utilize all the levers of influence and power against an employer. State or local legislation antithetical to the employer's interests is introduced. Pressure is exerted through business license, zoning and regulatory processes. Political pressure is applied by electing local, state and federal officials, and seeking the appointment of union-friendly bureaucrats. Lawsuits may be filed. Reports and "white papers" may be issued, and relationships with members of the press built. Picketing may occur at charity events, at the homes of board members or senior corporate officers, at the workplace, or at the place of business of subsidiaries, customers or suppliers. The support of religious, community, civic, consumer, environmental and other groups is won and continuously displayed to the employer and the public. As information is uncovered, it is assessed and fit into a strategic plan extending several years into the future. Escalation is planned, back-door channels sought, and new allies found. The comprehensive campaign is a pressure campaign, one which seeks to continuously apply pressure until the employer makes an egregious error or the union uncovers embarrassing or damaging information.
Continuing confusion over term of art
There is, however, still some confusion over the term "comprehensive campaign". In part, this is because some writers use the term "comprehensive" as an adjective for the word "campaign" rather than as a term of art. For example, Bronfenbrenner and Hickey define a comprehensive campaign as one which contains the following elements:Since nine of the 10 elements listed by Bronfenbrenner and Hickey are elements of "good organizing practices" used in traditional union organizing campaigns, it is clear that they are referring not to the term of art "comprehensive campaign" but to a traditional organizing campaign which is comprehensive.
Other sources exhibit confusion over the term "comprehensive campaign" because they lack knowledge about the state of labor union organizing. In some cases, writers do not appear to understand what a comprehensive campaign is, and equate the term with community campaign or corporate campaign.
Subsequently, use of the term "comprehensive campaign" varies widely among labor activists, employers, attorneys or academics. This may cause confusion when an author or speaker refers to a comprehensive campaign but means something more restricted. Context is often the key to determining exactly what a person means, and speeches and written works must be closely read to determine the actual meaning of the descriptive phrase used.
Elements of a comprehensive campaign
Comprehensive campaigns contain a number of different elements. Some or all of them may be used, and use varies over time and according to circumstances. According to labor union strategists, use of a given element is dictated by strategy and research.Goals and length
There may be one or more goals to a comprehensive campaign. Most often, the goal is to form a union at an employer's workplace or multiple workplaces simultaneously. In organizing, the goal of the comprehensive campaign may be to encourage the employer to recognize the union without recourse to a National Labor Relations Board election, to sign a neutrality agreement or code of conduct for the organizing election, to agree to hold an election under the auspices of a neutral third-party, or to recognize the union once it was won an NLRB-sponsored election.One or all of these may be the goal of the comprehensive organizing campaign.
Comprehensive campaigns are not limited to organizing, however. They may also be aimed at winning an initial or successor collective bargaining agreement, or to achieve a collective bargaining goal or goals. Comprehensive campaigns have also been used to prevent plant closings, prevent plant openings, or to encourage the employer to take some action.
Comprehensive campaigns vary in length. Many elements of a comprehensive campaign take one or more years to be effective. Subsequently, comprehensive campaigns are often expected to last over many years. But they may last only months or only one or two, if the union's goals are achieved quickly.
Three core elements
Comprehensive campaigns are notoriously expensive, and require significant lead-time to initiate. Many labor union activists advocate a six-month research effort before the comprehensive campaign begins, making it difficult to properly undertake a comprehensive campaign once a strike or negotiations have begun.Various elements make up a comprehensive campaign. Chief among these is research. Research into the employer's finances, business strategy, governance, structure, leadership, board of directors, vendors and suppliers, building plans, staffing, billing, and operations occurs six months or more before the comprehensive campaign begins. Research into other areas, such as state law and regulatory regimes, community demographics, workplace health and safety, local and state labor union strength, political support and other non-employer issues also occurs. Although the most intense research phase begins before the comprehensive campaign is publicly announced, research continues throughout the comprehensive campaign. Comprehensive campaigns are research-driven: The information discovered is analyzed, assessed and fit into short- and long-term strategies, which then drive additional research as well as dictate the pace, timing, and actions undertaken in the media, legal, community and other realms.
Forging ties and working relations with other groups—the community campaign—is a secondary but vital component of the comprehensive campaign. The goal of the community campaign element varies, depending on the research outcomes. Community campaign tactics may merely extend to coordinating publicity and or joint lobbying, but may also encompass boycotts, information-gathering, electoral politics, educating the community about labor unions, enhancing or impugning reputations, viral marketing and more. Establishing community-based "workers' rights boards"—led by prominent religious or civic leaders—or other investigatory bodies is also common.
Another element of the comprehensive campaign is writing, introducing and seeking the passage of local, county, state or federal legislation inimical to the employer's business interests. Such legislation may be aimed at the business interests of suppliers, vendors, customers, subsidiaries or co-owners as well. The goal of legislative activity may merely be to force the employer to divert resources to lobbying, election politics or other legislative activity, or it may be to enact legislation. Proposed legislation may be as broad as universal healthcare or comprehensive workplace safety laws or as narrow as requiring the employer to collect and publicly report information which is not otherwise available.
An extensive publicity effort is a second and subsidiary, although vital, aspect of the comprehensive campaign. Publicity—often called "the air war"—is one of the primary vehicles by which information gleaned from employer research may be used. The use of "white papers", press conferences, advertising or the distribution of research often is an important aspect of the publicity campaign. The creative release of information to the public is increasing. Demonstrations, the use of street theater and music, picketing, leafleting, bannering and disruptive tactics are increasingly common means of attracting public attention in an age where information overload is common. Although the timing and duration of the "air war" varies widely, experience suggests that the publicity campaign takes up half to two-thirds of the comprehensive campaign timeline.
A third vital, but secondary, element is traditional organizing. Known as "the ground war" in the labor movement, traditional organizing often occurs late in a comprehensive campaign. In part, this is because research, publicity, building community coalitions, legislative work, legal pressure and other elements of the comprehensive campaign are time-consuming and not immediately effective. But "the ground war" is also staff-intensive, so it is often implemented only in the final stages of the campaign, when the employer has been so weakened that success becomes more likely than not. Research also suggests that workers cannot be "activated" for long periods of time without encountering burnout or discouragement. Hence, the "ground war" is saved for the final stage of the comprehensive campaign.