And the last words go to others

20/Feb/2007 19:23
On our last day of classes, with only one more session to go, I sat down with seven fellow students to talk about the Harvard Trade Union Program. I taped the session (with their permission, of course) and used the material, along with some material from our graduation ceremony, to create the podcast below.

(I have also posted an MP3 version of the conversation in the event you have problems downloading the podcast. It is a big file so please don't try to open it if you are not on a high-speed internet connection or if your computer is more than a couple of years old.)

With this last post, I end this participant's blog.

I hope you will come back to the web site again to visit other sections that I am constructing as I continue on with my investigation into union leadership development.

In solidarity,
Morna Ballantyne

Podcast

To access the MP3 file another way, click below:
Last words on HTUP.l
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Too much to tell all

20/Feb/2007 19:21
It's over; I am back at home.

Reading all the postings below, I am struck by what a small fraction of the program I've reported on through this blog. I knew from the outset it would be impossible to comment on everything. After all, the course is made up of more than one hundred separate sessions covering about 85 topics. We read more than ten books and many kilos (pounds) of articles; I know because I had to pack and ship them home. And then there were the countless hours of informal discussions evenings and weekends.
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Personalities and leadership

16/Feb/2007 08:24
When it comes to leadership, how relevant is personality? Leadership development workshops often allocate time to explore this question. The Harvard program does not. However, one of the students in the class happens to be trained in Myers-Briggs personality analysis. He volunteered to take us through it—and almost half the class participated. I joined in because I am one of those people who can’t resist self-discovery exercises, even though the skeptic in me questions the science. The results: I am an intuitive, judging introvert. My score on the “life-style orientation” came in half way between “J” (judging) and “P” (perceiving). This means I am either an INTJ (“everything has room for improvement”) or an INTP (“a love for problem solving”). Those of you know me are probably thinking you could have told me this without having me fill in a questionnaire.
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A conversation with David Weil

15/Feb/2007 22:03
David Weil's course on strategic planning for unions was a hit. Most of us enrolled in this programme to find ways of being more effective in our union positions, and to explore ways of building the capacity of our organizations. David Weil has given us tools to do just that.
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Continuous bargaining

15/Feb/2007 20:23
Charley Richardson (University of Massachusetts-Lowell) has a lot of experience with change in the workplace. He has studied how, time and time again, Management introduces new technology and systems to increase productivity, profitability, efficiency and control at the expense of workers. He has also studied how, time and time again, unions fail to respond adequately.
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Reorganizing for power (the case of BCGEU)

15/Feb/2007 14:00
The big divide in the US labour movement is supposedly over differences about how unions and labour representation should be structured. I say “supposedly” because nothing I have read or heard in this program suggests a big gap in point of view. Both the AFL-CIO and Change to Win camps speak of the need to change. Both speak of the need to organize the unorganized. Both speak of the need to build union power. Both are putting significant resources into organizing and campaigns. Neither seems to be moving forward any radical restructuring of the broader labour movement to accomplish those goals.
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Gender gets raised (finally)

14/Feb/2007 12:47
I have been disappointed by how little discussion there is of gender in this program. A bit of attention has been paid to race, including in an excellent lecture delivered by Charles Hamilton of the Houston Institute for Race and Justice. But there have been only passing references to the particular issues or challenges facing union women. But then yesterday, by chance, the program offered an insight into the issue of affirmative action for women. It was a great example of an unexpected “teachable moment,” as we union educators like to say. Read More...
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Howard Zinn’s class on class

13/Feb/2007 16:39
Howard Zinn, author of the best-selling A people’s history of the United States, is a class act—in every sense of the word. He is funny, charming, articulate, and so smart. He is also a class warrior.
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A tool to analyze our employers (the pickle story)

13/Feb/2007 12:41
To be a strategic union leader, you have to understand your employer’s environment. This is true whether you represent workers at a hospital or at a steel plant. If you know what other forces are bearing down on your employer, you can identify your respective strengths and vulnerabilities. In this leadership program, we’ve been offered a tool to do this type of industry analysis. To see how it works, we looked at how the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) used it to analyze the competitive environment of the pickle industry in order to devise a strategy for raising the working conditions of cucumber pickers in North Carolina.
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Voices from Australia

07/Feb/2007 14:55
The two Australians in the class have added important new voices to our discussion about the state of the trade union movement in North America. As well, they have given us insight into what has been happening to unions in Australia, especially since the election of John Howard’s government in 1996, 1998, 2001 and again in 2004.

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Union managers or leaders?

06/Feb/2007 15:14
The role, responsibilities and actions of union managers come into play in just about every case discussed in this leadership program. The predominant view is that union managers (people employed or elected to direct union programs and/or staff) should conduct themselves more as leaders than as managers.

What is the difference?
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Noam Chomsky comes to class

04/Feb/2007 16:24
The Guardian says "Chomsky ranks with Marx, Shakespeare, and the Bible as one of the ten most quoted sources in the humanities." The Nation describes him as "a major scholarly resource," and that "not to have read him is to court genuine ignorance." What I found so impressive about Noam Chomsky when he came to class last Friday was his ability to offer an analysis of every topic we raised with him (although he declined to comment on union organizing, on the grounds that we know more on that topic than he does). He expressed himself so clearly and simply. But judge for yourself. I taped the class and posted the series of audio files below. After the class, I introduced myself to him as union educator and asked what advice he would give union members on how to sort through what goes on in the world. He said there really isn't a better source of information than the newspapers. What is the best way to teach critical thinking skills so that people can analyze what they read and hear? He replied the best approach is to study specific events: Take an event, read about it, discuss it with others, think through what motivates people or countries to do what they do, and figure out who wins and loses as a consequence. A good endoresement of the case method used in the Harvard Trade Union Program, I think. Read More...
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The unresolved case of HUCTW

01/Feb/2007 16:59
The story of Harvard’s clerical and technical workers (HUCTW) has come up a lot in this program. In the first week, HUCTW President Adrienne Landau and Secretary Treasurer Donene Williams spoke to us. Last week, founding leader Kris Rondeau gave a guest lecture. The story also crops up in several of our assigned readings. Thomas A. Kochan, in his article, Restoring Voice at Work and in Society, offers HUCTW as an example of the kind of unionism that could revitalize the labour movement. In Turning the Tide, David Weil includes HUCTW as a case study to demonstrate how a union can succeed when it responds effectively to both its external and internal environments. Why all this attention to an organizing victory that took place more than fifteen years ago?
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Lessons from community organizing

29/Jan/2007 21:38
We’ve come full circle. The organizing skills and principles of community activists, learned from unions decades ago and adapted as their own, are now being passed back. Community organizing is about building power through grassroots mobilization. And so integrating principles of community organizing into the day-to-day work of unions is really nothing more than going back to basics—back to our roots.
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Police and power

29/Jan/2007 21:23
I didn’t know what to expect when I saw that the Director of the Combined Law Enforcement Agencies of Texas (CLEAT) was scheduled to speak to the class. CLEAT is a powerful Texan police organization. As it turned out, the presentation by Ron DeLord was one the most progressive and militant yet. DeLord is a self-proclaimed socialist and follower of the late Saul Alinsky, the famed American grass-roots community activist who believed the only way to make change is to organize and mobilize.
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Evaluating local union strength

29/Jan/2007 15:51
Most unions will acknowledge that their organizational capacity is only as strong as the individual capacity of their local unions. This is why initiatives to strengthen and revitalize unions almost always include measures aimed at increasing local capacity—for example, training programs directed at local union activists, or special funding for local campaigns. But how do you measure local union strength? How do you know which of your local unions need special attention? How do you know if the special measures you put in place are actually working?
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Making organizational change

23/Jan/2007 14:33
A large number of unions and union leaders are trying to change their organizations to put themselves in a better, more powerful, position to advance the interests of their members. The need for change is made urgent by the increasingly difficult environment in which unions operate: for example, loss in net membership, a drop in overall union density, laws that give advantage to employers, social and economic policy (like privatization and free trade) that diminishes union leverage. Of course, succeeding in bringing about fundamental change is no easy task.

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Political action à la AFL-CIO

22/Jan/2007 10:34
The day after the last mid-term US elections, the AFL-CIO issued a media release to credit the union vote for driving the shift in balance of power. Election day exit polling and an independent national election-night survey released by the AFL-CIO showed that union voters supported Democratic House candidates by a 50 point margin compared to the non-union voter margin of 2 points.
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Working America – a labour organization for the unorganized

21/Jan/2007 15:22
Question: How does a labour central like the AFL-CIO speak and act for workers when only 12 per cent of the country’s labour force is unionized? Answer: By creating a political organization called Working America and inviting all non-union workers to join. Membership is free. Launched in the summer of 2004, already almost two million workers have signed up.
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Strategic choice vs strategic planning

17/Jan/2007 17:18
When David Weil asked how many of our unions engage in some form of strategic planning, almost everyone in the class raised a hand. But how many unions actually stick to their strategic plans? So often the plan represents the ideal – the reality is represented by everyday decisions that are unconnected to the plan. It is no wonder that strategic planning is regarded by many as a distraction at best, or at worst a waste of time.
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Group survival

15/Jan/2007 21:11
We did one of those survival exercises that are fairly common in leadership development programs. Here's the scenario: It is early October and we (the class) are passengers on a small float plane that crashes in the subarctic. The pilot was killed but the rest of us are not injured. The plane drifts into deep water and sinks. It is 2:30 p.m. We are approximately 35 air kilometers from Schefferville, our destination. We were expected to return to Schefferville from northwestern Labrador no later than October 19. We are all warmly clothed but we are wet from the waist down. Collectively we have some money (bills and coins), a pocket knife, one stub lead pencil, and an air map. We were able to salvage 15 additional items from the plane before it sank. The challenge is to decide the relative importance of each of these 15 items.
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A bit about life in Cambridge

14/Jan/2007 17:37
In her orientation session at the start of last week, program director Elaine Bernard gave some tips for understanding the local accent. They drop the “r” so that Harvard Square is Haahvaahd Squae and harbour is Haah baah, but they don’t lose the “r” completely, she quipped. It gets inserted other places. For example, “ideas” become “idears.”
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Strategic planning, the case method and PATCO

13/Jan/2007 19:29
One of the main reasons I was interested in attending the Harvard Trade Union Program was to experience first-hand the sessions on strategic choices and planning for unions. These sessions are led by David Weil, a professor of economics at Boston University’s School of Management who has researched the strategic planning tools commonly used by government, business and the non-profit sector, and explored how they can be adapted and used in a labour union environment. Read More...
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Almost end of week one!

12/Jan/2007 13:28
The first week of the program is almost over. I can't wait for the long weekend coming up. Monday is Martin Luther King day, a statutory holiday in the United States. It will give me a chance to catch up with the reading; we are assigned to read about four articles or book chapters every night. It is far too early to offer any assessment of the program. But here are a few “noticings” (as George Lakey, Director of Training for Change, might say). Read More...
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Getting ready

05/Jan/2007 00:07
The Harvard Trade Union Program brings together 30 or so trade union leaders each year for an intensive six weeks of training. I am joining the class of 2007 and plan to report on the experience through this blog.
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