Capital O organising

Featured in

  • Published 20160202
  • ISBN: 978-1-925240-80-1
  • Extent: 264pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

THE UNION ORGANISING brand seems set to get a major makeover with news that Hollywood star James Franco is directing and starring in the film of John Steinbeck’s labour novel In Dubious Battle, a book described by former organiser Barack Obama as one of his favourites. Matching the star quality with substance was the news that the Tunisian trade union centre has shared in the Nobel Peace Prize for its work as part of the civil society ‘quartet’ organising for and then sustaining democratic change in Tunisia.

From Hollywood to Oslo, the meme of unions organising to challenge power appears to be shaking off the almost three decades of deliberate marginalisation and, at times, criminalisation. And at the same time – and for the first time – after all the attempts to keep unions locked in a twentieth-century analogue world, organising is starting to build unions in the new digital economy in both Australia and the United States.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

More from author

Discounted goods

EssayWALK THROUGH THE doors of a suburban op shop and you’ll find the residue of household (de)composition that was once catalogued in rhyming newspaper-speak...

More from this edition

The memory ladder

EssayTHERE APPEARS TO be a deep attraction to the naive idea that we can re-create ourselves and our societies at will, with no regard...

The good old days

EssayOver the last thirty years I have sought to explore how our top political executives exercised their power, whether they were prime ministers, ministers or departmental secretaries. My books include a study of the ways that the Australian Cabinets have changed over the past hundred and fifteen years, and two books on particular prime ministers, one from each side of the political divide. My interest has always been on how they do the job, how they define their responsibilities, what being prime minister means. Perhaps inevitably, when current circumstances are compared to, and placed in the context of, past leaders, it is the continuities rather than the differences that strike me as the most significant.

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.