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,Logan, "The Union Avoidance Industry in the United States," British Journal of Industrial Relations, 2006; Dundon, "Union Avoidance and Employer Hostility to Union Organising in the UK," Industrial Relations Journal, 2002. 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 union-avoidance and anti-union tactics, economic and cultural changes, statutory and case law alterations in federal labor protections, etc.).
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.Putnam, Bowling Alone, 2001; Nissen, "The Effectiveness and Limits of Labor-Community Coalitions," Labor Studies Journal, Spring 2004; La Botz, A Troublemaker's Handbook, 1991; Slaughter, A Troublemaker's Handbook 2, 2005; Bobo et al., Organizing for Social Change, 2001; Pope, "Labor-Community Coalitions and Boycotts," Texas Law Review, 1991.
Community campaigns frequently use the strategy of labor-community coalitions, or coalitions between unions and community organizations.See, generally, Tattersall, Power in Coalition, 2010. 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.Estlund, "The Ossification of American Labor Law," Columbia Law Review, 2002.
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 (literally) 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 (in some cases) several years into the future. Escalation is planned, back-door channels sought (through which negotiations may be conducted), 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 (for example, harms the community in some way or overreacts to union pressure) or the union uncovers embarrassing or damaging information.For example, in 2003, the California Nurses Association issued a report which accused Tenet Healthcare, then the nation's second-largest operator of for-profit hospitals, of defrauding the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs of billions of dollars through over-billing and "upcoding" patient care charges so they appear to be the more expensive "outlier" charge. The evidence took CNA several years to uncover. The revelations severely damaged the company financially and politically. A weakened Tenet eventually accepted a neutrality and card-check agreement with CNA in order to turn its attention to pending federal charges. See: Polland, "Nurses' Union Puts Spin on Tenet's Troubles," Pacific Coast Business Times, February 14, 2003; "Tenet Healthcare to Sell 11 Hospitals to Help Cover Cost of Settlement," Medical News Today, July 4, 2006; "California Nurses Association, Tenet Healthcare Reach Agreement on Stronger Voice for RNs on Patient Protections, Fair Elections," press release, California Nurses Association, December 17, 2003..
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 (e.g., uses most or all of the traditional organizing tactics).Bensinger, Reaching Higher, 2002.
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.Manheim and Perry often confuse community campaigns with corporate campaigns. See Manheim, The Death of a Thousand Cuts, 2000, and Perry, Union Corporate Campaigns, 1987. More recently, Manheim has confused comprehensive campaigns with community and corporate campaigns as well. See Manheim, Labor Pains, 2003. A failure to define terms is considered an egregious error in political science and business management.
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.The term "coordinated campaign" is also used as a synonym for a comprehensive campaign, although this is rare.
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 (NLRB) 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.Eaton and Kriesky, "Union Organizing Under Neutrality and Card Check Agreements," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 2001.
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 (such as a union security clause). Comprehensive campaigns have also been used to prevent plant closings, prevent plant openings,On occasion, an employer may open a new plant or facility. The employer may then encourage workers to move to the new, non-union facility, or simply transfer them. In time, the older facility becomes non-sustainable as a business enterprise, and the employer closes it. The employer has rid itself of a union, while maintaining the public pretense of good labor relations and good corporate behavior (e.g., building a modern facility and investing in the community). Unions may oppose new plant openings, or seek to force the employer to recognize the union at the new plant. or to encourage the employer to take some action (such as opposing a business competitor, withdrawing support for legislation, etc.).