With continued financial support, the approach has been so successful in Edinburgh that the team have created three physical hubs in Edinburgh, Craigmillar and Falkirk. <\/p>\n
This could be big. Unions have the numbers to make a huge impact on poverty<\/a> and exploitation. Unite has trained 50 members to offer benefit support including on housing. Imagine the impact if that was replicated across the six million union members.<\/p>\n But cooperation isn\u2019t easy. Frustratingly, it\u2019s pretty unusual in the UK for unions to step outside their traditional roles and embrace community-based collaboration.<\/p>\n Conditions in the local textile factories in Leicester<\/a> \u2013 wage theft, the \u2018blue eyed boy\u2019 system penalising workers who raise issues, lack of formal contracts \u2013 can be abusive. In one case an employee was marched to a cash point to withdraw and hand over the cash that represented the difference between the minimum wage they were paid on the books, and the lower illegal wage the employer was willing to pay them.<\/p>\n It was a community organisation not a union that got the stolen wages back. Traditional union organising works for stable groups of workers in defined workplaces, increasingly in the public sector.<\/p>\n Gig workers, whose housing and other problems can absorb the time and money that might be spent on union membership, are much more challenging to organise. Yet they have the least power and the most need of support.<\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n The Scottish example shows it can be done if unions and community organisations pool their strengths. And in the face of the growing power of the far right, and the hostile environment for migrants<\/a>, the need for working together is becoming urgent. <\/p>\n Stephen Stark from the Ron Todd Foundation, sums up the challenges, saying: \u201cOrganisers face a growing threat from the far right and intensifying racism in workplaces and communities. While both unions and community groups want to challenge these forces, their efforts are often disconnected: unions organise within workplaces, community groups organise around neighbourhoods and social issues. This separation weakens collective power, leaves vulnerable workers and communities exposed, and makes it harder to sustain campaigns.\u201d<\/p>\n We think this is so important that we\u2019re making it the theme of the fourth New Organising Conference from August 28 to 30 in Liverpool: Roots and Branches \u2013 Unions and Communities in Common Struggle. Find out more here.<\/a><\/p>\n Carolyn Hayman OBE is a board member of the New Organising Collaborative which runs the New Organising Conference.<\/p>\n Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this?\u00a0Get in touch and tell us more<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Change a vendor\u2019s life.<\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n Buy from your local Big Issue vendor every week \u2013 and always take the magazine. It\u2019s how vendors earn with dignity and move forward.<\/p>\n You can also support online: Thank you for standing with Big Issue vendors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With continued financial support, the approach has been so successful in Edinburgh that the team have created three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[29,96,154,32950,613,1073,5,6],"class_list":["post-72103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","tag-employment","tag-health","tag-housing","tag-learning-and-employment","tag-opinion","tag-poverty","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116828130660456345","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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