Organising Union Power Across a College: Lessons from History and Practice
By: David Clarke (NSWTF Member and Fed Rep)

Organising union power within a multi-campus college presents unique challenges. As a HSIE trained teacher, I believe understanding the historical context of these struggles is essential. Over the past century, employers and the state have pursued a deliberate strategy of dispersal: economic, residential and social, that has left the working class more atomised and harder to organise than at any point in living memory.[1] This has not happened by accident. Recognising it as a strategy, rather than a natural drift of modern life, is the first step towards reversing it.

This article situates the ongoing attacks on working-class organisation within that longer history and shares practical lessons from my own experience building union power across a dispersed college.

Key Shifts Since the 1930s

Since the 1930s, economic and residential decentralisation have reshaped working-class communities. Workers are no longer concentrated near workplaces, as industries like retail, education, and healthcare have spread across suburbs and regions. This dispersal has not been a neutral by-product of progress; it has systematically weakened the organic community ties that collective power was once built on. Long commutes and suburban sprawl erode worker-to-worker relationships, making sustained organising far more difficult than it once was.[2]

As the service sector comes to dominate the economy, union density keeps falling, and decentralisation is a major reason why.[3]  Without local hubs or shared social spaces, the traditional methods of union building, rooted in tight-knit community networks, are increasingly blunt instruments.

Challenges for Modern Unionisation

Today’s workers lack the pre-existing social bonds that once made union growth almost automatic. Forty years ago, working-class neighbourhoods bred familiarity and solidarity as a matter of course. Now, many people barely know their neighbours, as social clubs, sporting teams, religious institutions, and community groups have all declined.[4] This fragmentation is not incidental to falling union membership, it is one of its root causes.

Historically, union victories spread through organic social connections: word of mouth, community gatherings, shared spaces.[5] Those channels have been hollowed out, leaving behind not just weaker unions but the isolation and poor health outcomes now labelled the “friendship recession.”

If we are serious about rebuilding collective strength, we cannot simply wait for these conditions to reverse themselves. We have to actively manufacture the solidarity that used to arise naturally which is industrially, through trust built between workers via workplace collective actions and culturally, through shared interests like sport, music, or politics.[6] Deliberate community-building is no longer optional; it is the precondition for organising.

Strategies for Success

Before attempting workplace organising; signing up members, mobilising for meetings, planning actions, it is vital to “socialise before organising.” Building genuine relationships through after work drinks, sports outings, and barbecues lays the groundwork that formal organising structures depend on.[7]

Over time, this cultivates a sense of working-class community within the workplace and opens the door to meaningful organising. Union staff and organisers are invaluable, but they cannot reach everyone alone. To genuinely expand union power, we need a shift towards grassroots, worker-driven organising: relationships that workers build with each other, which then become the infrastructure for collective action.[8]

Critical Takeaways

The union-building tactics of factory towns and mining communities cannot simply be transplanted onto today’s fragmented, sprawling workplaces. Resource intensive, top-down methods are not sustainable at scale. What is required instead is worker-led networks rooted in community and trust. Solidarity now has to be actively cultivated as our collective organising foundation.[9]

Putting Theory into Practice: Organising Across a Multi-Campus College

Our college comprises three campuses: two “junior” campuses (Years 7–10) and one “senior” campus (Years 11–12). Staff at the junior campuses face real barriers to gaining the experience and mobility needed to move to the senior campus, a process nominally governed by the NSW Staffing Agreement (Appendix 1).[10] Historically, there was little transparency or structure around this, fostering a culture of nepotism and “jobs for the boys” that produced high turnover and instability; a small but telling example of how, left unchecked, workplace power defaults to those who already hold it.

Key Actions & Strategies (2021–2023)

Building Union Power at the Junior Campus

Recognising the importance of connection, I organised a comprehensive outreach campaign ahead of a union meeting. Over four weeks, I visited every staffroom, spoke personally with staff, listened to their concerns, and built rapport. This created genuine relationships and trust rather than a one-off transaction. The result was the largest union meeting in the school’s history, with 45 attendees.

Forming a Union Committee

Drawing on what I’d learned about staff and their political instincts, I recruited eight dedicated union activists. We met regularly, often at the pub, to discuss issues and share ideas. These informal spaces did more than build friendships, they became the organic infrastructure for grassroots organising across staffrooms and faculties, and we used them to drive campaigns like “More Than Thanks” and to raise WHS concerns, lifting engagement across the board.

Creating a Union Community

We hosted social events; after-school drinks and casual gatherings, to strengthen bonds and build a genuine sense of community. These informal spaces deepened trust and solidarity, laying the foundation collective action would later depend on.

Cross-Campus Solidarity

Building solidarity across campuses was essential. After a couple of years, union reps from all three campuses established a communication group to maintain open dialogue between sites that would otherwise have remained isolated from one another.

Ahead of negotiations for a new College Staffing Agreement, we met six months in advance to align our demands and prepare a collective strategy. These meetings, often held after hours with the support of our organiser, ensured our demands genuinely reflected member input rather than being decided from above.

We also organised regular social drinks, open to all union members and especially committee members, to strengthen bonds across campuses. This grassroots approach built the trust and unity that bargaining would later be won on.

Negotiation Challenges

During negotiations, the college principal initially resisted key demands, unwilling to properly engage with a union-led process. But because we had built real, organic relationships across the campuses, our federation representatives could confidently hold the line against that resistance.

Backed by visible grassroots pressure and genuine member engagement, we compelled management to adopt a transparent, structured College Staffing Agreement. It was proof that organising built from the bottom up can move even entrenched management positions.

Outcomes & Lessons

Union power grew across the college, and teachers got a real taste of our collective strength. It was a gradual, uneven process, consciousness doesn’t shift evenly or all at once, but it demonstrated something important: democratic collective action is where our actual power lies, and each small win creates more space for staff to trust one another and act together next time.

Over this period, I personally signed up around 50 staff to the union. None of that would have been possible without first building organic worker-to-worker connections, translating those relationships into action, and using our collective strength to back our demands. We built a durable infrastructure of solidarity across the college through consistent Fed Rep communication and regular cross-campus social events. Most tellingly, school management began to actually acknowledge union-driven demands as legitimate, leading to ongoing consultation between campus principals and Fed Reps which was a recognition of a workplace power structural shift.

Key Takeaways for Modern Unionism

1. Socialise before organising: relationships come first, term-time drinks, cross-campus bonding, informal catchups.
2. Worker-led and democratic: mobilise members directly and resist the pull towards top down, staff driven shortcuts.
3. Build scalable solidarity: decentralised campuses need proactive, intentional networks if collective power is going to hold.

In conclusion, the future of unionism in a fragmented, decentralised landscape depends on our willingness to rebuild community, trust, and genuinely worker-led organising, brick by brick. By learning from history and applying these lessons in practice, we can rebuild collective power against the forces that continue to benefit from our division. Our strength lies in community, resilience, and an unwavering commitment to each other and that is precisely the goal PEWA is organising to achieve.

Footnotes

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[1] Eric Blanc, We Are The Union How Worker-To-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big, Berkley: University California Press, 2025, 6.

[2] Denis Glover, “The unmaking of the Australian Working Class and their right to resist,” The Conversation, 2015, https://theconversation.com/the-unmaking-of-the-australian-working-class-and-their-right-to-resist-44781

[3] Richard Marles, “The Changing Role of Employer and Employee Organisations,” The ACTU, 2001, https://www.actu.org.au/media-release/the-changing-role-of-employer-and-employee-organisations/

[4] Anton Jager, “From Bowling Alone to Posting Alone,” Jacobin, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/12/from-bowling-alone-to-posting-alone

[5] Lance Sharkey, The Trade Unions: Communist Theory and Practice of Trade Unionism, Communist Party of Australia, 2018, 18-20.

[6] Blanc, We Are The Union How Worker-To-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big, 39-42

[7] Kris Rondeau, “Internal Union Organizing Centered on Building Community,” Negotiation Journal 31, no 4 (2025): 381–385, https://doi.org/10.1111/nejo.12113

[8] Blanc, We Are The Union How Worker-To-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big, 180-184.

[9] Blanc, We Are The Union How Worker-To-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big, 61-63.

[10] NSW Department of Education, Staffing Agreement 2024-2029, https://education.nsw.gov.au/about-us/careers-at-education/roles-and-locations/roles-at-education/teaching/staffing-agreement#Appendix_34

Bibliography

Blanc, Eric. We Are The Union How Worker-To-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big. Berkley: University California Press, 2025.

Glover, Denis. “The unmaking of the Australian Working Class and their right to resist.” The Conversation, 2015. https://theconversation.com/the-unmaking-of-the-australian-working-class-and-their-right-to-resist-44781

Jager, Anton. “From Bowling Along to Posting Alone.” Jacobin, 2022. https://jacobin.com/2022/12/from-bowling-alone-to-posting-alone

Marles, Richard. “The Changing Role of Employer and Employee Organisations.” ACTU, 2001. https://www.actu.org.au/media-release/the-changing-role-of-employer-and-employee-organisations/

NSW Department of Education. Staffing Agreement 2024-2029, https://education.nsw.gov.au/about-us/careers-at-education/roles-and-locations/roles-at-education/teaching/staffing-agreement#Appendix_34

Rondeau, Kris. “Internal Union Organizing Centered on Building Community.” Negotiation Journal 31, no 4 (2025): 381–385, https://doi.org/10.1111/nejo.12113

Sharkey, Lance. The Trade Unions Theory and Practice of Trade Unionism, Communist Party of Australia, 2018.