IF A trade union had a problem with its computer system, the chance is that it would contract a qualified professional to help put it right. 

Ditto if the lights went out in union head office and you had paid the exorbitant energy bills, you would probably call an electrician.

However, when it comes to fixing the gulf that has developed between workplace organising and community organising, between trade unions and community organisations, unions haven’t necessarily taken advantage of professional advice or learned from the rich tradition of community-building that we have throughout the country.

The profession of community work has a long heritage in Britain with qualifications and national terms and conditions. 

While battered in the 2010 austerity round, the great spirit of community development and the many organisations that fight for justice and democratic participation in the community, like trade unions themselves, are raising their heads again and becoming popular. They also, for the first time for many decades, want to work with unions again.

Some of the great theoretical works and practice of community empowerment and active social campaigning come from the British community work tradition. It’s well worth unions finding out about it.

At the GFTU, following our successful conference bringing unions and key community organisations together last November, we are holding regular meetings with community organisations, have already opened our doors to welcome national community organisations like the Workers’ Education Association onto our executive, and are offering a range of free courses for trade unionists on how to constructively reach out and link up with the wider community. We have a book on the subject highlighting best practice on the way too.

And there is urgency to all of this work.

The biggest divide within the working class, in my view, is between workplace and community organising.

The main organisations simply speak less to each other than they once did, yet they share the same values and concerns and by and large the same commitments to democratic principles and social justice.

Look at the early trade union banners and constitutions — they were community organisations reaching out to support all aspects of workers’ and their families’ lives.

Trade unions were the welfare state for their members. In the periods when unions were most popular they were the most impactful inside and outside the workplace.

The struggles for workers’ rights, the franchise, the welfare state, decent wages and pensions led by the unions, were always recognised as being complementary to the wider social wage of decent housing, cheap utilities, preventative healthcare, transport, free education at all levels, affordable food and active cultural and sporting facilities.

In industrial cities factories were not just the centre of strong trade unionism and workplace controls, but sites of communal organisation and providers of resources and personnel for community campaigning.

The community association I first worked for in the early 1980s was established by AEU and T&G members and so empowered the local community that councillors and developers practically needed a passport to enter the neighbourhood and certainly could not make any decisions effecting residents without close consultation.

As the two sectors have become more distant there is a bit of a danger, at this time of need, that unions will either patronise community organisations as charities to receive their funding, or simply hope they can add numbers and noise to picket lines in campaigns for better pay and conditions. Such things are just a start.

A different, more sustained and structural approach has to be developed.

We need a social movement that will respect the different purposes and autonomy of unions and community organisations, but, importantly will find new ways of bringing them together in permanent coalition and alliance.

Progressive trade union councils have always been the potential basis for this at local level and all of the best ones are well known within the active array of local and regional campaigning and community bodies.

But they deserve more support and resourcing in developing this work and greater freedom to organisationally engage representative bodies in their work.

It should not any longer be the case that there are temporary alliances when the trouble starts or things get bad, or something needs defending. 

We should start to build permanent forums of exchange and mutual support to create bodies of ideas and action that propose change and improvement.

An integrated vision of our workplace and communal living needs should be put together in every area.

There are 32 million workers in Britain, about 6.5 million are in trade unions. There is no real sense of how many of these members are consciously active. There are 26 million non-unionised workers and an even higher number of workers not active in their unions. 

Improving pay and pensions of members has not always been the number one priority for union members. It has to be now of course, but we should appreciate that members join and stay engaged because inclusive, democratic unions can add value to so many aspects of their lives — from the provision of a range of services from insurance to mental health support, professional or legal advice, to the constant inspiration of quality union education.

Unions themselves need to continue to become more like community organisations with resonance in all parts of workers’ lives. 

It is especially true also that young people and millions of those not necessarily active in workplace trade unionism are extremely active in community organisations.

At a push trade unions probably employ no more than 5,000 full-time workers. Community organisations employ around 835,000 people. 

While general levels of volunteering for worthwhile organisations are declining, still some 14 million people do volunteer each year for one worthy organisation or another.

Harnessing, learning from and helping to develop this active social life to make collective improvements in all aspects of our lives must surely be our new priority in achieving a new deal for workers and our communities.

Join in with free education courses on these subjects, see GFTU website www.gftu.org.uk.