Join Together
People are turning to unions again.
“Join a union” is a phrase you hear a lot more of than you would have done five years ago. It’s coming from every corner of society, in every part of the country - a recognition that for several decades capital has had it too easy, while labour has had it too tough. That the balance is wrong and needs correcting. That the cost of living is too high, and the wages to pay for it are too low. It’s a feeling that’s bubbling up. It’s happening.
But there’s still a way to go to having a union movement that’s growing quickly, and becoming powerful enough to press for - and get - the wide-ranging change workers need.
We started Join Together as a co-operative with a focus on helping unions address technology challenges because we’ve worked with unions for years, and though we’re not ‘organisers’ (well, one of us is!) in the traditional sense, we’ve come to see ourselves playing a similar role.
Our mission is to make it easier to join - and stay a member of - a union. We’ve created software that gives people a better online joining experience (the way most members want to join), so we can help unions recruit more members, get bigger - and win.
We can also make things easier for unions themselves. It should be simple to sign a member up, process their application, work out which branch they should be in, sort out their subs and show them how to play an active role. Again, Join Together helps with this.
As we discover things that improve the experience for people joining one union, we can share it with all unions. As we make it quicker or cheaper for unions to get new members, we can share those improvements with the whole movement. And as every incremental advance compounds over weeks, months and years, Join Together becomes something that’s driven onwards by its own momentum.
Just like a union.
Posted: 03 January 2023
Join Together builds high-converting union join forms that get you more members. If a prospective member arrives at a Join Together form, they’re more likely to end up a member. Over time, this results in many more members, and much more money for the union. If the form is bad, it’ll leak potential members, resulting in a union that’s smaller - and poorer - than it might have been. So… start with the form.
Posted: 03 January 2023
Every person that doesn’t get to the end of your union’s online join form is a potential new member lost. But have you ever calculated what that costs the union? The maths is simple:
Posted: 13 December 2022
Join Together’s platform makes it easy to ask good questions of prospective union members.
Posted: 27 October 2022
If you’re reading this, you’ll already know well that one of the main challenges for a union is dealing with bad employers.
Posted: 25 October 2022
The deduction of member subscriptions directly from wages is great for union members and their unions. When you have it agreed with an employer, check-off makes signing up new members easy, collecting their subs automatic, means members never need to worry about renewals or failing payment methods ensures subscription fees reflect the member’s increasing wages, so they’re always paying their fair share. It also means unions can collect subs with minimal bureaucracy and cost (such as banking fees), as they get all their subs in a lump sum.
Posted: 28 June 2022
Loads of parks have them - dusty tracks across the middle of an otherwise pristine lawn, worn down because it’s quicker than taking the asphalt path twenty yards away.
Posted: 10 June 2022
If you break down everything you can think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.
— Dave Brailsford, the coach who turned British cycling into a world-beating force.
Posted: 29 May 2022
As soon as this pub closes, the revolution starts.
—Alex Glasgow
Posted: 17 May 2022
“Join a union” is a phrase you hear a lot more of than you would have done five years ago. It’s coming from every corner of society, in every part of the country - a recognition that for several decades capital has had it too easy, while labour has had it too tough. That the balance is wrong and needs correcting. That the cost of living is too high, and the wages to pay for it are too low. It’s a feeling that’s bubbling up. It’s happening.