Musician's Union - review of democratic structures

The Campaign Company worked with the Musician's Union on their innovative Union Modernisation Fund (UMF) round two project. The UMF is a government scheme established by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR), previously DTI now BIS.  It provides funds to trade unions that are seeking to modernise structures or otherwise transform their practices to ensure that they are in the best possible position to support their members' needs and aspirations.

The Musician's Union put together a proposal for a membership consultation on there democractic and participartory structures. The Union had already undertaken significant and innovative reform in the previous five years, this was an opportunity to consult members on how those reforms had bedded in and what the next steps in improving the unions democratic structures were.

The project had three clear stages that TCC designed and delivered:

  1. 1.Comparative resarch
  2. 2.Activists and stakeholder consultation
  3. 3.Wider membership research

In stage one we produced a comprehensive report on innovation within membership organisations in the UK and internationally. We followed this with 11 focus groups and invited 9000 members to take part in an online consulation exercise in stages two and three.

Working closely with the Senior Management Team and the Executive Council throughout the year we developed a comprehensive set of findings and recommendations for the  future democratic strucutres of the Union.

The full time officials and the members of the Union are working on implementing some of the recommendations as we approach summer 2009.