7. Conclusion

While union renewal as a term is yet to be embraced by teachers’ unions in Fiji, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Malaysia, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, each of the ten unions we engaged with had made an effort, and achieved some progress, in union renewal in one or more domains – whether it be in strengthening one or more element of internal structure or in the ways to pursue teachers’ interests as workers, professionals and citizens. It is also evident that particular unions have different strategic orientations and uneven capacity across different union functions. For example, some have very well-developed welfare arms, while others have honed specific technical expertise. Others still have advanced capacity for public campaigning but lack some of the basic elements required to build strong worker organisations.

As Bascia and Stevenson (2017: 3) observe, the work of union renewal is ‘long, slow and often difficult’, but also deeply embedded in local context. Despite this, and while the different teachers’ unions examined in this study have different levels of experience when it comes to union renewal, some common challenges remain. One of these is the challenge of developing a clear and consistent narrative about union identity and purpose that is responsive to members. A second is to find ways to harness that narrative to guide and prioritise union work in various domains, while identifying ways to move beyond case-based support for individual workers and ad hoc programming towards more systemic solutions. A third is to develop more productive ways to engage with often hostile governments while maintaining organisational independence and integrity. In order to overcome these challenges, it is vital to build a union that is more responsive to the interests of its members, more relevant to the teaching profession, and better equipped to tackle the realities of the education sector in the 21st century. This requires a leadership that reflects the membership – in terms of demographics, but also values and priorities – and which has the skills and resources to inspire and mobilise it. It is only then that unions will be able to develop the political and industrial power they need to (re)assert themselves as strategic actors in the education sector.