Trade Union membership rises again: some historical perspectives
The Government has published the annual figures for trade union membership. They are for those concerned with workplace organisation (I’m a trade union officer in the private sector based in the City of London) mildly encouraging. Membership has risen by 90,000 overall.
The TUC have published some headline figures on membership growth:
Overall membership up 91,000 in the last year
🔺170,000 female members in the last year
🔺Almost 200,000 in two years
🔺Third consecutive year of rising membership
🔺Highest female membership since 1995
The TUC’s commentary is here:
https://www.tuc.org.uk/blogs/union-membership-rises-third-year-running-64-million
There are still major challenges and some are highly relevant to the areas I’m involved in broadly telecoms and the wider connected world.
Union membership in the private sector has risen but there is a long way still to go. Likewise the numbers of younger workers (under 35) is also rising but remains far too low.
Of course an organising agenda can address this and has successes. Aside from dealing with issues for existing members and negotiating with employers I actively work to recruit new members.
It is world where people understand very well the issues they have- job security, the cost of living such as housing and transport and whether they can expect regular pay rises, all this in a world of work massively disrupted by COVID-19.
It is also a world where many don’t really understand how useful being a union member can be to them. People I speak to are often surprised by how much I know already about the matter they’ve raised with me and also how much I can do about it with colleagues. Of course satisfaction is never guaranteed but getting the issue addressed and answered definitely is. As individuals they just don’t have that clout.
There is a wider picture.
Strikes remain close to an historic low so the visibility of what unions can do, if need be, is low to both members and potential members. Even if a strike is defeated (by no means an unusual event unfortunately) it shows that collective action is possible. That said the intervention of unions at the grassroots and at Government level in the present moment has also significantly raised profiles.
Statistics invariably reflect the past and we do know that some unions such as the National Education Union have seen significant rises in membership and activism recently.
There are two further and wider issues that need to be looked at.
One reason often given for the low level of strikes was that people were waiting for a Labour Government to change Tory laws which deliberately make taking legal industrial action difficult. Indeed the 50% minimum turn-out of those eligible for a legal strike ballot applies nowhere else in British public life. Likewise the ban on e-balloting is specifically designed to frustrate turn-out in ballots and cause the minimum figure not to be achieved.
The present political crisis notwithstanding it is unlikely that there will be a Labour Government in the near future. Of course unions can still exert political pressure and they do, but it would be optimistic to think this will extend to more worker friendly employment laws.
It’s a question of looking at how waves of unionisation took place in the past before there was any realistic chance of looking at political changes from above by a friendly Government. We can look back to the new unionism of the 1880s and the dock strike and to the unionisation of the new technology of the 1930s, the car industry.
It was a tough struggle but it was done.
The equivalent today are the Googles and the Amazons and unions are on to it. Union recognition campaigns at TFI Fridays, McDonalds and Wetherspoons underline that it is possible to organise but also inevitably that success can remain elusive.
A success in one of these areas would be totemic in terms of people not currently in unions understanding both why they should be and what it could mean for them.
In short, it can be done.
Keith Flett convenes the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research
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