Published date
27 May 2021
The annual trade union membership statistics have been published today. As usual they contain some good news and some bad news, and they highlight the challenges facing the trade union movement now and in the future.
So first the good news.
Between 2019 and 2020 trade union membership increased by over 100,000, the fourth consecutive year in which it has risen. The last time that happened was the late 70s. This increase was propelled by a massive increase in the number of trade union members in the public sector of over 200,000. Almost 150,000 of these new members were employed in education.
Union density, the proportion of employees who are members of unions, also increased and now stands at 23.7%. There are now more women members of trade unions than at any point since 1995 - over 3.7 million women employees now carry a union card.
Now the bad news.
Union membership in the private sector fell by more than 100,000. This is the lowest level of membership in the private sector recorded since 1995. This fall reflects a fall in the total number of employees in the private sector of over 300,000, most likely caused by the pandemic. The fall in union membership in manufacturing was particularly significant. It is estimated that unions lost 80,000 members in the sector.
It wasn’t all bad news in the private sector, and we should acknowledge the work of unions organising in arts and entertainment, accommodation and food services and retail, all parts of the sector in which union membership increased.
And the challenges.
Increasing union membership and density in the private sector has been the biggest organising challenge facing the trade union movement in Britain has for the last 30 years, so the loss of 100,000 members in a sector where there are already around 18 million non-members is a big setback.
Yesterday’s news that the GMB union has reach a recognition agreement with Uber demonstrates that increasing union membership and organisation in a sector, where for many workers the relationship between themselves and their employer is becoming increasingly opaque, it’s not an impossible job. But the challenge is how unions can organise to scale.
It would be reasonable to assume that many of the hundred thousand members we have lost over the last year, were workers who found themselves furloughed on reduced pay because of the pandemic. Under the circumstances it would be understandable if many of them, when reviewing their monthly direct debits, decided to cancel their union membership subscription.
So, the first immediate challenge identified by the statistics is to re-recruit as many of these workers as possible. Not easy, but not impossible either. They are workers who have recently been in union membership and to whom it should be easier to make the case for the benefits of trade unions. Indeed, it was because of trade unions and the TUC that the furlough scheme was introduced in the first place, and whilst not perfect it undoubtedly saved many tens of thousands of jobs.
The second strategic challenge re-confirmed by the statistics is how we renew the trade union movement by dramatically increasing membership amongst young workers. Less than one in ten workers aged 16 to 24 are union members, and amongst union members themselves less than one in twenty are 16 to 24. Almost 40% of current union members are aged 50 or older. At the moment the trade union movement is not recruiting enough younger members to replace the ones we will lose through retirement over the next 10 to 15 years.
The key to addressing this challenge is to dramatically increase organising activity and membership in sectors such as hospitality, where there are large numbers of young workers, but where union density is just 4%.
What shouldn’t be in doubt is the commitment of the movement to address these challenges. Last summer the TUC General Council and the General Secretaries of all TUC affiliates signed up to the TUC Organising Pledge.
The pledge commits the movement to addressing the following six strategic challenges:
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Increasing the number of workers aged under 30 in our movement.
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Enthusing thousands of activists from all backgrounds to become new workplace reps, offering them training within the first six months and training every new rep within their first year.
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Working co-operatively as TUC unions to bring trade unionism into new and growing sectors
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Working jointly to eliminate insecure employment, including agreeing and pushing common bargaining agendas across sectors
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Modernising how unions operate, organise and communicate for a digital-first era.
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Driving up union membership in workplaces where we already have recognition agreements with employers
Unions will report progress against each of these challenges this July and then every year afterwards.
This will help us build on our successes and address the core issues facing the movement.
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Trade unions in the United Kingdom were first decriminalised under the recommendation of a Royal commission in 1867, which agreed that the establishment of the organisations was to the advantage of both employers and employees. Legalised in 1871, the Trade Union Movement sought to reform socio-economic conditions for working men in British industries, and the trade unions' search for this led to the creation of a Labour Representation Committee which effectively formed the basis for today's Labour Party, which still has extensive links with the Trade Union Movement in Britain. Margaret Thatcher's governments weakened the powers of the unions in the 1980s, in particular by making it more difficult to strike legally, and some within the British trades union movement criticised Tony Blair's Labour government for not reversing some of Thatcher's changes. Most British unions are members of the TUC, the Trades Union Congress (founded in 1867), or where appropriate, the Scottish Trades Union Congress or the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, which are the country's principal national trade union centres.
Membership declined steeply in the 1980s and 1990s, falling from 13 million in 1979 to around 7.3 million in 2000. In September 2012 union membership dropped below 6 million for the first time since the 1940s.[2] Union membership has since begun rising gradually again, reaching 6.44 million in 2019.
Main article: History of trade unions in the United Kingdom
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Further information: United Kingdom labour law
Much like corporations,[3] trade unions were regarded as criminal until the Combination Act 1825, and were regarded as quasi-legal organisations, subjected to the restraint of trade doctrine, until the Trade Union Act 1871. This Act abolished common-law restrictions, but took an abstentionist stance to unions' internal affairs. The Trade Disputes Act 1906 exempted trade-union funds from liability in action for damages for torts, and this freedom gave future union pickets a great deal of power.
Democratic organisation
The principle that the common law enforced a union's own rules, and that unions were free to arrange their affairs, is reflected in the ILO Freedom of Association Convention and in Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, subject to the requirement that regulations "necessary in a democratic society" may be imposed. Unions must have an executive body and that executive must, under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 sections 46 to 56, be elected at least every five years, directly in a secret, equal postal vote of union members.
Union constitutions
The structure of the unions was based in contract, and the rights of members depended on being able to show some proprietary interest to be specifically enforced.[4] This meant that the express terms of the union rule book can, like any contract, be supplemented with implied terms by the courts as strictly necessary to reflect the reasonable expectations of the parties,[5] for instance, by implying the Electoral Reform Service's guidance to say what happens in a tie break situation during an election when the union rules are silent.[6] If there are irregular occurrences in the affairs of the union, for instance if negligence or mismanagement is not alleged and a majority could vote on the issue to forgive them, then members have no individual rights to contest executive decision making.[7] However, if a union's leadership acts ultra vires, beyond its powers set out in the union constitution, if the alleged wrongdoers are in control, if a special supra-majority procedure is flouted, or a member's personal right is broken, the members may bring a derivative claim in court to sue or restrain the executive members. So in Edwards v Halliwell[8] a decision of the executive committee of the National Union of Vehicle Builders to increase membership fees, which were set in the constitution and required a ⅔ majority vote, was able to be restrained by a claim from individual members because this touched both a personal right under the constitution and flouted a special procedure.
Discipline and expulsion
- ASLEF v United Kingdom [2007] ECHR 184
- McVitae v UNISON [1996] IRLR 33
- Roebuck v NUM (Yorkshire Area) No 2 [1978] ICR 676, Templeman J
- Esterman v NALGO [1974] ICR 625, Templeman J
- Radford v NATSOPA [1972] ICR 484, Plowman J
Dispute resolution
- Hamlet v GMBATU [1987] ICR 150, Harman J
- Longley v NUJ [1987] IRLR 109
Union members' rights
- Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 ss 28–31, true and fair view of accounts, member's right to inspect, and complaints to Certification Officer.
- Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 ss 62–65, right to require a ballot before industrial action, and no detriment may follow
- Knowles v Fire Brigades Union [1997] ICR 595
- Edwards v Society of Graphical and Allied Trades [1971] Ch 354
- Cheall v APEX [1983] 2 AC 180
- Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 s 174
- ASLEF v United Kingdom [2007] ECHR 184
- Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants v Osborne [1910] AC 87, political donations
- Trade Union Act 1913
- Birch v National Union of Railwaymen [1950] Ch 602
- Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 s 72–73 and 82
- Paul v NALGO [1987] IRLR 413
- Weaver v NATFHE [1988] ICR 599 EAT
Subscriptions
Members' subscriptions are often paid by DOCAS (Deduction of Contributions at Source) i.e. deduction from salary. Implementation of the draft Trade Union (Deduction of Union Subscriptions from Wages in the Public Sector) Regulations 2017 has been delayed until 2019.[9]
The ETUC, headed by Wanja Lundby-Wedin until May 2011, is the union federation for 37 European countries, the counterpart for the TUC of the UK and the ITUC internationally.
Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, first elected in 1979, saw trade unions as an obstacle to economic growth and passed legislation of the sort the Conservatives had mostly long avoided.[10]
Membership declined steeply in the 1980s and 1990s, falling from 13 million in 1979 to around 7.3 million in 2000. In 2012, union membership dropped below 6 million for the first time since the 1940s.[2] From 1980 to 1998, the proportion of employees who were union members fell from 52 per cent to 30 per cent.[11]
Union membership declined in parallel with the reduction in size of many traditional industries which had been highly unionised, such as steel, coal, printing, and the docks.[12]
In 2016, the Conservative government passed a new Trade Union Act, which proposes stricter ballot thresholds for industrial action, further restraints on picketing and a requirement that union members contributions to political funds would only be via an ‘opt-in’.[13]
International affiliations
- European Trade Union Confederation
- International Trade Union Confederation
- Organised labour portal
- United Kingdom portal
- Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875
- Criminal Law Amendment Act 1871
- Employers and Workmen Act 1875
- GCHQ trade union ban
- History of the socialist movement in the United Kingdom
- History of trade unions in the United Kingdom
- Labour Party (UK) affiliated trade union
- List of trade unions in the United Kingdom
- Student unionism in the United Kingdom
- Trade Union and Labour Party Liaison Organisation
- Trade Union Freedom Bill
- Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition
- Trades Union Certification Officer
- Union Modernisation Fund
- ^ a b Bishop, Ivan (27 May 2020). "Trade Union Membership, UK 1995-2019: Statistical Bulletin" (PDF). Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Retrieved 16 February 2021.
- ^ a b Moylan, John (7 September 2012). "Union membership has halved since 1980". BBC News.
- ^ See the Bubble Act 1725 and the Combination Act 1799
- ^ See Rigby v Connel (1880) 4 Ch D 482 and Lee v Showmen’s Guild of Great Britain [1952] 2 QB 359
- ^ See Equitable Life Assurance Society v Hyman [2000] UKHL 39 and AG of Belize v Belize Telecom Ltd [2009] UKPC 10
- ^ AB v CD [2001] IRLR 808. See also, Breen v Amalgamated Engineering Union [1971] 2 QB 175, where the dissenting judgment of Lord Denning MR is probably an accurate reflection of the law after Hyman and Belize
- ^ See Foss v Harbottle (1843) 67 ER 189
- ^ [1950] 2 All ER 1064
- ^ Irwin Mitchell, Update on Deductions of Contributions at Source (DOCAS), accessed 1 August 2018
- ^ Neil J. Mitchell, "Where traditional Tories fear to tread: Mrs Thatcher's trade union policy." West European Politics 10#1 (1987): 33–45.
- ^ Andrew Charlwood, "The anatomy of union membership decline in Great Britain 1980–1998" (PhD . Diss. The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), 2013), Bibliography pp 212–22. online.
- ^ See graph
- ^ Williamson, Adrian (8 March 2016). "'The Trade Union Bill 2015: echoes of the General Strike?'". History and Policy. Retrieved 28 June 2016.
- Adams, W. S. "Lloyd George and the Labour Movement." Past & Present 3 (1953): 55–64.
- Aldcroft, D. H. and Oliver, M. J., eds. Trade Unions and the Economy, 1870–2000. (2000).
- Campbell, A., Fishman, N., and McIlroy, J. eds. British Trade Unions and Industrial Politics: The Post-War Compromise 1945–64 (1999).
- Charlesworth, Andrew, Gilbert, David, Randall, Adrian, Southall, Humphrey and Wrigley, Chris. An Atlas of Industrial Protest in Britain, 1750–1990 (1996).
- Clegg, H. A. et al. A History of British Trade Unions Since 1889 (1964) The major scholarly history; highly detailed.
- --do.-- A History of British Trade Unions Since 1889: vol. 2 1911–1933. (1985)
- --do.-- A History of British Trade Unionism Since 1889, vol. 3: 1934–51 (1994),
- Davies, A. J. To Build a New Jerusalem: Labour Movement from the 1890s to the 1990s (1996).
- Laybourn, Keith. A history of British trade unionism c. 1770–1990 (1992).
- Minkin, Lewis. The Contentious Alliance: Trade Unions and the Labour Party (1991) 708 pp online
- Pelling, Henry. A history of British trade unionism (1987).
- Wrigley, Chris, ed. British Trade Unions, 1945–1995 (Manchester University Press, 1997)
- Wrigley, Chris. British Trade Unions since 1933 (2002) 115 pp online
- Zeitlin, Jonathan. "From labour history to the history of industrial relations." Economic History Review 40.2 (1987): 159–184. Historiography
- Reid, Alistair J. (4 April 2017). "Trade unions and ‘Original Labour’: an alternative to state-socialism". History and Policy. Retrieved 6 May 2017.
- Britain's unions. Trades Union Congress (TUC)
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