State of the unions

Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 132, August/September 1996

In Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 120, we analysed the major developments within the trade union movement drawing on data collected by the Labour Force Survey in 1991. The article, Whose Unions? by Gavin Scott, showed that the trade unions were becoming increasingly dominated by ‘educated, managerial, professional and associated workers’ — ie the middle class. The Labour Force Survey has recently reported on 1995. ROBERT CLOUGH assesses whether the trends apparent in 1991 continue to assert themselves, and what implications they have for building a union movement that can organise the mass of the working class.

The first point is that the decline in union membership continues without interruption. From the high in 1979 when trade union membership reached 13.3 million (12.2 million for unions affiliated to the TUC), the number of trade unionists had fallen to 8.6 million by 1991, and 7.3 million in 1995, of whom just over 6 million were in TUC affiliates. This is a staggering fall, and there is no sign that it is going to halt.

Falling union density

The most revealing figures are those which look at union density (the pro-portion of workers belonging to a union) according to employment sector or category of worker:

Since 1991 alone, union density amongst manual workers has fallen by nearly a quarter, but only by about one in ten for non-manual workers. The tendency we noted in our analysis of the 1991 data for trade unions to become increasingly irrelevant to manual workers, has continued unabated as we can see in the following table which looks at union density according to educational qualification:

Whilst union density has fallen at all levels, the rate of fall for those with the lowest qualifications has been twice as fast as those with the highest qualifications.

Miners on strike, 1984-85, to save their jobs and the mining industry

Unions and the middle class

There are now as many male trade unionists who are managers, professionals, and associate professionals as there are who are craft workers or operatives. There are five times as many women trade unionists who are managers, professionals, and associate professionals as there are women trade unionists who are craft workers or operatives. These figures mean that 35 per cent of male trade unionists and 45 per cent of female trade unionists are managers, professionals, or associate professionals. In 1991, 34 per cent of all trade unionists fell into these three privileged categories. By 1995, this had risen to 41 per cent.

So, what is happening? Unionism in the private sector, industry and services is dwindling into insignificance. On average, union density is just 21 per cent. In the public sector it rises to 62 per cent. Union membership is high amongst civil servants, local government officials, health service and social workers and teachers. But whew public sector workers have been forced into the private sector, union density has shrunk to private sector levels, evidence that one of the main purposes of privatisation — to break unionisation — has been relatively successful.

Liverpool dockworkers fighting the return of casual labour

There is no evidence that the decline in union membership will not continue. As it falls, the middle class preponderance will only increase: in part because density will fall more slowly than for the less qualified or privileged, and in part because middle class jobs are likely to be a growth area in the absence of any major crisis, Current forecasts are that in the seven year period 1994 – 2001, 1.3 million new management, professional and associate professional jobs will be created, whilst the number of craft and plant operative jobs will have fallen by about 200,000. By the turn of the century it is quite possible that the managerial, professional and technical middle class will be a majority of the five or six million trade unionists that remain.

There are other tendencies at play. Six per cent of those at work under the age of 20 belong to trade unions. Even in the 21 to 30 age range, it is only 24 per cent. Between the age of 40 and 50 it reaches its highest point — 40 per cent, levelling down to 36 per cent for those over 50. Trade unionists tend not only to be middle class, but they are also inclined to be middle aged. There are about 1.5 million trade unionists under 30 (and only 120,000 under the age of 20); there are 1.7 million over 50 and another 2.5 million over 40. That the proportion of women amongst trade unionists has increased reflects the fact that the great job shake-out of the past 15 years has affected men far more.

What does all this tell us? First, that any political strategy that places trade unionism at its centre must in practice be a strategy geared towards the middle class. It is not just that the official trade union movement is useless, bureaucratic, and cowardly in the extreme: it actually organises only those who have any remaining stability in their job position — highly-qualified workers or middle-class people in the public sector. Secondly, such a strategy does not begin to address the needs of young working class people. Union density amongst the under-20s has fallen by half since 1991 — even then it was only 12 per cent. If you are young with low qualifications and you are lucky enough to have a job (more than half of those without qualifications don’t), then you are very unlikely to be in a union.

However, this is not the only point. Union members in the public sector are often involved in policing the working class. It is as well to remember that the Prison Officers’ Association is a TUC affiliate, and there are many on the left who regard its members as a legitimate part of the working class. And it is union members who stand on the other side of the counter to the unemployed, demanding that they take up jobs at poverty rates of pay, and harass them to ensure they are actively seeking work. This antagonistic relationship will become more intense as the provisions of the Job Seeker’s Allowance come into full force. Within the health service and local government, middle class members of Unison have been and are still involved in organising compulsory competitive tendering which has driven working class members into the hands of wage-cutting private employers. This was the experience of the Hillingdon women — who then had to occupy Unison offices to get official support for their strike action.

Hillingdon hospital workers fight low pay

A return to 19th century friendly societies

As conditions for the working class start to resemble those of 100 years ago — part-time, casual or temporary employment, with no rights to speak of — then so does the trade union movement. 100 years ago, it organised about 15 per cent of a employees, and some 75 per cent of its membership was drawn from the skilled and affluent layers of the working class. The skilled unions themselves deliberately excluded the unskilled in order to preserve the privileged position; their greater degree of job security was a significant factor in achieving this. In his history From Chartism to Labourism, Theodore Rothstein poured scorn on these unions when he showed that between 1899 and 1909 they sometimes spent as little as 5.7 per cent of their income on strike and lock-out benefit and never more than 19.2 per cent. During the same period, however, they were prepared to spend up to 40 per cent on friendly society benefits and 25 to 30 per cent on unemployment benefit. He quoted John Burns, when the latter was a revolutionary organiser of unskilled workers, who described these craft unions as so fearful of being ‘unable to discharge their friendly society liabilities’ that it ‘often makes them submit to encroachments by the master without protest. The result of all this is that all of them have ceased to be unions for maintaining the rights of labour, and have degenerated into middle and upper class rate-reducing institutions.’ One wonders what Burns or Rothstein would make of union like Unison, which over a 1-month period in 1994-95 spent about £1 million on strike pay whilst its income amounted to over £100m.

The trade union movement today is little more than a federation friendly societies. Yet there is a need for trade unions, the same need that drove unskilled workers in 1889-9 to form unions to represent their interests independently of those of the craft workers. Part-time and temporary work are the modern form of casual labour that was the lot of the unskilled worker in Victorian times. Employment rights in 1975 covered 56 per cent of those in work: this has fallen to 36 per cent as the period of qualification for statutory rights has risen from 6 to 24 months. As a result, the majority of the working class is now without basic employment rights, and the situation is set to deteriorate further, with redundancies running at about 800,000 per annum and starting to rise. These changes are also reflected in the extent of unionisation amongst those who have been employed for a short period. In 1989, density amongst those employed for 6 to 12 months was 21 per cent, and between one and two years 26 per cent. Five year later the figures were 12 and 17 percent, respectively.

A movement of the future

A new union movement will have to break the shackles of the current trade union laws. It will therefore have to confront the official trade union movement which hasn’t the slightest intention of doing anything which might threaten its assets or its income. It will also have to confront New Labour with its refusal either to change the two-year qualification period for employment rights or repeal the Tory trade union laws. It will be a movement of those who are now without employment and trade union rights. Central to the great movement of unskilled workers led by the dockers’ strike in 1889 was an alliance between working class revolutionaries and Marxists in opposition to the official trade union movement of the day — the craft unions. The same will be true again. It may or may not use existing union structures — it is too early to say. It will however have to draw it strength from community-based organisations, a lesson learned by the black South African trade union movement in its revolutionary days. Such links with the community pose the possibility of organising alongside the unemployed to ensure real working class unity. Without this trade unionism will have no practical relevance for the working class.