Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No. 113, June/July 1993
The recent wave of trade union militancy – the miners, Timex, railway workers, firefighters etc – has been seen by the left as an upturn in struggle which contains possibilities for socialist renewal. They clearly do present possibilities, but what is the left’s strategy? – to demand that the TUC and trade unions organise these struggles and give them more support.
However, GAVIN SCOTT shows that the changes that have taken place in union membership since the 1970s, their character now, and the record of the TUC over that period, are evidence that such demands push the fighting sections of the working class into the arms of their most dangerous foes – the new labour aristocracy. The 1991 Labour Force Survey presented in the Employment Gazette of January 1993 provides graphic evidence that the trade union movement does not represent the mass of British workers – whether in unions or not. It does not represent women, the low paid, part-time or temporary workers. It does not represent the unemployed. The report confirms that trade unions are increasingly dominated, controlled and directed by a new labour aristocracy of non-manual workers – a tiny minority of educated managerial, professional and associated workers.
Whom do the unions represent?
Union membership in Britain steadily declined throughout the 1980s following a peak of around 13 million in the late 1970s. Union membership density (the proportion of workers who are in a trade union) among the employed in Britain fell to 33 per cent in 1991 (8,488,000 members). Significantly the fall in density was greater than average among employed as op- posed to self-employed workers. This is obviously due to the shift in union policy away from collective representation of the working class to provision of individual, personal, largely financial, services such as credit cards, insurance, private health care and so on.
Fewer women
Women – who are largely lower paid – are generally underrepresented within trade unions. Men have an overall density of 42 per cent compared to 32 per cent of women. Among part-time workers density is dramatically lower and the proportions reversed – 13 per cent of men to 23 per cent of women. This is obviously due to the greater proportion of women part-time workers. (The proportion of women trade unionists went up from one fifth in 1948 to two fifths in 1991).
In the public sector union membership among men and women is roughly equal. This is also the case in banking and finance, showing that generally there ‘…is little difference between the union densities of male and female full-time employees in industries where women account for a large proportion of total employment.’
Not the youth and part-time worker
The trade unions’ inability to organise growing numbers of temporary or young workers is also evident. Density among temporary workers fell from 18 to 17 per cent. In terms of age groups union density rises from 22 per cent among 16-24 year-olds, to 42 per cent of 35 year-old employees. Only workers with 10 or more years of employment have over 50 percent membership (58 per cent). Those with only 2-5 years have a density of only 31 per cent. But the density for workers who have been in employment for only 1 year – predominantly younger workers – drops to 17 per cent.
More ‘educated’
Union density varies also with educational level. Of male employees, those with higher education qualifications short of degree level (44 per cent) and with ‘A’ level or equivalent (45 per cent) had the highest density, and those with one ‘O’ level or equivalent, the lowest (33 per cent). Among women employees there is a great difference between those who have degree or equivalent (49 per cent) or other higher education qualifications (64 per cent) and those with ‘A’ level or lower (all less than 30 per cent). This is due to the concentration of highly qualified women in those certain occupations, such as teaching, health professions, and associate health professions, in which density is high. Over half of trade union members had at least one `A’ level or equivalent. One in eight were graduates.
Public (and ex-public) sector workers
An examination of the public sector, where union density is highest, reveals the ascendancy of highly qualified, managerial, professional and supervisory workers. The Employment Gazette notes that:
‘…differences (in density) between manufacturing and service industries are quite small; instead, the key factor appears to be public sector status … all the industries where union density was above 50 per cent in 1991 are those where employment is largely or wholly in the public sector (or in industries that used to be in the public sector, such as telecommunications)’.
In the energy and water services, density among craft and related workers was 89 per cent as compared to 16 per cent in the private sector services of distribution, hotels and catering, and repairs.
The sectors where union density is low (below 20 per cent) are in the private service sector (with agriculture and construction). Between the two extremes are most of manufacturing industry and the banking, finance and insurance sector.
The new aristocracy of labour
In examining variations in the density of union membership across different occupations, the Employment Gazette says ‘the highest levels of union density by occupation occur amongst certain occupations commonly associated with the public sector’. Among these are ‘associate health professionals (74 per cent) and teaching professionals (70 per cent).’
Within the public sector non-manual workers form a greatly disproportionate group with:
‘The most striking finding … that other services, which includes national and local government, education and health, accounted for 40 per cent of trade union membership, whereas (this) sector formed only 27 per cent of total employment.’
Density among non-manual workers is steadily rising. In 1948, only 23 percent of union members were non-manual workers, whereas in 1991, they were slightly in the majority at 53 per cent. The reduction of the proportion of members in manufacturing over that time was from 44 per cent to only 24 per cent. In 1991, traditional `blue-collar’ occupational groups (the ‘craft and related, plant and machine operatives, other occupations’ category) were less than 40 per cent of all trade union membership.
This change is due to changes of industry and occupations, but also to ‘the marked increases in union density that took place during the 1970s amongst non-manual workers in manufacturing industry and amongst public sector workers.’
Supervisors and foremen
As if to underline the growing distance between the mass of the working class and the minority represented by the trade unions, the Labour Force Survey notes the link between union density and supervisory responsibility. It shows:
‘Union density was higher in 1991 amongst foremen/supervisors (46 per cent) than it was amongst people with no managerial or supervisory responsibilities.’
This high level of union density amongst ‘foremen/supervisors’ is due to the entry routes into these jobs. These positions are usually held by people who have progressed from more junior positions and so ‘they are likely to possess considerable seniority which … is positively related to union membership.’
In keeping with the general trend of higher density in the public sector, or former public sector, service industries, managers in energy, water supply, transport and others, are much more likely to be union members than those in the private sector.
The Employment Gazette points out that this is a general phenomenon:
‘Although density varies significantly by broad industrial classification, the relationship between union density for foremen/supervisors and union density for people with no managerial or supervisory responsibilities is broadly constant across industries.’
Even in small workplaces, where densities are generally low, the relatively high density among professionals and associate professionals shows markedly: even in workplaces with between 6 and 24 employees, over 50 per cent of these two categories are members of a union. Again, this is due to the change of emphasis to personal members services. In fact, ‘… in 1991, over a third of all employed trade union members worked in managerial, professional or associate professional occupations.’
These then are the new elements of Britain’s labour aristocracy whose members are largely non-manual, highly qualified, white, by and large male, supervisory, managerial or professional workers. This new labour aristocracy has a disproportionate effect on the political character of the unions through their domination of its organisational structures.
The British left and the modern trade unions
This trend, of over-representation in the unions of higher graded, higher paid workers has been so emphatic that even passionate worshippers of reactionary British trade unionism such as the SWP have been forced to admit that:
‘… the massive rise in white-collar trade union membership over the past 40 years cannot simply be equated with a growth in unionisation of the lower more “proletarian” grades … A study of union membership in a bank, an insurance company and a local council, concludes … in all three institutions the level of union organisation rose with grade level.’ [The Changing Working Class, Alex Callinicos and Chris Harman, p.69]
They continue:
‘… some routine white-collar workers do have a very real chance of moving out of their lowly jobs, in a way which manual workers do not.’
Harman and Callinicos even recognise the state’s ability to buy off sections of even militant workers and undermine rank and file trade unionism. Even in the CPSA the ‘attraction to some of the ablest militants of upward mobility and the continual turnover in staff presents a big obstacle to sustained rank-and-file-led organisation.’ (p.72)
They reported that one study found:
‘…among stewards, “female and low status employees are under-represented relative to the membership”’. So 41 percent of stewards came from middle-level jobs, even though these were only 30 per cent of the workforce (and 29 percent of the stewards came from 19 per cent of the workforce who were ‘high status’).’ (p.77)
And:
‘…the most trade union-conscious white-collar workers are often those with greatest hopes of moving up the career ladder, eventually into jobs in which they will supervise other workers. This explains one of the central peculiarities of white-collar trade unionism: those who are most committed union activists, whose activity leads them to play a key role in union branches, are often those who end up in managerial positions.’ (p. 78)
This all points to the trade union movement in Britain being made up of relatively privileged workers who, as one study Harman reports said, ‘exert a moderating influence’ and ‘often drew attention to the constraints under which the management were operating’ (i.e. capitalism). Harman himself admits that ‘One reason middle grades are paid more than low-level workers is to buy such support from them.’ Precisely!
More staggeringly still, the SWP despite all this continues to prostrate itself before this reactionary trade unionism. The reason is not difficult to fathom. It represents a tiny and powerless stratum of public sector workers – professionals, social workers, non-manual workers etc – whose status is tied to aristocratic trade unionism and opposed to mass trade unionism.
The Labour Force Survey report confirms the consolidation of a new labour aristocracy within the working class. It confirms Lenin’s view that:
‘On the economic basis (of imperialism), the political institutions of modern capitalism (press, parliament, associations, congresses, etc) have created political privileges and sops for the respectful, meek, reformist and patriotic office employees and workers, corresponding to the economic privileges and sops. Lucrative and soft jobs in the government or on the war industries committees, in parliament and on diverse committees, on the editorial staffs of ‘respectable’, legally published newspapers or on the management councils of no less respectable and ‘bourgeois law-abiding’ trade unions this is the bait by which the imperialist bourgeoisie attracts and rewards the representatives and supporters of the ‘bourgeois labour parties’. (CW vol 23, p117)
During the post war boom, imperialism was able to offer a substantial section of the working class significant privileges through the welfare state and full employment. Today, as the capitalist crisis undermines the foundations of the economy, we are once more seeing the development of a profound split within the working class. On the one hand the mass of workers – low paid, women, black, part-time, temporary or unemployed – on the other hand a privileged, reactionary and self-interested minority. The latter, a labour aristocracy, happy to do capitalism’s dirty work – as the trade union leaders have in the Timex dispute, in the miners’ strike and other disputes. An effective working class movement will break from these elements who control the modern British unions and get on with the job of organising the mass of workers to destroy capitalism and imperialism.
