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FROM MANAGING DECLINE TO ORGANIZING FOR THE FUTURE
The steady decline in British trade union membership from 13.3 million in 1979 to 7.2 million in 1996 led the Trades Union Congress to launch the New Unionism initiative, not only to provoke a debate on how to revive the future of trade unionism but also to provide guidance and support to unions on developing new renewal strategies. As highlighted in the introduction, New Unionism was far broader than just a focus on organizing. It was a broad-based effort at using a range of strategies to promote revitalization. So, for example, the development of the Organising Academy sat alongside an almost simultaneous development of a Partnership Institute that promoted cooperative relations with employers in the hope of winning mutual gains. The apparent contradictions between these initiatives led to significant debate, particularly within the academic community (Carter and Fairbrother 1998, Heery 2002, Badigannavar and Kelly 2011), although some practitioners were more relaxed about the implications. John Monks, then general secretary of the TUC, argued that the position should be to organize âbadâ employers and develop partnership arrangements with âgoodâ employers. What is important is that the discussions about union renewal in the mid-1990s clearly located organizing efforts within a much broader context of the political, social, and economic challenges facing the UK labor movement.
That there has been a turn toward organizing in the UK union movement since the mid-1990s is undisputed, but the extent to which organizing worksâthat is the extent to which new organizing approaches are able to reverse the declineâis more contentious. In part, this relates to the reasons why the decline occurred in the first place and the balance of class forces ranged against the union movement during the growth of neoliberalism. Academics and practitioners have been debating these issues over the years and keen observers of the union movement will be familiar with the many arguments and counterarguments put forward to explain the social, political, and economic factors influencing the way unions and their members (or nonmembers) behave. These debates have been wide rangingâmany have extolled unions to organize their way out of the these challenges (Cooper 2000) while others have adopted a more pessimistic tone (Machin 2000, Disney 1990), arguing that economic forces are the determining factors influencing union growth and power and that, despite best intentions, union organizing initiatives, while potentially beneficial in small-scale individual workplace campaigns, have little effect in significantly increasing overall membership growth. The aim of this chapter is to review some of the main debates in the context of the changes experienced in the British union movement over the last few decades and to understand what implications different economic, political, and social factors have had on the development and adoption of union organizing approaches. There is little doubt that unions faced an increasingly difficult social and economic context during the 1980s and 1990s and that in many cases the factors affecting union membership have continued. The fallout from the economic and fiscal crisis of 2008 will affect people for decades to come and we can be sure that it is likely to hurt the working class much harder that those who have sufficient capital to ride out the economic downturn. But if it is true that union growth is dependent on external factors like theseâmany of which are beyond the immediate control of unionsâwhy is it that organizing activity has become of such central importance within British unions?
Debates have raged about the relative impact of the different causes of the persistent decline of unionism from the peak of 1979, and it is often difficult to disentangle them (see Simms and Charlwood 2010 for a fuller discussion). The economic, political, and social environments in which unions are operating have become significantly more challenging with, among other things, the decline of the manufacturing sector where union membership was strong. Further, the growth and diversity of service work has been associated with a growth in the workforce in sectors and jobs that have not previously been unionized (personal services, professional services, among others) as well as large numbers of small workplaces that unions have traditionally found difficult to organize. At the same time, the profile of working people has changed. The increasing feminization of the labor force (and union movement) has challenged many of the structures and patterns of interest representation within unions, and despite the changing gender demographics, union officers and activists still reflect the âpale, male and staleâ image of yesteryear. This is despite female union membership overtaking male membership in Britain, such that 54 percent of union members in Britain are now women (Office for National Statistics 2010). Similarly, the growth in the migrant labor force, while not as dramatic, has also caused unions to refocus their organizing work to bring in these new workers, many of whom are working at the margins of the economy and subject to considerable exploitation (Holgate 2011, Perrett and MartĂnez Lucio 2009). In this chapter we explore some of the many arguments put forward by academics and practitioners for the factors influencing union decline and the possibilities for union growth, before moving on to highlight the tensions and debates that are raised as a consequence of the kinds of developments outlined.
Economic and Technological Change
Many economists and industrial relations scholars have argued that union strength and activity is primarily affected by changing economic circumstances and that unions are, to a greater or lesser extent, recipients of membership rather than active agents. Some authors (Bain and Elsheikh 1976, Bain and Price 1980) argue that membership levels are more influenced by factors beyond the control of unions such as the level of inflation, real earning, and the level of employment. From this perspective, there is little unions can do to reverse a membership decline when these wider forces are against them. Without doubt, recent decades have seen an increase in global trade and rapid changes in the use of technologies, which have had many implications for product and labor markets. While it is difficult to disaggregate the relative effect of growing trade and technological change on labor relations issues such as union membership and power (although see Freeman 1995 for a discussion), we can say is that the effects of these developments on the context within which unions operate have been profound.
In short, increased product and service competition usually makes it more difficult for organizations to pass on any rises in labor costs to the end user. As a consequence, it can be more difficult for unions to gain improvements in terms and conditions. Mobilization theory (Kelly 1998) helpfully illustrates how this shifts the cost-benefit judgment for workers in taking collective action. It also gives employers a sound reason to try to reduce the influence of unions within the organization. By and large, increased international competition makes employers more vulnerable to rising labor costs in relation to other international competitors. It also undermines the logic of national level multiemployer collective bargaining, which was a common strategy to help unions take wages out of competition in the United Kingdom until the 1980s. Technological changes (especially the use of information and communication technology in service work, and the automation of factory work) make it easier for employers to substitute labor with capital and to intensify work. In the UK, these changes have particularly affected factory workers doing routine but skilled work (Autor et al. 2003, Goos and Manning 2007) and possibly lower-skilled workers (Machin 2001) who formed the bulk of trade union membership until the 1980s. This has been disastrous for UK unions as these skilled manual workers were previously the ones who were most able to win improvements to their terms and conditions because of their hard-to-replace skills and traditions of collectivism learned through the apprenticeship system. Taken together, these developments present significant challenges to unions in building collective solidarity and achieving economic benefits for workers. But it is not only the economic context that has been changing in recent years; the institutional context has also been considerably transformed.
Changing Institutional Context
The study of the institutional arrangements within which the employment relationship takes place is one of the core principles of industrial relations (Edwards 2003). It is therefore unsurprising that there has been a long tradition of explaining union behavior in terms of the structure of collective bargaining and other aspects of the wider institutional context such as legislation. The impacts of policies of national governments and supranational institutions such as the European Union (EU) on union membership strategies have been closely studied (for example, Freeman and Pelletier 1990). An important way in which government policy can affect organizing activity is by promoting an environment that is hostile to or supportive of trade unions in general. Freeman and Pelletier (1990) identify the law as an essential determinant of the industrial relations âclimate.â The first point to note is that the institutional context of British labor relations shifted dramatically in the 1980s, with seventeen consecutive years of Conservative Party dominance of UK politics. During this period, most notably associated with Margaret Thatcher who led the Conservative Party for much of this time, a series of laws were introduced that constrained the ability of trade unions to take collective action. These included, but were not limited to, the introduction of laws similar to those in âright to workâ states in the United States through the abolition of closed shop arrangements, constraints on the range of issues over which unions can take collective action, strict rules about conducting a postal ballot of all affected union members before industrial action can take place, the requirement to inform the employer one week in advance of any industrial action, and harsh penalties for any breaches of the law. Even before the election of the Labour Party in 1997, Tony Blair was clear that these laws would remain in place, and indeed they are in place to this day.
Smith and Morton (2001, 2006) argue that the New Labour governments developed a distinctive form of neoliberalism with regards to employment legislation. Specifically, the continuity of the Conservative Party restrictions on collective action was combined with âa more subtle discourse of social partnership and collective and individual rightsâ (2006, 414). In practice, although most unions are now familiar with the legal requirements of industrial action and have become used to working within this legislative framework, taken as a whole, the law places very real constraints on workersâ ability to take effective industrial action, and this has a number of impacts on union organizing activity. First, it places serious âcostsâ on the side of the âcost-benefitâ decision of both the decision to unionize in the first place and of taking industrial action once the union is established. As a consequence, this can constrain the likely effectiveness of unionization in the United Kingdom. Second, this legislative program was one aspect of a very real institutional shift of power toward employers over the 1980s and 1990s that helped to delegitimize unions in the wider sociopolitical context.
Despite a continued commitment of the Labour Party to many of these legislative initiatives, there have been some important changes. Most observers agree that since the election of the 1997 Labour governments the legislative context has become a little more sympathetic to trade unionism than under previous Conservative administrations (Oxenbridge et al. 2003, Undy 2002, Gennard 2002). The introduction of a raft of European Union employment legislation, the national minimum wage, and most relevant here, the introduction of statutory recognition procedures in the Employment Relations Acts of 1999 and 2004 promoted an environment more conducive to trade unionism, which triggered unions to engage in organizing campaigns (Gall 2004a). The statutory recognition legislation put in place a mechanism by which unions can, in principle, compel employers to bargain if the majority of workers want the union to represent them. Smith and Morton (2006) argue that these laws in fact enshrine the illegitimacy of unions because unions are only given very limited rights under very strict conditions. Nonetheless it is, we argue, important that such legislation exists at all and concedes a role for collective bargaining; something that was generally not accepted by Conservative Party legislation and social policy from 1979 to 1997.
Legislation is only one way in which the institutional context can facilitate organizing activity. Industry-specific policies may also create an environment that makes organizing activity more or less attractive to unions at particular times; for example, the economic policies that were pursued throughout the 1980s and 1990s that led to a decline in the British manufacturing sector. The extent to which these policies have intended or unintended consequences on opportunities for union organizing is not immediately relevant here. The point is that government and employer policy often interact to create an environment in which union organizing becomes more or less difficult. We are particularly keen to include a consideration of employer behavior in the analysis we present. Specifically, we want to look at how the âsuccessâ or âfailureâ of many organizing policies and practices rest not only on the behavior of the unions themselves but also on the behavior of employers and other institutional actors. And in setting ourselves the task of evaluating the impact of organizing initiatives over the period of the New Labour governments, we feel it is important to integrate this institutional analysis.
Clearly all of these factors influence the context within which unions organize, and they also influence union decisions over which groups of workers to target in organizing campaigns. One of the most significant challenges for unions over the past decade or so has been the increasing diversity of the UK workforce and the interests they bring to the workplace.
Increasing Diversity of Worker Interests
All these factors have created a context within which it is increasingly difficult to identify a homogenous âworking classâ in the way that was once thought to exist (see Crompton 2008 for an extensive discussion). An obvious example in relation to trade unionism relates to the changes in lifestyle (declining relative cost of and increasing access to transportation and patterns of house prices, for instance) that mean that workers often no longer live close to their workplace. As a consequence, their experiences outside work are increasingly different from each other. There is less of a common physical geographical community that ties workers to place or lived space. As such, local collective identities are harder to establish and maintain. Together with the increasingly diverse demographics of workers and the increasingly wide range of jobs they do it can be very difficult for unions to identify and construct a coherent, shared set of interests around which to organize. This has led some commentators to emphasize the need for unions to develop new and innovative organizing strategies to respond to the changing and increasingly diverse workforce (Healy et al. 2004b; Holgate 2004a, 2004b).
Although gender is by no means assumed to be the only way in which workforce heterogeneity exists, it is the area where there has been most research and debate and is therefore the area where theoretical contributions are most developed. The growing participation of women in the labor market during the past forty years has brought with it debate about the extent to which women have similar or different interests to men. Many authors have examined the ways in which trade union agendas can privilege male workers (among many others Cobble 1993, Colling and Dickens 2001, Cockburn 1991) and have argued that women can bring different issues and interests to trade unionism, for example, a greater interest in flexible working patterns (Conley 2005), maternity provision, or even, a less confrontational way of negotiating (Hurd 1993). Although the precise nature of these proposed differences and the ways in which women can more successfully have their interests represented has been hotly debated, the key point here is that these authors all argue that to some degree there is divergence between âmenâs interestsâ and âwomenâs interestsâ and that unions that build gender-specific organizing strategies may be more successful in their organizing work (see Hurd 1993, for an example of how gender-specific organizing tactics were used during the Harvard University clerical workers campaign).
Similarly, the issue of how best to recruit and organize black and other minority group workers has been an important part of the ongoing debate within union and academic circles (Humphrey 2002).1 The British trade union movementâs response to the involvement of black and minority ethnic (BME) workers within its ranks has not always been positive and, in some cases, despite official policy statements in opposition to discrimination, it has been objectively racist in practice (Phizacklea and Miles 1987, Radin 1966). There has, at times, been an unwillingness to recognize the racism experienced by black workers, leading some black union members to believe that trade unions do not adequately represent their interests (Bradley 2002b, BTUSM 1983, WEA 1980). Only since the late 1970s, as a consequence of challenges from black activists and antiracists, have trade unions been forced to reevaluate their so-called âcolor-blindâ stance, whereby they regularly asserted that there was âno differenceâ between BME and white workers (CIR 1974, CRE 1985). The importance of these contributions is that not only do they not assume homogeneity of worker interest, but they argue that homogeneity is neither achievable nor necessarily desirable. In the area of union policy, for example, this discussion is perhaps most evident in Unisonâs development of âself-organized groups.â Unison, the largest public-sector union covering the UK, has developed formal self-organized structures (black, women, disabled, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) throughout the union, from national to branch level, all of which are able to create and influence union policy (see McBride 2001 for further discussion).
However, the idea of self-organization is not without controversy. In the beginning, there were claims and counterclaims that it was separatist, divisive, and distracted from the main goals of trade unionism. As a response to the inaugural meeting of on...