Are the trade unions back in business? Or can we put the rail strikes down to the peculiar conditions created by the disaster of privatisation?
It is true that, since privatisation in 1994, the rail industry has become almost as strike-prone as Britain’s badly managed postal service. Privatisation was supposed to cut the power of the national rail unions; competition between firms, it was said, would allow employers to play off one group of workers against another and drive down terms and conditions, freeing up profits for investors. In fact, recent labour shortages, coupled with union organisation and militancy, have allowed workers to play off one company against another and drive wages up.
But the more revealing evidence of union revival comes from firms that were formerly non-union. Within the past year, Eurotunnel, a byword for sophisticated union avoidance, was compelled to sign a recognition agreement with the Transport and General Workers’ Union. Within the past month, at the giant Honda car plant in Swindon, which has stood union-free for 16 years, nearly three-quarters of the workers voted to be represented by Amicus (the product of the merger between the AEEU, the engineering and electrical union, and the white-collar union MSF). The number of union victories of this kind has more than doubled since Labour’s Employment Relations Act 1999 obliged employers to negotiate with a trade union if a majority of workers voted for recognition in a secret ballot.
Moreover, after falling from a peak of 13.2 million in 1979 to just above 7.5 million in 1998, total union membership is now rising annually and has recovered to about 7.7 million. And the unions – although they are still ignored over matters such as the private finance initiative and privatisation of air traffic control – have regained a measure of influence over government policy.
The British recovery is echoed widely, if unevenly, around the advanced capitalist world. American unions, which currently represent less than 10 per cent of the private sector workforce, have stepped up their efforts to organise non-union employees, with some notable successes. One example was the “Justice for Janitors” campaign, launched in Los Angeles in the early 1990s, and dramatically portrayed in Ken Loach’s film Bread and Roses. The Italian union movement successfully exploited the collapse of the political system in 1993-94 to position itself as a stabilising force with which any government had to deal if it wanted to enjoy legitimacy in the eyes of the electorate. Through a series of high-level negotiations, or “social pacts”, the union confederations have exerted influence over a number of labour market, social security and pension reforms. It is a similar story in Spain, where despite a right-wing government coming to office in 1996, the unions have influenced several significant labour market reforms through high-level negotiations with government ministers.
How do we explain these signs of union revival? Politics is one factor. The advent of centre-left coalitions in countries such as the UK, Italy, France, Germany and New Zealand has created political opportunities for unions, even in countries where the union movement remains politically divided, as in Italy, France and Spain. These governments have had to face the harsh consequences of global competition and European deregulation but, unlike many of their right-wing predecessors, they have chosen not to exclude unions in the formation and implementation of state policy.
The same argument holds at company level. While there are still many employers, especially in the United States and the UK, who loathe and fear trade unionism, there are others who can see benefits in consulting and negotiating over change with independent worker representatives. Unions have also been adept at exploiting the growing volume of legal rights for the individual. Evidence shows that an individual who takes an employment claim to an industrial tribunal more than doubles his or her chance of success if represented by a union. This also affects compensation levels. The average tribunal award for sex discrimination is £2,515; the average figure for a union-backed claim is £17,082.
Such successes reflect some of the reasons that workers have given in recent years for joining trade unions, but the underlying factor is a general lack of trust in the willingness or ability of the employer to look after employees’ interests. In the banking sector, for example, once renowned for its paternalistic management style, a typical 1990s press release would announce a substantial growth in profits, an imminent merger with another firm and a major round of job losses. Falling unemployment has also helped the unions, particularly when, as in Britain, it coincides with shortages of skilled labour arising because employers have been too foolish and short-sighted to invest sufficiently in training.
Finally, the unions themselves have played a part in shaping their own destiny. The increased resources going to organising non-union employees have had to be argued and fought for within the union movement by leaders such as John J Sweeney in the US and John Monks in the UK. Both realised that the unions had to recover their membership if they were to recover their power and influence. In Britain, the rhetoric of social partnership has also been used to allay the fears of employers and to refashion a softer union image, though many activists are rightly sceptical about the apparent conversion of some employers to a more co-operative union-management relationship.
Despite their recent successes, the unions still face many problems. The social pacts with centre-left government coalitions could disappear with electoral victories for the right (but it must be said that the weakening ties between union movements and their erstwhile social-democratic party allies could make it easier for unions to engage with administrations of the right, as has happened recently in Spain). And any return to very high levels of unemployment would seriously erode the power resources of most unions. That said, the outlook for the union movement today, in Britain and elsewhere, is probably better than it has been for 20 years.
John Kelly is professor of industrial relations at the London School of Economics
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