Today is the first day of the Trade Union Congress' 137th annual conference. Overshadowing the usual attacks on the Government, warnings of 'pensions crisis', and calls for pro-union laws is the risk of the TUC becoming increasingly irrelevant. There are two reasons why.
First, union membership in Britain is low and declining, with no sign of it recovering. According the latest official figures, less than one in five private sector employees are union members. Union recruitment activity may have slowed the pace of decline, but it has failed to reverse it. This despite a sympathetic Labour government and massive increases in public spending, leading to many more nurses, police and teachers being hired.
Second, three large affiliated unions are planning a mega-merger which threatens the influence and funding base of the TUC. The proposal to combine 2.6 million members in the GMB, TGWU and Amicus would yield a very large conglomerate accounting for two-fifths of TUC membership. It might choose to bypass the TUC and deal directly with government. At the very least, it will use its new-found muscle without compunction. As Derek Simpson, general secretary of Amicus, told Saturday's Guardian:
If 90% of the members in the TUC are in one union, why should that union not have 90% of the say. ...We are going to be a big powerful bloc. What do you want us to be, weak and ineffective? Are we supposed to be scared of being powerful?
Might is right, eh Derek? One suspects before too long a super-conglomerate union might also wonder why it should continue to fund a peak organisation like the TUC. As today's Financial Times editorial comment, The TUC Titanic, warned:
Amid reports that such a super union's annual fee to the TUC would amount to as much as £5m, some are said to be querying just what members will get in return.
Derek's new power bloc, if it eventuates, would also control 20% of the votes at Labour Party conference. That's a lot of influence. But there is no evidence that such mergers will arrest the decline in union membership. Last week the LSE Future of Unions research programme published Trade Unions: Resurgence or Perdition?, volume three in its series of Routledge volumes. Chapter three is by Paul Willman of Oxford University, "Circling the Wagons; Endogeneity in Union Decline" (PDF). Willman notes that:
Unions have declined in numbers, members and membership density and they are deteriorating financially. Responses to this decline have reinforced it, as a shrinking number of conglomerates fights over a declining membership base. ...Merger is normally an activity managed and implemented centrally. Where it is absorption, common in UK, it requires no ballot of the absorbing union. It is thus a strategy likely to appeal to risk-averse leadership incumbents bent on organizational survival
Mergers reduce inter-union competition, and they "create large problems of internal co-ordination and a loss of choice". They also raise familiar monitoring problems, as agency theory would suggest:
In very large conglomerate unions, with many bargaining units and diverse memberships the effective monitoring of leaders by members becomes more difficult.
Willman argues this might explain the recent radicalisation of union leadership in the UK, "without the radicalization of union behaviour" (industrial stoppages are at record lows).
The key organisational dilemma facing unions is how to balance financial pressures to centralise administration against democratic pressures to decentralise representative structures. If a conglomerate approach is favoured, with decentralised bargaining, local meetings and sectionalized structures, voice may remain but the supposed economies of scale won't occur:
Where mergers are combined with representative decentralization, many members remain unaffected by it, but scale economies cannot then be derived.
So British unions face declining membership, ailing finances and a radicalised leadership out of touch with its membership. To survive, they need to acquire "recognition and facilities" resources from employers and "membership and participation" from members. As to behaviours:
Increasingly, unions will need to find a role in the governance of employment contracts which generates benefits for both employers and employee... The role is likely to diversify away from bargaining representation in at least two directions; first, towards consultation where employers are more receptive and legislation more favourable and, second, towards advice and insurance services selectively targeted within a diverse membership base.
Can British unions manage that? Well, this week's TUC Congress seems all about the usual 'shopping list' of demands. Until union organisation and recruitment are put centre-stage, further decline seems inevitable. The only small cause for optimism is a Guardian weblog post this afternoon by David Hencke that the likelihood of "the new all singing, all dancing super union ...has been exaggerated":
The truth is that the three unions have very disparate structures and officials are going to very reluctant to cede territory and jobs to their partners in the new union.
"is the risk of the TUC becoming increasingly irrelevant."
Yes, well Tony Blair seems to have travelled to Brighton to make exactly this point to them:
"Tony Blair on Tuesday warned trade union leaders to modernise the labour movement or face terminal decline, as he rejected a shopping list of demands on pensions and workers' rights".
"In his most outspoken criticism for several years, he warned in a text released by Downing Street that trade unionism had “to undergo a fundamental modernisation” and that they would do themselves no favours by returning to the confrontational approach that marked much of Labour's second term in power."
"He went on: “Public sector pensions is high on our agenda too. But every government round the world is facing the same problem . . . The financial commitment is rising. We have together to find the right solution.” Echoing an earlier speech by Gordon Brown, the chancellor, Mr Blair said globalisation and emerging economies presented unions with a choice to work together “or decline”."
This is all from the FT
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/db61385a-2499-11da-a5d0-00000e2511c8.html
Maybe he'd been reading New Economist on his laptop during the drive down to Brighton. :)
Actually perhaps the most indicative feature of the decline is the fact that Blair explained this to them during a private dinner, years back, when they still carried some weight, it would have been mandatory for a labour leader to address the conference.
Posted by: Edward Hugh | Wednesday, September 14, 2005 at 07:43 AM