Professor Greg Gall Director of Centre for Research in Employment Studies (CRES) at the University of Hertfordshire has provided yet more evidence that trade unions need more than a quick tilt of the tiller.
In a paper from the CRES Employment Relations Research Service*, Gall pinpoints that long term structural changes in the labour market combined with the recession are accelerating the decline of trade unionism. In the private sector, where it has virtually collapsed and in the about to be savaged public sector where it has stagnated.
He goes on to highlight that the private sector is a much larger sector of the economy and yet the vast majority of union members exist in the much smaller public sector. There are 4.1 million union members in the public sector as opposed to 2.6 million in the private sector.
Professor Gall may be wrong on one point however. He has accepted in this and other articles that for the past 10 years some unions have shifted their operation from being 'servicing unions' to 'organising unions'. Certainly all major unions declare that this is what they have done - who would not want to? But taking our own union as an example - what has this actually meant? Certainly resources have been made available and many new 'organiser' posts created. So on the evidence of money spent and reports received any academic would feel entitled to feel that UNISON is becoming an organising union. Therefore if there is no change in UNISON's membership trajectory then is that because 'organising' is failing? Is that the same for all 'organising' unions in the UK?
We are not succeeding. Membership growth is not enough to reverse in full the decline since 1979, nothing like. In the private sector UNISON remains a bit of a luxury for most workers transferred out. Over the years the union members leave, TUPE conditions disappear and with them any trace of union organisation.
How can that be? Mainly because we are still in a servicing union with the vast majority of our recruitment carried out in a servicing mode. There is a danger that advocates of organising become counter posed to any successful recruitment activity - after all UNISON needs to recruit over 150,000 a year just to keep still. But that is missing the point. Organising requires long term commitment to building union power by increasing and sustaining density. That can't be done in addition to all our activities - it needs to replace some of them. It can't be done as a slight change of style or emphasis, it needs to be radical and bold.
To build union power in the private sector - which will increasingly be the environment in which we operate - means intense work by union organisers, working to find leaders, build committees, run campaigns and fight the employer. It isn't done overnight and it isn't a choice. Defeat and decline are staring us in the face, we must change, we must be bold and radical. We could and should audit all our services for value and relevance to Organising, and those that don't clearly and directly help us organise then we should stop them. That would be a great start.
Gall is on our side. He is giving us the clear evidence that this is no roller coaster ride, it is an unrelenting decline. We should heed his findings.
* For details of the Employment Relations Research Service subscriptions go to:
http://www.herts.ac.uk/courses/schools-of-study/business/research/centre-for-research-in-employment-studies.cfm