Who needs unions now?

In a feature to mark the centenary of the Dublin Lockout - when transport workers staged a five month long strike for the right to unionise in the face of ruthless employer and state intimidation - the Irish Times poses the question ‘who needs unions now?’ to a group of today’s Irish workers.

Trade Unions alive and well? Only if we’re kicking...

‘Thatcherism is unfortunately alive and well, but so – thankfully – is trade unionism,’ says Carl Roper of the TUC, writing on the Stronger Unions blog. Carl makes an important point that ‘the paradox of Margaret Thatcher's policies is that whilst proclaiming the illegitimacy and irrelevance of unions they actually reinforced the need for collective representation of working people.’ Of course unions are alive but we can be less confident that the condition of the trade unions in the UK is ‘well’ whatever criteria is used - membership density, collective bargaining coverage, political influence etc.