The Financial Status and Performance of British Trade Unions, 1950–1988
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1990.tb00998.x |
| Author | Paul Willman |
| Date | 01 November 1990 |
| Published date | 01 November 1990 |
British Journal
of
Industrial Relations
28:3
November
1990 0007-1080
$3.00
The Financial Status and Performance
of
British Trade Unions,
1950-1
988
Paul Wilirnan
*
Final version accepted
1
May 1990
ABSTRACT
The paper analyses the financial status of British trade unions from
1950
to
1988.
It documents the long-term financial decline in union real net worth,
despite the maintenance
of
solvency, which has followed from the shortfall
of
subscription income over total expenditure. Unions were financially quite
stable until the mid-l960s, when financial decline became serious; despite
membership growth from
1967
to
1979,
wealth declined and solvency was
low. Paradoxically, the period of membership decline since 1980 has seen
a
partial recovery in financial performance. The factors underlying decline and
recovery are analysed and the prospects for the future examined.
1.
INTRODUCTION
There have been
few
studies
of
the financial status of British trade unions
in
the postwar period. Roberts (1956: 343-95) analysed change across the
period 1936-50, Latta (1972) looked at the decade 196040, and Willman
and
Morris
(1988) looked at the period 1975-85. All three described the
financial performance of particular unions as
well
as the financial status of
unions as a whole; their findings indicate that the financial fortunes of British
trade unions have been highly variable in the last forty years. However,
there has been no account
of
financial performance across the postwar
period as a whole, and little discussion
of
the implications of changing
financial performance for union structure and behaviour. The objective of
this
paper
is
to
provide such an account and discussion.
The structure is as follows. Section
2
discusses the previous studies and
Section 3 describes the data that are the basis
for
this and previous studies.
Section
4
presents the overall picture of union finances from 1950 to 1988.
Section
5
discusses the implications of these data, and Section
6
concludes by
assessing the prospects for union finances in the future.
Senior Lecturer in Industrial Relations, London Business
School.
.
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