Trade Union Membership and Activism Among Young People in Great Britain
| Published date | 01 March 1989 |
| Date | 01 March 1989 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1989.tb00211.x |
| Author | Joan Payne |
British
Journal
of
Industrial Relations
27:
1
March
1989
0007-1080
$3.00
Trade Union Membership and
Activism Among Young People in
Great Britain
Joan
Payne*
INTRODUCTION
Widespread unemployment and fundamental changes in occupational
structure have caused trade union membership to fall in Britain since 1979.
In response the unions have made efforts to recruit among groups which in
the past they have treated as marginal. Announcing a new recruitment
drive, the General Secretary
of
the Transport and General Workers’ Union
recently stated, ‘Our new unionism will address itself to the problems and
aspirations
of
groups
of
temporary and part time workers, women, young
people and members
of
ethnic minorities who have, quite frankly, been
neglected in the past’
(The
Guardian,
27 February, 1987).
In
the case
of
young workers there is plenty
of
scope for action,
for
their
trade union membership has always been low. The 1983 General Household
Survey (GHS) showed that only 21 per cent and
24
per cent respectively of
male and female full time employees aged sixteen to nineteen were members
of a trade union
or
a staff association, whilst membership was roughly three
times as great
-
67 per cent
of
full time male employees and 58 per cent of
full time female employees- in the age group forty-five to sixty-four (OPCS
1985). Bain and Elsheikh (1979) have demonstrated that in 1951, 1961 and
1971 union density was significantly less in industries where the workforce
was relatively young, though more rece
t
data suggest the differences in
union density between groups may have declined somewhat (Batstone,
1988). Nevertheless, Bain and Elsheikh’s finding has been confirmed at the
individual level in two studies based on the 1975 National Training Survey
(NTS): Bain and Elias (1985) and Booth (1986) report that when a range
of
personal characteristics is controlled, age and number of years
of
work
experience are still significantly associated with union membership. In
recent years several trade unions have set
up
youth sections and in some
*Research Fellow, Policy Studies Institute and University
of
Oxford, Department
of
Social and
Administrative Studies.
r:
112
British
Journal
of
Industrial
Relations
cases lower youth subscription rates have been introduced for the first time.
This effort arises partly from a fear that the norms
of
trade union
membership which prevail when a young worker first enters the labour
market will influence behaviour throughout the working life. This fear is
compounded by the very large numbers
of
young workers who are now on
the Youth Training Scheme (some
426,060
in November 1987), many
of
whom may
go
on to join the Employment Training programme. Though
not excluded from trade union membership, these young people have
considerably lower rates
of
membership than ordinary employees.
Studies in the field of industrial relations tend to take the workplace as the
unit of analysis, and as a result analyses
of
individual level data on union
membership which cover a full cross-section of the working population are
rare. Studies of young workers are even rarer. One data source which has
not been exploited is the National Child Development Study (NCDS),
which contains information on the union membership of a large national
sample
of
twenty-three year olds in 1981
-
a date by which the general
decline in membership was well under way. The first purpose
of
this paper
is
to use these data to explore the levels and correlates of membership among
young workers. This should help to determine whether low membership
among young workers results simply from the fact that more of them belong
to
groups which have generally low rates
of
membership,
or
whether there
are other factors specific to young people which impede membership. The
difference between these two explanations could have implications for the
way in which the unions conduct their recruitment campaigns.
Trade union activism is the subject of political controversy, and it might
be argued that recent legislation has had the effect
of
curtailing the power
of
the activist and increasing that
of
the non-active member.
No
previous
British study has looked specifically at activism among young workers,
though the unions must in the end rely on activists for the success of their
recruitment campaigns among the young. The second part
of
the paper uses
the NCDS data to report levels of activism among young workers and
to
analyse its correlates.
The work was carried out as part
of
an ESRC funded research project
to
analyse employment histories from NCDS between the ages of sixteen and
twenty-three.’ Other results from this project to date are published in
Micklewright (1989) and Payne (1987).
REASONS FOR
LOW
UNION MEMBERSHIP AMONG
YOUNG
PEOPLE
Several explanations have been put forward for why union membership
is
low among young workers. The simplest
is
the ‘exposure effect’ described
by Bain and Ebheikh
(op.
cit.):
an older worker, in virtue
of
longer
experience in the workforce, has had more opportunities
to
join
a
union.
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