Union Organizing in Britain: The Views of Local Full‐time Officials
| Pages | 48-62 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425459410073942 |
| Date | 01 December 1994 |
| Published date | 01 December 1994 |
| Author | Ed Snape |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Employee
Relations
16,8
48
Union Organizing in Britain:
The Views of Local Full-time
Officials
Ed Snape
University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland, and Hong Kong
Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Introduction.
Trade union membership in Britain fell from a peak of 13.2 million in 1979 to 9.5
million by 1991. While the most rapid decline came in the recession of the early
1980s, membership continued to fall into the 1990s. Increases in contributions
levels allowed most unions to avoid immediate financial crisis[1], and many
resorted to mergers, cost-cutting and staff reductions. A growing number of
unions attempted to reverse the decline in membership through internal growth
strategies. Services and benefits were developed to attract and retain members,
and recruitment campaigns were launched[2,3]. In this article, we focus on the
recruitment option.
Most of the larger unions launched recruitment campaigns, particularly during
the later 1980s[3]. For example the TGWU, with its Link Up campaign, sought
to organize part-time and temporary workers in par ticular, and USDAW’s “Reach
Out” was designed to consolidate its position in distribution. In a TUC survey
of union officials, carried out in 1989, over 75 per cent said that recruitment was
becoming a more important aspect of their job, and only 2.4 per cent saw it as
becoming less important[4]. However, in spite of such efforts, union density and
the proportion of workplaces with union members and recognized trade unions
all declined after 1984[5].
The aims of this article are to describe the experience of union recruitment
and, using the Kelly and Heery typology[6], to evaluate the advantages and
disadvantages of the different forms of recruitment activity from the point of
view of unions. The article focuses mainly on the role of the full-time official, seen
by Kelly and Heery[6] as occupying a critical position, especially if unions are to
extend their organization to new sectors. We draw on our analysis to account for
the observed pattern of recruitment activity in the late 1980s, before concluding
with a discussion of the implications for the future of union organizing.
The Research
The article draws on secondary analysis of the 1984 and 1990 Workplace Industrial
Relations Surveys(WIRS). The core of the analysis, however, is based on interviews
Employee Relations, Vol. 16 No.8,
1994, pp. 48-62. © MCBUniversity
Press, 0142-5455 The author wishes to thank the union officials who co-operated in the research, and two anonymous
referees of Employee Relationsfor their helpful and perceptive comments on an earlier draft of the article.
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