By Annie Hayes, HRZone Editor

The Thatcher administration triumphed in its destruction of the power of the trade unions and for almost a generation it looked like the light had finally gone out but the tables it would seem have turned and the unions are rising from the ashes; Editor’s Comment looks at why they refuse to go quietly.

The pendulum of power between unions and the government has been swinging back and forth for decades. Between 1945 and 1979 we saw a period of growth. The ‘70s was dogged by industrial unrest as endless strikes afflicted the Post Office, steel industry, the ferries and steelworks. Membership in turn rocketed as the unions’ wielded power over bosses.

By the end of the decade, however, businesses were starting to get fed up with the endless unrest and walkouts, hampering business productivity and the bottom line. So when Thatcher came to power in 1979, she made it her aim to put a lid on their power and let business get back to work.

For many she was the nemesis of the trade union movement, hitting them where it hurt.

A set of laws were introduced that increasingly removed many of the rights and immunities they possessed:

• Secondary strike action was made illegal




• Picketing only became lawful if it was carried out by workers at their own places of work




• The Trade Union Act 1984 required secret ballots for union elections




• Closed shops were made illegal by the Employment Acts 1988 and 1990




• Seven days’ notice of strike action became a requirement

According to the CIPD: “The strategy was of deliberate exclusion aimed at reducing union power to improve productivity, often in the name of partnership.”

Coupled with these body blows that diluted their grip on power were changing demographics.

The bread and butter of the unions disappeared as large workplaces slipped into decline – steel works and car factories.

The miners’ strike of 1984-85 put a further nail in the union coffin as defeat ensued and the recession of the early 1980s saw manufacturing membership, the backbone of the union movement shrink by half while unemployment soared to over three million. The result was that union membership plummeted from a peak of 12 million in the late 70s to almost half that by the late 80s.

At the time, many felt that unions had sung their lost song. But while most wrote them off, they hung on by a thread and when Labour came back into power in 1997 they refreshed their hope for renewed power.

What of unions today?

In a recent speech, Trades Union Congress (TUC) leader Brendan Barber admitted that while growth still hasn’t been achieved they have been successful in ‘halting’ the decline.

“Given the forces we have had to overcome simply standing still represents a heroic effort, yet I know that this is not enough.”

A closer examination of the makeup of the trade union movement produces some surprising results.

It would be fair to say that the unions have had to recover from a change in their demographic makeup.

Grassroots members used to be characterised as manual, blue-collar and male. As the labour force has changed so has the membership base. We’ve witnessed a dramatic decline in the number of men and young members and we now see a more diverse mix where women play a role.

Union leaders, male and macho much like Brendan Barber do well to hide this eclectic mix of members but again they seem to have survived despite their poor representation of women at the top. You certainly can’t deny that of late they have let their presence been known. The civil service and fire-fighters strikes were all over the papers at their height.

But while they are making their return felt, they are still much weaker than before – but just what is the position?

This week The Work Foundation’s British Unions: Resurgence or Perdition by David Metcalf, Professor of Industrial Relations and Deputy Director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics warned that the unions face extinction.

Membership now sounds at around 5.5 million, this equates to just 29% of workers who are members, leaving an awful lot of employees unaccounted for.

Metcalf says that unions’ own structures and policies have compounded their problems. The ‘male, pale and stale’ composition did little to re-build membership after it crumbled in the 1980s and 1990s when jobs were altered in the unions’ traditional heartlands of manufacturing and public sector,’ he said.

The economic and political environment has in turn played its part. A strong labour market erring on the ‘nanny’ side with the national minimum wage and family friendly policies gives the unions fewer issues to dispute.

Trade unions have also suffered from their ‘so very 80s image’ in other words it just ‘ain’t cool to be a member’.

So what the unions have done is very clever.

They’ve literally changed tactics and stuck with the principle ‘if you can’t beat’em join ‘em’.

Darwin would be proud.

This in essence is what the new ‘partnership’ role is about.

Barber said of its definition:

“We mean high trust industrial relations based on the recognition that employees and their employer have both much in common and inevitable differences. And that it is best to try and resolve those differences through consultation and negotiation as that way can, and should, deliver gains for both sides.“

In other words they work with the businesses rather than against them.

Rather like the employee that evades redundancy, they have re-invented their purpose and persuaded us all that by virtue of their longevity they provide an intrinsic element in the labour mix or as Barber puts it:

“If unions did not exist, someone would have to invent them. Employers need to talk to employees, government needs views from the workplace and above all, employees need a collective voice.“

As for the future well, I suppose they will continue to play on their strengths. A re-built public sector offers further opportunities for more members. The Work Foundation believe that the new EU Directive on Information and Consultation may also be an important influence on unions’ futures.

The directive establishes, for the first time, permanent and general arrangements for information and consultation for all workers in the UK in organisations employing more than 50 employees and will cover three-quarters of the British labour force by 2007.

David Coats, Associate Director at The Work Foundation said of the unions’ challenge:

“Their task must be to make an offer to potential members that is about “getting on” at work as well as “getting even”. And unions must appeal to employers too, showing that effective co-operation can deliver big improvements in organisational performance.”

Looking back on the power struggles of the trade union movement is rather like watching a long-drawn out boxing match, just as you think the opponent is down he regains his composure to come back on the final count and you can’t help but feel that despite their much-weakened position, as long as they continue to play the game of re-invention they’ll be around to witness the next few administrations too.