Jeremy Waddington

Why Do People Join Unions in a Period of Membership Decline

Drawing on a large survey of new members, this paper examines the reasons why people join unions and the methods of their recruitment. It shows that collective reasons remain central to union membership and that individual services are secondary in the recruitment process. While there is little variation in reasons for joining across industry, occupation and sex, there are marked differences in the methods used to recruit new members. These findings are used to examine existing explanations of membership decline and to assess the efficacy of the different recruitment policy options available to unions.

Trying to Stem the Flow: Union Membership Turnover in the Public Sector

Based on a survey of members leaving UNISON, this study suggests that more than 40,000 members leave the union every year because of their dissatisfaction with some aspect of structure, organisation or policy. This analysis identifies some of the barriers faced by unions that are attempting to promote more participative unionism in order to reduce rates of membership turnover.

Towards a reform agenda? European trade unions in transition

No abstract available.

Membership retention in the public sector

Based on a survey of UNISON members, this article examines the reasons underpinning membership retention in the public sector. It shows that collective reasons are central to retention and that packages of financial services have little impact on retention. An article to be published in the next issue of this journal develops the themes raised here by reference to a survey of union leavers.

European trade unionism in transition? a review of the issues

** Director, European Trade Union Institute, Brussels, Belgium. *** Senior Research Fellow, Institut for Sociale Forhold og Organisation, Aalborg Universitet, Denmark. In recent years European trade unionists have debated how changes in industrial relations systems will impinge upon current union activity and organisation. They cite labour market restructuring, workplace change and developments in the European Union’s (EU) social policy agenda as constituting both threats and opportunities for action. In addition, a wide range of strategies, implemented by employers to raise competitiveness, require unions to accommodate concurrent trends towards intemationalisation, as capital seeks to reduce production costs, and localism, arising from the fragmentation of markets. Some of the questions raised by these issues are the following: Are these changes promoting convergence or divergence? How are these changes mediated by different institutional arrangements and public policy choices? To what extent are the same trade union responses appropriate in different countries? Can trade unionists influence the direction of policy or must they merely be influenced by it?

Industrialization and Politics: A Century of Union Structural Development in Three European Countries

Using data from three European countries - Sweden, The Netherlands and Britain - and a period of about one hundred years, this article charts and explains the development of trade union structure. Although the character of the union movements in the three countries differs markedly, the rate of change of union structural events (foundations, dissolutions and mergers) shows considerable similarity. One of the main features of these structural events is that they occur in waves. The article reviews existing explanations of trade union structural development in the light of these findings and suggests how they might be revised.

UK Unions: searching for a new agenda

Throughout Western Europe since 1979 policies directed towards flexibility and deregulation have characterised labour market developments. In the UK these policies have been accompanied by the direct restriction of trade union influence. Between 1980 and 1993 Conservative governments in the UK introduced no fewer than eight Acts to regulate union activity. In addition, most tripartite institutions were abandoned, thereby excluding the trade unions from any role in macro-economic policy-making. Within this political environment, employers decentralised bargaining and narrowed the scope of collective job controls. The combined effect of these developments was to place trade unions on the defensive and to encourage the search for a new policy agenda appropriate for the circumstances of the 1990s. This paper reviews four key elements of this new policy agenda: recruitment strategies, modernising trade union structure, a social partnership with employers, and embracing the law. Although many modernising initiatives have been introduced by unions in the UK, it is far from certain that they are sufficient to reverse the decline that has taken place. In each of the policy areas discussed here, it is the tension between workplace and national union structures that is central to reform. The paper shows that workplace organisation in many areas is now isolated and national unions have been unable to support activities in the workplace.