Trade Unions

Trade unions are organisations that represent people at work. Their purpose is to protect and improve people's pay and conditions of employment. They also campaign for laws and policies, which will benefit working people.

Trade unions exist because an individual worker has very little power to influence decisions that are made about his or her job. By joining together with other workers, there is more chance of having a voice and influence.

All sorts of jobs and industries are covered by trade unions. Some unions represent people who do a particular job or work in a specific industry - for example, the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), as its name suggests, represents journalists, and the Union for Finance Staff (UNIFI) is made up of people who do different jobs in the financial sector.

Other unions include a mixture of people in different jobs and sectors. The biggest unions in Britain are the GMB, UNISON and the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), they represent people working in a range of different occupations and industries in the public and private sectors. Often this is because unions have merged with other unions so that they can increase their membership and their influence.

Trade unions are democratic organisations, which are accountable to their members for their policies and actions. Unions are normally modelled on the following structure:

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  • Members - people who pay a subscription to belong to a union
  • Union representatives - sometimes called shop stewards - who are elected by members of the union to represent them to management
  • Branches - which support union members in different organisations locally. There is usually a branch secretary who is elected by local members
  • District and/ or regional offices - full time union officials usually staff these. These are people who are paid to offer advice and support to union members locally
  • A national office - the union's headquarters ...

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