History
‘Although relationships between employers and employees can be traced back to the medieval guilds, the modern period of industrial relations commenced at the beginning of the nineteenth century when the building industry underwent a profound change.’ (Construction Management in Practice, Wiley-Blackwell,2002)
This tells us that the unions initially began in modern society in the early 90s but what it doesn’t tell us is how different they were. Although the early craft unions were very much unions, they opposed ‘collective bargaining’ in favour of a more ‘take it or leave it’ approach where the unions would just lay down their terms and conditions of employment to the employer. The Industrial Workers of the World, ‘the Wobblies’, prioritised the general strike which gave the workers (unions) the majority of power as the employers couldn’t afford to have people off work. The reason for this being that the timescale targets for the work wouldn’t get met as well as less chance of winning any more work to fund the company leaving the employer in a massive debt; it was more beneficial to pay the extra wages in order to gain some profit rather than have none.
In Germany, before Hitler the DHV (German National Commercial Employees Association), the largest white collar workers’ union publicised a racialist ideology and excluded Jews; and until recently in South Africa many unions excluded black workers. Yet again it shows how much development has been made in the modern society trade unions. The following quote taking from McIlroys, Trade Unions in Britain today, 2002 can take many different forms as developing capitalism generates many opposing responses.
‘The trade union is an organ of revolt against the capitalist system’ (McIlroy, 2002)
Government opposition to Trade unionism in the United Kingdom was a major factor for economic crises during the 1960s and 1970s arguably climaxing in the ‘Winter of Discontent’ where a major percentage of the nation’s public sector workers went on strike (1978,1979). At the peak of the strikes, nearly 30,000,000 working days were lost in Britain during 1979 whereas under the new Margaret Thatcher government union reform policies, that had dramatically fallen to around 5,000,000 in 1981. Of course in 1984 this changed as in possibly the most recognisable strikes ever in Britain began over Margaret Thatcher showdown with the miners (most of these 25,000,000 working days lost were due to miners). From then on the number of working days lost in Britain due to strikes remained in the low millions. According to the BBC, Thatcher “managed to destroy the power of the trade unions for almost a generation”. (Wilenius, Paul, BBC News, 2004, )
Despite The Labour Party initially receiving great strength from the Trade Unions and growing political power, this ultimately backfired and led to their downfall as people lost trust in the unions over the Thatcher reign, with union members almost halving from 12,000,000 members to just over 6,000,000.
(G. Bain,1970, The Growth of White Collar Unionism, Oxford University Press)
The above table taking from Bain,1970 shows us the steady increase of members in unions since the early 1900s and furthermore, shows us the percentage of labour force the unions provided in this time. As spoken above about how Labours main strength came from the unions.
In addition I should mention the importance since the 1960s of public sector trade unionism, manual and white collar. The National Union of Public Employees grew from 200,000 members in 1960 to 700,000 in 1979. NALGO (now UNISON) had 274,000 members in 1960 and 753,000 in 1979. There were around 370,000 union members in the NHS in 1967 and 1.3million in 1979. These developments did much to change the face of the British trade unionism which had previously possessed the stamp of the private sector.
(Employment Gazette, TUC Reports/ McIlroy 1995)
There has been significant reduction in the number of unions from 1000 in 1940 to 560 in 1968 and 268 in 1992. This is partly due to amount of unions merging in a period, as McIlroy describes as ‘merger mania’. The greater unions were often snapping up many of the lower unions in order to maximise their members and power, for instance, TASS (Technical Administrative and Supervisory Union) prior to its merger with ASTMS (Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs) snapped up the National Union of Gold, Silver and Allied Trades, 1981, the National Union of Sheet Metal Workers, 1983, the Patternmakers, 1984, the Metal Mechanics, 1985 and the Tobacco Workers’ Union, 1986. (ultimately TASS and ASTMS are both now merged with MSF, Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union).
Benefits to Employee
A lot of employees feel it is a necessity to join a Trade Union as it can be of aid to them in more than one way; ‘this may include the negotiation of wages, work rules, complaint procedures, rules governing hiring, firing and promotion of workers, benefits, workplace safety and policies’ (Wikipedia, January 3rd 2012)
Furthermore, Trade Unions provide the employee with (sometimes expensive) legal support in the case they are unfairly dismissed from employment. It also saves a lot of time as the union member will represent the employee in tribunals.
Employees like myself; may only join a union as I get relevant discounted products that apply to my trade or just to know that if needed, I have the 24 hour support of the legal help line. Knowing that I am part of a union with a massive financial, legal and industrial backing (Unite) is very reassuring as I trust them to always agree the best deals for its members; whereas someone else may join to be part of the political influence and European lobbying or pension schemes.
It can be assumed a necessity to join your trade union to enable to best wage and benefits etc as the more members the union has, usually means the more bargaining power it has with the employers.
Conclusion
Britain’s trade unions possess the longest history of workers’ organisations anywhere in the world (McIlroy, 1995). Unions still negotiate with employers in 47 of The Times top 50 companies as of 1995 (McIlroy, 1995) with the average wage premium for members over non-members is around 10%. In 1992, unions £300million for their members in legal awards alone. These figures prove how Trade Unions are a success and are needed in modern society employment.
Without Trade Unions, we wouldn’t have fairness, equality and justice in the workplace and wider, to the democracy of Britain and the well-being of its citizens. Therefore it is unlikely they will ever stop in the future as there will always be a need for representation of fairness and justice in the workplace.
In conclusion to my report I believe that today’s unions are the fairest they have ever been with an equal balance of power between employers and employees and will only continue to improve. Especially with the amount of jobless people in the UK at the minute, the unions can only increase its members and ability to protect them.
Bibliography
Trade Unions, Wikipedia. Available at: (available at: 13 December 2011
G. Bain, 1970, The Growth of White Collar Unionism, Oxford University Press (Also available to find in McIlroy,1995)
McIlroy, John; Trade Unions in Britain today, 1995
Construction Management in Practice (2nd edition), Wiley-Blackwell, 2002, Authors: Robert Fellows, Richard Langford and David Newcombe. (Available on Newcastle College e-library on 3rd January 2012)
Wilenius, Paul (5th March 2004). . BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3067563.stm Retrieved 3rd January 2012.
Employment Gazette, TUC Reports. (also found in McIlroy, 1995)
The Electrician’s Guide to Good Electrical Practice, Unite the Union, 2008
by
Carloellis15 (student)
