Without trade unions. we wouldn’t have many of the rights we take for granted today. From parental leave to paid holidays to the right to strike, these organisations have helped build the case for better working conditions over the years. The right of workers to take action and withdraw their labour is an important one.
That’s not to say that unions always act sensibly. I grew up in the 1970s and was horrified by these mass meetings where people had to vote by raising their hands in front of everyone. If you didn’t agree with the scary leaders, would you not be terrified of what might happen to you if you voted against them? Abuse of power, wherever it happens, is offensive to the liberal mindset and what we had at that time was massive abuse of power by collectivist union leaderships. So, there were quite a few aspects of the Tory reforms of the 1980s that were helpful. Introducing secret ballots before strike action could happen was a very good thing. If Scargill had balloted the niners in 1984, the outcome might have been very different.
But now the Tories have come up with measures to completely undermine the unions. Even if we were having 1970s levels of strikes, some of these plans would not be appropriate. The requirement for 40% of those eligible to back the proposals imposes on unions alone a restriction not faced by the Government itself. Elected on just over a third of the votes of just over two thirds of the people, it is now free to impose its overall majority on all of us. Is that fair? It’s effectively questioning its own legitimacy but can’t see it.
Then we look at the changes proposed to funding. Forgive my hollow laughter at the exchanges between Harriet Harman and David Cameron at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, each clinging to their own vested interests. Being a member of a union should not mean that you have to donate a chunk of your sub to any political party if you don’t want to. If you do, fair enough, but why does it have to be the Labour Party? Why can’t you choose to give it to us or the Greens or the SNP? I’m not holding my breath for that income stream to develop for us, but the principle is right.
Strikes come about because the welfare and wellbeing of the organisation’s greatest asset, its workforce are not put front and centre. Intransigent management and union bosses re-enacting the 1980s and enjoying it a little too much often miss the point. That’s why mandatory arbitration is a good idea to try to focus on what is actually important. It won’t prevent every strike but it should be an integral part of dispute resolution.
Liberal Democrats want people to be well-treated at their work. It’s part of who we are to challenge abuse of power, wherever it appears. It makes common sense that motivated, happy workers, who have power in the organisation, work better and everyone benefits. A strong, vibrant, representative trade union movement has to be part of that picture and we should be encouraging it. That’s not the only answer, though. We need to look at models which give the workforce more influence in the direction of the organisation itself, with proper consultation, board representation and such things. The debate over the trade union bill should enable us to contribute some old ideas which show off our values well.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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24 Comments
I agree that we should certainly oppose weakening of the trade union movement via artificial political means, but can’t agree that the trade union movement is strong and vibrant naturally anyway. I like the sentiments of encouraging workforce-influences for organisations, but am unsure what specific things that you are thinking about?
From my experience, I’ve just left my trade union because I could not see how it was helping people, and it appeared to just be cataloging all the redundancies being made due to poor management and disagreeable decisions, but which were un-opposable from the point of view of how the workers were being treated. Nevertheless, I do appreciate that there are still some professions where the trade union is invaluable. This union-bashing from the Conservatives is just lazy politics, but dangerous if they should get their way. Hopefully it will backfire on them because of the pointlessness of it (a few transport strikes are hardly going to turn public sentiment seriously against unions, and striking nurses always get sympathy).
I wonder how the government will deal with the barristers “work avoidance” – a strike in all but name – against the reduction in legal aid?
Caron
“Intransigent management and union bosses re-enacting the 1980s”
I think you may be misdiagnosing the issue in a lot of cases, while this is the case in certain circumstances I think it is often simply incompetence by one or both parties.
“It makes common sense that motivated, happy workers, who have power in the organisation”
Unfortunately one of the gaps that feel empty is the ability to empower workers by increasing their options to move (even if they choose not ot do that), by up skilling outside the current work place as well. As a country we are very bad at doing this.
Thatcher’s Children…… A day’s inconvenience for London (even though that strike would have been legal under the proposed legislation) gives the excuse for draconian measures to further penalise workers…..However, the prospect of getting effective legislation on the financial sector (who destroyed the economy) is as far away as ever…..
It would not appear unreasonable for a Londoner caught up in the recent tube strike to expect 50% of Union members to have voted and 40% in favour of the strike, that would appear to those affected to be fair, and we are the party of fairness. It is not legitimate to compare union voting with our broken political system, a system that is very unfair.
The main issue on funding is also missed. Anybody can contribute to any political party, however it is unreasonable for an organisation to do it for them. Most unions believe the Labour party serves their members better than any other party, you would not expect them to pass on funds to another party at the request of a member.
The real injustice here is the Tories cutting off Labour funds whilst their own (greater) funding remains untouched.
This is an insult to democracy. Labour have only got themselves to blame. Had they supported us in electoral reform and political funding they would not have walked into this mess.
We should be opposing the trade union bill on the funding issue, and demanding that political funding is cleaned up. There is no mileage in opposing the 40/50 but we should be using this to demonstrate the unfairness of our political system.
Whilst the Tories may have addressed the mote of union funding they have ignored the beam of political funding, which works to their advantage.
There is a joy to be had in standing up for worker’s pay and conditions. I don’t like morally judging people, which I think the trade union movement sometimes veers into, but when they stand up for their interests I can totally relate to them.
Lib Dems should support unions, but if they do make a louder noise on this then they can’t row-back on support for business.
Good article.
The way to support businesses is to make sure that they engage with their workforce sensibly when planning for the long-term, rather than the knee-jerk short-term accountancy based approach of many British companies. Looking at the German/continential system of allowing elected work-force reps to be represented on boards of directors (which I thought was old Liberal Party policy at one stage!) would be one way of engaging with this!!
Why did the British trade union organisations not support two-tier boards with worker representation, on larger companies, like their counterparts in Germany ?
When Jacques Delors went to the TUC they welcomed the French socialist.
Tory Chancellor Nigel Lawson commented that Jacques Delors” had suceeded beyond his wildest dreams”.
There is a risk that David Cameron is trying to negotiate away things that he should not.
If he were to succeed the Labour Party could swing again, back to the problems of 1979-1983.
We should press for progress on the electronic ballotting procedures that Vince Cable was working on with the TUC.
In just 35 years, British Unions have gone from representing half the workforce to only 1 in 5. That fall has been continued over Tory, Labour & Coalition Governments – its not governments or employers fault, clearly Unions are doing something wrong & only they can sort it out.
As far as I can see the Tory legislation is actually helpful, if you cant get even half your members to vote on a strike proposal you shouldnt be striking anyway.
Unions need to adapt to being mass-membership but low-involvement organisations, they need mechanisms to stop themselves being captured by noisy minorities. Above all they need to get out of Politics & the Tory proposals would be some help with that too. Theres a big gap in the market for Unions that stress the useful stuff they do & explicitly reject involvement in politics.
An excellent article Caron.
I have seen the trade union movement from the inside and yes it does need reform.
Would be happy to be contribute to party policy on this.
The Tories aren’t stupid. If their opponents man the barricades in defence of striking on less than a 40% vote, they will only give the Tories a propaganda victory. Most people would feel that something as serious as a strike shouldn’t be decided by a minority of the workforce.
We should concentrate on some of the smaller-print proposals which are much more blatantly anti-worker and can easily be seen to be unfair. For example, the proposed requirement for a union to give 14 days notice of a strike, and to allow the employer to recruit agency workers is clearly designed to put all the cards into the hands of the employers.
On the question of strike ballots, perhaps we should look harder at the reasons why turnouts are often so low. My suspicion is that many workers will think something like “Well, I would be prepared to strike, but I’d rather not. Perhaps the employers might increase their offer voluntarily. Given that uncertainty, I’ll put that ballot paper on the mantelpiece and forget about it.” Sneakily, another of the Tory small-print proposals is that the union must define in advance precisely what kind of strike action it is that they seek approval for. Again, that is an attempt to deprive the union of the advantages of flexibility. We should look at a counter-proposal that a strike ballot should actually be as vague as possible. It could simply ask the worker whether he/she agrees to empower the union with the option to strike if, in the view of its executive, that proves necessary to achieve a reasonable settlement.
Another way of thinking about this is espoused in the Liberal Democrats constitution: “We want to see democracy, participation and the co-operative principle in industry and commerce”
There is a newly-formed “Lib Dems for Co-Operatives” AO which is interested in developing the bottom-up approach of co-operatives as an alternative to the top-down structure of unions.
We shouldn’t be focusing our efforts on supporting or undermining unions. We should be working hard to make employee protections so strong, Union’s become redundant.
Unions should stick to their core purpose – looking after the interests of their members (which, incidentally, includes ensuring the competitiveness and durability of their employers). From what I have seen from both sides of the union fence this works reasonably well in the private sector. Its in the public sector where most of the perceived problems lie. Caron makes sensible suggestions (arbitration, secret ballots, removal of compulsory political levies) but the headline doesn’t reflect the article.
Interestingly, a bit of a side story, but a good one, not so long ago I asked someone why they always criticised Labour (even though they were not well off) and he said “because we had a factory in xyz in the 80’s and the unions came in, cut everyone’s hours and then it shut down because it wasn’t making any money”.
For him, it basically summed up the economic competence of Labour and not much seems to have changed. Lol.
The operative term here is “member-led”.
Most of the current crop of large unions are (small-l) labour cartels that are intent on leveraging a near-monopoly on a given workforce into politically-motivated actions due to the political connections of those running the Union.
Members interests are secondary at best. Remember Grangemouth?
Cllr. David Becket 16th Jul ’15 – 10:29am………………….It would not appear unreasonable for a Londoner caught up in the recent tube strike to expect 50% of Union members to have voted and 40% in favour of the strike, that would appear to those affected to be fair, and we are the party of fairness. It is not legitimate to compare union voting with our broken political system, a system that is very unfair……………….
Ref tube strike…..Nearly 92 per cent of members voted in favour of strike action over both London Underground pay and the transition to running the Tube night. Some 96.5 per cent voted for action short of a strike……
What more do you want? The Tories would like to remove all ‘unions’ of employees. Individuals are weak, no matter how just their cause…
I work in the railway industry where pay, benefits, conditions and job security are pretty fantastic in comparison to say the retail industry with zero hours, prevalent minimum wage and poor working conditions (from experience) yet the railways are highly unionised and in comparison it is a waste of your limited minimum wage to pay subs to the unions representing the retail industry. I can’t help but think unions are not particularly interested in all the workers just the ones where they can win a fight by bringing an industry to its knees and thus having leverage. After all it isn’t really that hard to drive a train but the “shop floor staff” of the railway industry get 30 hour week, voluntary Sunday work hansomley rewarded, the chance to have an extra month off on top of leave through accruing rest days and a 50K salary (people are quick to bemoan fat cat bosses getting rich quick on privatisation of the railways but rarely mention the huge wage bill and halting of progress caused by union demands) whilst the retail industry get 39 hour weeks, unpaid overtime, no shift/unsociable hours/ Sunday allowances, have mandatory Sunday working and take home around 12K . People will comment that I have the benefits because of the unions and yes I might have a few quid less if it was not for them but actually my employer is not a profit maximising monster sticking two fingers up at employees and passengers a like and in terms of improvements for passengers, union demands for extra cash for any new bit of technology or restricting any form of progress seriously hampers the industry. I’m not denying there is not a place for unions but as things stand they appear to be widening the gap between workers pay, condition and lives depending on the leverage they hold in different industries. As liberals this gap should concern us and our involvement and support for unions should seek to address these issues.
@ Paul Howden,
USDAW claims to be the fastest growing union , so clearly workers who join must feel that there is some benefit from paying subscriptions to belong to it.
The recent experience of people I know with unions was that they were useless. Very keen to make a bid noise and do TV interviews but when members need them in a tight corner they are worse than useless.
An insurance policy that paid for a local employment lawyer would have been much more effective. I’m thinking about people with serious terminal medical conditions that a decent union (who were focused on serving its members) would have no problem sorting out. In fairness I can imagine there are one or two Unions who would have done a better job, but often these unions are trying to hold up technology and progress (as Paul Howden points out) which is worse for the employees in the long term.
Paul Barker is correct in his pointing out of the fall in union membership, I believe the more people experience what my friends and family have the less inclined they are to bother.
Paul Howden 17th Jul ’15 – 8:12am ………………I work in the railway industry where pay, benefits, conditions and job security are pretty fantastic in comparison to say the retail industry with zero hours, prevalent minimum wage and poor working conditions (from experience) yet the railways are highly unionised……..
You say “YET the railways are highly unionised”…Perhaps, whilst taking advantage of the ‘pretty fantastic’ conditions, you might consider that they are that way BECAUSE of the unions…. Rail companies, ‘despite’ being lumbered by these nasty unions still seem to make hefty profits l
“you might consider that they are that way BECAUSE of the unions”
Well on the engineering side, it has a lot more to do with the scarcity of skilled staff. I knew some people who left other industries to get significant pay rises on the basis that the skills were hard to come by for the industry. Perhaps Drivers / Train managers (Guards) / buffet carriage staff are different but the maintenance and construction side have often had to pay up to find anyone willing to do the work.
“Rail companies, ‘despite’ being lumbered by these nasty unions still seem to make hefty profits”
What makes a Profit “heafty” for you?
“The recent experience of people I know with unions was that they were useless. Very keen to make a bid noise and do TV interviews but when members need them in a tight corner they are worse than useless.”
My experience has been totally the opposite.
Psi 17th Jul ’15 – 3:52pm…………………What makes a Profit “heafty” for you?………..
Try this…..In its five years as East Coast, the state-run firm returned a little more than £1bn in premiums, as well as several million in profits, to the Treasury……Virgin paid £3.3Billion for the franchise and have promised to far better returns to the government…
I’d say they expect to make a ‘hefty’ profit’….