My personal experience of unions is anything but good.

A few years back I worked for a local council in England. When Labour where running the council, they could, and frequently did do whatever they wanted. Workers – especially those at the bottom – were treated like shit. Complaints to the union would be met with “but you’ve got to see the big picture, we can’t do anything otherwise the tories’ll get in”. When the Lib Dems were in control, the unions would pick the tiniest little things to cause trouble about – frequently things that workers at the bottom were left scratching their heads about in puzzlement about why this was seen as an issue at all.

To many unions are far too interested in politics, and nowhere near interested enough in the real issues that give their members cause for concern.

Sadly, I have no reasons for believing that this will change in the forseeable future.

The thing is, there already was a big trend in the unions to try and shift from a position where “unions are still mostly orientated towards firms and workplaces” to one oriented on “workers directly” – this was the “Service Unionism” of the eighties and nineties that tried to focus on providing individual legal advice, insurance, health insurance and the like to members , more than workplace focussed activity – and to relating to those members through home addresses, rahter than workplace meetings and circulars. And this trend did not help resist the loss of union members to shifting employment or agressive employers at all. It just tied up lots of union time to servicing a passive membership, rather than mobilising an active membership – And cosnequently certainly didn’t help decline.

this is hardly surprising, as the strength of the union is in it’s members, not its machine, and you need to find a place where you can get the members together.

By contrast, unions that stood up for members , and organised those members collectively in workplaces, in activity – including reaching out to new workplaces – have show they can do quite well – consider for example the RMT, organising in the depots and stations, and organising new workplaces – like cleaners. Equally, I know that there isn’t a single union involved in the recent workplace based activity known as strikes that hasn’t recruited more members.

- Certainly, there is a case for making sure members who move from workplace to workplace are more efficiently put in touch with the union representation at their new workplace. And there is a very powerful need to have some real organising drives to build unions outside of their current strongholds, but given past experience, I’d be very wary of thinking a “service model” is an answer.

Seeing as collective bargaining is one of the key purposes of a Union, what then, is the point of unions for self-employed persons who have no (evil, capitalist, fat cat, pig dog (have I covered all the bases?)) boss to bargain with?

“The case for unions isn’t just about working class solidarity” – strongly disagree – trade unions are very much a working class phenomena driven historically by poor conditions, poor pay, or other forms of exploitation.

The professional class (lawyers, doctors, accountants, etc) agitate in a different way, essentially using specialist knowledge as a bargaining lever in the market place.

Unions can’t be all things to all people and I really think it is time we put an embargo on meaningless phrases like modernisation – after all it has already been said “with all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than any other association of men”.

“what then, is the point of unions for self-employed persons ”

People who are self employed could easily need the help of an organisation that could help with things like; contract disputes, navigating the tax/welfare system (massive problem when self-employed people get ill), legal stuff etc.

Sunny, those 3 points are spot on. I’d add that they need to stop supporting the labour party and focus more on camapaigning over issues – coalface’s comment is entirely correct.

You should be arguing for better unions, not stronger unions.

A strong, but useless union is no help to anyone.

A strong, but dogmatic union that refuses to be reasonable is even worse. It’s not without reason that most Londoners would probably be quietly pleased if something unpleasant happened to Bob Crow.

In all things, there needs to be sensible compromise between all parties – not the persistent war of attrition that some of the stronger unions seem to prefer.

I used to be a member of a union – today I am not, and I can’t see myself joining what was frankly, just another layer of management getting in the way of doing my job.

I want unions to be more like the CAB, a resource that people can use when they need it – not some dogmatic bureaucracy that just seeks to tie staff and management up in red-tape.

It is quite a common mantra on the left to argue for unions to modernise, to recruit into new private services sector jobs, to organise the self-employed and thereby to magically re-politicise the masses towards, err, whatever it is we are all aiming for.

A lot of work has and is being done with well-trained young organisers being churned out by the TUC every year and sent out to the industrial estates to try to redress the balance and give a voice to the voiceless. But having stood on those bleak warehouse and call-centre gates at 5am trying to engage with people and encourage collective spirit for many years myself, I can tell you it is far easier said than done. There are successes but still there is little large-scale movement towards trade unionism from the many being shafted in the modern private sector.

It’s very easy to say what needs to be done, but quite another actually achieving it and carrying it through. The NUJ, as pointed out in the article, represents many thousands of freelance journalists, assisting with chasing cash and other legal queries, as well as providing a collective voice for common areas of concern. The RMT is a fabulous example of a strong and well-organised craft union covering distinct grades of staff and using their power to full-effect. It is, I believe, certainly easier for distinct craft unions to offer a clearer voice and concentrate on the industrial issues than it is for the super-unions.

Certainly people will only join a union they see actually achieving something tangible. And I think we all know that, away from the small-scale legal wins unions may secure using our final remaining weak and patchy employment rights, the only tried and tested method to winning for members is through united and decisive collective industrial action. To give any illusion otherwise is dishonest and will not lead to membership growth.

I do think that the main problem facing unions is the unfavourable legal system and the greater individualism of members. The Thatcher legislation banned the closed shop, which means that non-members can free-ride and benefit from union-negotiated terms and conditions in a workplace where there’s collective bargaining. It is amazing how right-wingers get annoyed at people on social security “free riding” by getting benefits when they may not have worked – but don’t realise that non-union pepole in unionised workplaces do this all the time!

In terms of links w/ Labour, given it was the Tories that brought in the anti-union laws of the 80s and 90s (and are still threatening to bring in more) and Labour that brought in the last significant pro-organised-labour legislation (Trade Union and Employment Rights Act 1974, I think) I am not surprised trade unions are pro-Labour. Also, if big business is giving money to the Tories – it is appropriate that their ‘opponents’ (organised labour) support the Tories’ strongest opponents (Labour).

Another case where the law has hampered unions (and their ability to fight for the low-paid in particular) is the ban on secondary action. The contracting-out of things like social care, cleaning, catering etc has meant it is difficult to organise unions to push wages up in these low-paid, predominantly female sectors. Secondary action would mean that stronger sections of the workforce (say the directly-employed staff in a gov’t dept) could take industrial action in solidarity with the workforce for a bad contractor. This would make it more likely the people in the contractor would be able to win their dispute and get better terms and conditions.

The case for unions isn’t just about working class solidarity – it is very much about better living standards and wages for working people.

No, its about gaining better living standards and wages for working people through working class solidarity.

New Labour just doesn’t get it.

A union movement perceived as being mostly for public sector workers can be easily painted as ‘out of touch’ and being for additional government spending when most people’s budgets are being squeezed.

So what are you arguing here – that public sector unions should keep their traps shut? The reason public sector unions are in the public eye is that the current government is continuing the previous administration’s war of attrition on their job numbers and pensions.

What the unions need to do is distance themselves from their traditional enemies, including the Labour Party, which has been nothing but a parasite on union funds for decades.

@ 5. Planeshift

“People who are self employed could easily need the help of an organisation that could help with things like; contract disputes, navigating the tax/welfare system (massive problem when self-employed people get ill), legal stuff etc.”

So, as far as I can see it, from what you’ve listed, none of them require a union to do.

1. Lawyers/Solicitors exist for this reason, negotiating contracts, settling disputes, etc. Your counter will no doubt be “but lawyers are expensive, a union lawyer would be cheaper”, there are two problems with this; 1. lawyers are expensive because the law is complicated, simplify laws and lawyers can’t justify the rates they currently do i.e. it’s a government problem and 2. yeah, a union lawyer would be cheaper for someone who uses the service a lot, but there are going to be people who rarely use it/who are low down on the queue for the union legal service, they will be paying their union subs for nothing, i.e., limited use means hiring a solicitor/lawyer is cheaper.

2. The fact that people need help navigating the bureaucracy tells us that the system isn’t working as intended. Fix the system and you can reduce a whole boat load of costs instead of just adding something to the mess. Since the government controls tax and benefits, this is a government problem.

3. Getting ill and losing income is a risk of being self-employed, if it is short term (nasty flu, colds, etc.) illness then the individual needs to try and budget for it or work through it. If it is long term illness then there is health insurance to mitigate some of the damage of not working.

4. Legal stuff, see answer 1.

@12 – you’ve given a list of things for government to do as reasons why a union isn’t necessary. Here’s some news – the Government have no intention of doing any of the things you say, so there is a need for an organisation such as a union to do it.

Your argument is like saying we shouldn’t bother having legal aid because if the government simplified the legal system then anybody could understand it.

Interesting article Sunny. There’s an important and underexplored issue relating to the continuing decline of unions and that’s the diminishing working class representation in the Labour Party at all levels and failing levels of social capital in working class areas. The blue collar unions have traditionally played a key role in developing the key skills of their members, skills that are useful in the workplace but are vital in the wider community. Through involvement with their union branches generations of working class men and women have developed skills in advocacy, negotiation, public speaking and organisation. TUC studies have demonstrated that for years these shop stewards and activists have employed these skills in supporting their wider community through volunteering (anyone remember the Big Society?) and, of course, in their local CLPs.
However, unions have for too long ignored the new industries and in the newly privatised sectors to the detriment of workers and to the communities from where those workers are drawn. I don’t think it’s so much a case of ‘modernising’ though. If anything unions need to explore ways in which they can return to being a focal point for working class communities and again become a real and relevant voice for these communities. To do this unions have a choice to make: either invest massively in organising new sectors of the economy or merely manage decline.

@12 – On your second point, you are grossly underestimate lawyers fees.

I saw a guy made redundant unfairly who refused point blank to join the NUJ in his 10 years of work, mainly because he “retained his own lawyers” – his words and your argument.

Within a few weeks of this happening, he phones me up shamelessly asking if I would be prepared to sit in on his appeal if he “joined the union today” as, naturally, solicitors are not legally allowed to sit in on internal disciplinary and dismissal procedures.

On further exploration, it transpired he had already spent more than £500 on the preliminary legal advice and letters for his appeal to his solicitors. At the precise time he was facing an uncertain financial future. He could have been in the union for five years for that sum of money, and not had to shell it out all at once either.

The point of union legal protection is that you get it at the precise time you need it – when you are facing potential destitution and cannot realistically afford to pay for lawyers.

Anyone who claims that paying for a private lawyer is somehow cheaper and better than paying just over a tenner a month to a trade union is lying.

A couple of other points – I think “IanVisits” couldn’t be more wrong about the RMT – the union has grown because it organises its members in the workplace who then win things for themselves. Far from being a bad model, it is a good model for growth – the RMT has notably started organising cleaners on trains and stations as well, so broadening membership.

On “Working Class Solidarity” , of course this is all about winning better conditions – the casualised, unorganised , ethnically divided dockers turned themselves into a group with a strong sense of solidarity in pursuit of the “Dockers Tanner” (that is , the Dockers Sixpence, a sixpence an hour rate). The Matchgirls fought together for better wages and better health and safety. But this kind of union soldarity does not exclude some very “Middle Class” professions – the strongest unions in the recent pensions strikes are the teachers unions.

On self employed membership – of course unions should allow and encourage self employed people to hang on to membership, because they are drawn into the workplace alongside employed people , and unions need to be able to draw them in to action on , say , a health and safety or a rate-for-the-job issue. This is particularly important in some industries – from journalism to construction. But the organisation of self employed – and also casual and temp labour, is done around a core workplace membership – that’s still the key.

Interesting that you should show that the public sector is better paid than the private sector (“Hourly average earnings of union members were 16.7 per cent more than that of non-members, according to the Labour Force Survey in 2010.” and “public sector employees accounted for 62.4 per cent of union members”.) I thought that you often argued that this was not the case.

My personal view, having been a union organiser in a few of the places I have worked, is that unions need to become federations of localised staff associations. The idea of a national rate is irrelevant as the local wage varies around the country. Those areas with economic challenges are often the ones where unionised rates are vastly out of kilter with the local economy.

@13.

Was it not the Napoleonic code that said that laws should comprehensible to the layman so that he knows when something is illegal or not?

I am just saying that adding something doesn’t necessarily solve the problem, it may even exacerbate it for other people.

@15.

I know legal fees are expensive.

I am saying that there is a point at which the cumulative union sub will be greater than the cost of a single case, essentially this is the rent vs. buy argument. For example*, If it takes 10 years for union subs to hit that amount and a person only uses the union’s legal service once in that time then no loss, if they use it more than once then they have benefited but if they never use it then the union member is spending money on nothing.

* completely hypothetical – just trying to illustrate the point.

” the union member is spending money on nothing.”

Not really, he gets the benefit of others securing their rights and thus means the law gets enforced and employers know they can’t take the piss.

I’ve never had to call the police – does that mean I haven’t benefited from the existence of them?

I am saying that there is a point at which the cumulative union sub will be greater than the cost of a single case, essentially this is the rent vs. buy argument. For example*, If it takes 10 years for union subs to hit that amount and a person only uses the union’s legal service once in that time then no loss, if they use it more than once then they have benefited but if they never use it then the union member is spending money on nothing.

This is an argument against insurance.

@ 19.

“Not really, he gets the benefit of others securing their rights and thus means the law gets enforced and employers know they can’t take the piss.”

I thought we were talking about self-employed people.

“I’ve never had to call the police – does that mean I haven’t benefited from the existence of them?”

Apples and oranges. The police’s work isn’t solely responding to call outs. Very few lawyers are seen wandering the streets (ambulance chasers excluded) looking for infractions of the law so that they can make a case and draw their fee.

@ 20.

Shhh! Yeah, I know its risk mitigation. My original point was “The system as is makes legal costs high, why create something to facilitate access for a few people when you can benefit more people by fixing the system”

Bobski,

Shhh! Yeah, I know its risk mitigation. My original point was “The system as is makes legal costs high, why create something to facilitate access for a few people when you can benefit more people by fixing the system”

I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive, and I’m inclined to agree with Planeshift @13; I imagine specialists in law will always be needed and the law will never be so simple that it will result in lawyers being affordable to everyone.

here’s an interesting argument about unions

Since the early 1990s, all actors in the US political system have understood that policies that increase unit labor costs risk a response by the “inflation fighting” central bank, whose “credibility” was swaggeringly defined as a willingness to provoke recession rather than risk inflation. In this environment, the decline of labor unions and their shift in focus from wage growth to working conditions was understandable. If workers won on wages, they would lose when the recession put them out of work. As long as wages were contained, monetary policy was “accommodative”, and workers could supplement their purchasing power with borrowings and asset appreciation.

that probably translates to the UK too.

from the first article in my stack here:

http://delicious.com/stacks/view/GFGCCk

“Apples and oranges. The police’s work isn’t solely responding to call outs. Very few lawyers are seen wandering the streets (ambulance chasers excluded) looking for infractions of the law so that they can make a case and draw their fee.”

Everybody benefits from the law being enforced, and part of that involves lawyers. I’ve never sued anybody, but I benefit from the fact other people have taken legal action and demonstrated the law is enforced. (It works the other way as well with bad laws, I’ve never injured anybody but I still pay increased car insurance due to the over-use of personal injury lawsuits)

“I thought we were talking about self-employed people.”

Who have benefited from the fact that contracts regarding fees they get paid can be enforced in law, their clients can’t beat the shit out of them or order them to do dangerous things etc. (in any case from a personal development point of view it’s always a good idea to view everybody as self-employed – those with a job have simply chosen to work for one client)

A&E nurse: “strongly disagree – trade unions are very much a working class phenomena driven historically by poor conditions, poor pay, or other forms of exploitation.”

I refer you to the actual stats in my piece – ‘Middle income earners are now a larger percentage of union members than lower-income workers earning less than £250 a week.’

Re: the self-employed argument. I suppose it really depends on the industry. My experience of being in the the NUJ is that there is a lot a union can do for self-employed union members as the media often uses self-employed labour alongside full-time. In construction, its the case that the unions defend essentially self-employed contracts as that it the way the work is often handed out.

Given the way the labour market is going, I would have thought that unions should take up the case of self-employed, casualised, part-time workers, which can also play a role defending full time terms and conditions.

I’d go further and call for a union for unemployed people and other claimants. Many paid their dues as union members, also the division between employed/unemployed can be divisive, and attacks on unemployed people undermine often pave the way for attacks on employed.

Lastly, the arguments about “what did the union ever do for me” are even more reason for people to get involved, including fighting to democratise the unions and make them more attuned to their members needs.

I fully agree, Sunny. I do have my concerns about some unions. Unison being a public sector union realised it would be under pressure with the Coalition plans and in anticipation created five new Assistant Gen Sec level jobs instead of recruiting into the chronically understaffed regional offices who have to service the branches. While the union has seen a huge increase in membership, paid staff have increasingly unmanageable workloads. The new senior staff at Mabledon Place seem to have had very little effect.

Cynics might say it looks like a bit of featherbedding for Prentis’ mates before the shit hits the fan. It is an almost incomprehensible move under the circumstances.

Certainly one aspect of modernisation I would like to see in Unison is a Gen Sec and senior staff who come from a later era than the Jurassic.

[25] £250pw equates to a gross annual income of £13k – there are many working class men and women earning not much than this but presumably fall into the ‘middle income’ category.

Anyway, what does ‘middle income’ mean, the average wage in the UK is around £26k.

How about modelling our unions on German unions i.e. industry-wide rather than craft-based?

You people should read this book:

http://mises.org/books/bargaining.pdf

“It is now a given that people move from job to job during their lifetimes.”

It won’t be once we build socialism. The current capitalist settlement is far weaker than you think. I don’t doubt that in 100 years the red flag will fly in every country.