Interesting piece.

1: The “Bridlington” principles are still largely in force and should always prevail in most cases of overlap. There are not too many cases that I know of where unions are fighting each other to organise. You cannot discount inter-union rivalry happening at grass-roots level where workers dissatisfied with the behaviour of a rogue official or the position taken by a national leadership decide to up-sticks and join another union – I see that happening fairly frequently and we should not stand in the way of that as you have highlighted. But the problems of official “poaching” were more of a problem in the days of Sir Ken Jackson’s sweetheart deals and nowadays most unions seem to have a fairly good idea of where they can and can’t go. The bigger problem recruiting members on non-union workplaces that I have come across is an aversion to joining any union whatsoever, not because of a problem over which one to join.

2. The “union for life” idea is nothing new for some unions. Most unions are continuing to move apace to Direct Debit away from employer-side check-off arrangements to make it easier for members to stay in the fold and maintain a direct relationship away from the workplace. The GMB use “membership for life” in my region as a strapline already ( http://www.gmbnorthern.org.uk/dpart-member.html ).

Meanwhile the old Steel and Ceramic unions have changed their names to cuddly generic titles to try become “community unions” with mixed degrees of success. I used to work in the Ceramics union – now Unity. The problem is that most workers locally still know the union as being the pottery industry, and therefore a union that basically entirely failed to halt the wholesale destruction of the industry caused by the rampant rush to move production abroad. Whilst the vagaries of globalisation and New Labours obsession with keeping us the most easy people to sack in the whole of Europe are not lost on people around here, they still believed the union didn’t put up enough of a fight to save jobs moving abroad then, so why should they think it would be different in future?

3. We can all agree with this. Fact is, in spite of the common belief amongst many so-called expert commentators that people want “moderate” trade unions, the reality is that they will only join a strong and combative union that is prepared to stand up and fight. This idea that people will join a union if we can convince them that we’re not going to force them out on strike is now discredited by the stats which show huge membership increases recorded by the likes of the RMT in recent years, and also the large surge of membership growth around the big November 30 action. Unions don’t need to win a PR battle to appear reasonable to the political bubbles, they need to simply be able to show some backbone and people will join.

Cheers

Bring on the ad hominem attacks? What a short-sighted approach. Make it personal and the union leaders will seem like 1970s dinosaurs.

You missed one:

4. Disaffiliate from the Labour Party (if you haven’t already done so), and stop subsidising the neo-liberal coat-tail-riders in the PLP. Consider only contributing to the campaigns of MPs/MSPs/AMs with proven records of solidarity with workers (especially unionised ones); that way, honourable politicians such as John McDonnell wouldn’t lose out, but the ‘golden parachute’ brigade would have to swim for themselves (with the assistance of their wealthy temporary ‘friends’ in the ‘business communty’). And make it clear that your union will not make any subvention to the Labour Party at central level until it returns to its original premise; defending the exploited against the exploiters.

@3

Of the 58 trade unions in the UK, only 15 are affiliated to the Labour Party, and even then the degree of actual money that changes hands varies greatly from union to union and most are already doing (or at least moving towards) what you demand in terms of only assisting MPs that support union policy.

No disrespect to you, but many on the left keep on demanding an abstract “break from New Labour” without actually understanding the actual state of play on the ground, or heaven forbid offering a serious and established political alternative actually grounded in local communities for union political funds to be sent to instead.

The unions are in decline for a number of reasons, not least their vehement self interest.
This is best displayed of late by the attitude of the two extreme teacher unions NUT & NASUWT. Never a mention of the pupils, who we pay them to teach, in any of their utterances

The last hiding place of the unions is the public sector. When National bargaining is removed they will also decline and eventually disappear.
To the satisfaction of most in the uK

On a more basic level unions need to look at how they work internally. Management levels, management techniques and the use of professional staff are often antiquated and very poor. The integration of professional staff, full-time release members and the membership needs to be better managed, probably at the cost of a certain amount of middle-management and an increase in front-line staff. Initiatives need to be better planned and to flow from a strategic plan rather than reacting to events as often happens.

And, from a personal perspective, Unison need to get rid of Dave Prentis as he’s a waste of space.

But John, the NUT and NASUWT are not in decline – their membership is pretty stable (as is the RMT) – funnily enough unions that stand up for themselves (“vehement self interest”) can do quite well.

In order to be successful, the unions need to break from their own narrow self interest and the ambitions of their leaderships and try to represent both their members and the people they see as potential members. In many ways, they should emulate a supermarket chain, providing what their customers actually want and offering something to potential customers. This is not a “top down” approach and never involves coercion.

Somehow, JC, I suspect you have never been involved in recruiting members to join unions – “In order to be successful, the unions need to break from their own narrow self interest” is just a rubbish pitch to sign up new members. I can tell you why people join unions – they join because they are asked to by a steward or office rep, and the basic talk is always about sticking together with your workmates so you can protect eachother if the boss turns nasty, and push together for better conditions. “Join the union. We are like a supermarket, we will supply whatever you want, but we won’t represent your interests” – this isn’t just a wrong way to recruit members, it is plain potty.

9. Solomon Hughes.

I have been a union rep for 2 trade unions in my time and have been very successful in recruiting members. In fact, I was the standard bearer for my union in a march through central London and was shown on both BBC and ITN news.

My feeling is that unions have, like political parties, become too “Top Down” and not enough “Bottom Up”. This, together with the partisanship, leaves outsiders cold.

I used to be a union rep, but when I lost my job, I lost this role. Although still a member of my union, I have no voice. There must be many unemployed or retired union members who are a potential source of expertise within their unions and who could be of great use. For example, wherever a member is facing a meeting with management, we could take some of the burden off existing reps by being available to accompany the member and take notes.