Following on from a debate on the Theatre Sound Mailing List on unions after a recent Fox News broadcast, I’m posting an article written by Professor Gregor Gall, Professor of Industrial Relations at the University of Hertfordshire, on behalf of the Centre for Research in Employment Studies.
This was in turn sent to me by one Peter Clennell of the British Musuem (at least at the time of sending).
It makes for interesting reading.
Cracking the Perennial Nut: understanding members’ views of their unions
Introduction
‘What’s the union doing about this?’, ‘I pay my subs and getting very little back in return’ and ‘What’s the union ever done for us?’ are examples of common responses of union members to the issues and challenges they come across in their workplaces and working lives. At root here, ‘the union’ is seen as a body external to themselves and an organisation which they believe should work for them on their behalf without much in the way of work and involvement from themselves. The union is seen more like a bought service that is contracted in when there is an emergency of some sort – a bit like phoning a plumber to come round and fix a leak. Even despite the rise of ‘union organising’ which stands in conceptual terms at least in distinction to the latter approach which is known as ‘servicing’, the problem of such membership expectation and inactivity is a seldom discussed one. This problem for unions is arguably more fundamental than any others that unions currently face. It is about the combined issues of membership participation, democracy, effectiveness and responsibility. While it is not an absolute truth, there is much truth in the view that membership participation is likely to make unions more democratic and more effective in a kind of mutually reinforcing, upward spiral. The purpose of this research paper is to examine the roots and contours of this problem of membership expectation and involvement.
Historical and Contemporary Contexts
Historically, many of the first unions in Britain practiced direct democracy rather than representative democracy, whereby all members of the union would meet together in a mass meeting to decide upon policy and courses of action. This was possible as membership numbers were relatively small and located in one place because the union was, for example, the wool workers union of Chorley or the wool workers union of Leyland. However, as unions grew and expanded, particularly as regional and national unions were formed, this method of operation became impractical. Indeed as the employment relationship became more subject to more juridification and as the personnel function of employers became more developed, it seems plausible to suggest that workers would no longer be able to command the breadth and depth of knowledge to operate without a division of labour within unions. The structures and processes of representative democracy and sometime later employed unions officers (often referred to in neutral or pejorative terms as the ‘bureaucracy’ depending on different perspectives) were deployed. Historically, it was at this point that a physical separation of unions as institutions from their members as workers began. Whether ways of operating – such as through representative processes and structures with delegates and elections – could square the circle of the unions’ members controlling those employed by the union and what was done in their names became central issues here. That said, the issue of members treating their membership as a bought in service speaks to an altogether different problem – one which suggests that after unions crossed this Rubicon, they are either a reflection of their members’ passivity or that unions have not been successful in communicating the core message of participation to their members.
Setting out the Issues
There are a number of possible explanations for membership passivity and inactivity:
• A ‘servicing’ approach is promoted by the union and members are recruited on that passive basis
• The overall culture of citizen participation in the organs of civil (non-state) society has been eroded and is now at such a low point
• Membership passivity and activity ebb and flow as waves and tides depending on historical circumstances so the current levels of membership inactivity are not set in stone and not unexpected either
• Members are dissuaded from becoming active in their unions as unions are not welcoming or attractive for potential activists in terms of their culture and structure
• The ‘organising’ approach is insufficient in quantitative and qualitative terms to make any difference to the challenge of achieving more membership activity
• The centrality of work and work identity to workers has declined so that this has a knock-on effect on unions whereby unions are not seen as important players in people’s lives
• The weakness of unions does not make for an attractive recruiting sergeant (and with low worker consciousness, workers are unable to make the leap of logic that if they were more involved in their unions then these unions might become stronger)
This will now be taken each in turn and examined.
Servicing Culture
The premise of the servicing culture, or business unionism as it is sometimes called, is that a (business) service is bought by members and thus delivered by the union as part of a contractual arrangement. In historical terms, some have argued that when there was economic growth, favourable state policy and less employer hostility like in the post-Second World War period until the 1970s, this was a form of unionism that was quite effective in delivering material advances with little membership involvement. In this period, and notwithstanding some exceptions, it seems that both unions and members were willing to acquiesce in a relationship which was far from perfect but was less demanding, and allowed both members and union officials to get on doing what they wanted to do without too much hassle from each other. There are two problems with the servicing approach; one is that it ill prepared the unions for the onset of hostilities from government and employers, and the other is that it is of little use in developing strong unions when government and employers are hostile. Union strength in these times does need membership participation but the disincentives to doing so are higher (in term of an effort-outcome calculation) and there are thus many members who for these reasons and others (ideological, instrumental) are quite happy to be serviced and leave their relationship with their union at that.
Citizenship
Under post-war social democracy and/or periods of acute social crisis conducive to the emergence of new social movements, levels of participation by citizens in the political process (voting, canvassing, campaigning, membership of political parties) as well as their own organisations (unions, community groups, pressure groups and the like) were far higher than they are today. This was despite many of these organisations still being quite hierarchical, dominated by leadership elites and unresponsive to grassroots membership pressure. Since the 1980s, there has been a managerialisation of all types of politics (official and unofficial) so that citizenship participation is now much reduced. This is a result of the increasing penetration of neo-liberalism throughout all parts of society for an important component of the politics of neo-liberalism is that those that are regarded as being ‘entitled’ or ‘suitable’ to hold any posts of influence in society must be those that are qualified and experienced, and this means qualified and experienced in terms of being compatible with – or certainly not very challenging of – neo-liberalism and its claim that business knows best.
Waves of Participation
Historically speaking, membership participation in unions has ebbed and flowed according levels of overall struggle and the impact of the outcomes of those struggles on the morale and confidence of members (i.e., whether defeats or victories broadly speaking). For example and generally speaking, victories tend to encourage further and greater participation because of a positive demonstration effect while defeats the opposite because of failure and retribution from the victor. In this regard, there is nothing particularly unremarkable about the present period of industrial relations in Britain which is one of defeat and retreat in this regard. However, it is the length of this period, lasting as it has from the late 1970s and the continuing rise of neo-liberalism throughout it which mark this period out as unusual and worrying.
Union Environments
Unions are sometimes, with an element of truth, characterised as male, pale, stale and increasingly frail. They are not then particularly representative of their memberships as a whole despite much genuine effort on the part of unions to make themselves so. There is a sense of Catch-22 here for without the participation of these members, especially those underrepresented groups/types, within the union the situation will not change and without more from these groups/types involved, more of their co-members will not become more active and involved. Affirmative action and positive discrimination have not broken through this ceiling. But setting aside this issue of the representation of minorities, most of the obvious majority constituencies of individual unions (which themselves vary) are women and men (regardless of other attributes) and here neither is active in their unions in very high proportionate terms. Within this, it is probably the case that women are less active in proportionate terms for there are quite a few unions where the majority of members are women but men predominate in terms of activists and leaders. Some of the reasons commonly cited for the under-representation of women in term of the environment being unwelcoming concern macho-cultures, the incursion of family responsibilities and the like. It is unlikely that the issues of unrepresentative and unwelcoming environments are the crux to explaining paucity of participation. Sure, they do not help but they are arguably secondary to other explanations offered here for there have been occasions when these barriers have not constituted the obstacles they seem to be. So, it seems reasonable to conclude that they are rather more likely to be symptomatic than casual of other factors.
Union Organising
This issue has been covered extensively in previous research reports. Suffice it to say, whether for reasons of quality of union organising and/or quantity of resources dedicated to it, union organising does not seem capable of delivering upon its promise of self-organised workplaces and empowered members, i.e., far more active members of unions and in all their diversities. This would seem to be because in the current circumstances, the objective of union organising here is far too ambitious, in addition to which it can be questioned whether the top of a union can regenerate the bottom of a union in this way.
Centrality of Work
The balance between work, consumerism and leisure in people’s lives in society has changed over the last few decades. Work is no less central to people’s lives in terms of the time it occupies but for many at the lower end of the labour market, it does not provide the same form of identity and affiliation that it used to. Part of this is attributable to the declining control that working people have over their working lives when at work, and the rise in job insecurity so that working in one job or form for a long time is less and less common. Part And, just because there is not more time for leisure does not mean that the desire for leisure, particularly that associated with consumerism, is not now more feted than ever before. The consequence of this is that in preferred meaningful terms work is less central to workers now that for a long time as a badge of identity. In a sense, the attempt to escape from work through various ways is probably now greater than for a long time before – and the route to escape from work is not necessarily work itself in terms of working hard or long hours to pay for things that make work bearable like holidays etc. None of this suggests that workers are more likely to engage in participation in their unions because work is no longer of the same importance or the same means to an ends.
Union Weakness
Union weakness does not make for the most attractive recruiting sergeant for active union members, and with low worker consciousness, the vast majority of union members are unwilling or unable to make the leap of logic that if they were more involved in their unions then these unions might become stronger. It is clear to many on a cost-benefit analysis that becoming active in a union is a risky business – not necessarily because of possible victimisation but more so in terms of the high risk that the personal effort, time and emotion put in is unlikely to yield a good return. Here, good return is not about personal gain but rather collective gain. Therefore, many conclude that doing so is not worth it at the moment or for the time being.
Solutions to Problems
There is no single set of magic solutions to these problems which manifest themselves as members saying ‘What’s the union doing about this?’, ‘I pay my subs and getting very little back in return’ and ‘What’s the union ever done for us?’. Even the old adage that people’s consciousness changes through (collective) struggle does not help us understand why and when they might struggle in the first place and how this helps change their consciousness. Yet there are some things that unions and existing activists can do to begin lessening the problems they face here. One is to constantly and consistently explain to new and existing members that joining a union is akin to joining a club, and clubs only function, and function effectively, on the basis of membership participation. Membership fees entitle and oblige participation. Membership confers both rights and responsibilities. The point here is to actively shape member expectations of what they put in and what they get out (and the link between the two) by not allowing these expectations to seem too one-sided, i.e., the union – as an external body – can get you this or that etc. What is really being discussed here is the brand of the union and how this is being sold. This task of achieving membership participation is one that has much better chances of succeeding if there are also actual demonstrations in practice that collective action is evidently productive. However, expectations of unions and their activists also need to be tempered so that these are not dashed for it will never be the case that all or even a majority of members are highly active other than in the most exceptional circumstances. Another is to be careful in the use of the term ‘the union’. It is common for even those supporting and working towards greater membership participation in unions to use a language of ‘the union’ as in ‘the union makes us strong’. Here, the union can still seem like an external, third party. Consequently, the use of language needs to be titled more towards ‘we the members, we ourselves are the union’ and ‘the union is us’. Although changing the language does not change the social reality, it may act as a spur to workers and members identifying and understanding the need and their obligation to do so.
