Reaching the missing millions

The report of the TUC’s Promoting Trade Unionism Task Group

Contents

• Foreword by John Monks
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The state of the unions
• Chapter 2: Who should we be trying to recruit?
• Chapter 3: How should unions appeal to new members?
• Chapter 4: What can the TUC do?

Foreword by John Monks

In 1999 Congress debated a document called Meeting the Millennial Challenge. Perhaps provocatively, it was subtitled Can Britain’s unions seize the moment?

It covered a wide range of pressing union concerns, and posed five questions for wide debate in the movement:

o How do we give more priority to organising?

o How do we get more, and better, workplace reps?

o Can we get a better structure?

o How can we handle inter-union relations?

o How can we promote trade unionism?

On most of these we have made steady, if not always spectacular, progress.

The continuing emphasis given to organising is reflected in the record numbers of new voluntary recognitions. Unions, and the TUC, are providing more support for reps. The TUC’s innovatory new weekly email bulletin Risks for Health and Safety reps is just one example. These however are two areas where we can, and should, do more.

Structure was perhaps the most controversial issue. Some seemed to think that Congress House had a secret plan for shotgun marriages, or that we could see no role for specialist unions. This was never the case. The question was whether we could do more to encourage existing trends. And indeed there have been many positive developments. There are important mergers about to come to fruition, and there are significant discussions in sectors as diverse as finance and teaching about closer links.

Inter-union relations will no doubt always occupy more time within the TUC’s inner circles that anyone would like. Yet we have agreed new rules, and the new network of union officers able to get involved at an early stage has worked well. In particular unions have worked together to make a success of the new statutory recognition procedures. This is another area where there is still progress to be made, in particular in speeding up some of our processes.

But what about the final challenge? How can the TUC do more to promote trade unionism?

To a large extent this is the TUC’s core business. We are always seeking to ensure trade unionism receives a high and positive profile in the media. We campaign and lobby to ensure that our objectives and values are reflected in decision making by public bodies. Every piece of polling in recent years suggests that unions enjoy high levels of popular support - a finding confirmed by the research reported later in this document.

But as the research also shows, wide support for trade unionism is proving harder to turn into membership. People at work are glad to see us lobbying for more employee protection. They backed us when we won better parental leave rights by taking the government to the European Court, but too many think that while unions are a ‘good thing’ they are not relevant to them. 'The union did a great job for my dad, but it’s not for me' is the kind of statement you will hear in any focus group. It sums up much of our problem.

This is not to say that union membership trends are all bad news. Membership fell continuously throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s but the official figures show that we are now holding firm, and even experiencing some small increase. Considering the number of manufacturing jobs lost in recent years - a sector where unions are relatively strong - this is a real achievement.

However we cannot afford to be complacent. That is why the General Council set up the Promoting Trade Unionism Task Group. Its brief was to examine trends, commission research and consultancy and investigate whether there were new initiatives the TUC could take to build union membership and recruitment.

This is its report. It stands in addition to the formal report presented with the rest of the General Council report, where the Task Group’s membership and work programme is described.

We have been much assisted by outside advisers. We are very grateful to those who gave of their time and expertise to sit on the Task Group - Richard Freeman, Will Hutton, David Pitt-Watson, Chris Powell, Nadya Kassam, Ben Monks and Mark Atkinson.

We also appointed a strategic brand consultancy, Butterfield8, to advise the task group, conduct opinion research and make recommendations on initiatives the TUC might take to promote trade unionism. We are very grateful to Leslie Butterfield and Helen Edwards from Butterfield8 and their research colleague Chris Forrest. This report includes their recommendations as well as those contributed by the Task Group.

This report is hard-hitting, and does not pull any punches. We have not attempted to gloss over the problems we face. But we do so in a spirit of optimism. Trade unions remain Britain’s largest voluntary organisations and a powerful force for good. Unions are already doing much to modernise their structures, reach out to new members and improve the services they offer. We highlight just some of these stories throughout this report. We could have included many more.

And while there are many worrying trends reported here, there is also good news. The new recognition law is making union organising easier. New legal rights such as the right to be accompanied in disciplinary and grievance hearings give even more value to the union card. The European Directive on Information and Consultation will introduce works councils into all large and medium firms in Britain. The spread of partnership industrial relations is attractive both to potential members and employers.

Much of the analysis and research presented here stands in its own right. We hope that it can help affiliated unions as much as it does the TUC in looking at our future strategy. Indeed it is worth emphasising at this point that recruitment and organisation is the responsibility of each and every union. The TUC may be able to help, but it can never substitute.

In this spirit, this report sets out some interim proposals from the consultancy we commissioned on specific initiatives the TUC might take that can help people along the road from non-membership to membership by changing both their experience and perception of unions.

They are undoubtedly challenging. They suggest some radical new directions for the TUC. As might be imagined they have provoked a lively debate on the General Council. Some say they are vital if we are to regenerate trade unionism. Others are more cautious, saying they start to confuse the role between the role of individual unions and the TUC, or are simply too ambitious.

It should be stressed that no final decisions have been taken. The General Council will consider the proposals made in this document in detail at its strategy session in October.

But we hope this document does more than provide an opportunity to share the research available to the task group. The aim is to provoke wide discussion, not just of the ideas suggested here, but any that help unions and the TUC promote union membership and influence.

John Monks

General Secretary

Introduction

If we are to promote trade unionism, then we need to start with a cool look at where we stand today. Unless we know what the trends are, then we can do little to reinforce the positive or reverse the negative.

This report gathers together a great deal of research about the state of unions today, the attitudes of members and non-members and trends in the labour market.

There were four main research sources available to the task force:

• The official Labour Force Survey asks a series of questions about union membership every year. This is a sample survey, involving 120,000 people. It provides a great amount of ‘big picture’ statistics through which we can track membership and the profile of union members by gender, age and ethnicity. While the research series only goes back to 1989, it does mean we can examine change over more than a decade.

• The Workplace Employee Relations Survey is another major official research project. This periodic survey was last conducted in 1998. It conducts detailed interviews with both managers and staff in a representative sample of workplaces that employ more than 25 staff (though it added some smaller workplaces in its most recent survey). It is a rich source of information about relationships at work, union organisation and personnel and human resources practices.

• Jeremy Waddington of The School of Management at UMIST has conducted a great deal of survey work among union members, former union members and non-members in unionised workforces. The research he presented to the Task Group was drawn from some 70,000 completed questionnaires.

• Professor Richard Freeman and his colleagues at the London School of Economics undertook the most substantial survey conducted for many years on attitudes to work and relationships at the workplace during the summer of 2001. This was supported by the TUC. The results only became available a few days before this report went to press, but we have been able to incorporate some of its findings. It is a rich set of data from which we, and others, will be able to draw many further insights. In the rest of this report, it is referred to as the LSE survey. (One technical note - because of the time scale the data presented is unweighted, but it is unlikely that the figures will vary by very much once the weighted data is available.)

• Qualitative research work - so-called focus groups - commissioned by the Task Force as part of the work of the consultancy appointed by the Task Group.

We are grateful to all those who presented their work to the Task Group. The TUC - and not the named researchers - have drawn up the reports of their work given here. Any errors introduced are ours.

Gathering this research has been a useful exercise, and will stimulate much discussion, but it is what we do with it that will matter in the long term.

This report therefore highlights some questions and challenges that have arisen during discussion on the Task Group that need discussion in the movement.

It also contains an outline of the recommendations for specific TUC initiatives that were recommended by Butterfield8. As John Monks says in his foreword, no decisions have been taken about whether or how the TUC proceeds with these. Before the special General Council considers them in October, we hope they will be widely discussed within - and without - the trade union movement.

Chapter 1: The state of the unions

This first chapter tries to draw out an objective picture of where unions are today. If we are to develop ways of building membership and influence we need to know where we are strong and where we are weak, why people join unions and why they leave, what types of people join unions and what types of jobs they do.

Union membership in 2000 - a snapshot

The Labour Force Survey shows union membership increased by 60,000 from 1999 to 2000. Total union membership on this measure now stands at 7.3 million - this includes staff associations and unions not affiliated to the TUC such as the RCN.

The TUC’s own membership figures show a small decline in membership among affiliated unions of 25,000 (0.4 per cent) over the last year. Since 1989 TUC membership has fallen by 1.9 million (22 per cent).

The increase in membership over the last year is mainly due to part-time women employees. Union membership amongst this group increased by more than 100,000. As a result, union density amongst women part-time workers increased to 23 per cent and to 29 per cent for women as a whole. This is the first time density amongst women employees has increased since the LFS began to measure union membership in 1989.

The figures also show:

• the proportion of white-collar workers in unions (30 per cent) is greater than that of blue-collar workers (29 per cent).
• union density amongst men is down - from 31 per cent to 30 per cent - as a result of fewer full-time men in union membership. This is partly due to the loss of 110,000 manufacturing jobs in the last year.
• of the seven million union members, 5.7 million work full-time (32 per cent of all full-time employees) and 1.3 million work part-time (21 per cent of all part-time employees).
• union density increases rapidly with age. Four in ten (38 per cent) of employees in their forties were union members while only one in five (19 per cent) of 20 year olds is in a union.
• Welsh employees are still the most likely to be in a union (40 per cent). Employees living in the southeast and eastern region are least likely (23 per cent).
• professional employees, teachers, social workers, scientists and engineers, are most likely to be union members. Half of all professional employees (50 per cent) are in a union, compared to only one in ten (11 per cent) in sales.
• Black and Asian employees (24 per cent) are less likely to be in a trade union than white employees (30 per cent). But the difference flows from different unionisation rates among men and women. Women have similar density rates whatever their ethnicity, with white women at 29 per cent and black and Asian women at 27 per cent. The same figures for men however are 30 per cent and 23 per cent.

Where union members live - union density by region

Region	Union density
Wales	40%
North East	39%
North West	35%
Scotland	35%
Yorkshire & Humberside	32%
East Midlands	30%
West Midlands	30%
GB	29%
South West	26%
London	24%
South East	23%
Eastern	23%

Union density by occupation

occupation	union density
Professionals	50%
Associate professional	43%
Plant and machine operatives	37%
Craft and related	31%
Personal and protective	28%
Less skilled	26%
Clerical & secretarial	24%
Managers and administrators	19%
Sales	11%

The LSE survey adds one further interesting nugget.

· 44 per cent of trade unionists have jobs where they supervise or manage staff compared to 38 per cent of non-union members.

There are more details about union membership in the Trade Union Trends report 01/03 Today’s trade unionists available from the TUC.

Membership trends

If this is a snapshot of union membership today, how did we get here? According to the Labour Force survey, trade union membership fell throughout the 1990s but this has now been reversed. Last year’s increase followed a 100,000 rise reported in 1999.

But figure one underlines that this is no cause for complacency. Instead of absolute numbers of members this shows the proportion of the workforce in unions (or union density as statisticians call it). After sharply falling, density now seems to have levelled off. The small increases in membership reflect the growth in employment. You would expect union membership to grow if there are more people in work.

Figure 1 - union density 1989 - 2000

If you ask many people to imagine a typical union member, they will probably conjure up a middle-aged white man with a full-time job that uses their hands. Indeed for much of TUC history that has not been an untypical profile of the average union member.

In recent years, however, that picture has changed. Just as the workforce has become more female, more part-time, more ethnically diverse, so have union members. Indeed in many respects union members today are a typical cross-section of the workforce, although in others they differ markedly.

To some extent this represents a determination by unions to adopt an equal opportunities agenda. But as the following graphs show the proportions have changed largely because we lost more white male manual workers than other groups during the years of decline. Between 1999 and 2000 the overall increase of 60,000 was made up of an increase of 100,000 women (mainly working part-time) and a fall of 40,000 men.

Figure 2 - union density by gender 1989-2000

Figure 3 - full and part time union membership 1989-2000

Figure 4 - manual and non-manual union membership

The public/private split

The figures given in the snapshot of union membership in 2000 above appear to suggest that unions are good at recruiting white-collar and highly-skilled professional workers. They show that half of Britain’s professionals are union members, and 43 per cent of associate professionals.

But to really understand trends in union membership, you have to look at the private and public sectors separately. This is one area where union members are most definitely not a typical cross-section of the workforce.

Union density in the public sector is 60 per cent, but has fallen to 19 per cent in the private sector - fewer than one in five employees in the private sector are now union members. And as figure five shows, fewer than one in seven women working in the private sector are union members.

Figure 5 - The public/private split 2000

As can be seen in figure six, high levels of unionisation among professionals are almost entirely explained by public sector professions (such as teaching). It is likely that much private sector union membership at these grades is in privatised companies such as the utilities.

Figure 6 - the public/private sector split - union density in professional and managerial occupations 2000

Figure seven shows union density in some selected sectors of the economy - three in the public sector and three, with widespread poor employment conditions, in the private sector.

Figure 7 - union density in selected sectors

Union membership remains fairly healthy in the public sector, although there is always work to do to increase density. But membership levels in the private sector are worryingly low.

Young people

Every union activist will agree that we need to recruit more young people. There are various theories advanced about why few young people are in unions, with some arguing that young people today are more individualistic - and that one legacy of Thatcherism has been to destroy support for any collective or community approach. Others say that unions cannot recruit the young because of their middle-aged out-of-date image.

The Labour Force Survey provides some important clues about why young people are unlikely to be in a union.

• 18 per cent of employees aged 18-29 were union members in 2000 compared to 44 per cent in 1983
• Density among this age group in the private sector is only 11 per cent today.

But union density in this age group in the public sector rises to 48 per cent. This is not quite as high as public sector density for all ages, but does show that young people can be recruited to unions in unionised workplaces. This suggests that our problem in recruiting young people therefore has more to do with the kind of jobs they are doing, rather than their attitudes or union image, though these undoubtedly play some part.

But our failure to recruit young members is still a big problem for the movement. We may be able to recruit them when they work in public sector jobs, but 83 per cent of those in this age group now work in the private sector. Some government sponsored research (R Disney et al, The Dynamics of Union Membership in Britain. DTI 1998) shows that if we do not recruit people into unions when they start work, they are less likely to join unions at a later stage in their working lives even if they get a job in a unionised workplace.

WERS also shows us that graduates seem to be particularly resistant to union membership. While this again may be mainly a function of the kind of jobs graduates do, we cannot ignore this, as the government aims to turn half the workforce into graduates.

Some international comparisons

The table shows union density in some OECD countries. It can be seen that UK membership has held up fairly well compared to some other countries, including some that have not had to suffer both the political and economic effects of Thatcherism. But at the same time there are many European countries with far higher rates of unionisation. To give some indication of what these percentages mean we would need to recruit an additional 800,000 members in the UK to take us above Germany. Of course industrial relations systems differ and in some countries like France with low membership, union coverage of workplaces and involvement in regulating conditions of employment are much higher than in countries with apparently more powerful unions.

Country	Density	Year of figure
Finland	95.6%	1997
Denmark	89.9%	1997
Sweden	86.4%	1997
Belgium	85.0%	1995
Norway	71.3%	1997
Hungary	52.5%	1995
Ireland	52.3%	1995
Austria	46.6%	1997
Italy	38.0%	1995
Germany	33.4%	1997
UK	30.2%	1997
Netherlands	28.9%	1997
Portugal	25.6%	1995
Australia	25.0%	2000
Spain	15.1%	1997
US	13.5%	2000
Greece	11.2%	1995
France	8.6%	1995

Employment trends

There is some good, but quite a lot of bad, news if we look at likely changes in the type of jobs people will be doing in the future. In the short term we can already see a growth in public sector employment reflecting higher spending by the Labour government. This is set to continue.

Altogether the government estimates that there will be an extra 2.1 million additional jobs in the economy by 2010.

• Around two thirds of these jobs (1.5 million) will go to women.
• Around two thirds (1.5 million) of all the new jobs will be part-time employee jobs - 800,000 for men and 750,000 for women.

The next two charts show how the government expects the shape of employment to change by 2010. The first, figure eight, shows that employment will increase in those occupations with low union density in the private sector.

Figure 8 - government estimates of changes in occupations 1999-2010

The second chart, figure nine, looks at changes in employment by sector. This is even clearer in setting out the problems we face. Both the sectors likely to decline are ones where unions have at least some strength. While transport and public services have good levels of union membership, the other growth sectors are where we are at our weakest.

Figure nine - employment trends 1999-2010 by sector

Unions at the workplace

To look at union organisation in today’s workplace we can draw a great deal of information from the periodic Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS). This is an official study of workplaces employing more than 25 workers. Four surveys have taken place with the first in 1980 and the most recent in 1998 (when some workplaces employing more than 10, but less than 25, were included for the first time). As with the Labour Force Survey there is both good and bad news when we examine how unions are performing in today’s workplaces.

Collective bargaining covered 70 per cent of employees in the workplaces studied in 1984. By 1998 this had fallen to 40 per cent of workplaces. And as this only includes workplaces employing more than 25, the latest estimate for all employees is that around 33 per cent are now covered by collective bargaining.

One new trend is the growth of workplaces where unions are recognised but there is no collective bargaining - 14 per cent of WERS workplaces fell into this category in 1998.

Figure ten - workplaces where employers unilaterally decide pay

Figure ten shows the rise in workplaces where employers unilaterally decide pay between 1984 and 1998.

There has also been a sharp fall in union influence over other issues. The table draws on analysis (W Brown et al ‘The Employment Contract: from collective procedures to individual rights, BJIR Dec 2000) of the responses of union reps in workplaces employing more than 10 people when asked to say how issues are handled at their workplaces in 1998.

	Negotiate	Consult or inform	None
Handling grievances	41%	44%	15%
Pay/conditions employment	31%	34%	36%
Health & safety	22%	62%	17%
Systems of payment	13%	38%	49%
Equal opportunities	13%	53%	35%
Staffing levels/planning	12%	51%	37%
Performance appraisal	10%	38%	52%
Training	7%	54%	38%
Recruitment/selection	5%	44%	51%

Union decline

The authors of the WERS study say there are two key reasons for union decline.

• Unions have failed to achieve recognition in newly established and expanding private sector workplaces;
• Density has fallen in unionised workplaces in both the private and public sectors.

WERS reveals that the proportion of private sector workplaces recognising unions halved between 1980 and 1998 (down from 50 to 25 per cent). This trend was clear even in sectors where unions have traditionally been strong. In manufacturing the fall was particularly pronounced (65 to 29 per cent) while private sector services fell from 41 to 23 per cent.

The decline in the number of recognised workplaces is almost entirely due to the failure of unions to win membership and recognition in new workplaces. Other explanations such as derecognition by employers or the anti-union theory that unionised workplaces are more likely to fail are not supported by the data.

The authors of the study conclude 'employers in new and growing workplaces appear to have little sympathy with joint regulation with trade unions, while their employees appear to have less appetite for union membership'.

The fall in union density in workplaces where unions are recognised affects both the public and private sectors, although it is not as big a contributor to the overall decline in membership as the reduction in unionised workplaces.

In the private sector density in unionised workplaces employing more than 25 fell from 36 to 26 per cent between 1990 and 1998, while in the public sector it fell from 72 to 57 per cent.

Worryingly the fall in union density was most marked in those sectors where unions were already weak, in particular private sector services such as retail, hotels & catering, and business/finance services. Unions were getting weaker in the sectors with the strongest growth.

In the public sector the decline was mainly in the health sector, with the data showing that density held up well in local and central government and a slight fall in education.

Another key finding from the WERS data is that while much of the fall in union density in the 1980s could be put down to employer attitudes, by the 1990s it was more down to employees deciding not to join. In establishments with recognised unions where the employer 'strongly recommended' union membership, the average union density fell by only two percentage points between 1984 and 1990, but by nine percentage points between 1990 and 1998.

After further analysis the authors conclude that 'around 10 percentage points of the 12-13 percentage point drop in mean union density (between 1990 and 1998) … (can be) attributed to a reduced propensity among employees to join trade unions, even when encouraged to do so' by their employer.

This leads the WERS team to conclude that 'unions had not only lost the support of managers' throughout the last two decades (as graphically highlighted by the decline in recognition in the private sector) but that 'in the 1990s they had also lost the support of many employees'. In the next chapter we look at the available evidence about why people leave unions or fail to join in unionised workplaces.

The public sector again presented a different picture. Here union membership in well-established unionised workplaces remained fairly steady. Any falls in unionisation had more to do with changes in the structure of public sector workforces such as the effect of contracting out and the growth of new workplaces - often smaller - with no union tradition.

Of course the WERS study is now three years old. It is a snapshot taken not long after the end of nearly two decades of a government hostile to trade unionism, and before both the recent evidence that membership has stopped declining and the record numbers of new recognition agreements. However it is highly unlikely that the trends revealed by the WERS study have been reversed since 1998, even if some may have slowed.

Some conclusions

While union membership has stopped falling, there is no room for complacency.

Union membership is concentrated in the public sector. Density remains relatively high, although there are some areas where membership is falling.

In the private sector, union membership is largely confined to long established workplaces - though even in these workplaces membership is falling. We have failed to get many toeholds in new businesses, even in sectors that have union traditions.

While the likely future growth of the public sector will bring some new members, in the private sector most growth will be in jobs and sectors where union membership is currently low.

Chapter 2: Who should we be trying to recruit?

Any commercial organisation wishing to increase its market share would go through the same kind of rigorous analysis we have presented in the first chapter. It would then move on to seek to identify new markets. Then it would ask what it could do that would help it reach new customers across all of its intended markets and whether there were specific initiatives that could help reach the new markets it had identified.

Some union members object to discussion of union membership as if it were a commercial product or service. And of course our values, purpose and ethos are very distinct. But it should not be forgotten that potential and existing members are being asked to pay for services, representation and protection. They will judge us in much the same way that they will assess any other demand for their hard-earned wages.

This report therefore unashamedly uses many of the techniques and approaches common in the commercial world. In this chapter we seek to identify some target audiences that unions and the TUC need to consider if we are to increase union density - our measure of market share.

As we will see there are about 3 million people working in unionised workplaces who are not union members, and about 5 million working in non-union workplaces who would be likely to join a union. That’s a total of 8 million potential sales leads.

However while membership remains our priority, we have been careful in this report to talk about increasing membership and influence. Clearly the more members that unions have, the more weight they will carry when negotiating with employers, campaigning in the community or lobbying government and other bodies.

Professor Richard Freeman, one of the advisers to the Task Group and normally based at Harvard University in the USA, makes the point that one striking difference between the US and the UK is that here union leaders are treated by the media as serious players in national policy debates.

The attitude of non-members towards unions is therefore vital. If they see us working together to advance the interests of everyone at work, then they will not only support our campaigns and make them more effective, but also be more likely to join. If however they see unions as no more than a series of vested interests, competing where they should be co-operating, and concerned with narrow issues, then we will find it hard not only to recruit but also to influence others.

The TUC aims to speak for Britain at work, and whenever we poll we find that the majority of people at work back the representations we make to government. According to the LSE survey, 61 per cent of non-union members agree that strong trade unions are needed to protect the working conditions and wages of employees.

Our support for decent minimum standards at work - such as the minimum wage and paid holiday rights - has probably benefited more non-union members than trade unionists. Indeed one of our main messages to potential recruits has been that unionised workplaces have already achieved better than the legal minimums through negotiation and collective action.

Similarly our anti-racist work does not seek simply to benefit union members that suffer discrimination, but raise standards everywhere. The stance we have taken on asylum seekers probably benefits few members directly, but reflects our core values of fair treatment and solidarity.

Trade unions gain strength and influence precisely because we are a social movement, active in the community and campaigning for social justice. For many of our wider objectives we need allies, and to work with a wide range of different groups from employers to pressure groups, voluntary organisations to political parties.

Getting the support of non-union members for union values and objectives will become even more important when the European Information and Consultation Directive is introduced. Every company employing more than 50 will need to have a formal system for informing and consulting staff. In non-unionised and some unionised companies this will almost certainly take the form of some kind of works council. Even in companies where there are no union traditions, union members are likely to seek election to works councils. This will provide an important base for seeking influence in more companies, and in many may well prove to be a catalyst for unionisation. As we reveal in the final chapter there is strong support for works councils among the workforce.

This is not to say that we want to follow the French example, where unions are influential in companies through winning works council elections and in wider society through their involvement in much government decision-making and administration, but have low levels of individual membership.

Rather it is to say that unions should both be seeking to win members and win respect throughout society. The more people who think favourably about unions, and come into contact with our work and our services, the more able we are to serve our existing members, recruit new ones and win new allies in our wider campaigning.

It also means that while unions will always compete for members, it should always take place with a realisation that each and every union gains from a successful and growing movement. The trade union movement is greater than the sum of its individual parts. There are trade union values and ideals from which we all benefit and to which we should all contribute.

But while most trade unionists would agree with this in theory there does not seem to be anywhere where we spell out our collective understanding of the vision and values we share.

If we were asked ‘what are modern trade unions for?’ we would probably produce a range of answers. They would undoubtedly overlap, but probably produce some significant differences in emphasis.

Yet as every union operates against a backdrop of the overall image and positioning of the whole movement, it would be sensible to have a shared vision of trade unionism, particularly if we are to make serious efforts to reach out to the missing millions. Of course each union would add its own appeal relevant to the sectors in which it seeks to recruit, but such appeals will always be built on a foundation of the shared perceptions of trade unions as a whole. We discuss this in more detail in the next chapter.

All our work to promote trade unionism should take place in that context.

But who should be our target audiences? The next few sections identify some important targets for trade unionism. They are by no means an exhaustive list. Nor are they all of the same type - some are types of workplace, others are types of employee and some - like employers - fall into neither category. Some are groups that should be relatively easy to recruit. Others are less easy and will require a longer-term strategy, but cannot be neglected because of their growing importance in the labour market.

Membership retention

One factor often forgotten by outsiders when discussing union membership is that even when membership is holding steady, there is still a big turnover of membership as members leave and new members are recruited in their place. Many unions are actually very good at recruiting, but also lose many members every year.

The LSE survey shows that 53 per cent of the workforce are either union members now or have been in the past.

According to Jeremy Waddington’s presentation to the Task Group, around one million people leave unions each year, so with total membership around seven million the turnover (or churn rate, as it is often called) is about 15 per cent a year. (Some people will count as both leavers and joiners if they change union when changing employers.) Other estimates of the numbers leaving unions put the figure lower at 500,000.

Jeremy Waddington’s work shows the commonest reason for leaving a union is not surprising - 70 per cent say they leave because of a change in their job situation. They are either changing employers, raising children, retiring, becoming unemployed or leaving employment for some other reason.

But worryingly there is still 30 per cent who are leaving for other reasons. Some 25 per cent leave because of dissatisfaction with some aspect of union structure, organisation or policy.

Jeremy Waddington’s survey asked these 25 per cent to give more details. Their responses are set out in the table and ranked by the importance of the reason for leaving.

Reason for leaving	per cent saying reason was important or fairly important	per cent saying reason was not very important or not important at all	Net importance (col 2 - col 3 and then rounded)
their reps hardly ever contacted them	70	30	+41
not enough help to members with problems	69	31	+38
receiving little information from the union	58	42	+16
membership was too expensive	46	54	-7
the union does not negotiate my pay and conditions	45	55	-10
did not want to participate in industrial action	34	66	-31

All the possible reasons had led to some members leaving, but the clearest complaints were lack of service from the union either in the form of not receiving help, information or contact with a rep.

There were some interesting gender differences. Women were more likely to say:

· that unions do not provide enough help with problems (+42 per cent compared to +28 per cent for men on the net measure);

· that they received too little information from their union (+23 per cent compared to -0.4 per cent);

· that reps hardly ever contacted them (+50 per cent compared to 22 per cent).

Those who stay echo the attitudes of those leaving unions. Around two thirds of union members say that unions need to improve:

· provision of information on union affairs

· provision of information on pay and conditions

· contact with lay reps or full-time officers

· holding meetings at convenient times and appropriate locations.

The LSE survey also found that in unionised workplaces only 27 per cent of union members said they were frequently in contact with union or other worker representatives. 56 per cent reported occasional contact and 15 per cent said they were never contacted.

The LSE survey found that only 30 per cent thought that their union offered good value, a further 53 per cent thought it offered reasonable value for money and there were 15 per cent who said their union was poor value for money. There is no cause for complacency here.

There will not be a universal approach to increasing retention rates that will work in every union. Indeed the churn rate of different unions varies widely. Those organising in sectors with high labour turnover such as retail and other services will lose (and gain) more members every year than those organising well-defined professional groups, such as the specialist health unions.

Yet every union should always be asking whether they could improve the services they deliver to members and improve communications. The research also suggests the quality and quantity of local reps is also very important in membership retention. (We deal with better ways to support reps in the next section.)

As every consumer knows. the quality of private sector service companies can vary enormously. Yet good ones provide a very responsive and personalised service to their customers, as does the best of the public sector.

One reason that unions may be losing members through dissatisfaction may be that we are not providing the level of responsiveness that people have come to expect from high quality service operations.

Some years ago there was a debate within trade unions sparked by suggestions that unions should think of themselves as no more than an AA for the workplace. The argument went that we should drop much of our wider functions as a social movement and force for social justice, and concentrate on delivering individual services. There was in fact little support for this restricted servicing view within the movement. However it should not be forgotten that our members will compare us with other organisations and services they experience. We may see ourselves as having a wide role, but we need to be good at providing services to secure that role.

Can unions be contacted out of working hours? Is it clear who to contact with particular problems? Will your case be handled professionally? Will you be kept in touch with every development? Do unions regularly research what their members think of their services and the way they are delivered? Are unions keeping in touch with their members, including using new and cost-effective techniques such as the Internet?

An important concept in both the public and private sector is customer relationship management (CRM). New technology allows accurate records of every interaction with every customer or service user to be kept. They can be analysed not just to provide important market research, but more importantly to make the service offered individualised and personal. Firms can target customers with offers they are likely to find attractive and will always have a history of a customer’s contacts with the company when someone calls or complains.

While unions’ relations with their members are different in many important respects, this does not mean that we cannot learn from best practice. Keeping better records of our members and their contacts with the union will help us treat members as individuals and mean we are more likely to retain their membership.

But what about the 700,000 members who leave, according to Jeremy Waddington’s presentation, because their job situation has changed? While some retire, become unemployed or leave paid employment to become carers, many will be changing employer. It is likely that a large proportion of these will be lost to the trade union movement at that point. Even if they do not make a conscious choice to resign, their membership will lapse if their former employer had collected their fees through check-off. We doubt whether many unions have efficient systems that will ask them to rejoin in their new job. Even fewer will be prepared to steer them in the direction of a more appropriate union for their new job.

Better and more detailed membership records will help track members who change jobs so that they are lost to their union, or the movement as a whole. It may be that either individual unions or the TUC has a role in setting up systems - perhaps through a call centre - that can follow up lapsed members and either keep them in their existing union or pass them on to one more appropriate for their new job.

Infill

Union density has fallen in many workplaces where unions are recognised, and even, as we saw from the WERS analysis, in workplaces where the employer strongly backs unions.

The LSE survey asked a series of questions to non-members in unionised workplaces. A majority (55 per cent) had never been asked to join.

They were asked a series of questions about why they did not join. They are presented in the table.

Reason for not joining	per cent saying reason was very important or quite important	per cent saying reason was not very important or not at all important	Net importance (col 2 - col 3)
The union does not achieve anything	37	52	-15
There is no point in joining as I get all the benefits anyway	36	53	-17
Membership was too expensive	30	58	-28
People doing my job don’t join trade unions	28	66	-38

There was no overwhelming reason why people are not joining. Either there is some undiscovered obstacle to joining or it should not be too hard to recruit many of the non-members in unionised workplaces. David Metcalf, Director of the Leverhulme Trust Programme on the Future of Trade Unions in Modern Britain, (Centrepiece Spring 2001) estimates there are some three million ‘free riders’ who are covered by collective bargaining but are not union members.

The LSE survey also asked members in union workplaces why they had joined.

Some people say there is no point in joining the union at your workplace since you will get most of the benefits without joining and paying membership fees but which if any of the following possible reasons for joining was the most important?	Per cent agreeing
My friends and colleagues were already union members	13
You get better treatment if you have a problem at work	50
The union offered financial services such as insurance and a credit card	3
The more people that join a union the more effective it is	28

Both members and non-members were asked to rate the performance of the union in their workplace on a range of issues using a school report card grading system (ie A for excellent and F for failure. )

The following table presents for both members and non-members a success rating on these issues. This is calculated by taking the proportion who thought the union scored ‘poor’ or ‘failure’ away from those who thought it was ‘good’ or ‘excellent’. This presents a lot of figures in one relatively simple table, but excludes don’t knows and those who thought the union’s performance fair. The higher the score the more successful the union is considered to be.

	Member success rating		Non-member success rating
Promoting equal opportunities for women and ethnic minorities		60	46
Understanding and knowledge of your employer’s business		59	45
Protecting workers against unfair treatment		59	43
Being open and accountable to members		47	29
Sharing the information they have about your employer and your workplace		37	23
Working with management to increase quality or productivity		36	22
Winning fair pay increases and bonuses		23	15
Making work interesting and enjoyable		7	0

While non-members do not rate their workplace union as highly as members, it still scores positively on all measures bar one. Again this suggests that non-members are not hostile to their workplace union.

The easiest way to grow membership in the short term is to recruit members in workplaces where unions are recognised and already part of the existing workplace culture. And of course, many unions are already deploying significant resources in recruitment exercises that would come under an ‘infill’ heading.

Many of the issues raised in the section on retention apply equally to infill recruitment. If non-members see existing members well served by their union they are more likely to join. If they are always moaning about it, then they won’t.

Some further useful research would be to use the WERS data to see where there are lessons to be learnt from comparing recognised workplaces with high levels of membership and those with fewer members. One trend in unionised workplaces is for management to have added direct communication with employees through team briefings, quality circles and other media to traditional representative communications through union channels. It would be worth seeing whether this has an effect in any further research. It is certainly the view of anti-union management consultants that good flows of information can help employers resist unionisation.

In chapter one the table drawn from Willy Brown’s work shows that union reps have a much more limited role than they did in the past. This may also be an important clue. The tables above show that unions score reasonably well for defensive action protecting the interests of members, but much less well on ‘making work interesting and enjoyable.’ The focus groups presented in the next chapter suggest that unions are not doing enough to help people get on at work, as well as get even when things go wrong. While the growth of the learning agenda shows that unions can do this, it may be that broadening the bargaining agenda to quality of work issues, as well as providing learning rep support, could be important.

The role of reps is key to both recruitment and retention. Most members join unions because a workplace rep recruits them. This means that reps are crucial to recruitment and retention in unionised workplaces. Here WERS supplies some good news. The ratio of reps to members has remained fairly constant. The difficulties unions often find in recruiting good reps have not got worse.

Unions and the TUC already do much to support reps. Training courses are run by the TUC, the GFTU and many individual unions. Many unions have special help lines or other services specifically designed to help reps.

The Internet can also be used to support reps. The TUC has launched Risks, a weekly email-delivered newsletter for health and safety reps. A new section of the TUC web site run by TUC learning services will provide help and encouragement to learning reps. Many unions have similar email bulletins or closed areas of their web site that can help reps. Answering queries by email can often be easier than ensuring phones are staffed continuously. This is a support mechanism that can only grow in importance in the years ahead.

Partnership relations at work can also help encourage reps. High trust relationships with the employer make any rep’s job easier. In a workplace where union reps are valued, any sensible employer is bound to realise that the problem-solving and communications skills reps require are an asset to any organisation when promotion or annual assessments come round.

The LSE survey confirms much other data that says most people at work today do not have, or want, an adversarial relationship with their employer. When asked which statement they preferred from an organisation representing workers, both union members (72%) and non-union members (75%) preferred 'We work with management to improve the workplace and working conditions' to 'We defend workers against unfair treatment by management', backed by 26 per cent of union members and 21% of non-union members.

While much is already done to support reps, there is always more than can be done. This is one area where any investment will be repaid, not only in recruitment and retention, but also in respect and influence.

Partnership can also help unions with infill recruitment in other ways. Employers are more likely to encourage union membership and give unions good opportunities to meet new staff. And as we will see later, potential recruits are worried that joining the union will label them as troublemakers. Partnership relations will help overcome that fear.

New services can also help unions recruit and retain. The role that unions are now playing in promoting lifelong learning, and the role of the new union learning reps, soon to be given a legal footing, can be very important in making union membership relevant to existing and potential members. Everyone involved with adult education knows how liberating and life changing it can be. People who are grateful to their union for unlocking these doors will not only be loyal, but also enthusiastic, members - an excellent sales force.

Sectoral infill

Better recruitment and retention in organised workplaces should be the easiest ways to increase union membership. The next easiest should be workplaces that are not organised, but are similar to already unionised workplaces. This category might best be called sectoral infill.

Unions will already understand these types of workplaces, and offer the kind of support and services that their employees need. They are highly likely to have staff that have moved there from unionised workplaces. Even if they have not kept their membership up, they are likely to have a positive experience of union membership.

There is certainly scope here. The WERS study found a strong link between the age of the workplace and whether it was unionised. Even in sectors with high levels of density this is true. Only 14 per cent of manufacturing workplaces set up after 1980 recognise a union, compared to 50 per cent of those established in 1980 or before.

The TUC and IRS research into the voluntary recognition deals that have been won since it became clear that employees would win a right to have their union recognised when a majority support it, confirm that the vast majority of recognition agreements fall into this kind of category. The media (one sector where there was considerable derecognition in the 1980s), airlines and manufacturing were singled out in the recent IRS research. (IRS Employment Review 730, June 2001)

The TUC’s Organising Academy was set up to help unions recruit and organise mainly in these types of workplaces. Much TUC material already sets out the case for organising, and how to do it effectively. Although we do not repeat it here, this should not be taken as a signal from the task group that organising is less important than other initiatives and ideas suggested in this report. It remains a vital component of any strategy to rebuild and renew unions.

There is considerable information in the LSE survey about the attitudes of non-union members in non-union workplaces. While they apply to all non-union workplaces it is likely that the pro-union responses will be somewhat skewed towards ‘sectoral infill’ type workplaces so we present them here, although the conclusions will also help inform us about workers covered by other headings in this chapter.

The survey asked people about how much control they have, and how much control they would like to have, in various areas of their working life. The table presents the responses of non-union members (though there was little difference between non- members and members)

	% of non-union having a lot of influence	% of non union members saying it’s important to have influence
How to do your job and organise work	55	90
The pace at which you work	44	81
Setting working hours	24	75
Deciding what perks and bonuses are offered	6	68
Deciding pay rises	4	65
Deciding how to work with new equipment or software	24	65

Respondents were asked whether they would prefer to deal with a range of problems on their own or with a group of colleagues or fellow workers. The answers reveal a desire for collective action at the workplace. What might be called the basic principle of trade unionism does receive support.

	% of non-union members wanting to deal with a problem on their own	% of non-union members wanting to deal with a problem in a group
Bullying	30	67
Sex or race discrimination	30	66
Negotiating working hours	34	65
Training and skills development	34	64
Negotiating salary	40	57
Promotion issues	53	42

With the exception of promotion (where you are usually trying to get one over your colleagues!) support for a collective voice is roughly twice as strong as support for an individual approach.

But when the same question is asked, but with the choice given between acting on your own or through a trade union or staff association, the practice of trade unionism is revealed as less popular than the theory.

	% of non-union members wanting to deal with a problem on their own	% of non-union members wanting to deal with a problem through a TU or staff association
Sex or race discrimination	40	55
Bullying	51	43
Negotiating working hours	59	38
Negotiating salary	59	37
Training and skills development	70	26
Promotion issues	73	22

Yet even this reveals that 37 per cent of non-union members would like a union to negotiate their salary. This means that there are more then 5.5 million workers who are not currently union members who want their salary to be negotiated by a union.

Some of these will already be working in unionised workplaces, and indeed, may have their wages set through collective bargaining.

The survey also found that 19% of non-union members working in non-union recognised workplaces thought that their workplace would be better off with a union. This is about two million people.

The same group were asked how likely it was they would join a union ‘if a group of workers formed a union and asked you to join’. This found that 45% would be likely to say yes. This rises to five million - close to the figure for those who would like a union to negotiate their salary for them.

This is where the figures given at the start of this chapter come from. There are about 3 million people working in unionised workplaces who are not union members and about 5 million working in non-union workplaces who would be likely to join a union.

Employers

The attitude of employers can be very important. Of course there are many workplaces where effective union organisation is maintained despite the opposition or indifference of employers. But union officers know that supportive employers make organisation and recruitment much easier.

Of course there is always a difference in interest between employer and employee, but they also have much in common. At the most basic level employees want to work for a successful organisation able to offer them fair terms and conditions. There are many areas of the employment relationship where it is possible for employer and employee to work together in partnership. Again this is an area where there is already considerable published TUC material, and we will not repeat it here, despite its strategic importance to modern trade unionism.

But it is worth emphasising that unions can contribute a great deal to previously non-unionised workplaces. Small employers can welcome expertise in health and safety and setting up fair personnel procedures. Large employers can welcome the extra and highly trusted communications channel opened up by union recognition. Unions can play a crucial role in raising the skill levels of staff with their own training and access to training funds. Organisations with good reputations as employers will find it easier to recruit and retain quality staff.

Employers cannot be expected to organise unions. Yet if the example set by good relationships at many partnership employers switches non-union employers from a stance of actively resisting unionisation to one where they will deal with a union if their staff clearly want them to, even without much enthusiasm, can be very helpful. Better relationships can often flow from such a reluctant beginning.

Young people

In chapter one we saw that while young people do join unions if they work in unionised work places, most do not. This is particularly worrying as other research shows that people who do not join unions when they start work, are less likely to join a union in their later lives even if they get a job in a unionised workplace. It is no doubt true that the image of unions is not exactly attractive to young people.

They have also grown up in an era when unions have been under sustained political and media attack. And while some young people are always interested in current affairs and want to make the world a better place, the well-publicised anti-globalisation and environmental campaigns of recent years should not obscure the fact that young people today are very focussed on doing well at work and becoming prosperous.

Graduates in particular are unlikely to become union members unless they become public sector professionals.

As graduates are more distant from current unions than the other targets we have discussed above, there may be more of a role for the TUC. We can always help present trade unionism in a more attractive light through the media, but the real problem is that graduates do not come into contact with existing unions when they start work.

However the vast majority will have been members of the National Union of Students while they were studying. NUS is very keen to help unions recruit new members, and have worked closely with the Task Group. This is a group likely to have access to the Internet and we asked Butterfield8, the consultancy commissioned by the task group, to make specific proposals for a TUC initiative that would give graduates some experience of union support, and thus make it easier for unions to recruit graduates. More details of this initiative are given in the next chapter.

The ‘new economy’

We use the term ‘new economy’ in a wide sense to cover the growth of reasonably secure, reasonably well-paid white-collar jobs in private services.

Some will be in jobs and sectors where there are already unionised workplaces such as financial services and call centres, but many will not. The projections in chapter one show the fastest employment growth over the next decade will be in the area of business services, financial and other services. Unless trade unionism can make more headway in this sector then we will find it hard to secure long-term growth.

While some in this sector - such as call centre workers - are also members of an infill or sectoral infill target audience, the vast majority are not.

Indeed many may be quite remote from existing unions, and see little immediate relevance of union membership where they work. However they are likely to have access to the Internet, probably at home and at work. This is another target audience where the TUC may have a role in providing some kind of contact that can help make the bridge to full union membership or at least bring them into contact with some experience of trade unionism. The task group asked Butterfield8 for advice on how best to reach this group. This is set out in the next chapter.

The vulnerable

The figures in chapter one reveal that union density is particularly low in a number of sectors where insecure work and poor employment conditions are common such as hospitality, catering and private services.

These sectors have always been hard for unions to organise given rapid staff turnover and the small size of workplaces, even if part of a much larger operation.

Yet these are groups in need of help and assistance with problems at work. They probably make up a large proportion of the growing numbers that contact the CAB and ACAS help lines with work-based problems. They are the group that stand to gain the most from the new legal minimums such as the minimum wage and holiday entitlements, but also likely to miss out on them. Unlike the graduate and new economy groups, this group is more likely to see the potential of union membership, but fear their employer reaction. As they are also likely to be low-paid and in insecure and casual employment, retention will be hard even if they can be persuaded to join.

Unlike the last two groups, these are people who are unlikely to have web access. Much of the initial focus of the Task Group’s work was on using the Internet to reach out to new groups in the workforce. But as we worked with the consultancy to draw up our proposals it became clear that concentrating on the Internet would exclude very many at the rough end of the labour market, perhaps most in need of union help and assistance.

Chapter 3: How should unions appeal to new members?

No one who served on the Task Group would pretend that increasing membership is easy. Nor would we suggest that there is only one way to do it. One of the strengths of the British trade union movement has always been its diversity. Where other countries have different union federations based on job type, political allegiance or religious background, we have in the TUC a single centre.

It would be wrong therefore to pretend that the Task Group thinks it has all the answers. Indeed we want to encourage unions to try new methods and approaches and share good practice. The methods used to recruit low paid textile workers with poor English will be very different from campaigns to recruit high skill, highly paid IT professionals or top civil servants.

But they are being asked to join the same movement. The overall image of unions will play a part in how people respond to any union recruitment campaign.

We therefore asked Butterfield8 to examine how unions currently appear to non-union members and how we should seek to present ourselves if we want to add members and increase our influence.

Much modern marketing is dominated by the concept of the brand. Companies want to have long-term relationships with their customers, and build their loyalty, construct an overall image within which their customers will view individual products or services positively.

Some will no doubt recoil from any suggestion that unions or trade unionism as a whole have anything to do with brands. Politics has suffered from accusations that too much of it today is about style and image, rather than policies and vision.

Yet many of the attributes that modern marketeers will assign to brands, obviously apply to unions too. Concepts like values, personality or emotional benefit make a great deal of sense when applied to unions, perhaps more sense than when applied to some commercial products.

Indeed the care that unions are now giving to their names, logo and corporate identity reveal that while we may use different language, we are often dealing in the same concepts. We may not all like it but we live in an age where image, fashion and trend are very important. Appearance can be as important as substance.

But this is not to argue that we should develop our strategy by aping every commercial trend, or suspending our critical faculties in favour of the focus group.

It is what you do with the insights and findings of this kind of approach that is important, not whether you are prepared to use a potentially useful process in the first place. All the techniques, research and insight from the commercial world presented here is an aid to judgement, not a replacement for it.

That is why we should ask whether unions and the trade union movement as a whole are positioning ourselves in a way that makes us attractive to new members and potential allies in our work.

As part of their consultancy, we asked Butterfield8 to find out what the people we would like to join unions think about us, and to make recommendations about how we should present ourselves.

As an early part of their work for us Butterfield8 conducted a round of focus group research to probe precisely these questions. A second round of group research concentrated on shaping the initiatives dealt with in the next chapter, but also provided confirmation of the first round of research and some further insights that have been incorporated into their recommendations.

In the first round of research there were four focus groups. They were constituted to reflect the two initial target audiences we wished to address, students and young people, and workers in the broadly defined new economy.

Two groups were held in London and two in Cardiff. One group was all students. The rest all had ‘new economy’ jobs but were divided into three age bands - 18-21, 24-30 and 30-40. They were recruited on the basis that they were neither union members, nor inherently hostile to trade unions.

What do people think about unions?

The initial and spontaneous reaction to trade unions in these groups was often negative, and based on media stereotypes. Union imagery is about clenched fists, brass bands, miners and heavy industry.

Unions are seen as male and stale. People think that unions are looking for a fight and pining for the ‘good old days’ of the 1970s when they were more powerful. Union officials are expected to be men in their late 50s.

These are hangovers from the anti-union images of the 1970s and, depressingly, are held by people too young to have remembered them first-hand.

They no doubt inform the main concern that people have about unions today. This response was common in all the groups.

People believe that unions are looking for disputes, which they want to escalate into problems bigger than the original issue. They are worried that if you join a union you will find yourself ordered out on strike against your wishes.

But it is not all bad news. The workers in Cardiff were definitely more pro-union than in London, reflecting both the local labour market and greater likelihood of coming from a family background with union connections.

Nor is it that people are hostile to unions in a Thatcherite ‘enemy within’ way. Opinion polls report fairly high levels of support for unions, but the focus groups reveal that many see unions as a good thing - but for other people. The members of the groups understand why transport workers, miners and teachers are in unions, and while they may not necessarily support everything that unions say or do, they can see why their members need them.

The groups in Cardiff tended to be positive about unions not so much because of the area’s union heritage but more because of changes in the local labour market.

People are worried about the growth of a new kind of exploitative employer. Call centres in particular (of which there are many in the Cardiff area) were seen to be bad employers, but there was a general worry about ‘them and us’ attitudes growing.

Some in the groups talked about the new global economy of hire and fire, with employers thought to be increasingly following a harsh US model rather than the more benevolent European model.

The groups tended to divide employers into those seen as benevolent and those seen as antagonistic. Those thought to be bad employers tended to be larger, with smaller employers thought to be better.

But there are exceptions to this. The key is the amount of control people feel they have over their work.

Where people feel in control they are less likely to see a need for unions to have a role in their workplace. If they think they can talk to their boss to get something sorted out and identify with their employer’s interests they simply don’t see any point in joining a union.

But where people feel they have no say in their destiny and cannot talk to their boss or know that it will not change anything then they see the appeal of a union. Or to put it more simply, people who think their boss is out to exploit them are more likely to want to join a union.

So large organisations can be benevolent if people work in relatively small units. In the groups this seemed to be much more common in the public sector. Similarly some small employers were seen as exploitative. One particular complaint was of the rolling three-month contract, with small family-owned retailers seen as common offenders.

One important finding is that young people at work think they have far more in common with older people at work than with students.

Young people are also more prepared to put up with problems at work. They do not yet think they have settled, and consider that they can always easily move on to another job if something goes wrong with their current job.

Some statements from the focus groups

'like dinosaurs … they haven’t modernised'

'like an outsider coming in to stir up trouble'

'If I could get help in sorting out my career plans and looking for my next job, if the union could offer me networking opportunities ... maybe even career tests.'

'I negotiate my own pay. I’m one of twelve in the company and we all talk to the MD every day. There is no way I would want a union to do that on my behalf.'

'It’s not ‘us and them’ anymore. We work alongside management.'

The LSE survey

The survey asked a series of questions about job satisfaction, poor treatment and other similar issues. As a TUC poll conducted in 2000 found, most people enjoy their jobs. Britain’s workplaces are not seething with discontent. Most employees think they are treated fairly.

There are no huge differences between union members and non-union members in these questions. On some questions union members seem to have a slightly better time at work, while on others it’s the non-union members.

For example:

· 78 per cent of non-union members trust their employer to keep promises compared to 65 per cent of union members

· 75 per cent of non-union members say relations at their workplace between employers and employees are good or excellent compared to 62 per cent of union members

· 48 per cent of union members strongly agree their jobs are interesting and enjoyable compared to 44 per cent of non-union members.

· 48 per cent of union members look forward to going to work, compared to 49 percent of non-union members, while 22 per cent of both groups wish they didn’t have to go.

· 78 per cent of union members agree they are encouraged to develop their skills compared to 71 per cent of non-union members.

· 12 per cent of union members say that workers being disciplined or unfairly is a problem at their workplace, compared to 7 per cent of non-union members.

But it would probably be wrong to draw very many conclusions from the differences revealed here between union and non-union members. It is more likely they reflect some of the other differences we have already observed such as union members being older, more likely to work in large workplaces and in the public sector. An alternative explanation is that union membership raises expectations of a good deal from work. Further analysis of the survey will help explain these differences.

The survey provides some insights into workplace problems and grievances. Here are some general statements about work.

	Per cent agreeing
My job requires I work very hard	86
My job is secure	77
I feel loyal to my organisation	75
Managers here are understanding about employees having to meet family responsibilities	74
I never seem to have enough time to do my job	49

Respondents were asked to rate their managers on a school report basis - A for excellent through to F for failure. The following table presents a satisfaction rating by taking those who give a bad report ‘poor’ or ‘failure’ from those giving ‘good’ or ‘excellent’. The higher the rating, the higher the satisfaction.

What grade would you give the management for	Satisfaction rating
promoting equal ops	68
Concern for employees	46
making work interesting	28
willingness to share power and authority with employees	26
keeping everyone up to date	20
Giving fair pay and increases	15

What about grievances? The survey asked whether a range of issues were problems at the workplace. (These questions are being put to all workers and asks about their perception of whether there is a problem. To accurately gauge whether there is discrimination it would make more sense to ask those likely to face the discrimination or use other objective tests.)

Are any of the following issues a problem at your workplace?	Per cent saying yes
Unfair wages	18
Preferential treatment by management	18
Unfair disciplinaries or dismissals	9
Bullying	9
Sex or race discrimination	3

The key conclusion is that the average British workplace is not riven with major grievances. If anything staff in non-union workplaces are somewhat more satisfied than in union workplaces, though as noted above, there is a range of possible causes.

Union activists should not conclude that non-union workplaces are all Dickensian sweatshops with exploited staff. Even though they undoubtedly exist, they are not typical.

How should unions present themselves to prospective members?

To try and look at what type of appeal unions can best make, some ‘positioning’ statements were put to the focus groups to gauge their reaction and to see which might best help unions recruit. These statements were drawn from interviews conducted by Butterfield8 among members of the Task Force.

‘Your friend in the workplace’ and ‘Your friend in the workplace and beyond’ are concepts that have worked for unions recruiting in workplaces where they are recognised and there is experience of union organisation. But while they may be useful retention messages they worked less well in the research groups where there was little experience of unions. Here they were seen as a bit cheesy. People did not see a union as their mate.

The reaction to both ‘On the side of working people’ and ‘A champion for the needs, hopes and fears of working people’ were similar. They provoked a ‘so what?’ attitude and were too obvious. They also suffered from not explaining what unions actually do. We need a verb in an effective statement.

Both ‘Helping you get the most out of work and working life’ and ‘Helping you move on and up’ provoked real interest. In particular the second statement was seen as a new and interesting departure for unions. This is because the people in the groups did not see that unions might be interested in advancing your career. We are seen as solely concerned about your rights as a worker. Unions are seen to go with a job, not with an individual.

‘Understanding the needs, hopes and fears of working people’ and ‘Understanding, help and advice for people at work’ were also received reasonably well, but the second was better as it suggested understanding but then doing something about it. As someone said in one group 'Your gran is understanding. That doesn’t mean she’s going to get anything done for you.'

The ‘AA for the workplace’ also appealed to some. It was seen as an interesting way of putting union membership that has a real ring of truth. It is more realistic than trying to become your friend, and while it was more mercenary than some of the ‘understanding’ statements it explains the contract between you and the union - you pay them as a back-up and that’s it.

‘Protecting the rights of working people’ and ‘fighting for your rights at work’ were received well by those with antagonistic employers and were widely accepted as accurate descriptions of unions today, even by those who did not see the need for anyone to fight for their rights. They were seen as ‘dynamic’.

But a note of caution is necessary here. Those with bad employers wanted someone to fight on their behalf, but people are also put off unions by their fear that small issues will be blown up into major disputes. The trick will be to attract the first group without alienating everyone else.

The solution may well be to talk about unions as ‘strong defenders’ rather than ‘fighters’. The sense should be that the union doesn’t go looking for trouble but if someone picks on a member then they will stick up for them.

Unions need to be tough rather than pugnacious, and strong rather than aggressive. People are still put off by the anti-union messages used in the 1970s, and they want modern unions to speak softly and reasonably but carry a big stick.

From this research three general positions emerge that work in different ways for unions wanting to attract new members. Of course each union will need their own appeal based on the interests of their target audience, but knowing there are some appeals that work in general can only be helpful.

1) An unemotional transaction - This builds on the ‘AA for the workplace’ approach and presents union membership as insurance for the workplace. You have home and car insurance, this is just work insurance.

2) A strong defender - Your union is keeping watch over your rights. This is a restatement of what people already know and appreciate about unions but presented in a way that doesn’t suggest unnecessary escalation. It is also probably helpful to address each individual and talk about your rights.

3) Nurturing and support - While few unions other than some specialist and professional bodies would probably claim to play this role in regard to all their members, it is an attractive stance for potential members. As unions develop more of a role in training and lifelong learning, unions will be increasingly seen as taking this kind of role in people’s lives at work. It will definitely help recruitment. Other services that can assist people develop their careers will be popular, and could reinforce the appeal of unions.

Butterfield8 suggested the ideal appeal for a modern union might be:

'Subscribing to a union is well worth doing. Unions are your strong defender. They are listened to. They get things done (quietly).

'And it’s a service. Unions work for you, not the other way round. You pay the union. They service you. They don’t envelop you.

'We can do this because we understand today’s working people.'

Put into a single statement (though not meant as a snappy recruitment slogan) this might become:

'Understanding, supporting and, where necessary, defending today’s workforce'

And what about a modern trade union brand?

By this we don’t mean a new logo, slogan or corporate look but the way we would want members and non-members to view and experience trade unionism. It’s about our relationship with them.

Indeed we already have a brand, in the sense that people already have views about us, and our members have direct experience of us. The question is therefore not whether the TUC, trade unionism or individual unions should have a brand, but what we would like it to be.

In chapter two we pointed to the need to be clear about the shared values of trade unionism. This is not to argue for a snappy slogan or a glib mission statement that is filed away and forgotten, simply a convincing answer to the fundamental question ‘what are modern trade unions for?’ that helps unions increase membership and influence.

As part of their consultancy work, Butterfield8, interviewed many of the members of the task force and asked about how trade unions are, and should be, perceived. It was from those interviews that the positions tested in the research reported above were drawn.

Their conclusion was that an accurate answer for how trade unions are currently perceived would be ‘fighting for your rights at work.’ But while this is an important part of what unions do, it is not sufficient. Unions have a much wider purpose and range of activities and we run the risk of putting off some potential members if we are prepared to limit our appeal.

Instead they suggest another quotation from the Task Group interviews as a better positioning statement:

'A force in society to represent the dignity of working people.'

This adds important extra dimensions to the more limited statement. 'A force in society' adds our campaigning, community and wider representation roles. It places us so we are not just 'fighting' but also defending and supporting those at work, including non-members (as we do though campaigning for the minimum wage and against racism at work). And 'dignity' goes further than 'rights'. It implies we are interested in the quality of work, helping people get on at work and giving them more control and influence in the workplace.

But this is not how we are generally perceived at present. The question is how we can help move the movement in a way that our broader role and functions are as appreciated as the time we spend 'fighting for rights'.

While unions can always raise their game, we know that unions already take on a far broader role, even if the perception is sometimes different. But the change in positioning we need will not be achieved by each union acting alone. The movement as a whole must work together, and in particular the TUC, as the most public face of trade unionism, needs to contribute to that process. This is a key aim for the initiatives suggested in the final chapter.

This all adds up to an effort to create a modern trade union brand. A key starting point for thinking about brand is identifying the attributes we want people to think we have. A common approach in thinking about these attributes is based on a hierarchy of attributes.

The most basic attribute is your function, what it is that you do. Once you have established this you can move on to the emotional benefits that you offer through the performance of your function and the way that you do it. You also have values implicit in the way that you deliver the function and emotional benefits. These all add up to a personality. Each of these is built on the ones below it in the hierarchy.

Image is not replacing substance. ‘What you do’ is still the most important basic building block. But other factors - such as the way in which you do it, the quality and nature of the interactions between member and union - also shape how unions are perceived.

As part of their work Butterfield8 drew up some suggested attributes based on this approach for how we would like modern trade unionism to be seen.

Modern trade unionism
Personality	Conscientious, determined, responsive, compassionate, youthful
Values	Dignity, decen