‘We just get a bit set in our ways’: renewing democracy and solidarity in UK trade unions

Abstract

German

French

In a broader context of austerity, sustained financial pressures and policies of restructuring and outsourcing have steadily eroded traditional features of UK public sector employment such as job security, fair reward and collective representation through trade unions. This article examines how a UK trade union representing local government workers attempted to respond more effectively to radical restructuring plans. By engaging in a process of democratic experimentation, full-time officials from above and activists from below sought to challenge the existing ‘insider’ relationship between branch officers and management, which was seen as ineffective in responding to a severe disruption in the regulation of local government employment. Drawing on participatory ethnographic research, the findings show the importance of leadership in the processes towards union renewal and the tensions and struggles underlying democracy and solidarity. Union renewal is presented here as a dialectical process and set of responses involving both strategic direction from above and membership pressure and activism from below.

Keywords

Democracy full-time officers local government leadership solidarity trade unions

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bach

Stroleny

(2014) Restructuring UK local government employment relations: pay determination and employee participation in tough times. Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research 20(3): 343–356.

Bohle

(2011) Trade Unions and the Fiscal Crisis of the State. Warsaw Forum of Economic Sociology 2(1): 89–105.

Brook

Darlington

(2013) Partisan, scholarly and active: arguments for an organic public sociology of work. Work, Employment and Society 27(2): 232–243.

Carter

Danford

Howcroft

, et al. (2012) Nothing gets done and no one knows why: PCS and workplace control of Lean in HM Revenue and Customs. Industrial Relations Journal 43(5): 416–432.

Cohen

(2006) Ramparts of Resistance: Why Workers Lost Their Power and How to get it Back. London: Pluto Press.

Connolly

Darlington

(2010) Radical political unionism in France and Britain: A comparative study of SUD-Rail and the RMT. European Journal of Industrial Relations 18(3): 235–250.

Darlington

(2002) Shop stewards’ leadership, left-wing activism and collective workplace union organisation. Capital & Class 26(1): 95–126.

Darlington

(2009) Leadership and union militancy: The case of the RMT. Capital & Class 33(3): 3–32.

Darlington

Upchurch

(2012) A reappraisal of the rank-and-file versus bureaucracy debate. Capital & Class 36(1): 77–95.

10.

Fairbrother

(2005) Rediscovering union democracy: processes of union revitalization and renewal. Labor History 46(3): 368–376.

11.

Grimshaw

Johnson

Marino

, et al. (2017) Towards more disorganised decentralisation? Collective bargaining in the public sector under pay restraint. Industrial Relations Journal 48(1): 22–41.

12.

Guillaume

Kirton

(2017) Challenges and pitfalls for workplace unionism in a restructured public service. Economic and Industrial Democracy 41(1): 212–228.

13.

Gumbrell-McCormick

Hyman

(2019) Democracy in trade unions, democracy through trade unions? Economic and Industrial Democracy 40(1): 91–110.

14.

Hyman

(1971) The Workers’ Union. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

15.

Hyman

(1989) The Political Economy of Industrial Relations: Theory and Practice in a Cold Climate. London: MacMillan.

16.

Hyman

(1994) Theory and industrial relations. British Journal of Industrial Relations 32(2): 165–180.

17.

Hyman

(2015) The very idea of democracy at work. Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research 22(1): 11–24.

18.

Johnson

Rubery

Grimshaw

(2019) Public sector employment relations after the crisis: A comparative case study analysis of UK local authorities. Economic and Industrial Democracy. Epub ahead of print 19 June 2019. DOI: 10.1177/0143831X18823699.

19.

Kelly

(1998) Rethinking Industrial Relations: Mobilization, Collectivism and Long Waves. London: Routledge.

20.

Kelly

Heery

(1994) Working for the Union: British Trade Union Officers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

21.

Kessler

(1991) Workplace industrial relations in local government. Employee Relations 13(2): 1–31.

22.

Lévesque

Murray

(2010) Understanding union power: resources and capabilities for renewing union capacity. Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research 16(3): 333–350.

23.

Levi

Olson

Agnone

, et al. (2009) Union democracy reexamined. Politics & Society 37(2): 203–228.

24.

Looker

(2019) Union organising and Full-time Officers: acquiescence and resistance. Industrial Relations Journal 50(5–6): 517–531.

25.

McAlevey

(2012) Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell): My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement. London: Verso.

26.

Michels

(1962) Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. New York: The Free Press.

27.

Murray

(2017) Union renewal: what can we learn from three decades of research? Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research 23(1): 9–29.

28.

Parker

(1998) Appealing for democracy. New Labor Forum 3: 57–73.

29.

Simms

Hopkins

(2020) The Changing Face of UK Public Sector Policy. In: Keune M, Ramos Martin N and Mailand M Working Under Pressure: Employment, Job Quality and Labour Relations in Europe’s Public Sector Since the Crisis. Brussels: ETUI, pp. 327–358.

30.

Stewart

Martinez Lucio

(2017) Research, participation and the neo-liberal context: The challenges of emergent participatory and emancipatory research approaches. Ephemera 17(3): 533–556.

31.

Voss

Sherman

(2000) Breaking the iron law of oligarchy: Union revitalization in the American labor movement. American Journal of Sociology 106(2): 303–349.

32.

Webb

(1894) The History of Trade Unionism. London: Longmans.