Trade unions and the 2016 UK European Union Referendum

Ian Fitzgerald, Ron Beadle and Kevin Rowan
Additional contact information
Ron Beadle: Northumbria University, UK
Kevin Rowan: Trades Union Congress, UK

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2022, vol. 43, issue 1, 388-409

Abstract: This article reports on pre and post interviews with trade union leaders and senior Trades Union Congress (TUC) and union officials who held campaign responsibilities for the 2016 UK European Union (EU) Referendum. The article considers the development of union policy towards the EU, the determination of unions’ final positions, campaign resources and media, the arguments made and the drivers of and constraints upon active campaigning. Campaign intensity, resourcing and strategic decision-making varied widely across unions and was frustrated by resource constraints, fear of alienating members and in some cases lack of priority. The article concludes that unions must be better prepared to commit material resources and national officers’ time so that campaign issues are effectively framed in terms of member concerns.

Keywords: European Union Referendum; migration; social Europe; trade union policy and campaigns (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0143831X19899483 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:43:y:2022:i:1:p:388-409

DOI: 10.1177/0143831X19899483

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic and Industrial Democracy from Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().