‘Partnership’: A Serious Strategy for UK Trade Unions?

Michael Terry

Chapter 15 in Unions in the 21st Century, 2004, pp 205-219 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The statistics of union decline in the United Kingdom since 1979 are familiar, depressingly so to those who hold a strong trade union movement to be a central guarantor of a degree of economic and industrial democracy. Union membership fell from 12.6 million in 1979 to 7.1 million in 1998, a fall in the membership density of the employed workforce from 56 per cent to 30 per cent (Waddington and Kerr, 2000: 231). By 2000 membership had fallen to below 7 million. In the last few years there has been a flattening-out, even a slight upturn, but not enough to mask the trauma of decline, most marked in the private sector. In 1980 well over half of all private sector employees were union members; by 1998 this had fallen to a quarter, and by late 1999 estimates put it as low as 19 per cent.

Keywords: Trade Union; Collective Bargaining; Industrial Relation; Union Membership; Employment Security (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
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DOI: 10.1057/9780230524583_15

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