Trade unions in Britain currently face challenges from three main directions: economic crisis and mass unemployment, the employers' offensive in its many forms, and the role of the law and the state.
Unions and Economic Crisis A major reason for the problems of British trade unions in the last decade and a half has been mass unemployment. Many industries with strong trade union traditions have been cut back dramatically. Such employment growth as has taken place has been concentrated in areas of weak organisation, such as consumer services. According to the 1990 Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (WIRS) in Workplace Industrial relations in Transition by N Millward (Dartmouth Publicity Company 1992), which looked at workplaces with 25 or more employees, only 297 of workplaces established since 1984 had recognised unions. Many of those employed in these sectors have been part-time workers which unions have failed to recruit. The Labour Force Survey (Department of Employment) shows an increase in the number of part-time workers from 4,913,000 in 1984 to 6,121,000 in 1994, while 1994 union membership levels stood at 387. for full-time workers and just 217 for part-timers. The record of the unions in organising the unemployed is even worse, and this has contributed to the lack of involvement of young people with trade unionism. In the 1980s job losses were concentrated in the manufacturing and energy related sectors: now the same is threatened for services. The Financial Times of 28 March 1996 discussed an Economist Intelligence Unit report on retail banking in North America, continental Europe and the UK, which predicted that jobs in this sector will be cut by half in the next ten years.
The immediate symptoms of economic crisis reflect not only global competition but the long-running crisis of the British economy and of that part of British capitalism located at home. This dates back to the nineteenth century, to the consequences of Britain being the first industrialised country and to the
acquisition of the British empire. Of all the major industrialised countries, Britain has been the most international in orientation, and remains so, with a massive share of international investment even now. In 1990 Britain held 15% of the world stock of foreign direct investment (FDI: assets held abroad, not just as bank deposits or portfolios of shares, but as enterprises actually controlled b! British companies). This was second only to the 40% held by the USA. By 1993 it had slipped to third place with 127 behind the USA with 267. and Japan with 13%, but still ahead of France and Germany. The ratio of the outward stock of FDI to GDP (Gross Domestic Product) was higher for Britain in 1990 than for any other country, except the Netherlands and Switzerland. It was about 2.5 times that for France and Germany and about three times that for the USA and Japan. Corresponding to this has been a huge amount of multinational investment within Britain. By 1980, Britain had more inward investment than any other European country and more than the whole of Africa and Asia combined This high level of foreign investment by British capital, and the increased importance of the financial sector which has gone with it, together with the large role of multinational companies within Britain, have led to historically lon levels of investment at home by British companies and, consequentiy, of productivily. This has lowered growth and the share of world trade which in turn has further lowered investment, setting up a vicious circle of economic weakness. This underlying economic weakness led to the Labour government's shift to monetarist policies after 1976, encouraged by the IMF, and the intensification of such policies by the Conservatives under Thatcher. Since 1979 profit rates have risen in Britain, and productivity in manufacturing has been growing at a historically high rate but from a relatively low base. However, this has not been translated into overall growth, principally because of the weakness of investment. This weakness has fed through from the investment sector to the rest of the economy, depressing demand. Limited employment growth has been concentrated in areas where productivity has been growing more slowly. The consequence of all this is continued slow growth, and pressure on employers in the service sector to attack unions in order to keep wages down and reduce the workforce to raise productivity.
Not only has unemployment reduced trade union membership, the fear of iosing jobs means that workers have found it more difficult to take action. Indeed mass unemployment in the 1980s was used as a way of backing up the offensive against unions, under the cover of such phrases as "altering expectations in the labour market'. In addition to high unemployment in Britain, employers use the threat of international relocation or technological change as their main weapons in disputes over wages and changes in working conditions. The media back this up with a stream of articles and programmes asserting the 'end of work' or the
end of jobs for life' claiming that full employment will never return, and and responsibility. The message is that promoting individual self-reliance workers can no longer legitimately ask anything of employers, but must be grateful for whatever work they are given, on whatever terms. The Employers' Offensive After the Tories were elected in 1979 they met a huge challenge from the trade union movement driven by the rank and file. The steel workers struck for 13 weeks of militant action. There were two national one-day actions called by the TUC which brought out hundreds of thousands of workers. The miners defeated pit closures in South Wales. Car workers struck over wages. Health workers battled over pay, miners came out in their support. ASLEF look strike action over working conditions. These struggles were met at the top of the unions with the development of 'new realism' (sec below section 2). The defeat of the printers at Warrington was an important negative turning-point. The printers were left in isolation in the same way as ASLEF, who were instructed back to work under the threat of expulsion from the TUC. Initially the TUC voiced opposition to the first round of Tory anti-union laws, then it collapsed and accepted them. The Tories could now take on their principal target, the NUM. The defeat of the miners' strike of 1984-5, again through isolation and the role of the TUC, was a further turning-point which has still not been reversed. Since then other core sectors of the movement such as the seafarers and the dockers have been smashed up by the employers backed up by the government and the law. The defeat of these powerful sectors of the movement has not yet been redressed. Tremendously important battles still continue, most importantly the Liverpool dockers' resistance to victimisation, but the situation has not been reversed.
On the back of these victories, the employers have responded with a full-scale offensive against working conditions and the unions, particularly since the mid1980s. The shape of this offensive differs from sector to sector, but it centres on an increasingly sophisticated set of 'new management techniques' (NMTs). In some areas, such as newspaper publishing and coastal shipping, there has been widespread use of union derecognition, which has progressively spread to include more well-organised workers. While an earlier study by Claydon reported 25 cases of union derecognition in 1987-8, the later account by Gall and Mckay reports that by 1994 there were about 70 cases of derecognition each year. These included traditionally powerful areas of trade union strength such as dock workers (remarkably every port in the country has been derecognised), the Unipart car components plant in Oxford and all major companies in the oil industry. Many smaller employers have also refused to recognise unions and have enforced
"sweatshop' conditions. Even where unions are recognised there have been cuts in the number of reps and shop stewards and in the facilities they are afforded, olten accompanied by victimisations of active trade unionists. In other workplaces other aspects of the NTs have been used as a route to the intensification of work. These include agreements designed to neutralise the possibility of effective trade union action, such as the single-union deal signed by the AEEU at Nissan in Sunderland. This agreement states that: "(a) To ensure the fullest use of facilities and manpower, there will be complete flexibility and mobility of employees.
(b) It is agreed that changes in technology, processes and practices will be introduced and that such changes will affect both productivity and manning (sic! levels.
(c) To ensure such flexibility and change employees will undertake training for all work as required by the Company. All employees will train other employees asrequired.
Source: P. Garrahan and P. Stewart The Nissan Enigma.
In other words, the union has renounced any control over the ability of management to enforce its definition of flexible working. According to the WIRS survey (quoted above), in 1990 907 of trading sector workplaces, and 76%: of all workplaces with recognised trade unions, had no union agreement restricting how work is organised or limiting management flexibility: Of course, it is true that custom and practice has played a role in limiting the ability of management to exploit this formal freedom in existing sites, as opposed to new enterprises like Nissan. However, faced with the pressure of competition in the private sector, and with continual budget cuts in the public sector, a process of attrition is wearing down the ability of unions to limit management prerogatives.
Single-union deals have been used to encourage unions into competition with one another, with each offering more and more concessions in order to gain recognition. This is especially pernicious at a time when the old Bridlington agreements governing union membership are weakening in the face of falling numbers, leading to more poaching of members. Companies can further pressurise the unions in the case of new plants by threatening to locate elsewhere if insufficient concessions are made, as with the withdrawal of Ford's proposed plant at Dundee in the late 1980s. This was around the time of the Times dispute which also involved the relocation of production outside Britain. However, there is also an important issue of principle with regard to such deals. They concede to management the right to determine the structure of representation for the workforce. Whatever the merits of having one union or
several in a particular workplace, the decision about this is one that workers should be able to take on their own, without reference to management wishes. New management techniques can also include the reshaping of the workforce through an increased use of personal contracts, performance-related pay (PRP) and temporary workers. In 1994 over 50% of those who had been in their jobs for more than 10 years were union members while for those who had been in post for less than two years the figure was less than 207c. The WIRS survey showed 527, of establishments using at least one form of PRP (767 for trading sector establishments). The Labour Research Department's 1994 survey of union representatives showed that 40% of respondents reported more use of temporary workers in their workplaces in the preceding two years.
Il has been argued that the use of temporary workers has not really increased very much. For example, the number of employees in temporary jobs rose by just 150,000 between 1984 and 1994; from 1,236,000 to 1,396,000. However, this is misleading for two reasons. First, in certain sectors of the economy there appears to have been a very rapid recent rise in temporary work, which does not show up in the aggregate figures. The Financial Times of February 1 1996 reported a 67.5%: increase in the previous five years in the number of manufacturing employees on temporary contracts. The use of such workers had become critical to many manufacturers who were switching to just-in-time working practices. (With just-in-time, stocks are minimised and companies turn out goods quickly to fill orders). Several companies, including the UK divisions of Black & Decker and Proctor & Gamble, the Raleigh bicycle company and chocolate maker Bendicks of Mayfair, said temporary production workers had helped them improve their competitiveness, especially in continental Europe. According to this report, across the whole economy, temporary employees increased by 350,000 or 30.2%: between 1990 and 1995. This increase was by no means restricted to manufacturing. In certain service areas, for example in further and higher education, temporary employment is now extremely widespread. In many service areas within the private sector, for example tourism and catering, temporary employment has long been common.
Second, the cold statistics of the number of temporary workers do not capture the dynamic implications of the changes for individual employees. An attempt to do this has been made by Paul Gregg and Jonathan Wadsworth (in article in Oxford Review of Economic Policy Vol 11 1995), using Labour Force Survey data. The results are devastating. In their sample for 1992/3, while 63% of all work consisted of full-time permanent jobs only 30% of new jobs took this form. About 40% of newly filled jobs were part time. Of jobs filled by those out of work, only 20% were full-time permanent positions, and two-thirds were parttime and/or temporary. For every 1% of total jobs that are temporary they estimate that about 6% of vacancies will be temporary. The wage levels in jobs
taken by those unemployed people were correspondingly lou. The picture painted is one where anyone losing a full-time permanent job will find similar employment increasingly hard to obtain in the future.
Another new management technique is the use of new working arrangements, lor example 'Icam-working', where team leaders are counterposed to shop stewards as representatives of workers' views. The Labour Research surres showed 46% of respondents reporting the introduction of team-working in the preceding five years. Team-working has often been linked with so-called 'multiskilling where the range of possible tasks to be carried out by each employee is increased, allowing for a faster pace of work as people are shifted between tasks as the production process dictates. While team-working has been central to the restructuring of the labour process in manufacturing (notably car production) and in areas like the postal service, in other sectors different techniques have been used. In health, education, social services and some office work, teams are not new. What is increasingly the case though is the introduction of market relationships into the workplace. Budgets are devolved downwards and teams are set against one another in a competitive process, with jobs and appraisal reports dependent on meeting financial targets. At the same time various forms of "flexible hours" are introduced to push up profitability.
The combination of PRP, appraisal and team-working has led to an increased focus on the "capability" of workers as a potential disciplinary matter - leading to the increasing introduction of capability codes under which workers can be sacked if they are not capable of doing their job because, for example, of serious illness. More and more, management is asserting the right to select those it sees as the most productive and reliable workers and to weed out those who need to take time off due to illness or other commitments through the most draconian codes on sickness and attendance. Increasingly it is accepted in the media, and even by union leaderships in some cases, that management has such a right to select according to physical fitness and good health and that workers must justify, as individuals, their rights to a job and their productive contribution. Such ideas feed naturally into the way that new management techniques are backed up by a group of theories and approaches designed to gain the acceplance of the workforce: "total quality management', 'human resource management and others. Words like 'quality", 'choice' and "flexibility" occur again and again in this process. While it is still rare for the techniques all to be introduced simultaneously, managements are increasingly planning ahead and selecting carefully which approach to use in order to achieve their objectives. They are also becoming more confident. New approaches such as 'business process reengineering' bypass union agreements completely and impose change by diktat. Another example of the increasing confidence and sophistication of management in applying the techniques is the increasing popularity of 'bench-
marking'. Here information is gathered on which enterprise or part of a company has gone the furthest in each particular new management technique, for example team-working or flexible hours. This then becomes the 'benchmark' for that category of worker. In this way workers in a work place are confronted by management not just with the working conditions in nearby competitors in the same industry but with a composite set of conditions drawn from companies across the globe, harmonised down to the lowest common denominator. An important aspect of this technique is that the information on other companies is increasingly gathered by carefully chosen worker representatives, who inevitably come to see themselves as having a stake in the success of the operation. After initial opposition, the response of most trade unions to the NMTs has largely been to participate in their introduction, and in some cases actually to welcome them. The 1996 dispute in the Post Office over the so-called 'Employee Agenda'
, which was centrally built around team-working, assumes particular significance as the first national industrial action primarily concerned with the introduction of the new techniques.