Inexorable decline or moment of opportunity?

The importance of unions, and the urgent need for them to innovate to make themselves relevant to a new generation, has been something of a theme on this blog. Four-in-five of us think that trade unions are essential to protect workers’ interests yet trade union membership has been in decline for 40 years in the UK.

Over recent months a number of commentators have written ‘whither unions’ pieces, something that I expect has irked today’s leaders who can — in some respects correctly — point to a number of important victories over recent years.

Yet the facts, and underlying trends, speak for themselves. Indeed, it is a characteristic of the current moment that union issues and arguments feel more pressing than they have in a long time while the outlook for union membership remains bleak.

To try and bring this home, we offered this new analysis to a recent Unions21 conference on ‘the future of unions’. It sets out what recent falls in membership imply for the strength of the union movement in 2030.

We know, to put it simply, that today’s younger workers aren’t signing up in anything like the necessary numbers to replace older workers leaving the labour movement as they retire. So the analysis poses a simple thought experiment: what would have to happen to levels of unionisation among the young just to maintain today’s overall level of membership (given, that is, our projections for the loss of older workers). The answer is a stark one. Just to stand still we’d need to see an 80% rise (from 14% to 26%) in membership among the under 35s by 2030. We’re not aware of a union with a plan for achieving this (but stand to be corrected).

Union membership rates among the under 35s would need to nearly double during the 2020s just to stop any decline in the overall rates from taking place

Our analysis also summarises our more recent projections on trends in union membership, including a look ahead to what we expect the (soon to be published) official statistics on union membership in 2017 will say.

And here there are some chinks of light. Membership figures over the last year may have grown very slightly (in contrast to last year’s massive fall of 250,000). And, we also point out that private sector union membership among under 25s has at least stopped falling since 2010 (though it is stuck at a very low level). But these rays of hope are somewhat overshadowed by the forecast.

For those who want to see a vibrant and growing set of pro-worker institutions — particularly supporting those in insecure, low-paying employment — these projections are a stark reminder about just how much work needs to be done.