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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

State of the Unions

by New Worker correspondent

The percentage of UK employees belonging to trade unions fell to 22.3 per cent in 2022 – down from 23.1 per cent in 2021. This meant 200,000 fewer workers are in unions, with only 6,250,000 trade unionists out of a workforce of 28,300,000, the lowest rate since 1995. Of these, about five and a half million are in TUC-affiliated unions. The 2022 fall was most notable in the private sector, but public sector membership fell as well.

Another set of official figures was released in early July. These are in the Certification Officer for Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations Annual Report, which covers the year up to 1st April 2022 and are compiled from returns from unions and employers’ associations. The earlier figures were from the Labour Force Survey, which are based on sample surveys of workers. The figures are slightly different but not wildly so (with one important exception discussed below), but the latest Certification Officer figures are six months behind the Labour Force Survey. Whilst one might think the figures based on returns from the unions are more accurate, many union branches still use obsolete membership lists.

In the last year no less than eight unions have passed into history. The National Association of NFU Group Secretaries is no more, which will give farmers an easier time, as is the National Union of Mineworkers Cokemen’s Area, which was well past its sell-by date. The Institute of Journalists continues as a professional body but no longer pretends to be a trade union.

The only major departure recorded is the de- mise of “Workers Uniting”, founded in 2008 by Unite in collaboration with the USbased United Steelworkers, which was to “build global union activism, recognising that uniting as workers across international boundaries is the only way to challenge the injustices of globalisation”. In reality it only provided a few photo opportunities for general secretaries.

A few other unions that have not had sufficient energy to fill in their annual returns have also departed the scene.

There is one new union, although five other organisations are seeking certification: The “Solid” trade union which hopes to represent workers in the “private sector specifically within manufacturing, primarily in the North West of England”. But it does not seem to have done anything except set up a website and has not even been denounced by any other union.

The Certification Officer’s figures show that the total funds belonging to trade unions fell 2.2 per cent to £1.61 billion in 2022. More dramatically, political funds fell 42 per cent from £52 to £30 million. Membership of Britain’s 116 registered unions fell a massive 19 per cent from 6.7 to 5,353,382 according to the Certification Officer – however this is due largely to the absence of Unite from this year’s figures. Unite’s last official figures were 1,246,429. Even so, adding Unite’s membership to the latest total gives us a 6.6 million total, only about 35,000 above the Labour Force Survey figure. So there is plenty of room for improvement.

It beggars belief that a major trade union could not get its act together to fill in a form on time, something that the mighty Leek United Building Society Staff Association managed, but there we have it. We will have to wait another year to see what effect the recent strike wave has on the figures. There should be some positive bounce, but probably not as some optimistic reports from some unions.

The salaries of General Secretaries recorded in the Certification Officer’s report do not generally feature in union press releases. They range from the £9,098 earned by the leader of “Solidarity: the Union for British Workers”, which is run by a former National Front leader (there are some strange bodies that manage to get approval) to the £557,000 paid to the General Secretary of the Professional Footballers Association – but at least he could claim only to be taking what many of his members expect and more.

That is not the case for the railway workers in RMT, whose leader gets £193,973, nor the £251,158 pocketed by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) General Secretary. In the other two rail unions, the General Secretary of the higher-paid drivers’ union ASLEF gets £108,610 and that of TSSA £93,994. The General Secretary of the Musicians’ Union will whistle a happy tune on her £135,051. About a third of the general secretaries get six figure salaries, and that is before expenses and benefits. Who says trade unions don’t boost wages.

Even excluding the massive Unite, it is clear from the Certification Officer’s statistics that more than two-thirds of Britain’s trade unionists are in the 11 unions with more than 100,000 members. In descending order by membership, these are: Unison with 1,394,892 members, GMB, RCN, National Education Union, USDAW, National Association of Schoolmasters and Women Teachers, Communication Workers Union, PCS, British Medical Association (BMA), Prospect, and finally down to the University College Union with 122,104 members.

These are largely public service unions, many with a majority of university-educated members. Once upon a time the largest union was the National Union of Mineworkers, which had over a million members. It now has less than 200 and exists mainly to deal with welfare issues.

At the other end of the scale there are six unions with a total of 277 members, but there are almost a million members in the 105 unions with less than 100,000 members. At a time of general decline there has been a modest growth in the smaller unions with a membership of less than 10,000, which now amounts to 167,538 or three per cent of the total membership, which could possibly be evidence of discontent with the larger unions.