I like trade unions. I think that most people like the principle of trade unions, and I think you would be hard pressed to find many Conservatives who think that they should be abolished completely.
Generally, trade unions do drive up working standards, workers’ pay and also ensure that businesses are held to account by their staff. In principle they are, therefore, a good thing.
But trade unionism is dying in this country and it is another example of a perfectly good institution suffering, often due to its own self inflicted wounds. Trade unions are often too much associated with the Labour Party and left-wing politics. The leaderships are not accountable enough to their members, they often seek to grand stand to get in the news and they are too busy pinching members from a dwindling pool of workers who have joined a union.
Ed Miliband in his speech to the Trade Union Conference, said that the biggest challenge facing the trade union movement is relevance and their actions over the past thirty years show why they have increasingly become irrelevant to 85% of private sector workers and millions of public sector workers.
However there is an alternative.
In a modern society, people want less politics from their trade unions and more direct support. Trade unions should perhaps start to see themselves as membership organisations, providing services to their members directly to help them – as well as lobbying on their behalf to business and the Government.
Trade unions could start providing subsidised childcare for their members, helping them to save money. They could provide after school clubs, to give parents a break but also to help those who have multiple part-time jobs. They could provide gyms, facilities for members to host events such as weddings, christenings, funerals etc. They could even provide online libraries for their members, or holiday retreats. The list is endless and all of which could directly improve the quality of life of working people.
Unions are not poor. Unite the Union in 2009 took in nearly £140m from members in contributions, excluding political funds. The Public and Communication Services Union generated over £30m in subscriptions that year, and the GMB Union in 2010 got nearly £56m from subscriptions.
These are not small amounts of money and it could make a big difference for members. Already unions are seeing the problem of relevance and they are offering insurance discounts, shopping discounts and so on. But this is small fry.
John Lewis, for example, operates several clubs on behalf of its partners and allows them to book weekends away there at subsidised prices. At one club for example, partners can take a weekend break away for £18 a night with breakfast included.
Perhaps if trade union members were able to get similar benefits they would feel that joining a union would give them more benefits and would show that they shared the concerns of people in real life, rather than opposing government policies or trying to grab headlines.
Taking the example of child care, instead of decrying some of the costs of childcare, what if unions opened childcare centres with subsidised rates for members?
Of course, unions cannot take on the whole burden of providing services for their members but these might provide tangible benefits that might encourage people to join unions, providing them with more members, more income, income that could reinvested into members and then used to attract more members?
This could be taken across a range of services and a chance to discover a new purpose and defy critics who say that they are out of touch with modern life.
Some argue that the regulations provided by government and the social safety net that has been created have killed the unions, people aren’t members because the safety they wanted from union membership is now provided by the state. I don’t think that this needs to be spell the end of unions, rather it means finding a new role in communities across the country.
Ironically, the Big Society, which so many unions oppose – might be a salvation, giving unions are a chance to take over facilities and provide them a space across our communities to provide these kinds of services. Unions could open up new facilities in towns and cities across the UK, and these could act as hubs for offering new services.
Politics can never be removed from the trade union movement, they are voices that need to be heard by Governments and their approach can be useful in stimulating debate and counteracting the money and allure of business. But it shouldn’t be all that they do, and schemes such as unionlearn have proved that when they put their mind to it, trade unions do so much more.