Unions Today
On the surface of things, unions in the UK are on the crest of a wave, albeit a small one. Over the last two years unions have signed over 800 new recognition agreements; membership, in freefall for most of the last two decades, has stabilised; and there is growing evidence that unions are beginning to rebuild their influence in the workplace and beyond. Certainly unions have cause for optimism in comparison to the dark days of the mid 1990s. When the New Unionism project was launched in 1996, TUC unions had around 6.7m members, down from 12.1m in 1979 and overall union density had fallen steadily over the same period (from 56% to 39%).
In addition to steadying membership and new recognition deals, unions are more actively politically engaged at a national, and increasingly important, regional and local level – formally expressed, for example, through the recently published Skills Strategy White Paper[i] and comprehensive trade union representation on bodies ranging from Regional Development Agencies to Local Learning and Skills Councils. Of course, the relationship between government and unions remains tense in areas – but this should in no way overshadow the fact that unions have far more political access and influence than they did through most of the 1980s and 1990s.
The reasons for this nascent revival are well documented. A more positive political environment, better legislative framework, tighter labour market, increased public sector spending and employment – these external factors have all contributed to the progress that has been made over the last five years. But just as important as these external factors has been the increased focus on organising and recruitment which has filtered throughout UK unions since the mid-90s – an increased focus that we will return to later in this chapter.
However before we do – a caveat. Whatever limited revival there has been still leaves absolutely no room for complacency. Despite successes in winning numerical growth in some areas, the fact remains that mid-way through the second term of a Labour Government, union membership density is continuing to fall (down to below 30% across the UK as a whole) – and less than one in five private sector employees holds a union card. Even in areas of traditional strength – such as local government – union density is poor.
The general decline of national collective bargaining frameworks and sectoral agreements over the last 20 years also means that, despite new recognition successes, only around 36% of the UK’s workforce is covered by collective agreements, and like density, this proportion is falling slowly but steadily over time.
In unorganised sectors there is clear evidence that unions are running out of ‘easy hits’ and beginning to encounter what Tony Burke, Chair of the TUC’s New Unionism Task Group, has described as the ‘permafrost’; that layer of employers who take an ‘over my dead body’ approach to union recognition. In spring 2003, the CWU and Connect lost a recognition ballot at T-Mobile, thanks mainly to the intervention of Malibu based ‘union-busters’ The Burke Group, who boast of a ‘92% [union recognition ballot] win rate’ on their website. That an established European multi-national, which has a European Works Council and recognises unions in Germany, would call in Californian union-avoidance consultants speaks volumes of how much effort and resource they, and potentially other employers, are prepared to put in to stay union-free.
And of course neither recognition, nor rising membership, should be seen as ends in themselves. Turning recognition into real outcomes for members and potential members remains a challenge.
These caveats apart, UK unions are undoubtedly more confident, more hopeful and better-positioned organisations than they were even a decade ago.
New Unionism
The creation of the New Unionism Task Group heralded the first occasion in the TUC’s 135-year history that the organisation was tasked with intervening directly in the way that unions recruited and organised members. In addition, the Task Group’s creation and remit was an explicit acknowledgement that trade union decline, and efforts to reverse this decline, where not the preserve of one or another union, but of critical importance to the trade union movement in the UK as a whole.
The Task Group was set a number of key objectives. The first, and possibly most important (and certainly most difficult to measure) of these was to support unions in their efforts to develop an organising culture – practically expressed through increased resources and investment going into recruitment and organisation. Secondly, the Task Group was asked to look at ways that unions could develop their existing membership bases, while at the same time exploring the potential for growth in new and emerging sectors of the economy. Finally, the Task Group was set the challenge of sharpening the appeal of unions to traditionally under-represented groups of workers, including women, young workers, workers from black and ethnic-minority backgrounds and those at the fringes of the labour market for whom trade unionism appeared to have little or no relevance.
Measuring the success or otherwise of the Task Group was always going to be difficult. While it is clear that progress has been made against all the key objectives of the New Unionism Task Group, what is not so clear is to what extent the NUTG can claim credit, or blame, for this progress.
The shift toward organising
The shift toward organising evident in UK unions shows that rather than remaining content to manage decline, or to continue servicing their existing and dwindling membership bases, unions have begun to grasp the organising nettle. This new approach – evidenced to an extent by stabilising membership and significant organising successes is based at root on the premise that membership decline is neither inevitable nor irreversible. Unions can organise their way into growth.
Perhaps the most visible expression of increased and continued investment to organising has been the New Unionism Task Group’s development of the Organising Academy. Since it opened its doors in 1998 ,the Academy has trained over 160 Academy Organisers – with just over half of those going through the programme being women, and some 55% being aged under 30.
The relative success of the Academy has been well documented (most importantly by Heery et al), and will not be rehearsed again here. However, one key point to note is that some 21 unions, representing over 59% of the TUC’s total affiliated membership, have supported Academy Organisers at some point during the last five years. These unions have ranged greatly in size and scope – including the ISTC, BALPA, Accord and UNISON – as have the way they have used the Organising Academy and their Academy Organisers. As the Academy has developed, so this ‘flexibility’ has increased, as has the scope of the programme itself. For example, 2003 saw the first Academy programme aimed at existing union staff and full-time officers – a major departure from the original ‘vision’ of the Academy. In addition, a small number of unions, including the shop workers’ union USDAW, are developing internal ‘Academies’; deepening and widening the impact of the original initiative.
But of course the shift toward organising is about more than just the Organising Academy, and indeed about more than just employing specialist organisers – vital though these have both proved. Even a ten fold increase in the number of dedicated organisers would leave UK unions barely scratching the surface of the membership challenge.
Nor should employing dedicated organising staff be seen as a ‘quick-fix’ solution. Too often over the last five years unions have taken on Academy and/or specialist organisers on the assumption that this was all that was needed to turn around an organisation which previously seemed to be in almost terminal decline.
As Michael Crosby, co-director of ACTU’s ‘Organising Works’ noted in a critique of UK organising strategies following a visit to the UK in late 2002,
‘Organising is about much more than putting resources into growth and getting a few new members. It is in fact a profound change in the way that every part of the union does its business… Real organising - rather than just selling a bunch of union tickets to prospective members - takes time’.
Unions committed to cultural change need to build organising into everything the union does – and win support in the medium to long term for this shift from members and activists, as well as existing staff and officers.
There is some limited evidence that movement has been made in this area. A recent survey of union full-time officers[ii] found that 73% reported that recruitment was one of the most important aspects of their job, with some 86% reporting that encouraging lay reps and activists was also a key element of their work. These figures compare well with those reported by Kelly & Heery following their study of union FTOs between 1985-1991, which found that less than 20% of FTOs reported ‘recruitment’ as being one of their main three activities. Of course these figures do not strictly compare like with like – but they do suggest a trend towards an increased focus on recruitment and organisation amongst union FTOs over the last 10 years.
Another key group that unions need to engage in this change process are the 230,000 lay representatives and activists who are the face of the union in workplaces across the country. For many of these reps, overwhelmed by a multitude of competing pressures, organising barely registers as a priority. In a recent survey of UNISON representatives, only 13% of those surveyed identified recruitment as one of the three tasks which they spend most time on; and only 11% identified engaging members more effectively as a ‘top three’ priority. A recent TUC survey showed that the bulk of reps’ time is not spent on building the union, but on resolving difficulties between individuals and management, with almost a third of reps (28%) reporting spending more time doing this than any other union activity. This is not to demean the work that reps do in servicing and representing their members, after all this is a vital part of their work. But its does flag up the need for unions to further drive home the importance of the recruitment and organising to lay reps and activists.
Partly as a response to the results of the reps’survey highlighted above, UNISON has been at the forefront of efforts to engage members and activists in the shift toward organising - driving change from the bottom-up as well as the top-down. Around 48% of UNISON’s 1200 branches have branch development and organisation plans, and from 2004 all Branches will be required to draw up a Branch Organising and Recruitment plan. In addition nearly a third (30%) of UNISON branches currently take part in the union’s annual Organising Awards, which celebrate local and regional organising successes. Separately, these and other initiatives may appear trivial, but taken together they are vital in the development of a ‘whole union’ approach to organising.
The TUC too is exploring ways of pushing organising higher up the agenda of reps and activists. Organising is now an important element of the work being carried out by the TUC’s Education service, both through the integration of Winning the Organised Workplace (WOW) materials into core stewards and representative’s programme, and through the development of tailored provision for individual unions. WOW 2, launched in Autumn 2003, combines a bank of flexible, short session materials with an on-line organising ‘toolkit’ – and the materials are designed to be delivered both formally, through TUC Education units, and informally, by organisers briefing groups of reps and activists using stand-alone ‘lunchtime’ sessions.
Ironically, the increasing use of full-time recruitment or organising staff – which on the whole has been an extremely positive development can at times accentuate the problem outlined above. Where full-time organising staff are set prescriptive and defined membership targets, there can be a tendency for these staff and officers to focus more on returning back to the office with a briefcase full of membership forms than on encouraging reps and activists to take the responsibility, and credit, for this work for themselves.
Other problems have stemmed from the way organisers have been used, or misused. ‘Drive-by’ organising – identifying organising targets on the basis of techniques not far removed from the pin in the map/business directory, often means good, capable organisers, are allocated to unwinnable campaigns, or campaigns or projects which have no strategic value to the union.
Over the last few years, unions have got better at laying the groundwork for, and putting in place, the infrastructure to support organising. The GPMU’s recently launched campaign to organise the book publishing sector in Oxford is a good example of this – focussing the union’s resources on a sector identified as a strategic priority by the union because of its potential for membership growth and the longer term prospects for employment.
But this sort of example remains relatively isolated. While the TUC and unions have identified and mapped potential areas for growth, there is still some scope to develop a greater strategic analysis of which targets offer maximum leverage to expand union influence. A ‘one movement’ approach to this work may mean the TUC working more closely with unions to ‘map’ key sectors; identify strategically important companies and organisations; co-ordinate union efforts to recruit and organise in these areas; and mobilise the movement’s resources to support organising efforts.
Likewise, there is more unions could do on the bargaining front to support efforts to recruit and organise. Making increased and more flexible facility time a key element of agreements, opening access to company IT systems for communicating directly with members and non-members, negotiating ‘introductions’ to non-unionised companies in supply chains or industrial clusters - these are just three examples of how unions could use their existing collective bargaining arrangements to boost recruitment and organisation.
On balance it is fair to say that UK unions have not yet managed to effect the ‘cultural change’ originally identified as a priority by the New Unionism Task Group. This doesn’t mean that unions have been standing still – but it does mean that unions need to undertake a ‘step-change’ in their approach. Individual initiatives and successes are, of course important but in the absence of a broader practical framework for changing the culture of the union, these successes and initiatives will only ever have a short-term impact.
In any process of cultural change, leadership is vital, and this is especially the case within trade unions, where the bulk of the organisation’s human ‘capital’ gives its time and effort voluntarily. Unlike Chief Executives or company Chairmen, General Secretaries cannot simply order change from on high. In recognition of this the TUC is developing a ‘Senior Leaders Programme’, due to be launched in autumn 2003, designed to equip senior union officers at a regional and national level with the skills and knowledge they need to develop, lead and implement this process.
Finally, thoroughgoing cultural change is a long-term process - one senior officer in a large UK union reckons the switch to organising will take his union at least 10 years. Annual Conferences and regular leadership elections can militate against long-term strategic planning. This is not to argue that modern unions should dump internal democracy to facilitate organisational change – but it does raise questions about how unions set, and address, long-term strategic objectives.
Breaking out
As well as supporting unions to make the switch toward organising, the New Unionism Task Group was also asked to look at ways of ‘broadening out’ trade unionism in the UK – taking the trade union message out to traditionally non-unionised areas of the economy, and sharpening the appeal of unions to women, black workers and other under-represented groups.
A quick glance at the list of the 800-plus new agreements secured by unions since the introduction of statutory recognition, show that little progress has been made against the first of these objectives. The overwhelming bulk of these new deals have been secured in areas of traditional strength – manufacturing, production and engineering, and to a lesser extent, parts of the former public sector. This suggested bias towards areas of traditional strength is reinforced by union density figures. Manufacturing - 27%, Utilities 53%, Public Administration 59%; compared to Retail – 12%, Business services 11%, and Hotels and Catering 5%. On the plus side these figures show that, perhaps sensibly, unions are concentrating resources into those areas where they are most likely to secure wins, and most likely to walk away with recognition deals after resource-intensive organising campaigns. That said, of course, if unions in the UK are to grow as a whole, then diversifying the industrial base of our membership is absolutely crucial. With the exception of the public sector, union membership is still too heavily concentrated in those sectors and industries with poor or negative jobs growth. The narrowness of our industrial base also goes along way to explaining our continued failure to recruit and organise younger workers – a point we will return to.
While the industrial profile of the majority of the new recognition deals signed by unions looks relatively traditional, it should not be taken as a blanket suggestion that unions have made little or no effort in these areas – or indeed have made no progress. There are enough new ‘wins’ in areas such as catering, new media and, more generally, the private service sector as a whole, to suggest that unions can make inroads into areas of traditional weakness. Successful recognition campaigns in Romeike Media Intelligence (GPMU, August 2002), Telewest (CWU, July 2003), and significantly the TGWU’s recent national framework agreement with catering giants Compass Catering (covering some 90,000 workers), show that there are very few real ‘no-go’ areas for unions prepared to invest in serious organising campaigns.
Just as unions need to break into growing areas of the economy, so too is there a need for them to do more to recruit and organise previously under-represented groups.
Again,there has been some limited progress against the New Unionism Task Group’s stated objective to, ‘sharpen unions' appeal to 'new' workers, including women, youth and those at the rough end of the labour market’.
Union membership amongst part-time women workers, for example, has risen steadily over the past few years - in fact accounting for a significant proportion of new membership growth. Women now account for around 47% of total union membership – and since the beginning of the 1990s the ‘gender gap’ in union density has been rapidly diminishing. Indeed, for the first time in union history women full-time workers are now more likely to belong to a union than men are. This is partly explained by increasing numbers of women entering the labour market, and, in particular, the fact that women are more likely to work in the public sector than men, but it also reflects union efforts to recruit and organise women workers.
However, predictably, we must enter a qualification when assessing these efforts. It is clear that, while real progress has been made, there has not been a commensurate increase in the proportion of women reps, stewards, full-time officers, or executive officers. Likewise union cultures and structures sometimes fall short of delivering either the values, and/or practical arrangements that will facilitate the involvement of more women in the internal life of the union.
Whatever progress has been made in closing the gender gap in union density, it is clear that unions in the UK still struggle to attract young workers, those at the fringes of the labour market and workers from specific black and ethnic minority groups. [iii]
The reasons for this are many and various, but perhaps the most significant is simply that unions are poorly organised in those industries and sectors where these workers are likely to be employed. Add to this high staff turn-over, increased job mobility, casual and temporary patterns of employment, low pay, job insecurity – all features of employment at the lower end of the private service sector in particular – and unions find themselves in unfamiliar, and unrewarding, territory.
But unfamiliar though this territory may be, there are significant areas where unions could make real inroads. For example, according to the National Group on Homeworking (NGH) there are around 1 million industrial homeworkers in the UK – assembling, packing or manufacturing a huge range of products at home. Unionisation amongst this group is extremely low and few unions organise homeworkers in any sort of systematic way. Indeed, no UK union has made any real, long-term, properly resourced attempt to organise this significant group of workers. On the surface of things the reasons for this lack of engagement are pretty obvious – geographic isolation, confused legal status and uncooperative employers are just three of the potential barriers to traditional collective organisation that unions face.
But this is just one side of the story. A recent report by NGH[iv], revealed that four out of ten 10 homeworkers would actively welcome some sort of trade union involvement, with only 5% of those surveyed feeling that unions have nothing to offer them. Indeed, individual unions at a local level have had some success organising in this area - and international experience, most notably that of TCFUA in Australia, shows that unions can effectively organise and represent this group of, often, vulnerable and exploited workers. To all these factors can be added to the fact that many unionised high-street retailers and supermarkets openly acknowledge that they have significant numbers of UK homeworkers in their supply chains.
Yes, there are difficulties; yes, there are barriers, but this is a group of workers that wants a voice – that wants to be organised – but who to date have found unions either unresponsive or wanting. Why?
Of course there are plenty of ‘external’ reasons why unions find organising homeworkers, and indeed other atypical groups, difficult. But all too often it is our structures, our own ways of working, and our own cultures that actively diminish our ability to organise these workers. At their best, unions find ways of tailoring their structures and ways of working to the needs of their members and potential members.
Making unions fit ‘atypical workers’ rather than expecting them to slot nicely into our existing ways of working remains a key challenge. Sometimes this may mean amending Rulebooks; sometimes it may even mean rewriting Rulebooks altogether, but we would argue that a few sacred cows are a price worth paying to organise the unorganised.
One recent development which supports the need for unions to develop flexible structures and ways of working is the rise of the Union Learning Rep. When the New Unionism Task Group was set up, Union Learning Reps didn’t exist. At the time of writing, there are now well over 7,000 ULRs across unionised workplaces in the UK; identifying their members learning and training needs; providing information and advice about learning or training; and so on. By 2010, the Government estimates that there will be in excess of 23,000 ULRs, directly providing advice and support to half-a-million union members. Of these 7000-plus ULRs, some 20% are brand-new reps – people who previously were not attracted to the traditional stewards or safety reps role. These new reps are more likely to be women, more likely to be black or from an ethnic minority, and more likely to be younger than our existing reps.
Although they now have statutory rights similar to those enjoyed by Health and Safety Reps, the first Union Learning Reps were the product of practical workplace initiatives, developed by the TUC and unions, rather than union Rule-Books.
Beyond the Workplace
Reaching out to under-represented groups may also mean thinking beyond the workplace. ‘Community Unionism’ is a much-abused term and one which means many things to many different people, but we would argue that there is real value in unions building genuine long-term alliances and working relationships with community and other groups. In the US context, the communities in question are often local geographic areas – but in the UK ‘Community Unionism’ could include the work unions are developing with, for example, groups of Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual and Transgender members. It may mean developing links with black and ethnic minority community organisations on issues such as tackling the far-right; or working with specific groups of migrant workers, or faith groups. Community Unionism is a not a replacement or substitute for developing strong, effective workplace organisation – but it could be a valuable tool in reaching out to groups of workers which have failed to engage with our traditional structures.
Employers
So far this chapter has focussed exclusively on the role of unions – and how what they do as organisations impacts upon their ability to organise the next generation of workers. Also important, however, are the attitudes and actions of employers. Roughly speaking, where managements are broadly favourable to trade unions, union membership is higher and vice versa. As a consequence, unions need to think about how they engage employers positively.
At this point, it is important to define what we mean by ‘positive engagement’. In the rush to secure new recognition agreements and members, unions could risk ‘bidding-down’ the terms of collective agreements, often in an effort to prevent a company or organisation awarding recognition to a rival union. Winning recognition in these circumstances benefits nobody except the unscrupulous employer – and there is evidence to suggest that even this is not the case. Where unions are recognised, the majority of employers would prefer to deal with a meaningful organisation that can claim to effectively represent the views of its membership, rather than an unrepresentative organisation which exists purely on the say-so of the employer.
But engaging employers positively needn’t mean ‘selling out’ or unions placing themselves in the pocket of the management. The overwhelming majority of employers enjoy a positive and constructive relationship with their recognised unions. In some cases this may be formally recognised through the development of a ‘partnership’ agreement. IIn other cases it will simply be reflected in the development of decent working relationships between union representatives and management. Union efforts to widen the scope of collective bargaining in recent years – raising issues around, for example, work/life balance, equal pay, lifelong learning and workforce development – provide a basis for further strengthening these positive relationships.
Accompanying union membership decline throughout the 1980s and 1990s was the similarly significant decline in the number, and scope of industry or sector-wide employers’ organisations and federations. Those that do remain, such as the Engineering Employers Federation, had a much reduced collective bargaining role. This trend is problematic for unions. Resources, which could be allocated to organising are diverted to support collective bargaining at a workplace or enterprise level; employers who recognise unions and negotiate decent terms and conditions face being undercut by non-union competitors; and sector or industry-wide initiatives around, for example, skills, can be difficult if not impossible to deliver.
Unions can begin to tackle this issue by organising across labour markets or sectors – targeting all major employers of a particular kind of skilled workers, for example, or within a particular sector[v]. Unions can also begin to use their influence on bodies such as Sector Skills Councils or Regional Development Agencies to encourage employers to work together, alongside external bodies and agencies including trade unions, around specific issues such as skills or cluster development. A good example of this approach to ‘organising employers’ is the GMB’s role in the development of the Tyneside Maritime Group, which brings together employers in the ship repair, shipbuilding, and related industries in the North East of England. The Group, which includes several non-union companies, is chaired by the regional secretary of the TUC and effectively acts as a regional employers’ organisation. As well as lobbying Government on issues of common concern, the Group is also taking a joint approach to drawing down Government funding and support, skills, health and safety and labour supply – all of which is undertaken with the active involvement of the local trade unions. This sort of initiative highlights how unions can begin to extend their influence beyond the level of the individual workplace or enterprise.
Government
The legislative framework within which unions operate has a significant, though not necessarily defining, impact on their ability to recruit and organise members. As we mentioned earlier in this chapter, new rights to statutory recognition have seen an unprecedented rise in the number of new recognition deals secured by UK unions.
Of course legislation alone is not enough – how unions use and exploit the opportunities presented by this legislation is crucial. New legislation coming on-stream around rights to Information and Consultation presents unions with both challenges and opportunities. Will employers be able to use this legislation as a means of keeping their workplaces union-free? Or can unions use this new legislation to break into previously unorganised parts of the private sector? We believe that, on balance, this new legislation could become a crucial part of the organiser’s tool-kit, allowing unions to increase their influence in non-union workplaces, and to show workers the value of independent trade union representation. Union members and activists could play a leading role on embryonic in-house consultative bodies, effectively capturing them for the union.
While the Government has undoubtedly delivered a more positive framework for union organising than that which existed throughout the 1980s and 1990s, it is clear that significant legislative improvements to the current framework cannot be relied upon. In its recent submission to the Government’s review of the Employment Relations Act, the TUC identified a number of key points for Government action. These included lifting the 40% threshold on recognition ballots, extending the provision for statutory recognition to small businesses, tackling employers using ‘unfair labour practices’ to intimidate union activists or scupper recognition ballots and strengthening the provisions around the right to individual representation.
If there is likely to be little progress in these, limited, areas, it is perhaps wishful thinking to believe that Government has the political commitment and will to radically reshape the structure of industrial relations in the UK. Genuine social partnership, based on Government and employer recognition of the unquestioned role and value of trade remains elusive, even in areas where unions have shown their undoubted value such as skills and workforce development. Recent disputes in the public sector, most notably in Local Government and the Fires Service, show that there is clear scope for Government, unions and employers to build a genuine partnership, which addresses key questions such as public sector pay and the long term future of public services. The recently established Public Services Forum suggests that Government is beginning to edge toward this approach, but a stronger Government lead in this direction would undoubtedly send a clear signal to private sector employers about the value of engaging constructively with unions.
Summary
Unions in the UK still have a long way to go to repair the extensive decline they underwent throughout most of the 1980s and 1990s – but we would argue that there are clear signs that UK unions are no longer content to simply manage decline. Increased investment in organising and organisers have resulted in steadying membership and record numbers of new recognition deals.
This doesn’t mean that all in the union garden is rosy. We know there is still plenty of work for unions to do and plenty of hard decisions for union leaders to take. This chapter has stressed the need for unions to make a step change in the way that they organise; to increase the investment they make in organising; to strategically focus their organising efforts; and to do more to reach out to those workers for whom unions still have little appeal or relevance.
Alongside this we believe that the TUC needs to do more to support union efforts to recruit and organise the next generation of union members; to help prioritise key sectors and industries; and to lay aside traditional rivalries which stand in the way of a ‘one movement’ approach to organising the unorganised.
The way that we structure our unions, and indeed the wider movement, should be constantly reviewed to ensure that they facilitate, rather than hinder, growth.
Finally, but no means less importantly, we need to ensure that our relationships with Government, employers and other social partners deliver on behalf of our existing and potential members alike. Skills and lifelong learning represent just a fraction of the contribution that unions can make to the economic success, and social cohesion, of the UK. Government policy should reflect the scale of this unique potential contribution.
To conclude, we believe that confident, positive unions, focussed on growth and operating within a supportive social and political framework, can and will deliver real benefits to their members in the workplace and beyond. More than this, strong unions can also give a voice to our wider communities, shaping and influencing the development of social policy.
Rebuilding our membership is not an end in itself, but the means by which millions of working people and their families can get the respect and rewards they deserve.
[i] 21st Century Skills; Realising Our Potential, DfES, July 2003
[ii] Survey of Union Full-Time officers ,Edmund Heery et al; New Unionism Research Project, , 2002
[iii] Today’s Trade Unionists, TUC Economic & Social Affairs Department, London 2002
[iv] Organising Homeworkers in the UK (an NGH interim report on trade union policies and the collective organisation needs of UK homeworkers), Emily Gilbert Leeds, 2002.
[v] Employer Responses to Union Organising, Edmund Heery & Melanie Simms, TUC Organising the Future series, London 2003
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