BRITISH TRADE UNION

British Trade Union

Table of Contents

Introduction3

British Trade Union3

Membership Trends in the British Trade Union6

Causes of Fluctuations in the Membership of British Trade Union11

Future trends12

Conclusion12

References14

Appendix16

British Trade Union

Introduction

Trade unions play an essential role in determining the level of wage inequality or welfare state spending in Western European economies. In doing so, unions draw their influence and legitimacy, to a large extent, from their membership basis. Growth and decline in union membership is thus not only consequential for unions themselves, but also affects countries' pattern of economic development and social cohesion (Achur 2010).

Accordingly, this paper enquires into determinants of unions' success and failure in increasing their membership. In this undertaking, we diverge in two aspects from the bulk of earlier research on union growth and decline (Achur 2010).

From a methodological point of view, the local union may well offer a more useful perspective to explain variation in union membership. The idea is that workers make their decision to join a union on the basis of their experience at the workplace - depending on how easy the access is to a local union and how well the local union deals with their grievances and provides them with services (Waddington 2006). Union locals are thus the primary recruitment centres. At the same time, union locals differ significantly in their ability to recruit and retain members - depending on their strategic choices and organisational priorities (Achur 2010).

British Trade Union

A labour union symbolises workers' concerns at work. British Labour union representatives are nominated by workers and bargain their interest on subjects such as:

Employment degrees

Dismissal proposals

Wellbeing and security

Training (Achur 2010)

British Labour unions care for their associates and guarantee they are not victimised. They operate as an offset to administration supremacy. Several British labour unions are common which stands for their associates who are workers from a broad range of businesses; for instance, the Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU) has associates from many areas such as secretarial, managerial, construction, technology and farming. Other British labour unions have a centre on particular industries for example, the National Union of Mineworkers (Achur 2010).

Economists generally assert that when employees are dissatisfied with their jobs, the only rational option available to them is to exit or quit their job and re-enter the labour market to seek a better situation (Waddington 2006). However, some economists recognise that employees have a second alternative. Rather than exit their workplace, they can engage in voice. Engaging in voice involves trying to convince an employer to make changes in the workplace that will address employee dissatisfaction (Achur 2010).

Employees readily understand that if they engage in voice behaviour as individuals, they will probably have little success in convincing their employers to make significant changes. Even if an employee threatens to quit, an employer can, in most cases, easily replace one worker (Barratt 2009). Employees also recognise that if they combine their individual voices with those of the other employees in their workplace, they will be significantly more likely to persuade an employer to make ...