On Tuesday 24 March 2026 Politics in Pubs met to discuss trade unions.  The topic was introduced by Hilary Salt, Manchester Coordinator of the Social Democratic Party.  She organises members locally and is standing in the May elections in the Sale Central ward in Trafford.  Hilary was a co-Founder of First Actuarial where she worked extensively with trade unions on pensions issues including supporting the CWU in negotiating the groundbreaking new collective defined contribution scheme with Royal Mail.

Introduction

There are 130 trade unions registered with the government’s Certification Officer and Hilary began by testing whether Politics in Pubs recognised some of them and who they represented (e.g. Accord, WGGB, SCOR, ASLEF, GMB, BFAWU, NUM, PFA, IWUGB, USDAW).

In 1979, 13.2 million people belonged to a trade union – now it is 6.4 million (one fifth of the workforce).  50% of those work in the public sector (often education, public administration and health).  Members are more likely to be female, and more are degree holders.  47 trade unions are affiliated to the TUC (representing 5.5 million members) and 11 are affiliated to the Labour Party. There are strict legal requirements regarding strike ballots, notice of strikes, General Secretary elections, and submission of reports to the Certification Officer.

Part of the problem or part of the solution?

Hilary believes that it is difficult to know whether trade unions are part of the problem or part of the solution these days.  Many workers will still see their trade union as an important line of defence in the workplace – representing them in wage negotiations, ensuring health and safety requirements are met, defending their rights  and representing them in cases where they have individual grievances against an employer.

But others now feel abandoned by union officials who are firmly entrenched in the lanyard class and have failed to defend workers’ free speech rights, abandoned women forced to share single sex spaces with men, and sneered at their many members who opted to vote Reform rather than Labour.

With union membership now below 6.5m and concentrated in public services, utilities and transport, are unions now relevant for the majority of ordinary workers? And with membership concentrated in professional occupations, are unions like the BMA now holding ordinary workers to ransom?

What have unions become?

In Hilary’s view, unions have become a mixture of the good, the bad and the ugly. Everyday good work done by local union officials for workers rarely makes the news – examples include resolution of grievances and disciplinary matters, violations of legislation (such as failure to comply with the legal minimum wage and maternity rights).  Collective pay bargaining by unions and resolution of strikes and disputes have also helped workers.

The bad is that some unions have become an extension of HR mediation in the workplace – too concerned with ‘safety-ism’, therapeutic approaches, and defending individual rights at the expense of the collective.  And instead of being progressive they have become ‘pleaders’ for more in the form of benefits, bailouts and defenders of what people already have.  This position has been exacerbated by anti-trade union laws including EU code-based individual rights legislation, and old-fashioned sell-outs of the workforce by union officials.  The leadership and bureaucracy surrounding a trade union can be problematic depending upon the size, sector, and character.

The ugly includes the predictable financial and bullying scandals but also union involvement in promoting identity politics, DEI, and gender ideology.   Their harmful impact upon workers (particularly upon women as demonstrated in the cases of Fiona MacDonald, Sandie Peggie, and the Darlington nurses) is truly ugly, as is the failure of unions to protect workers like Paul Embery and the Batley school teacher on free speech matters.

A progressive role for unions?

There are encouraging signs, such as an awakening of unions like Unite, GMB and Prospect to the jobs threat of Net Zero policies and the government’s reduced spending on defence.  New unaffiliated unions for delivery and hospitality workers could be another light on the horizon – in 2021 the newly registered App Drivers and Courier Union (ADCU) took its case against Uber to the Supreme Court and won the right for drivers to be treated as workers with basic rights to minimum pay and holiday pay (Uber had previously classed them as self-employed).

Hilary suggests that unions should get back to workplace basics – finding ways to improve productivity, demanding skills training and self-improvement for workers, providing the first line of discipline in an organisation, encouraging collective belonging and participation of members, supporting communities independently of the State.   Returning to the values of their forebears – friendly societies and building societies – in protecting and supporting communities would remind trade unions whose side they are supposed to be on.

Discussion

Q. The origin of trade unions seems to stem back to Victorian times when the employers were all evil and treated their employees badly?

A. Yes, in the past employers held all the cards, trade unions have helped to re-balance the needs of employers with those of workers.

Q. Safety at work was the most urgent issue facing employees in manual work and unions battled to improve working conditions but now that this has largely been addressed there is an imbalance in union membership.  Most members work in sectors like public service, charities and a few in the private sector.  Unions no longer seem to represent the working class in manual jobs?

A. It has definitely changed the way the established unions operate – they now represent an aristocracy of workers.  This is why new unions like ADCU are being formed.

Q. If unions cast block votes on behalf of members, how are the members’ views represented in that vote?

A. Technically the views of members should be represented at national meetings by local delegates but in reality delegates often defer to the union leaders.

Q. Why do some unions resist multi-skilling at some workplaces?

A. Multi-skilling is often in the interests of the employer – down-skilling rather than up-skilling – to get something done more cheaply.  The union strives to protect the demarcation between skilled workers who are qualified to undertake that work and those who are not, and their respective pay.

Q. Are some unions representing individual rather than collective interests? For example the excellent pay award made to London Underground drivers?

A. Railway workers got a good deal because the transport network is essential – especially in London.

Q. Isn’t individualism far superior to collectivism?

A. Collectivism has much more bargaining power than individualism.

Q. Trade union membership has halved since 1979.  Why do unions seem to be a dying breed?

A.  Unions have alienated themselves from workers.  There are practical reasons to join a trade union but the narratives about those reasons (e.g. standing with your fellow workers) are missing.

Comment.  Trade unions were created by ordinary folk, not imposed by employers or the government.  They used to be illegal – early trade unionists risked deportation.  Trade unions were about survival not revolution.  They were severely curtailed by Thatcher’s anti-union laws.  People lost touch with the democratic aspect of unions – they stopped participating in the democratic election of their representatives based on their personal qualities rather than a manifesto (if an official failed to represent the interests of their workers they would be voted out next time).  When workers stop participating in that process, people get elected by default on a low turn-out and usually they have an agenda of their own which is not necessarily in the interests of the workers.

Q.  Historically trade unions have accomplished a lot of good but are they a product of the 19th and 20th Centuries?  Workers’s rights still need to be protected and organised but would we invent trade unions in the same way today?

A.  Yes, although the workplace is very different now with some even isolated from colleagues by working from home.  If there were no trade unions employment conditions would deteriorate.

Q.  Trade unions were especially negligent of workers during Covid, failing to challenge the response and interventions made by government and employers.  The Workers of England Union was one of the few who spoke up for workers affected by these interventions.  Isn’t it true that many workers are being failed by their unions like this?

A. Yes, many unions have abandoned their role in representing the specific needs of their members.

Q.  Employers weren’t necessarily running unsafe workplaces because that would have been less profitable for them.  Unions came about to protect workers from incompetent managers.  As workplaces adapted to this, union convenors became political appointments – which seems to have made them less competent at representing the interest of members?

A. Yes, ideally a competent management team and an effective trade union gives the best outcome for workers.

Q. Some unions have a dark side where members are punished for not taking the same political stance as the union.  The railway union is one example. Who polices the unions and the way they operate?

A.  Wrong ‘uns appear in many associations and unions are no different – they sometimes do bad things as well as good.  The Certification Officer takes on some cases where unions are behaving badly.

Q.  In the past, workers and communities formed friendly societies and building societies to help themselves.  They paid in and took out when it was needed.  Then the Welfare State was created and people often now turn to the State for assistance instead of themselves and their community.  Has this protective mindset of ‘self-help’ been lost altogether due to ‘stateism’ of the Welfare State?

A. Many people now regard the State as a better solution than their families and communities.  It is important to have the right sized state in each area – for example it is currently too large in welfare and too small in energy.

Comment.  Trade Unions have been replaced by State intrusions into the workplace via employment law.

Comment.  Although unions have improved things in some industries for workers, some of the strikes in the 1970s were called in response to a union official’s hissy fit rather than in the interest of members.  At times, unions have behaved more like the EU endorsing harmful narratives about Covid and Net Zero.

Comment.  Teaching unions endorse narratives on climate change and gender ideology and do not protect those who have a different opinion.

Comment. Unions allowed the NHS to make policies which were unlawful.  64 of them had to be altered after they were challenged during one employee’s Employment Tribunal proceedings.

Comment. Trade Unions allowed themselves to get very distracted by Net Zero but that is changing in some cases now that they are realising the impact on workers.  But where did it all go wrong – when did the workers become sidelined by the unions which are meant to represent them?

Politics in Pubs would like to thank Hilary Salt for leading this informative and lively discussion.  We would also like to thank our wonderful hosts at The Welcome Inn.  Cheers all!

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