2 MILLION STRONG – BRITAIN’S BIGGEST UNION, or so it says next to the logo on the home page of Unite. But that might be something of an exaggeration, according to Jim Pickard of the Financial Times, who has been analysing its annual report:
The group has reported a fall in its membership from 1.95m to 1.64m, equivalent to a drop of 310,000, in its annual report published this week. It later clarified this as mainly a “tidying-up exercise” as officials excised the names of former members who had left or died years earlier.
Even so, Unite admitted that it had probably lost about 30,000 members during the past year because of the recession. It forecast an even steeper haemorrhaging of members during 2009 as the downturn worsened.
Privately, officials expect the loss of as many as 150,000 members during the course of the year for the super-union, which was created through the merger of the T&G and Amicus. UK membership was reported to be 1.54m, down from 1.84m a year earlier.
There have also been unfavourable developments on the financial front:
Unite has reported a £19.5m deficit for the past year after writing down investments in property and shares that were damaged by the financial downturn.
I revealed in February that Unite had made unspecified paper losses on a portfolio of financial assets that had been worth £102m before the recent stock market crash.
Those quoted investments are now worth £71.7m – a fall of £30m – according to Unite’s annual accounts, published yesterday. The union’s accountants registered an “impairment of properties” of £11.9m and an “impairment of investments” of £10.8m …
Unite’s financial position is of wider political importance because the group is Labour’s biggest donor. The party now receives more than 90 per cent of its annual donations from unions.
OK, statistics such as these are never decisive, in the sense of representing the last word about the balance of forces in the workplace.
But they should certainly be set against the rather optimistic prognoses that have been produced by some sections of the far left in recent weeks. Victories at Lindsey, Visteon and Linamar notwithstanding, the British labour movement remains on the defensive.
Posted at 13:00, 10 July 2009
Comments (13)
Unite's problems are certainly there, but to get the full picture of the industrial situation you also need to look at the year on year growth of GMB, and the fact that is has been brought into robust financial surplus.
And this growth has been due to GMB returning to a much more traditional role as a proper trade union, eschewing partnership and sweetheart deals, and standing up to management where required.
It's not surprising that Unite has lost members given its largest industrial sector is banking. That, with the manufacturing sectors has borne the brunt of most of the redundancies in the current economic crisis. Unite has, however, increased it's membership in other sectors, particularly where there have been fights - health, IT, buses, etc.
people should be careful drawing conclusions from annual reports, the level of detail is insufficient to make any worthwhile analysis.
I'm generally a fan of the "things in the garden are rosy" way of doing left politics - because if they were really as bad as you sometimes suggest Dave, then we're all mincemeat.
BUT I read this today: "In April 2009, there were 2,000 working days lost from 6 stoppages. In the twelve months to April 2009, there were 557,000 working days lost from 124 stoppages." (source - http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/lmsuk0609.pdf)
The figures are worth comparing to the year-on-year figures for the past few years:
758,900 strike days in 2008,
1,041,100 in 2007, and
755,000 in 2006
At the very least, this would suggest that the number of strike days is presently falling. And as we all know - fewer strikes tends to mean fewer union members...
And this growth has been due to GMB returning to a much more traditional role as a proper trade union, eschewing partnership and sweetheart deals, and standing up to management where required.
Shame that message doesn't seem to have got through to all the local authority branches...
Harrods - 2007 is the freak figure there because of the national post strike. Reckon the others are close enough as to be hard to distinguish a recent trend.
How many of the union members are in the public sector, and how many will be lost when the inevitable happens?
Charles:
Unite has about 12% membership in the public sector.
Having been drinking with a mate - an old rocker who was a shop steward for UNITE, until, well, like last week when he was made redundant, this does not surprise me.
There are of course problems specific to UNITE. Like a certain GS and his cheer-leader, Charlie. What I hear does not sound too good.
Not at all surprised Unite is in decline. After all their Director Of Campaigns and Communication is non other than chair of Stop the War Coalition Andrew Murray. Have UNITE exec committee heard this joke: How do you get StWC to run a minor anti war movement? Give them a major anti war war movement to start with!
Presumably then it was the likes of Hugh who created the mass movement against the Iraq war and then 'gave' it to Murray and co. Funny, I never noticed that.
All this news tells me is thatUnion membership seems to be swapping from union to union. It is well known that the GMB have been picking up disatisfied Unite members. Similarly Unite in the Health sector have been recruiting pissed off Unison members. The RMT have been targetting Unite bus drivers for a while.
For the whole Union movement though the pot is gradually getting smaller. This recession wont help and unless Unions start organising like they do in the US and Australia the decline will be terminal.
Ian says "unless Unions start organising like they do in the US and Australia the decline will be terminal."
I wish I could say that US unions could be a model, but they aren't. Density has been on a general decline for over 25 years, exposing that "partnership" is not a replacement for struggle. Look at the UAW for an example of precisely what unions should NOT do.
CWIer USA.
I mean the SEIU and the Teamsters
"... RMT have been targetting Unite bus drivers for a while."
RMT is not 'targetting' (sic) Unite bus drivers. RMT has represented bus drivers and other workers in the bus industry for over 80 years and we are the largest busworkers' union in the South West of England, as well as the recognised union at numerous bus companies across the UK. The historic 'spheres of influence' between T&G and NUR (RMT's forerunner) were based on municipal bus companies (T&G), versus bus companies owned by railway companies (NUR). As 'bustitution' spread in the inter-war period, so did the busworker membership of the NUR. Today RMT is going out and organising the thousands of unorganised busworkers in non-union, private coach and bus firms around the country to win recognition for collective bargaining.
We don't 'target' members of other genuine, recognised trade unions, although sometimes they come to us. It's a shame that the so-called 'US Organising Model' has been developed as little more than a skull-counting exercise by some unions in the UK. Parachuting young recruiters into a highly vulnerable, sub-contracted workforce such as Cleaners on London Underground doesn't amount to an industrial strategy to organise the workforce, it's the trade union equivalent of those 'chuggers' that you try to avoid in the shopping centre on Saturday afternoon. That's why RMT has concentrated on Tubeworkers organising Tube Cleaners, so that the sections of the workforce with recognition and collective bargaining strength can give support to those workers still struggling to get it.
I seem to recall that at the time of the T&G/Amicus merger to form Unite there was much fanfare about the new rulebook requiring the merged union to spend 5% rising to 10% per annum of its membership income on organising. I wonder if that will survive the current recession.