Reinventing the Wheel? Privatisation and the Crisis of Public Service Trade Unionism

Abstract

The ideology and practice of trade unions in the public services has traditionally reflected the organisational culture of the ‘public service’ state agencies in which they organised. The neo‐liberal state restructuring of the 1980s contested traditional notions of ‘public service’ and attempted to impose new cultural definitions of ‘public service’ based on economic and political individualism. This paper explores the struggle over the meaning of ‘public service’ in the context of trade union campaigns against the privatisation of the water industry and the introduction of compulsory competitive tendering (CCT) in local government. The authors develop the argument that these campaigns highlight both the weakness and contradictions of traditional forms of public service trade unionism and the possibilities and dangers for public service trade unions in the deregulated and privatised public services of the 1990s.