The Geography of Trade Union Decline: Spatial Dispersal or Regional Resilience?

Abstract

Since the late 1970s, in many nations trade union membership has fallen sharply and the power of trade unions has weakened considerably. The decline in unionization has been particularly abrupt in Britain. Whether considered as a crisis or as a transition of organized labour, the unions have been in retreat. Although the broad features and dimensions of this decline have received attention, relatively little is known about its geography, about how far and in what ways the spatial contours of British trade unionism are being restructured. This paper seeks to explore this issue. Having outlined the scale and nature of the decline of recent years, the paper goes on to examine what impact this upheaval has had on the geography of unionization across the country. In particular, it examines the extent to which this decline has been concentrated in the unions' traditional regional heartlands, and whether this has led to a more spatially dispersed pattern of unionization. Our analyses indicate that the geographical heartlands have remained remarkably resilient, and that it is the failure to penetrate the new growth sectors and regions of the economy that represents the main challenge facing British unions. These findings of regional resilience, both to decline and to new organization, lead us to emphasize the role and significance of local labour traditions and employer attitudes, and hence the need for a locally focused approach, in order to fully grasp the continuing decline and restructuring of the British trade union movement.