Trade Union Power at the Beginning of the 1990s

Abstract

Abstract Previous chapters have examined the factors affecting the balance of power between management and unions, and the processes involved in using power in collective bargaining, both in general and at industry level. Changing contexts, capabilities, and objectives cause power relations to be inherently unstable. This concluding chapter brings the threads of the argument together by reviewing changes in the power of trade unions in Britain in the 1980s in the light of the previous analysis and in doing so summarizing many of the issues covered. Two major alternative views are identified. According to one view, trade union power has declined sharply since 1979, and Mrs Thatcher is seen to have ‘solved the union problem’. Declining trade union power enabled Britain’s ‘productivity miracle’ of the early 1980s to occur. An alternative view stresses the continuities in trade union power, indicated most importantly in the continuing rise in real wages, despite sharp increases (and falls) in unemployment.