Trades Union Congress Research Articles

Mobilization, Internal Cohesion, and Organized Labor

The strategic choices unions make are shaped by rank and file perceptions and the extent of commitment to a broad trade union-based project for social redress. This article explores the extent of internal unity and the nature and underpinnings of organizational participation by members of South Africa's largest trade union federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, based on a nationwide survey of trade union members conducted in the private sector in 1998. The survey findings revealed that members shared a clear notion of trade union identity centering around accountability, the defining of interests in collective terms, the will and capacity to make use of collective action, and the ability to count on solidarity action from community organizations and other unions. Less predictably, the survey revealed a remarkably low degree of social segmentation within COSATU, “the unity necessary for long-term strength.”

The Trades Union Congress and secondary education for all 1926‐39

L'article examine l'action des syndicats dans le processus de democratisation de l'enseignement secondaire en Grande-Bretagne entre 1926 et 1939. Les circonstances politiques et sociales expliquent le developpement ralenti de l'extension generale de l'acces au secondaire qui devint une realite a partir de 1939. L'auteur etablit l'historique de cette lente progression qui a vu l'enseignement obligatoire porte a 16 ans, grâce a l'action des syndicats et le soutien d'organisations politiques tel que le parti travailliste.

The Nairobi General Strike [1950]: From protest to insurgency

The Nairobi General Strike [1950] was the culmination of Kenya’s post war strike wave and urban upheaval. An unprecedented upsurge occurred with the general strikes in Mombasa [1947] led by the African Workers Federation [A.W.F.] and in Nairobi by the East African Trades Union Congress [E.A.T.U.C.]. While this has been termed and treated as a city wide strike, there is enough evidence to suggest a movement that went some way beyond Nairobi. The extent of the cohesion and reciprocal impacts amongst urban and rural Africans involved in the strike were underplayed by the colonial government and the media that followed it. Amongst other issues, this account has attempted to address the social physiognomy and scope of this struggle, the embryonic dual power within the city, the character of the E.A.T.U.C. leadership and its relationship to the Kenya African Union [K.A.U.]. Overall, what began as an urban led struggle with organised labour at the helm was subsequently reoriented into the forests and highlands.

The TUC’s Organising Academy: an assessment

In 1998 the British Trades Union Congress established an Organising Academy to train a new generation of paid union organisers. This article reviews the first two years of the Academy and offers an initial evaluation. It seeks to gauge whether the initiative has prompted innovation in organision policy in unions and led to successful organising outcomes.

Debate. Rethinking the work stress 'epidemic'

In July 1999 a British county court awarded former town hall worker Beverley Lancaster £67,000 in compensation for a 'stress-related personal injury' caused by her employer's insistence that she relinquish her job as a draughtswoman in favour of a more stressful position dealing with the public in a neighbourhood housing office. The ruling was the first of its kind in a British court, although the Trade Union Congress reported that a further 460 cases were before the courts, and a further 7,000 cases were being investigated by UNISON, Mrs Lancaster's union.

British Trade Unions Facing the Future

The current uncertainties facing British trade unions come after three decades of extensive restructuring of work and employment relations. This restructuring was accompanied by extensive legislative reforms as successive Conservative governments sought to shift the balance of power towards employers (Smith and Morton, 1993). In these circumstances, and with the beginnings of a distancing between the Labour Party and trade unions, individual unions and the TUC began to look to their own forms of organisation and operation to reverse the falling membership levels, both within particular trade unions as well as across the unionised workforce (Undy et al., 1996). A series of reviews were conducted from 1987, under the auspices of the Special Review Body (SRB) of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) (Trades Union Congress, 1988a; 1988b; 1989). One of the main concerns was to address the problem of falling membership and towards this end financial services were actively promoted to encourage membership recruitment and retention British Trade Unions Facing the Future

Executive Commentary

The mission of the United Kingdom's Health and Safety Commission is to ensure that risks to people's health and safety from work activities are properly controlled. The commission aims to modernize, simplify, and support the regulatory framework; to secure compliance with the law; to improve knowledge and understanding of health and safety; and to promote risk assessment and technological knowledge as the basis for setting standards and guiding enforcement activities. The commission also operates statutory schemes, including regulatory services through such agencies as the Employment Medical Advisory Service. Bill Callaghan was appointed Chair of the Health and Safety Commission in October 1999. He was previously the chief economist and head of the Economic and Social Affairs Department at the Trade Union Congress (TUC), the national body representing all U.K. trade unions. He wrote the TUC's key strategic document. Partners for Progress, setting out priorities in employment relations, and he was responsible for its May 1999 conference, Social Partnership, Partners for Progress: New Unionism in the Workplace, which established priorities in employment relations. He has considerable experience with different groups in the business community and has served on the boards of Business and Community and the Basic Skills Agency. Mr. Callaghan was appointed to the U.K. Government's Low Pay Commission in 1997. He studied philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford University.

Health and Safety Commission Chair Bill Callaghan on “Good Health is Good Business”

The mission of the United Kingdom's Health and Safety Commission is to ensure that risks to people's health and safety from work activities are properly controlled. The commission aims to modernize, simplify, and support the regulatory framework; to secure compliance with the law: to improve knowledge and understanding of health and safety; and to promote risk assessment and technological knowledge as the basis for setting standards and guiding enforcement activities. The commission also operates statutory schemes, including regulatory services through such agencies as the Employment Medical Advisory Service. Bill Callaghan was appointed Chair of the Health and Safety Commission in October 1999. He was previously the chief economist and head of the Economic and Social Affairs Department at the Trade Union Congress (TUC), the national body representing all U.K. trade unions. He wrote the TUC's key strategic document, Partners for Progress, setting out priorities in employment relations, and he was responsible for its May 1999 conference, Social Partnership, Partners for Progress: New Unionism in the Workplace, which established priorities in employment relations. He has considerable experience with different groups in the business community and has served on the boards of Business and Community and the Basic Skills Agency. Mr. Callaghan was appointed to the U.K. Government's Low Pay Commission in 1997. He studied philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford University.

Public Opinion and the 1908 Eucharistic Congress

The summer of 1908 was a summer of congresses in London. The decennial Pan-Anglican Congress assembled in July, the History of Religions Congress met in September, the Trades Union Congress held its annual meeting shortly thereafter, and the International Congress on Moral Education took place in October. None of these received as much newspaper attention as the Roman Catholic International Eucharistic Congress, which convened in England for the first time, from Wednesday 9 to Sunday 13, September. Many column inches were devoted to the preparations and proceedings; photographs were printed; and hundreds of readers’ letters were published afterwards. In reportage the newspapers differed slightly; in opinion, more so. Most of the proceedings were not controversial at all, consisting of liturgies, lectures on various aspects of Catholic belief concerning the Eucharist, and evening meetings in the Albert Hall. What excited the press and sections of the public was the proposed closing spectacular: a procession of the Blessed Sacrament through the streets around Westminster Cathedral.

The new politics of pressure – the Trades Union Congress and new Labour in government

The TUC’s political role has been in the forefront of its function for most of its history and has revived with the election of new Labour. This article argues that the TUC’s current political approach is unlikely to contribute towards significant union resurgence in the workplace or politically.

Democratic discourse? Realising alternatives in Zimbabwe political discourse

This article discusses political discourse in Zimbabwe from a perspective of discourse analysis. It examines two speeches presented (in English) at a seminar on Structural Adjustment and Political Democracy and subsequently published. One speech was given on behalf of a government minister and the other was presented by the Secretary-General of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. The speeches in their published form are examined in terms of their attempts to maintain or challenge hegemony in political discourse in Zimbabwe. The Minister's speech is described briefly as an exercise in rearticulatin g discursive hegemony at a critical point in Government policy formulation. The main focus of this article is an analysis of the linguistic strategies employed by the trade unionist to challenge that hegemony, by drawing the audience to consider alternative perceptions. His use of adversatives, negatives and questions is analysed in detail. The article concludes that the trade unionist's discourse strategies are an effective means of introducing a democratic voice into Zimbabwean political discourse and of engaging an audience in 'collaborative denaturalisation' of government discourse.

Chris Wrigley, ed., British Trade Unions, 1945–1995. New York: Manchester University Press, 1997. vi + 221 pp. $24.95 paper.

It is well known to readers of this journal that the British labor movement is in a state of precipitous decline. A recent government White Paper, for example, reports that since 1990 alone the percentage of workplaces with no union members at all has risen from 36 percent to 47 percent. Perhaps more ominously, the percentage of workplaces that recognize trade unions has dropped from 66 percent in 1984 to 45 percent in 1998. From 1979, when trade union density was estimated at over 55 percent of the workforce, it is now hovering somewhere between 30 and 35 percent. It is safe to say that this low level has not been seen in Britain since before World War Two. Chris Wrigley's contribution to Manchester University Press's fine series on contemporary British history offers a timely collection of documents on the origin and development of these events. By design, this collection focuses on documents generated by the government, political parties, and private interest groups, most notably the Trades Union Congress (TUC). Thus six of the book's nine chapters provide a chronological overview of the vagaries of the British government's industrial relations policies during the postwar era, adequately supplemented with extracts from official TUC responses. Wrigley himself provides an effective and thoughtful editorial introduction that emphasizes not only just how precarious the trade unions' former position actually was, but also just how deep resentments against unions ran among certain sections of the Conservative party.

Heritage Report: The Pumphouse: Peoples History Museum, Manchester

Manchester was the 'shock city7 of the British Industrial Revolution, seen by many then and since as the 'home of the modern',1 and it will come as no surprise to readers of Labour History that the city and its surrounds enjoy a rich industrial heritage which has a prominent place in the city's quest to attract tourists. Disused canals, once central to the city's cotton industry, are now enjoyed by tourists and diners on pleasure boats, while derelict factories and warehouses are being gradually transformed into caf?s, bars, restaurants and museums.2 The Castlefield area, once a byword for 'neglect and decay', is now 'a vibrant part of the city centre'. That, at least, is what one of the signs told me; it was actually a rather quiet corner of the city on the Sunday morning I was there to visit the Pumphouse Peoples History Museum.3 (On my way, I stopped off for a coffee at the nearby Y-Club, which most assuredly has nothing to do with its defunct Melbourne namesake.4 This one's a chic gym.) The Pumphouse is part of the National Museum of Labour History. During the week, I'd been working at the impressive Archive and Study Centre, located a short walk away in Princess Street, in the old Manchester Mechanics' Institution. This was the site of a meeting in 1868, organised by the Manchester and Salford Trades Council, which many labour historians regard as the first annual Trades Union Congress. The Museum was originally opened in London in 1975, based on material collected by the Trade Union, Labour, Co-operative, Democratic, History Society (abbreviated, mercifully, to TULC). The Study Centre still contains a few exhibits, including some posters and trade union banners (from the Museum's collection of about 300), and visitors are permitted to look through a large glass window into the room where the conservation of banners is being carried out. Most of the Museum's exhibits, however, are located in a converted Edwardian pumping station that provided the city with hydraulic power until 1972. It has been impressively transformed. The exhibits commence with a video narrated by Glenda Jackson. It helpfully defines the Museum's objectives, and makes clear its roots in the people's history movement. The museum, we are told, is not just about strikes, protests and demonstrations it deals with ordinary people's everyday lives. Visitors are invited to identify with the lives of the people in the exhibitions: 'This is their story; it is also your story.' The past is not a dead past, for the people featured in the Museum used history to help bring about change. Nor is the Museum an old building with exhibits provided by curators merely for the amusement of the paying customer. It is a space for a story that 'is not yet finished'. The Museum, we are warned, also has its absences: the poor, women and the various ethnic groups that have contributed to British labour history are not given adequate coverage. Jackson appeals to the public to help rectify this problem by supplying ideas and exhibits, particularly as there is no satisfactory exhibit dealing with Britain as a multicultural society. Above all else, the democratic credentials of the museum are emphasised: 'This is a museum of the

Workers’ Experiences of RPL in South Africa: some implications for redress, equity and transformation

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) has played a pivotal role in ensuring that RPL assessment be included as a key principle of the reforming education and training system in South Africa, as RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning) is seen to be an important mechanism for redressing past injustices and inequalities. A number of COSATU affiliates have participated in RPL assessment processes within their industries with the expectation that significant numbers of workers would be upgraded, would receive more pay, or would have increased opportunities for training. By and large, these expectations have not been met. Against such a backdrop, COSATU embarked on a participatory research process for developing implementation policy so that RPL might serve its intended redress and transformation agenda. This paper presents some of the policy issues which emerged during the research process by drawing on the RPL experiences of two affiliates. It concludes with some worrisome realities about the extent to which RPL on its own can serve a social justice agenda.

From Grassroots Democracy to National Mobilization: COSATU as a Model of Social Movement Unionism

To understand the development of labor movements like the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), which emerged in South Africa in the 1980s as part of the anti-Apartheid movement struggling for national liberation, we need to go beyond conventional categories of economic and political unionism. 'Social movement unionism' combines conventional institutionalized collective bargaining with modes of collective action typically associated with social movements. Based on the experience of COSATU this article develops a four-stage model, using a political process approach, to explain the origins, emergence and development of social movement unionism under a reformist authoritarian regime. The analysis concludes by considering whether social movement unionism can survive the transition to democracy.

The Relaunch of the Trades Union Congress

Despite the institutional bias in British industrial relations research, one of the oldest institutions, the Trades Union Congress (TUC), has been neglected by researchers. This article seeks to rectify this deficiency through an analysis of the formal relaunch of the TUC since 1994 under its new General Secretary, John Monks. It reviews the internal reforms and innovations in policy that comprise the relaunch and identifies two competing visions of the union future that lie at its centre. In the first of these, the TUC’s role is to act as an authoritative social partner in relations with government and employers, while in the second its function is to promote, co‐ordinate and support organizing activity by its member unions. Each of these perspectives on the TUC’s role is informed by experience overseas in continental Europe in the one case and in Australia and the United States in the other. The article concludes that social partnership and the ‘organizing model’ are not easily reconciled and that, despite the relaunch, the TUC has yet to make a key strategic choice: whether to follow the European or the North American route as it enters the twenty‐first century.

Do Trade Unions Have a Future? The Case of Denmark

This article analyses union membership among members of the Danish Trade Union Congress (LO). In contrast to most studies about union futures, it takes a subjective membership perspective by drawing empirically on an original database established by the authors. First, we show that there exists a widespread commitment to the union parallel with a very strong connection to the firm. The values of members are highly individualized, favouring non-material needs and interests and strongly supporting the public welfare system.Secondly, solidarity has changed; it has certainly not disappeared, but, in line with the trends of decentralization of the negotiation system, it has become more oriented towards the narrow relations in the workplace and at the local society level. The thesis of everyday solidarity seems to be confirmed.The relatively strong membership commitment is offset by abundant criticism of the union leaders who, in the eyes of the members, are primarily running an apparatus more than they are providing activities in which the members can involve themselves and take part democratically.The final judgement is that the unions in Denmark have a future if they articulate and negotiate the interests of their members. This future seems highly conditional upon sensitive listening on the part of the leaders. In creating a fundament for formulating policies, they must hear what members think and want and they must use democratic decision-making procedures congruent with the integrity of their members. Contingent on these measures, unions probably have a good opportunity to survive and develop in a post-industrial society dominated by rules and norms of 'service capitalism'.

Learning about globalization: a comparative study of the role of trade union education in Britain and Brazil

This paper examines and compares the means by which trade unions in Britain and Brazil, through their education programmes, educate their members and activists about the globalization of production and its role in driving organizational change. In particular, it examines the extent to which trade union education in the two countries seeks to develop critical understanding of the forces; behind the pressure for change. The research on which the paper is based is an analysis and comparison of the relevant educational activities provided by the largest Brazilian trade union centre‐the Central Unica dos Trabalhadores (CUT) ‐with that of the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) and its five largest constituent trade unions, a significant amount of which is provided through the Commonwealth Trade Union Council (CTUC). It will explore the nature and scope of the educational activities provided, recognizing that in addition to dedicated education courses, these may take a number of other forms such as industry or sector seminars and briefings. A variety of methods has been used to gather and interpret the information, including the analysis of policy documents and educational materials, and interviews with trade union officers, educators and participants in education programmes.

Government and Trade Unions

Some of the harder lessons of my life have stemmed from a dawning realization that not every rational person shared my appreciation of the surpassing excellence of all people and things Mancunian. The Trades Union Congress started there with its first Congress in the Mechanics Institute, and the labour movement as a whole owes much to that city. Jim Conway too was a son of Manchester and indeed a civic father, since he was a councillor and chair of the Health Committee for several years. It is therefore a great personal pleasure for me to be able to pay tribute to his memory. Jim Conway’s early working life was, like that of his contemporary and rival Hugh Scanlon, in Trafford Park at Metropolitan–Vickers. He was elected shop steward at the age of 15. He went on to become branch secretary and then district president. His rise as a national official was meteoric, and he was elected General Secretary within five years of going to Peckham. He was already well established as General Secretary of the AEU when I joined the staff of the TUC in 1969. His contributions to the TUC were constrained by AEU rules at the time, but he did within a very short time achieve the distinction of being elected chair of the TUC’s General Purposes Committee, and became an expert in its black arts of compositing, brotherly love and wheeler dealing. Jim Conway was an unashamed right-winger in trade union terms. He was utterly loyal to the Labour Party in particular. He took real pride in being entrusted with this stewardship, and he fulfilled it tirelessly and skilfully until his premature death in the Paris air disaster in March 1974. Just a few days before Jim’s death, Labour had won a general election against all the odds, in which the role of the trade unions had been the most prominent issue. That election had been called in the midst of the 1974 miners’ strike and was ostensibly about ‘who rules Britain?’ Despite that, governments of both parties saw a need to get the TUC and unions onside for a constructive approach to industrial and social change—all in the context of their view that widening inequality was socially harmful and economically unhelpful, and that full employment was the central goal of economic policy. Some disputes andthebreakdownoftheSocialCharter later, theeconomywassetonacourse

THE COSATU PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRATIC TRADITION AND SOUTH AFRICA'S NEW PARLIAMENT: ARE THEY RECONCILABLE?

COSATU, The Congress of South African Trade Unions, has a participatory democratic tradition on the shopfloor that dates back to the emergence of some of its constituent unions in the 1970s. In fact, an ethic developed among members that the unions ought to be democratic. By 1994, when South Africa underwent a major political transformation and the African National Congress came to power with the support of COSATU, the question arose whether the new parliament would be reconcilable with COSATU's expectations of it. A random survey of 643 COSATU members shortly before the 1994 election established that COSATU had sustained its democratic shopfloor tradition and that its members expected the 20 union leaders it sent to parliament on an ANC ticket to be as accountable to them as their shop stewards are. Subsequent research found dissatisfaction with the ANC on account of unsatisfactory delivery and inadequate consultation, especially by the ministries. In response, COSATU has adopted a dual strategy of strengthening its representation in parliament by opening a Parliamentary Office and putting pressure on the government and organized business by engaging in mass action on selected issues. COSATU thus reconciled itself to parliament by combining new terrains of struggle. ON 27 APRIL 1994 SOUTH AFRICA began the most important political transformation in its history since the arrival of colonial settlers orl its shores in 1652. On that day the first ever election in the country based on universal adult franchise was held. Political power was placed in the hands of the previously disenfranchised African majority by sweeping the African National Congress (ANC) into government as the major party in the Government of National Unity (GNU). But what would this democratic political transformation entail for South Africa's black workers? Would the new parliament based on the interim constitution1 ensure accountability of the parliamentarians to the black working class majority in Johann Maree is a member of the Department of Sociology, University of Cape Town. 1. The interim constitution was negotiated during the rule of the National Party. Its aim was to ensure that the transition to democracy and governance under the new regime would take place constitutionally. It was agreed that the Government of National Unity would only govern for one term of office under the interim constitution during which time a new constitution would be negotiated. The interim constitution was replaced by the final constitution in 1996.