Unions In Britain Research Articles

Sail, Steam and Emergent Dockers' Unionism in Britain, 1850–1914

In a well known study of the building industry written some years ago, Richard Price argued that the institutionalisation of trade unions and general formalisation of industrial relations that occurred during the latter half of the nineteenth century were influences that tended to restrict the capacity of work groups to regulate the conditions of their working lives. Whereas earlier labour historians, from the Webbs onwards, had emphasised the part played by formal organisations in the improvement of working conditions, Price stressed the capacity of informal groups to control the way work was conducted. Price's approach, and that of other writers adopting a similar perspective, has been extremely influential, not least because it accorded well with developments taking place in the modern industrial relations setting of the 1960s and 1970s, where interest was focussed upon autonomous work group activity. In the context of the mid-nineteenth century, however, Price certainly pushed his argument a long way. The capacity of craft workers, possessing a strong corporate tradition, to regulate autonomously conditions in their trade was one thing, but Price suggested that work group formation and activity extended to labourers, in building and other industries. Dock labourers, in particular, were held to have been capable of such regulative activity, “long before unionisation”. If this was indeed the case, then the argument regarding the negative contribution of formal union organisation and collective bargaining must presumably be held to apply even in those sectors of employment where the new unionism of the 1880s and 1890s made its appearance.

Training Trade Unionists in Britain

At the end of 1984, the Certification Officer listed 365 trade unions in Britain with a total membership of 10,753,993. Eighty‐nine of these organisations were affiliated to the Trades Union Congress (TUC) whose total membership at that time was 10,082,144 (p. 47), (p. 1). There are no up‐to‐date figures providing the numbers of full‐time officers and lay officials of TUC unions currently. But an estimate by the TUC in 1973/74 suggested that there were about 2,800 full‐time officers in affiliated unions at that time. There were also 400,000 voluntary officers in union branches or at their places of work, with an annual turnover of 20 per cent (p. 2). Given that TUC affiliated membership was just over 10 million at 31 December 1973, it can reasonably be assumed that there are similar numbers of full‐time officers and voluntary office holders today. The potential education and training needs of these 3,000 paid officials, but especially of the 300,000 work‐place representatives and 100,000 branch officials, as well as those of millions of trade union members generally, are very large indeed. And, given the limited resources available to satisfy them, they can only be marginally addressed by the trade union movement.

The Beginning of the Veto Controversy in Ireland

The year 1808 does not feature with any greater prominence in the history of Catholic relief legislation than it does generally in Irish history. It was an uneventful year for Anglo-Irish relations, and for the Irish Catholic community in particular it was – on the surface at least – a period of embarrassment, division and failure. The veto controversy, which dominated Catholic politics in 1808, was productive of mutual misunderstanding and was to cast a shadow over the later proceedings of Catholic interest groups. But the significance of the dispute, hidden even to the protagonists, lay in the very breadth and depth of the misunderstanding. With the veto controversy began the gradual loss of confidence in the traditional champions of Catholic relief, the equally gradual transfer of the initiative to new champions and, all unseen, the first faint crack in the union of Britain and Ireland. It is the purpose of this paper to analyse the causes and course of an incident which was fraught with such long-term serious consequences.

Legitimating the communications revolution: Governments, parties and trade unions in Britain, France and West Germany

Legitimating the communications revolution: Governments, parties and trade unions in Britain, France and West Germany

“United to Support But Not Combined to Injure”

The declaration of intent forming the title of this article – united to support but not combined to injure– succinctly illustrates a dilemma that confronted trade unions in Britain in the early nineteenth century, and that has since re-surfaced periodically. Successful trade unionism necessarily requires collective action, whether of an overt form, as during an industrial dispute, or implicitly, as in the enforcement of a closed shop. Not infrequently, though, the claims of solidarity and collective interest run counter to the rights of individuals: of employers, fellow workers and third parties. The intervention of the law provides an added twist to the potential conflict between the individual and the group. While the individual has traditionally enjoyed generous legal protection so that he can conduct his lawful business unhindered, the recognition of collective rights has been hesitant and qualified. The Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act of 1875 and the Trades Disputes Act of 1906 effectively legalized peaceful picketing, but the relationship of criminal law and trade unions remained uneasy despite the rarity of prosecutions for offences such as conspiracy. Nevertheless, during the century and a half since 1825 there has been a progressive tendency – at least until the 1980's – for the contradiction between collective and individual interest to assume a relatively muted and non-violent form. The emergence of institutionalized industrial conflict was a logical consequence of British trade unions achieving a position of respectability in the established order.

The Protestant Work Ethic, Voting Behaviour and Attitudes to the Trade Unions

This study set out to determine the structure and determinants of people's attitudes towards trade unions in Britain. Over two hundred subjects completed two questionnaires, the first measuring the Protestant work ethic, and the second attitudes towards the unions. Although there were few age, sex, education or trade union membership differences as regards attitudes toward the unions, subjects' beliefs in the Protestant work ethic and voting behaviour were clearly and predictably linked to their attitudes. Factor analysis of the attitude to the union scale revealed a number of interpretable factors. The results are discussed in terms of the psychology of voting and social and political attitudes in general.

New Technology, the Economy and the Unions in Britain

The development of an appropriate response to technological change in a period of economic recession has become a major concern of trade unions in Australia, as elsewhere. The lateness of the Australian trade union response is paralleled in Britain. The British Trades Union Congress (TUC) has recently developed a major training program for unionists in negotiation of new technology agreements. However, in the main, trade unions have approached these as productivity agreements, rather than the extension of industrial democracy which is implied in official TUC policy. In doing so, most unions have acquiesced in managerial strategies to ride the recession with minimal investment in the new technologies required to boost Britain's ailing industries. The only unions which have negotiated over new technology in a broader context have been a small number in the white- collar sector. Their approach is primarily a result of their unusual structure, bargaining power and membership.

Employee Representation in Building Societies

White‐collar trade unionism has aroused considerable interest among students of industrial relations, but relatively little attention has been paid to staff associations, which Crompton noted perform similar functions to trade unions and to which white‐collar workers are partial. At present, white‐collar and partly white‐collar unions account for roughly half of the unions in Britain and some 35 per cent of the membership. The density of white‐collar membership has increased to 40 per cent (over 50 per cent if staff and professional associations are included), compared with 53 per cent for manual workers. White‐collar workers are traditionally thought to be less disposed to join trade unions and, as Bain et al note, “when white collar workers do unionize, they are believed to carry with them certain aspects of the status ideology which affects the behaviour of their unions”. Blackburn and Prandy offer a theoretical framework which may be used to compare the “unionateness” of white‐collar and manual forms of employee representation. Most white‐collar unions satisfy the criteria of unionateness, but a large proportion of staff associations fail on the question of independence from employers for the purposes of negotiation. In the first four years of his appointment, the Certification Officer refused certificates of independence to fifty‐one organisations, all of them staff associations.

Book Review: The Fifth Estate: Britain's Unions in the Modern World

Book Review: The Fifth Estate: Britain's Unions in the Modern World

Social Research and Market Research: A Critique of a Critique

From a methodological standpoint, sample surveys organised by academics are generally less satisfactory than those conducted outside academia. Particularly in comparison with surveys sponsored by private companies, academics are likely to have less research money, less technical skill, less experience at both conducting and commissioning surveys and not least are less likely than company executives to be in a position where their future careers depend on the production of reliable results. This may be a depressing judgment but it is nonetheless unavoidable. It is derived from a year's experience of dealing with clients, both academic and commercial, as an executive with a market research company and amply confirmed by an analysis of research reports appearing in the British Journal of Sociology and Sociology for the period 1968-78. Although 24% of the 510 reports appearing in this decade could be included under the heading of 'survey research', broadly defined as any study in which a number of sampling units were drawn from a specified universe, the technical quality of the surveys reported is usually poor.1 The most frequent problem is the failure to sample from a theoretically significant population, a failing which places severe limits not only on the general relevance of the study but even on the value of the descriptive statistics it generates. One is often reminded of the researcher described by Peel and Skidworth in their unfavourable comparison of British sociological surveys with the American equivalents, a researcher whose sample consisted of 4 100 employees of a large insurance firm, 100 unskilled workers from British Rail, and 80 housewives in a suburb - half in owner-occupied housing, half in council housing'.2 Only 28% of survey reports are based on national studies of the population in question, whether that population is Catholic priests in New Zealand, Scottish firms quoted on the Stock Exchange or white-collar trade unions in Britain. Convenience rather than critical case methodology seems to have been the main criterion in determining the methodology of most of the subnational studies. None of the national surveys that are reported are based on samples drawn from the adult British population, the standard universe for many market research studies. Although the appropriate universe varies with the research problem, it is important for the development of sociology that surveys of the general population should be based on some standardized universe. As things stand, the sociology journals present us with a haphazard patchwork of survey reports which because of the enormous heterogeneity of populations studied, sampling methods employed and questions asked offer strictly limited opportunities for cumulation, replication and trending.3 Given too that as many as 3 1% of survey reports are based on studies conducted outside Britain, one can only infer that British sociology has signally failed to exploit the opportunity made available to it by the development of sampling techniques to produce precise, reliable and informative descriptions of Britain's social structure - and of those people within that structure who would otherwise be most likely to pass by unnoticed and unheeded. Whatever one's views on the importance of survey research to the development of the discipline, it is surely unarguable that those sociological surveys which are conducted should satisfy more exacting standards than is currently the case.

The Labor Movement in the Explanation of Social Service Growth:

Through a comparison of Britain and the United States, it is argued that the labor movement is an important variable in explaining the growth of social services. After the introduction, the first section seeks to explain why mass unionization came earlier and is more extensive in Britain and describes differences in the industrial relations systems of the two countries. The paper then traces the history of political action by unions in Britain and the United States in relation to periods of social service development.

Book Review: Politics, Government, and Industrial Relations: The Fifth Estate: Britain's Unions in the Seventies

Book Review: Politics, Government, and Industrial Relations: The Fifth Estate: Britain's Unions in the Seventies

The Fifth Estate: Britain's Unions in the Seventies.

The Fifth Estate: Britain's Unions in the Seventies.

Aspects of the Development of Teacher Trade Unionism in Britain: 1860–1919

Aspects of the Development of Teacher Trade Unionism in Britain: 1860–1919

UNIONS, INCOMES POLICY AND RELATIVE WAGES IN BRITAIN*

UNIONS, INCOMES POLICY AND RELATIVE WAGES IN BRITAIN*

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:Capitalism in Crisis: Inflation and the State, by A. Gamble and P. WaltonThe Growth of White‐Collar Unionism in Britain and Sweden;A Comparative Investigation, by Roy J. AdamsThe Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, by Daniel BellEuropean Contributions to Organization Theory, edited by Geert Hofstede and M. Sami KassemA Comparative Analysis of Complex Organisations, by Amitai EtzioniCommunity and Occupation. An Exploration of WorklLeisure Relationships, by Graeme SalamanThe Syndicalist, 1912‐14. Reproduced in facsimile by SpokesmanDeveloping Social Skills in Managers. Advances in Group Training, edited by Cary L. CooperWork and Welfare in Britain and the USA, by Bruno Stein

Nurses and trade unions in Britain.

The nature of the negotiating body for pay and conditions of nurses in Britain and some of the reasons for the body's past failure to negotiate a substantial pay increase for nurses are described in this article. A description is given of a series of events, including strike action by nurses during 1974, which led to a substantial pay raise. The pay award, however, represented only a partial success for the trade unions and the negotiating body. Methods of nurses' organization and the roles of their representative unions and professional body indicate some of the reasons for only a partial success. The lack of unity between the National Health Service trade unions and the reactionary role of the professional body were notable. However, many important political and organizational lessons were learned by nurses in this struggle. We are now facing savage cuts in National Health Service expenditure, leading to a reduction in the number of nurses employed. These lessons are clearly useful for the nurses and their organization with the labor movement in fighting these cuts in National Health Service expenditure.

The Significance of the Legal Status of Trade Unions in Britain and Australia

The legal status of trade unions has been the subject of judicial comment and legislation in both Britain and Australia in recent years. This paper examines the significance of this issue. An outline of the current law in both countries is prefaced by a summary of the status established under the original Trade Union Acts. The present legal position is discussed against the background of proposals for changes in the law in the last decade and the policy behind the changes that have in fact occurred. In conclusion it is suggested that providing the most appropriate legal status is not a simple technical matter; the status provided is indicative of wider judicial and legislative policy towards trade unions in particular and collective labour relations in general.

White Collar Unionism in Britain—A Survey of the Present Position

White Collar Unionism in Britain—A Survey of the Present Position

GOVERNMENT VERSUS TRADE UNIONS IN BRITAIN

The Political QuarterlyVolume 46, Issue 3 p. 293-303 GOVERNMENT VERSUS TRADE UNIONS IN BRITAIN N. A. SMITH, N. A. SMITH *The author was in local government administration for several years. Two of his articles have appeared in The Political Quarterly: “Education and the Schools” (July 1948) and “Theory and Practice of the Welfare State” (October 1951).Search for more papers by this author N. A. SMITH, N. A. SMITH *The author was in local government administration for several years. Two of his articles have appeared in The Political Quarterly: “Education and the Schools” (July 1948) and “Theory and Practice of the Welfare State” (October 1951).Search for more papers by this author First published: July 1975 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-923X.1975.tb02136.xCitations: 1AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume46, Issue3July 1975Pages 293-303 RelatedInformation