1979 Essay, Research Paper

Trade brotherhoods in Britain have existed for over two hundred old ages. In the early nineteenth century, trade brotherhoods were outlawed for being anti-competitive but by the early twentieth century there were two million trade brotherhood members and this rose to a extremum of over 13 million in 1979. However, in the 1980s there was a crisp autumn in the figure of trade brotherhood members. There are a figure of possible accounts for this extremist alteration in trade brotherhood rank in the 1980s but I feel that there are three chief grounds. First, the recession of 1980-82 led to an addition in unemployment of about two million and the unemployed tend to allow their trade brotherhood rank oversight. It is interesting to observe, nevertheless, that the rise in employment in the late eightiess did non take to a corresponding rise in trade brotherhood rank. Second, the 1980s saw a extremist restructuring of British industry as employment in fabrication, a sector which was really extremely nonionized, fell significantly. The new occupations that were created tended to be in the service sector of the economic system, which is traditionally far less nonionized than fabricating. Third, the 1980s was a decennary in which the authorities showed a pronounced ill will to merchandise brotherhoods. This affected the willingness of workers to fall in brotherhoods and increased the assurance of those employers trying to cut down or extinguish trade brotherhood activity in their workplaces. Trade brotherhoods have to work within a legal model and this started in Britain when they gained the right to organize in 1824 with the abrogation of the Combination Acts and their right to strike without being sued for amendss by an employer was enshrined in the Industrial Disputes Act of 1906. During the 1960s, nevertheless, there was a turning feeling that trade brotherhoods and their members were utilizing their power in a manner which was damaging to the economic system as a whole. The Labour authorities of 1964-70 shelved programs to present trade brotherhood reforms in the face of brotherhood resistance, but Edward Heath & # 8217 ; s Conservative authorities of 1970-74 did take action. The Industrial Relations Act ( 1971 ) was extremely controversial, met significant resistance from the trade brotherhood motion and failed to cut down their power efficaciously. It was repealed in 1974 when a new Labour authorities came into office and trade brotherhood rights were extended by assorted pieces of statute law in the undermentioned two old ages. The 1980s, arguably, saw a transmutation in the clime of industrial dealingss in Britain. The Conservative authorities, alternatively of presenting big scale legislative reform, passed a figure of Acts of the Apostless each of which restricted brotherhood power at the border. By 1990 secondary picketing had been made illegal ; trade brotherhoods had to keep a secret ballot and derive a bulk of the ballots cast to name an official work stoppage ; societal security benefits were withdrawn from the dependents of dramatic workers ; brotherhood officers had to be elected by secret ballots and closed store understandings were restricted and greater chances were given to employees to choose out of closed stores. Power within the trade brotherhood motion has besides shifted because before 1979, little groups of workers who were willing to take unofficial work stoppage action and certain hawkish trade brotherhood leaders tended to rule at least the newspaper headlines and the policy determinations and activities of their subdivisions. The reforms of the 1980s made it more dearly-won and more hard for workers to take widespread unofficial action and the power of trade brotherhood leaders to name work stoppages was curbed because workers now had to be balloted on work stoppage action. Furthermore, the democratization of brotherhood vote processs made it much more hard for hawkish trade brotherhood leaders to acquire elected to cardinal stations within trade brotherhoods. The authorities besides astutely distanced itself from the prosecution of trade brotherhoods. Previous statute law had concentrated on condemnable jurisprudence, where wrongdoers were prosecuted by the province and could be fined or imprisoned and as a consequence authorities ever risked making trade brotherhood & # 8220 ; martyrs & # 8221 ; . Much of the brotherhood statute law concentrated on civil jurisprudence and so employers were given powers to action trade brotherhoods for breaches of the jurisprudence. For case, if a trade brotherhood called a work stoppage without keeping a secret ballot, it was the employer affected that sued the trade brotherhood for amendss. The authorities has no power to prosecute the brotherhood. This means that the trade brotherhood hazards losing considerable amounts of money if it does non follow with the jurisprudence, but single trade brotherhood members can non derive public understanding by being sent to prison as they could in theory under the 1971 Industrial Relations Act. Not merely has the authorities well reduced the ability of trade brotherhoods and their members to take industrial action, it besides, during the 1980s, took a strong stance with public sector trade brotherhoods. The most of import trade brotherhood licking in the populace sector was the breakage of the mineworkers & # 8217 ; work stoppage in 1984-5. Furthermore, the authorities wholly cut off the trade brotherhood motion from determination devising at a national degree. This contrasted with the sixtiess and 1970s when authoritiess, both Labour and Conservative, would frequently confer with trade

union leaders before making important decisions. To say whether the reduction in the trade union movement is a propitious development or not, a definition of what trade unions are needs to be obtained. Beatrice and Sidney Webb’s definition of a trade union as “a continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their working lives” is still very apt today. For many important players in the economy, such as this Government, the Institute of Directors and the CBI, the decline of the unions is seen as a propitious development. They blame Britain’s trade unions for pushing up wages, applying restrictive controls to work and thwarting management’s ability to plan and innovate and as a result are the “prime factor in economic crisis”, as McIroy puts it. The Right also emphasise the role of trade unions in creating inflation and cramping productivity. They tend to believe that employees are self-regarding individuals, who have less need than in the past to organise themselves collectively to defend or promote their interests in the workplace. While some of these arguments can be seen as being true in the 1970s, when trade union power arguably got out of control, these views carry less weight today because of the decline of union power. Other factors must be taken into consideration when looking at Britain’s economic problems. There is the view that there is a debilitating split between the interests of the financial world and the industrial world. In other words borrowing, lending and currency speculation have taken precedence over what is really important as the basis of a thriving economy, building factories and producing goods. Others claim that incompetent management, the fragmentation of the economy into small units, or the tendency of capitalists to put consumption and dividends before investment, or investment overseas before investment at home is equally to blame. I feel that there is still a need for trade unions as they provide several important functions for the majority of workers. For a start there is and always has been an unequal relationship at work. In other words, the employee as an individual in the workplace suffers from having an unequal relationship of power with his or her employer. It is only when the employees decided to join together collectively, that they can create enough united strength to have a strong and credible voice to counter that of the employers. Unfortunately, the main feature of today,s labour market is its insecurity and lack of certainty. As a result a great fear for the future exists among employees. This insecurity is no longer confined to unskilled manual workers but has spread to all sections in the British workforce. As John Monks, General Secretary of the TUC said, “There are no steady jobs. They are here today, gone tomorrow jobs with no security, no pension, no sick pay and no paid holidays.” Trade unions at least go some way in trying to redress this balance. Recent years have seen the rise of a divided workforce because the British labour market is not just deregulated but it is also becoming increasingly segmented. The growth of part-time employment has strengthened the sense of employee insecurity. Problems are caused for employees because part-time workers have no legally enforceable employment protection like those who are employed in full-time jobs. Even with trade union representation, employees, especially in retailing, find their working lives unstable, insecure, low paid and under valued. Without trade unions all the evidence suggests that their situation would be even more impoverished than it is at the moment. The government’s own commissioned Workplace Industrial Relations Survey carried out in 1990 indicated just how vital trade unions are. Its findings revealed “repeatedly how much worse off employees who do not enjoy the protection of collective bargaining are. They are, on average, less favoured in terms of pay, health and safety, labour turnover, contractual security, compulsory redundancy, grievance procedures, consultation, communication and employee representation.” The power of the British trade union movement has certainly been significantly reduced since 1979. While I think that the trade unions were getting too big and powerful and as a result were causing more bad than good in the 1970s, their rapid decline in the 1980s was not a propitious development. This is because employers now do not need to adopt basic recognised fair standards of labour practice because of the lack of legal regulation. This, combined with workplace insecurity and evidence of a squeeze on living standards has made conditions in the labour market ripe for trade union protection. Workplace conditions and terms of employment will only detriorate further if trade union power and influence, responsibly used, is not allowed to continue. Bibliography British Trade Unionism c. 1770-1990 K. Laybourn 1991 Trade Unions WEJ McCarthy 1972 Trade Unions In Britain Today J. McIlroy 1988 Trade Unions. Public Goods or Public C. Robins 1981 ‘Bads’? The Future of the Trade Unions R. Taylor 1994 The History of Trade Unionism S&B Webb 1922