Is Another Trade Union Movement Possible?

By Marsha Jane Thompson and Nick Venedi (UK union activists)

The challenges which face the trade union movement and an attempt to tease out some of the threads from which it may be possible to weave a new trade unionism for the twenty first century.

Perhaps the most worrying of all the statistics that we can pull out of various official reports is the finding that less than one in ten workers between the ages of 16 and 24 are in a trade union. In spite of several years focus on organising and recruitment of young members, our movement is simply failing to reach out to our future. One of us has direct experience of the limits which constrain the official efforts of our trade unions to reach out to and organise young workers.

Two related dimensions of globalisation add to the challenges which confront our movement. On the one hand, workers are arriving in the UK in large numbers - on the other hand jobs themselves are increasingly mobile.

Union Ideas Network May 2007)