Are we heading for an autumn of discontent?

Mike Millar asks if the recent spate of strikes augurs a resurgence in trade union militancy

In the summer of 2004, Derek Simpson, then general secretary of the Amicus trade union, went to the Glastonbury music festival. He took to the skies and arrived by helicopter, lord of all he surveyed. But of course he was really nothing of the sort, hence the need for this stunt in the first place. Simpson was there to show that trade unionism was ‘down’ with the youth of today. The media took more notice than festival-goers did.

But desperate times called for desperate measures. Union attempts to entice a new generation of members in meaningful numbers were not working. The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that by the end of 2006 little had changed; indeed, things were actually getting worse. That year the rate of union membership fell by 0.6 per cent to 28.4 per cent of the workforce, the biggest annual fall since 1998. One in six private sector workers are union members, compared to three out of five public sector workers. Unfortunately for the unions, public sector workers only make up one fifth of UK employees.

But there is a feeling that the times might be changing. Almost every area of the public sector has either taken industrial action or threatened to do so recently. Even the police could one day walk out, after voting to lobby the government for the right to strike.

Professor Roger Siefert, director of the Centre for Industrial Relations at the University of Keele, says there is ‘a sense of something happening’ – driven by government policy, tough economic factors and a youth disillusioned with politics but keen to ‘enforce what is right’.

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