ILPC 2027

In its Comprehensive Spending Review of October 2010, the UK coalition Con-Dem government announced that £81 Billion was to be cut from public and welfare expenditure over the next four years. The UK Treasury has suggested this will result in a reduction of 490,000 jobs in the public sector and around 650,000 from the private sector (BBC 2010; HM Treasury 2010). The cuts will affect all sections of UK society and roll back the boundaries of the welfare state. The impact on trade union members, their families and communities and also union membership levels is, hence, likely to be profound. Unions have, unsurprisingly, reacted with anger and a determination to oppose government policy. A number of major unions have committed to work closely together, with the TUC and significantly with non union and community groups to oppose government policy through the development of a ‘coalition of the affected’.

Although examples of union coalition building exist in a number of countries (Clawson 2003; Tattersall 2009), evidence of such strategies in the UK is limited.  Whilst a number of UK unions have suggested that coalition building, generally under the aegis of community unionism, has strategic importance, with the arguable exception of ‘Community the Union for Life’, such interest has largely been at the level of rhetoric. Where joint campaigns with community groups have taken place, the process has been tense and the outcome problematic (Holgate 2009). Tattersall’s work (ibid) indicates that where unions campaign on issues that feed into the self interest of union members, the chances of successful coalition building is enhanced.  Such logic and opportunities seem to be currently present in the UK. If UK unions do manage to achieve their stated strategic objective of wide coalition building, it might signal an important turn for industrial relations and union politics in the UK.

The study and paper offer an empirical investigation of the development of union strategy for coalition building against government economic strategy and insight into the factors responsible for success or failure. Although data will be gathered from a number of UK unions, attention will be directed mainly toward UNITE. UNITE is the UKs largest union and has around one million members in the private sector and 250,000 in the public sector. The methodology will be qualitative. Data collection will be through interview, participant and non-participant observation and documentary material.

References

BBC (2010) [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11569160 accessed 4.11.10].

Clawson, D. (2003) The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements. Ithaca and London: ILR Press.

Holgate, J. (2009) Contested Terrain: London’s Living Wage Campaign and the Tensions Between Community and Union Organising, in J. McBride and I. Greenwood (eds.). Community Unionism: A Comparative Analysis of Concepts and Contexts. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 49-74

Tattersall, A. (2009) ‘A little help from our friends: a framework for understanding when labor unions are likely to build powerful coalitions.’ Labor Studies Journal, 34(4), 485-506.

HM Treasury (2010) HM Spending Review (Cm7942, October). London: The Stationary Office. [Available at: http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/spend_sr2010_documents.htm accessed 4.11.10]