British Trade Unions Facing the Future

The current uncertainties facing British trade unions come after three decades of extensive restructuring of work and employment relations. This restructuring was accompanied by extensive legislative reforms as successive Conservative governments sought to shift the balance of power towards employers (Smith and Morton, 1993). In these circumstances, and with the beginnings of a distancing between the Labour Party and trade unions, individual unions and the TUC began to look to their own forms of organisation and operation to reverse the falling membership levels, both within particular trade unions as well as across the unionised workforce (Undy et al., 1996). A series of reviews were conducted from 1987, under the auspices of the Special Review Body (SRB) of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) (Trades Union Congress, 1988a; 1988b; 1989). One of the main concerns was to address the problem of falling membership and towards this end financial services were actively promoted to encourage membership recruitment and retention