We’ll keep the taupe flag flying here…
Thursday, December 21st, 2006Very interesting piece by Jonathan Guthrie in the FT (read it before they slap the curse of subscription view on it), “Unions need to swap the red flag for pastel shades”. He’s drawing together the T&G/Amicus merger with a new paper on unions’ finanical outlook from LSE/PSI (with the snappy title of “Accounting for Collective Action: Resource Acquisition and Mobilisation in British Unions”).
His opinion is that unions need to revise their offer to prospective members to break out of a gradual decline. In many new industries, he believes, people’s view of work has moved on, to the point where there’s no longer a natural understanding of what a union might offer them.
“Unionists should not take Billy Bragg’s rallying call to ‘bring up the banners from the days gone by’ any more literally than modern Christians do biblical prescriptions on camel husbandry. Leave those dusty banners in storage, comrades, they remind nervous punters of Arthur Scargill. Instead, pop on pastel polo shirts, brew some fresh coffee and organise a speed networking event.”
Now, I like the old banners more than most people I think (always look forward to a good march behind them on May Day), but he has a powerful point. Fingers crossed there are signs of a change here, with one of the proposed merger names (OneUnion) sounding very fluffy and aspirational - just right for the large gains the union could make in the union-wastelands of the business services industry.
Funny how some of the unions’ best and fairest coverage (outside the Morning Star) seems to come from the FT. You’d not expect it given their readers, but I guess if there’s one thing a capitalist takes seriously it’s capitalism, so they’d want to hear pretty accurately when unions have something to say which might affect them. Union analysis seems to be taken much more seriously there than at the Times or Torygraph. Not enough to make me read it mind… (except Martin Lukes!)
