Union Retreat and the Regions: : The Shrinking Landscape of Organized Labour

Citation

Martin, R. (1998), "Union Retreat and the Regions: : The Shrinking Landscape of Organized Labour", Employee Relations, Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 99-100. https://doi.org/10.1108/er.1998.20.1.99.1

Documenting and explaining the extent, dimensions and significance of trade union decline since 1979 has long been a major concern of industrial relations scholars, and has recently attracted the attention of economists, sociologists and geographers. The particular concern of Union Retreat and the Regions is with the changing geographical distribution of trade unionism, covering membership (size and more particularly density), industrial action and collective bargaining coverage. The study charts changes since 1979 in detail, demonstrating the continued importance of the historical “heartlands” for the survival of trade unionism: Scotland, Wales, the north of England and, until the 1980s, the Midlands. The authors demonstrate the resilience of the north/south divide.

The main contribution of the authors is in demonstrating rigorously that the continuing importance of the north/south divide is not the result of “compositional effects”, i.e. the regional distribution of trade unionism is not an artefact of the sectoral distribution of employment, the gender composition of the labour force or the distribution of firm size. There is a genuine regional effect; historically, trade unionism has been stronger in north Britain. Although all regions experienced a decline in union membership after 1979, this decline was proportionately greater in the south than in the north.

The decline in the south is even greater when union power rather than numerical membership is considered, as a detailed comparison between two regions of the AEEU shows. Martin et al. stress the critical role of union recognition, and the much greater readiness of new firms to grant recognition in the north than in the south.

Union Retreat and the Regions draws upon a wide range of disciplines in seeking to explain the distribution of union membership. There is a particularly interesting if rather abstract discussion of the possible significance of “detraditionalization” and the related process of individualization for trade unionism. In considering the future of unions, the authors have some sympathy with the view that unions should seek to extend the services which they provide to union members as individuals; but they are less enthusiastic about the AA view of union developments than many, reasserting the importance of trying to maintain traditional solidarity.

The authors are stronger at demonstrating the resilience of the regional effect than in explaining it. Frequent reference is made to the importance of local cultures and the tradition of “labourism” in the north. But there is no detailed account of such traditions, nor any suggestion as to how or why they change, although the authors recognize that change occurs. In their discussion of strikes the authors stress the importance of individual workplaces, but they do not discuss the importance of sub‐regional variations in trade unionism generally. If the explanation for the resilience of trade unionism is due to local traditions, one would expect an examination of trade unionism at the level at which tradition matters, the local community, not at the regional level. The northern region covers a very heterogeneous set of traditions ‐ even within Lancashire there are important differences in tradition between Lancaster, Preston and Rochdale ‐ not to mention Liverpool.

Union Retreat and the Regions indicates the broad scope of contemporary social geography, and the strengths and weaknesses of the geographical approach. The authors document the pronounced importance of the regional distribution of trade unionism, but need to look for explanation outside the area of social geography.