Trade unions explained in 60 seconds: ideas that changed the world

In this series, The Week looks at the ideas and innovations that permanently changed the way we see the world.

Trade unionism in 60 seconds

A trade union is an organisation that safeguards the employment rights of its members and represents them in labour disputes, negotiations with employers and other workplace issues.

This could mean intervening to ensure companies comply with health and safety regulations, providing legal aid to members who believe they have been mistreated at work, and negotiating, through a process called collective bargaining, for better pay or conditions. In return, members pay a fee to the union, often known as “union dues”.

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According to the Department for Business and Trade, around 6.25 million people in the UK belonged to a trade union in 2022. Many of these are industry-specific organisations such as the National Union of Teachers or the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers. Others, like Unite the Union, represent workers across a multitude of sectors.

Most unions “are structured as a network of local branches with reps in every workplace”, explained public sector union Unison. Unions have a special status in UK law, and “you cannot be punished by your employer if you join – or don’t join – a trade union.”

When collective bargaining between trade unions and employers doesn’t work, unions can organise a vote among members on whether or not to go on strike. Such industrial action has been on the rise in the UK as unions representing teachers, rail workers, NHS employees, and other employees have demanded increased pay to beat inflation.

According to the Office for National Statistics, 2.472 million working days were lost between June and December of last year. In all of 2022, “more working days were lost to strike...than at any time since 1989,” reported The Guardian.

How did it develop?

The earliest predecessors of trade unions can be found in the medieval system of guilds, bodies set up by traders and craftsmen across European cities to regulate their industries.

However, it was not until the rise of mass production during the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century that large workforces under a single employer became commonplace – as did industrial disputes.

This industrialisation of the economy gave rise to the first modern trade unions, not only in Britain, but across Europe and North America.

At this time, employers generally had free rein to set and change pay and working conditions. Workers had few legal protections, and “unions and unionists were regularly prosecuted under various restraint-of-trade and conspiracy statutes in Britain and the United States,” said the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Nonetheless, the labour movement continued to grow. In the 1850s and 1860s, the British economy strengthened, putting workers in a stronger position.

The Trades Union Congress (TUC), a nationwide co-ordinating committee for organised labour, was founded in 1868. In the following decades, the movement continued to broaden, to include unskilled workers and women.

By the middle of the 20th century, “industrial unions – embracing large numbers of unskilled or semiskilled workers – were recognised as powerful negotiating forces,” said Encyclopaedia Britannica.

However, in the UK and US, the influence of organised labour was drastically curbed by the neoliberal governments of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

In recent decades, globalisation has further eroded the influence of unions in the developed world, “weakening collective bargaining in industries whose workers could be replaced by a cheaper labour force in a different part of the world”, explained the encyclopaedia.

How did it change the world?

Trade unions have helped workers win the rights that many of us take for granted today, such as the 40-hour working week, the minimum wage, safe working conditions, the right to sick pay and paid holiday and protections for pregnant women and parents.

Organised labour has also played a valuable role in the fight to end workplace discrimination. In 1968, female sewing machinists at Ford’s Dagenham plant staged a walkout in protest at being paid less than male workers.

Inspired by the Ford machinists, “women trade unionists founded the National Joint Action Campaign Committee for Women’s Equal Rights,” said the Trades Union Congress. Their protests, along with the impact of the Dagenham strike, “led directly to the Equal Pay Act of 1970” , which enshrined the right to “equal pay for equal work”.

But the influence of trade unionism can be felt far beyond the workplace. Trade unions rose in tandem with another transformational 19th-century movement: socialism. This ideology, as outlined in the work of Karl Marx, viewed society through the lens of the exploitation and oppression of workers by capitalist bosses – a perspective that naturally appealed to many labour organisers.

The Labour Party was formed when two trade unions worked together to create a Labour Representation Committee in 1906. By 1922 the party grew to become the main opposition to the Conservative Party. Today “the party continues to rely heavily on trade union funding,” said The New Statesman. “The Labour Party was founded by the trade unions and we expect Labour MPs to defend workers, by words and by actions,” Unite the Union’s general secretary Sharon Graham told the publication.

Similar links between progressive politics and organised labour can be found in many other countries. In the US, “union membership has been declining steadily since the 1980s, but the labour movement still represents a voter base that could make or break a candidate’s chances,” said Vox.

At times, this link has even been world-changing. In 1980s communist Poland, the Solidarity trade union morphed into a far broader social and political movement of opposition to the repressive regime, attracting 10 million members at its peak.

In 1989, the Polish government finally agreed to formally recognise Solidarity and submit to its demand for free democratic elections. That summer, “Solidarity won the maximum number of seats allowed in both houses of parliament,” becoming the first non-Communist government in the Soviet bloc, said Radio Free Europe. “Six months later, the Berlin Wall came crumbling down.”