Unions of all kinds are flexing their muscles. Should we be celebrating?
New Unite union boss Sharon Graham has promised to make every UK workplace ‘action ready’ and vowed to take on Amazon
The new boss of Britain’s second-largest union is barely a week into the job but already ruffling feathers, said Henry Bodkin in The Daily Telegraph. Sharon Graham of Unite has promised to escalate the use of controversial “leverage tactics” – protests and social media campaigns targeting companies, their senior managers and investors – and to make every UK workplace “action ready”.
The former waitress has form: she previously ran Unite’s “organising and leverage department”. She’s also unafraid to go after the big boys, said Michael Savage in The Observer – she is plotting an international campaign to unionise Amazon’s warehouses. In her manifesto, Graham lambasted what she described as “an increasingly passive tendency within the union”. Safe to say, those days are over.
Cometh the hour, cometh the woman, said Maggie Pagano in The Mail on Sunday. “For the past four decades, employers have been in the driving seat.” Now there are signs at last of “a structural reversal” in power “away from employers to employees”. You can see traces of it throughout the economy: from high finance – where Goldman Sachs is offering graduates starting packages of £100,000 in the UK – to the haulage, food and manufacturing industries.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
While some of this largesse is doubtless related to pandemic labour shortages, economists point to more permanent trends, such as changes to migration patterns in Britain. The number of foreign nationals working in the UK jumped from 1.06 million to 3.75 million in the 20 years before Brexit. Much of that workforce has now been depleted – and wages are rising. “It’s often difficult to detect seismic shifts in economic history”, but we may be witnessing one. “About time too.”
In recent decades, Britain’s “deeply flawed” labour market has been shaped by the “cost-cutting demands” of those, such as supermarkets, “at the top of the supply chain”, said James Moore in The Independent. Unions now at last have a chance to redress the balance.
Be careful what you wish for, said Matthew Lynn in The Daily Telegraph. The new breed of “woke” unions is very different from the movement that dominated the 20th century, and “a far bigger threat to companies”.
Traditional unions had a set of clear, defined demands: better pay, worker protections, and so on. The new “Generation Z” sort now proliferating in the US and beyond are interested in “values”, “social justice” and “equality”. There’s little room for compromise; “they promise only permanent cultural warfare”. They might be small right now, but they represent “the biggest threat business has faced in a generation”.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
'Epic meltdown'
Today's Newspapers A roundup of the headlines from the US front pages
By The Week Staff Published
-
The World of Tim Burton: a 'creepy, witty and visually ravishing' exhibition
The Week Recommends Sprawling show at the Design Museum features over 600 exhibits from across the directors' five-decade career from early sketches to costumes and props
By Irenie Forshaw, The Week UK Published
-
Crossword: October 31, 2024
The Week's daily crossword
By The Week Staff Published
-
The World Bank and the IMF: still fit for purpose?
In the Spotlight Washington meeting has renewed focus on whether 80-year-old Bretton Woods 'twin' institutions are able to tackle the challenges of the future
By The Week UK Published
-
Post Office: still-troubled horizons
Talking Point Sub-postmasters continue to report issues with Horizon IT system behind 'one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history'
By The Week UK Published
-
The UK's national debt: a terrifying warning
Talking Points OBR's 'grim' report on Britain's fiscal outlook warns of skyrocketing spending, but 'projection' is not a 'forecast'
By The Week Published
-
Copper coins: are they doomed?
Talking Point Treasury says no new 1ps and 2ps needed due to declining use – but would we really miss them?
By The Week UK Published
-
Shein: could the year’s mega-IPO fall apart at the seams?
Talking Point Latest hitch is a pre-float 'security review' that could deter potential investors
By The Week UK Published
-
Labor market strong as inflation sinks
Feature And more of the week's best financial insight
By The Week US Published
-
Midair blowout: another black mark for Boeing
Feature This isn't the first production issue Boeing has encountered
By The Week US Published
-
Behemoths of the seas
The Explainer Cruise liners keep getting bigger, with the world’s largest 'megaship' ever built set to make its maiden voyage this month.
By The Week Staff Published