The aim of this chapter is to explain and highlight the issues associated with trying to examine the structures and strategies of a contemporary trade union by carrying out a detailed analysis of the history and internal workings of the UK’s largest union, Unite. As with the previous chapter, this will be split into two sections. Part one will explain how the merger of Unite came to be, plotting the history of Amicus from the early craft unions of the nineteenth century and the TGWU from the early general unions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the considerable number of mergers that led to the two unions that merged in 2007. This section will explain how these two unions (Amicus and TGWU) grew to be the unions that they were prior to 2007 and what the complexities of these two unions mean when trying to apply theories on union structure such as Turner’s. Part two will examine Unite.
It will analyse the key policies of Unite and how these play out in reality looking at the tensions between organising and servicing, member led, managed activism, leverage and industrial action, and community organisation.
The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate the importance of history when trying to explain the workings of an organisation, such as UNITE, linking the union’s past to its present industrial, political and representational structures and policies. In doing this the complexities of researching a large trade union, such as UNITE, will be exposed, linked with the difficulties that have arisen from a lack of strong contemporary literature in this field.
61 Part one.
This part of the chapter will be examining the creation of UNITE, beginning with a discussion of the unions that amalgamated/merged together, over more than one hundred years, to eventually form Amicus and then carrying out a similar discussion in relation to the Transport and General Workers Union. This will demonstrate and identify, following Turner (1962), the type, democratic structures, policies and practices that UNITE’s predecessor unions adopted. The section will conclude by looking at UNITE’s early history, explaining how the union came to be and some of the issues that have so far arisen, in terms of its structures.
Unite was formed in 2007 from a merger between the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) and Amicus. This makes Unite a particularly interesting union to research due to the differing histories of the two merging unions. Amicus, was the result of a merger between the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union (AEEU) and the Management Science and Finance Union (MSF), which were themselves the outcome of several mergers, and can thus trace its history back to the closed engineering unions of the nineteenth century, which, using Turner’s terminology, could be seen as exclusive democracies. From these early closed unions the organisation has gone through a significant degree of structural change, resulting in the large open unionism of Amicus and the conglomerate that is Unite.
The TGWU, meanwhile, began as a large open, general, union and has remained so throughout its history growing in size to become the UK’s largest union before declining in size throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
62 Amicus - The Engineers.
As stated above, Unite was formed by the merging of the Amicus and TGWU unions, with Amicus being the result of an initial merger, in 2002, of the AEEU and MSF unions. The AEEU, which itself had been formed in 1992 by the merger of the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU) and Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbers Union (EEPTU), could trace its routes back to the new model unions of the mid nineteenth century.
The AEU’s history began in 1851 with the forming of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers from the amalgamation of the Journeymen Steam Engine makers and a number of its smaller rivals (Cole 1939:39). The aims of the organisation had been to unite all skilled engineers in one union, and whilst this was not fully realised, due to a number of craftsmen choosing to keep their own closed organisations, the ASE soon became Britain’s leading craft organisation (ibid: 40), with a membership total bigger, by 1852, than all other societies covering engineering trades put together (Jefferies 1945:32). The forming of the ASE was a new stage in British trade unionism, with features such as centralised control of funds and industrial action plus high contributions, marking it out as a new model of trade union, which became the basis for other organisations forming around the same time (Cole 1939:40, Jefferies 1945:32, Webb and Webb 1894:217).
The reluctance of engineering employers to accept the legitimacy of the ASE led, in January 1852, to an attempt to smash the union, with a strike by ASE members in Oldham being met with a great lock out of engineering workers in Lancashire and London (Cole 1939:41-42, Jefferies 1945:38-39). The lockout ended in victory for the employers, with all workers made to sign a document, prior to returning to work, renouncing the union. However, the duress imposed on workers to sign the
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document meant that it was regarded by ASE members as non-binding (Cole 1939:41) and far from being smashed the ASE doubled its membership in the ten years following the dispute, whilst amassing an unheard of sum of £73,398 in funds (Webb and Webb 1894:226).
Between 1883 and 1891, based on a period of prosperity and the success of the
‘New Unions’, the ASE’s membership grew from 53,740 to 71,221 (Pelling 1992:94), maintaining its position as the lead union in the engineering industry. The Employers Federation of Engineering Associations (EFEA) was formed as a direct response to the growth in strength of the ASE (ibid: 102) and in 1897 there was a second great strike and lockout called over the Unions call for an eight hour day and the employers insistence to be “masters in their own workshops” (Webb and Webb 1894:484-485). The lockout continued for six months and although the ASE received generous financial support from other unions, the expenditure needed to sustain the dispute was too high, leading to a humiliating climb-down for the unions, with the campaign for an eight hour day dropped and other rights ceded to the employers (Pelling 1992:103).
The stigma of the defeat and the terms of settlement caused a great amount of upheaval in the ASE, with much debate about its structures and constitution.
Between 1898 and 1914 the terms were discussed at every delegate meeting, with branches regularly calling for them to be abolished or renegotiated (Jefferies 1945:151). In terms of the union’s structure, a large amount of importance was put on how the organisation was to interact with the large number of semi- and unskilled workers that were entering the industry. The question of how to deal with semi-skilled workers was answered at the 1901 delegates meeting in Manchester where, by a slim majority, it was agreed to widen the societies’ entry criteria with the creation
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of a machinist’s section (ibid 166). However, in the face of strong opposition from members this new section was largely inoperative, with only four thousand members recruited to it by 1904. The 1912 delegate meeting caused further internal conflict with the adoption of a section for unskilled workers (section F). This resolution was again met with opposition from the rank and file, even more fervently than the machinist section had been and in 1917 section F was completely abolished.
Whilst shop stewards had existed prior to the First World War they had not been seen as important, with many engineering workshops having no stewards at all (Cole 1939:165). The conditions created by the war allowed for great advancements in the shop steward movement, particularly within the engineering industry. The Munitions of War Act, passed by parliament in 1915, prohibited unions from calling strike action, therefore, when grievances developed into strikes, during these periods, workers looked to leaders elected from within their workplaces (Cole 1939:165). During the war, in some large engineering organisations, the shop stewards committees took over the job of negotiating with management on issues regarding conditions (Webb and Webb 1919:489) and after the war an agreement was achieved in 1919, between the unions and employers, on the official recognition of these stewards (Jefferies 1945:186).
The ASE’s membership grew between the beginning and end of the war from 170,000 to 300,000. However, many workers within the engineering industry still remained in associations outside of the ASE and attention was once more turned to uniting all skilled engineering workers in one union (Webb and Webb 1919:487). In 1918 twenty two societies from across the engineering industry were invited to look at proposals, drawn up by the ASE, for amalgamation. Seventeen of those invited agreed to put the proposals to their members and with the ASE and nine others
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receiving a vote in favour; the new Amalgamated Engineering Union came into being on the 1st of July 1920 (Jefferies 1945:192-193, and Pelling, 1992:157) with 450,000 members.
The new union’s constitution was almost identical to that of the ASE, with only slight changes. The delegate meeting was replaced by a national committee, consisting of two members from each of the union’s divisional committees, which would meet annually to receive a report from the executive and give guidance on future policy.
A special meeting of the committee would take place every four years to debate proposed rule changes. Shop stewards were also recognised within the new constitution, with the right to have a direct involvement in the forming of policy, rather than their traditional role of recruitment and retention of members (Jefferies 1945:192-193).
The 1920s and 1930s were rocky years for the engineers, punctuated by two key issues, the General Strike in 1927 and great depression, which began in America, in 1929, but soon transmitted to almost every capitalist economy (Jefferies, 1945:233-235). The build up to the general strike had been a long one. The British Communist Party’s official newspaper had run the headline “Thirty-four weeks to go”
in august 1925 (Lane, 1974:18) referring to the ending of the mining agreement, which it was anticipated would spark “the greatest struggle in the history of the British working class” (ibid). This headline came one month after the signing of the previous mining agreement on what became known as red Friday, after the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, personally intervened in order to overt a boycott on the movement of coal, planned by the railwaymen and transport workers, in support of the miners (Pelling, 1992:162). Whilst the Unions are accused of being late in organising for the General Strike, the Government were not (Lane, 1974:18) and
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when it came, it was seen by many commentating at the time, including the UK Communist Party, as being doomed to fail, as indeed it did (ibid:24-25).
The experience of the general strike for the Engineers was a short one. The plan had been that key industries such as transport, print, iron and steel would begin their strike at midnight on the 3rd of May, with the engineering and shipyard workers acting as a second wave, coming out a week later on the 11th of May. But, whilst these workers “received their marching orders with enthusiasm and a sense of relief”
(Jefferies, 1945:233) the strike was called off the next day, after discussions, between the Government and the TUC general Council, led to the unions’
capitulation.
Despite the failure of the General strike the 1920s had been a mixed decade for the engineers. The first half had seen the union lose members, whilst the second half had seen these fortunes reverse, with a rise in numbers, including some in two newly introduced sections, for less skilled engineering workers, although this did not immediately bare fruit, mainly due to the elitist attitudes of the union’s branches (Jefferies, 1945:235 and Pelling, 1992:194). However, this limited revival of fortunes was to come to an abrupt end with the great depression hitting the UK economy, after beginning in the US in 1929. As mass unemployment hit Britain, the burden of paying out unemployment benefits to members hit the engineers hard, severely weakening the union’s funds and prompted the engineering employers to launch an attack in 1931 that resulted in major changes, to the detriment of workers’ pay and conditions. (Jeffries, 1945:240). In 1933, the engineers fortunes began to change again as the economy began to recover, with membership numbers again rising, including many new members in the lesser skilled section introduced in 1926. With the rise in numbers the union was again able to go on the offensive, managing to
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return pay and most conditions, by the end of the 1930s, to the levels enjoyed prior to 1931.
The conditions presented by the Second World War, such as the expansion of the engineering industry, saw the membership of the AEU grow to 900,000 by 1944.
This huge increase in membership had been fuelled by the recruitment of many semi-skilled and unskilled workers, the formation of a youth section in 1940 and the historic admission of woman into the union, for the first time in its history in 1943, bringing it into direct competition with the TGWU and National Union of General and Municipal Workers (NUGMW), who till this point had been the main organisers of woman workers (Jefferies 1945:259). This rapid expansion in membership presented problems for democracy and organisation that were completely different to that of the smaller organisation that the AEU had been prior to the war. Seen as essential that as many members as possible were involved in the decision making and running of the union it was the role of the shop steward which was seen as holding the key. Targets were set to have an AEU shop steward in every section of every engineering establishment and the representational role was further developed to include the encouragement of members to attend their branch meetings and to demonstrate the value of membership through willingness to deal with the problems encountered by members, both at work and at home (ibid :261).
The next significant merger to affect the AEU was its amalgamation with the Amalgamated Union of Foundry Workers (AUFW) in 1967 and a further merger with the Draftsmen and Allied Trades Association (DATA), who later became the Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Section (TASS) and Constructional Engineering Union (CEU) in 1971, to form the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers (AUEW) (Undy et al 1981:188). A continuation of the ASE’s goal of uniting
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the engineering industry in one union, the AUEW was dominated, as prior mergers were, by the AEU which had a million more members than any of the other unions.
The CEU was in fact smaller than some of the AEU districts. However the merger was important in that it bought a large number of white collar workers into the union through DATA, merger with whom had first been discussed in 1919 (Foley, 1992:48), further opening the recruitment base of the union and continuing the evolvement of the union into a general union for the engineering industry (ibid).
Taking a federated structure the four merging unions kept their own governmental structures, under the umbrella of the AUEW (Undy et al 1981:200), making the new union effectively an industrial engineering union with four separate trade groups.
Whilst this was a major change for the AEU section, the only structural change of any consequence was the addition of a new top tier of decision making to the union’s vertical structure, in the form of an annual joint conference and joint National Executive Council, with the AEU’s general secretary serving as such for the whole of the AUEW’s existence (Undy et al 1981:101). However, a number of difficulties were to arise which stopped the merger from becoming a full assimilation of the four sections into one coherent unit. The relationship between TASS and the AEU had long been a difficult one. The two unions were often at odds politically, the final straw being the AEU’s courting of a merger with the right of centre Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing union (EETPU) (Foley, 1992:60). With TASS against this merger the AEU national committee’s 1985 meeting voted to dissolve the federation, forcing TASS to go it alone (ibid). The remaining three sections of the AUEW subsequently merged fully, in a reformed AEU (Willman et al 1993 :155).
The 1980s, as for most unions in the UK, were a challenge for the AEU. The reformed union, in 1985, had 975,000 members, but by 1989 this number had fallen
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to 741,647. The aforementioned merger with the foundry and construction sections left the AEU with two loss making sectors (Willman et al 1993 :168) and the union’s structure, which had no provision for federation or sectionalism, made the union unattractive as a merger partner to smaller unions that would have wished to preserve some sort of identity (ibid).
In 1989, amalgamation talks with the EETPU broke down over differences in the two unions’ democratic structures, political ethos and the career aspirations of leading officials (Undy 2008:148). However, merger with the financially secure EEPTU offered the AEU security, and also offered both unions the ability to move forwards in their goal of uniting the engineering industry under one banner (ibid). Therefore, merger talks began again in 1990 and were successfully concluded in 1992, with the union new Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union (AEEU) formed on a rule book that did little more than bind the two unions together, largely unchanged structurally, with agreement that a new, more comprehensive, rule book be put into place within four years.
The EEPTU, like the AEU was rooted in the craft traditions of the nineteenth century New Model trade unionism. In 1889, at the time of the great Dockers Strikes in which the TGWU can find its origins, the Electrical Trade Union (ETU) was formed at a delegate conference in Manchester. The new union, it was agreed, would be based on a set of rules modelled directly on those of the ASE, however, no decisions were taken on issues such as the location of the head office or the makeup of the executive committee or the identity of the unions officers, with those decisions deferred to a second conference the following year (Lloyd 1990 :1).
Whilst the origins of the EEPTU, through the ETU, mirrored those of the AEU, the two unions which merged in 1992 were very different in structure and governance.
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Unlike the AEU, which had always vehemently defended its democratic structures, including the legitimate rights of members to form moderate and broad left organisations within the union, the ETU was highly centralised and dominated by a national leadership that held a moderate right of centre ideology (Undy 2008 :148).
Many unions have within them some form of political system, often based around factions. Edelstein and Warner (1975:188) describe these factions as a “somewhat organised special-purpose group within a larger organisation”. Usually these factions are described as being either right or left, however, rather than right-wing meaning conservative and Left-wing meaning Socialist/Labour, as it does in main stream politics, left and right within trade unions refers to the wings of the labour movement. Those described as left wing; therefore, usually include Communists, Maoists, Trotskyists, socialists and left wing members or supporters of the Labour party, whilst the right includes more conservative members of the Labour party and other individual’s committed to opposition to the policies of the left (Bray et al:2007:85-86, Edelstein and Warner 1975:191).
Agreeing with the earlier work of Allen (1954) and Roberts (1956) that these factions have never been admitted into a trade union as a legitimate opposition, Edelstein
Agreeing with the earlier work of Allen (1954) and Roberts (1956) that these factions have never been admitted into a trade union as a legitimate opposition, Edelstein