Member

Polling shows that public support for trade unions has remained consistent over the last four decades, but collective bargaining coverage has declined. That decline is not a natural or accidental event. Professor Jeremy Waddington of Manchester University has documented what he has described as a neoliberal long-term assault, which began in 1979. This took the form of a barrage of laws—it was when I was at the Transport and General Workers’ Union, and I remember it well—to restrict the rights, values and freedoms of working-class institutions, namely trade unions, combined with privatisation, outsourcing and a drive to derecognise. As a result, the typical workplace has become less democratic and more subject to unilateral employer decision-making.