Marriages of convenience? Trade union mergers

The concentration of trade union membership through mergers looks set to continue. We take a look at some recent developments and assess future possibilities for the UK's trade union structure.

Professor David Metcalf recently described talk of a giant private sector union formed from Amicus, the Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU) and the GMB as "shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic" (See Private sector unions enter the twilight zone ). His comment reflects a view that current trends point to perdition rather than resurgence for the trade union movement. In contrast, TGWU general secretary Tony Woodley argues that, "this merger may not make any new trade unionists on its own, but it will be a powerful springboard for carrying trade unionists to the millions of unorganised workers who need our protection in Britain and Ireland today".

Whether symbolic of the problem or part of the solution, the merger trend shows no signs of slowing down. But the effectiveness of some smaller, specialist unions suggests that forecasts of two or three "super unions" may be misplaced.

Here we provide an update on trends in trade union merger activity in the past two years, and take a closer at Community, the union formed by the merger of the former Knitting and Footwear Apparel Trades Union (KFAT) with the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation (ISTC) in July 2004.

Super unions set to dominate?

The biggest union in the UK continues to be the main public sector union, Unison, formed by a three-way merger of public sector, health and local government unions in 1993. Unison's 1,300,000 membership is closely followed in size by Amicus, formed in 2002 when the Manufacturing, Science and Finance union (MSF) joined with the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union (AEEU). While Amicus's largest sectors are finance and manufacturing, it also has a considerable craft and professional membership in the health service and members in occupations as diverse as vicars, nuclear technicians and Royal Mail managers.

On 2 February this year Amicus and the TGWU announced that they had agreed to enter into merger talks, and would invite the GMB to participate. The prize is the creation of by far the largest trade union in the UK, with potentially more than 2,500,000 members. But, as the Oxford academic and expert in union mergers Roger Undy comments (see box), the energy and resources required to pull off such a move would be considerable, especially in view of the failure of merger talks between the GMB and TGWU in the mid 1990s, and historical animosity between the TGWU and the engineers' and electricians' union AEEU (now part of Amicus).

And even if such a merger took place, it would still leave a further eight TUC-affiliated unions with more than 100,000 members. The biggest are Usdaw, the retail union, with around 330,000 members; the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), which represents much of the civil service; and the Communication Workers Union (CWU), with around 250,000 members. Moreover, the Royal College of Nursing, which is not affiliated to the TUC but spoke up recently to support TUC action against government plans to reform public sector pensions, estimates that its membership has grown by around 10,000 since last summer to more than 370,000.

The trend towards trade union consolidation is not new. However, in a recent analysis of union concentration and bargaining trends, Bernhard Ebbinghaus points out that "super unions" are less dominant in the UK than they are in other European countries¹. The three biggest UK unions (Unison, Amicus and the TGWU) still have less than half the membership of the TUC. In most European countries, the three largest unions affiliated to their respective centres tend to represent rather more than half of all individual members.

Why do unions merge?

In a guide to trade union mergers commissioned by Public Services International, the international umbrella group for public sector unions, Cranfield School of Management identified four main reasons why trade unions merge². These were:

In recent instances of transfers of smaller unions to larger ones in the UK, the first two categories have been most apparent. For the GPMU, a fall in membership from 200,000 to 100,000 since the union was formed in 1991, and rapidly declining income were two principal reasons put to members prior to the transfer ballot to Amicus. A GPMU bulletin to members also emphasised the industrial logic, pointing out that "our sector would gain 20,000 members at a stroke and a significant number of collective agreements - a welcome expansion of our influence in the industry".

The industrial logic of a single finance sector union was also cited by Unifi's Ed Sweeney - now Amicus joint deputy general secretary - in welcoming the completion of Unifi's transfer to Amicus last year. "As more companies merge and consolidate to become bigger and bigger, unions need to be ahead of the game," he said. "Size matters when it comes to utilising the resources necessary to protect workers in modern companies where cost-cutting and short-termism are rife."

Public sector union developments

With public sector employment growing and employees threatened with workforce and pensions reform, union membership is stable or growing in most areas of the public sector. Observers note that PCS, the civil service union, has punched above its weight with battles over cuts to civil service jobs over the past year. It now claims a membership of 325,000, up from the TUC figure of 285,000 in 2003.

In December 2004 it was announced that 96% of the 7,500 members of the Association of Magisterial Staff (AMO), the trade union for magistrates court staff, had voted in favour of a transfer of engagements to PCS. The merger follows the government's decision to transfer employees of the 42 magistrates' courts into the Courts Service.

In the education sector there are at least seven trade unions with overlapping constituencies. In July 2004 the Association of University Teachers (AUT) and lecturers' union NATFHE announced their intention to create a single new union for further and higher education. According to a joint statement, the union would be "the largest post-16 education trade union in the world", with more than 100,000 members.

Both unions' executives are positively recommending the merger to the AUT council in April and the NATFHE national conference in May 2005, with membership ballots to follow in the autumn if the plans are approved.

In contrast, the teaching unions look far less likely to merge than a few years ago, when "professional unity" appeared to be an achievable goal. The National Union of Teachers (NUT), the largest schoolteachers' union with nearly 240,000 members according to the TUC, insists that it continues to "stand ready" to work with other teaching unions in pursuit of a single organisation. But in recent years the differences between the NUT and other teaching unions in their relationships with government have widened, particularly over the national agreement on teachers' workloads, which the NUT did not sign. An NASUWT spokesperson told IRS Employment Review that the issue of a single teachers' union was "simply not on the agenda at present".

Private sector prospects

Should proposed merger talks between the big private sector unions progress, the private sector union landscape will look very different. Some union officials believe that much depends on how smaller but significant unions, such as Usdaw, the CWU or construction union Ucatt, respond to recent merger activities. There are also a number of smaller, specialist unions affiliated to the General Federation of Trade Unions that may consider transferring to a more powerful partner union. Will they want to go it alone, consider a transfer to Amicus, or decide that Amicus is not the only show in town? Some have stated their determination not to merge. Rumours of merger between the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and transport union RMT last year prompted the NUM to put a statement on its website from national secretary Steve Kemp, saying: "The suggestion is laughable, the NUM has one interest only and that is to serve our members and reports of our demise are nonsense."

The TUC will also be watching merger developments closely, as a potential three-way merger between TGWU, Amicus and the GMB may well pose challenges to its role and remit. The European Commission commented that the "scale and spread" of recent mergers creating conglomerate unions "often entails a shift in the balance of power within confederations and may necessitate a rethinking of the role of the confederation itself"³.

Lastly, international cooperation agreements - or even mergers - are frequently mooted as an option by unions operating in multinational companies. Amicus has long cited the possibility of a closer relationship with its powerful German engineering counterpart, IG Metall; and in February the TGWU announced that it had reached an agreement to work more closely with Teamsters transport union based in the US. While international mergers may turn out to be a pipe dream, greater cooperation through European Works Councils has been achieved by activists at business level, and may prove to be a more solid route for international collaboration.

¹Bernhard Ebbinghaus, "The changing union and bargaining landscape: union concentration and collective bargaining trends", Industrial Relations Journal, November 2004.

²Growing together: managing trade union co-operation and merger, Cranfield University School of Management and Public Services International, February 2002.

³European Commission, Industrial Relations in Europe Report 2004.

Table 1: Trade union mergers, 2002-04

Note: There are two types of union merger within the rules laid down by the Certification Office. A transfer of engagements means that the transferring union loses its own identity in transferring its membership and assets, and the identity of the union it transfers to remains unchanged. The second option is an amalgamation, where a new organisation is formed. In the former process, only the transferring union needs to ballot its membership, whereas an amalgamation requires both unions to ballot their members on amalgamation proposals.

Source: Certification Office.