The latest figures on Trade Union membership released at the end of April were sobering reading for trade unionists and the wider labour and progressive movement.
Amongst other things, the figures revealed that the impact of the government’s cuts programme on trade union membership is becoming apparent. In a year when the size of public sector workforce shrank by over 250,000, union membership in the sector fell by 180,000. Overall density, that is the proportion of employees who are members of a union, fell slightly to 26% and membership by 143,0000 to 6.4 million.
Arguably a more accurate way of assessing union influence is looking at the proportion of employees that unions collectively bargain on behalf of. Today in the UK just 30% of workers have their pay and conditions negotiated collectively by a trade union – in the private sector just 1 in 5 workers are included in collective bargaining arrangements.


Yesterday, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) released their
When the opportunity came for me to return to my home town of Wakefield I couldn’t resist. My colleagues in
On the desert-battered outskirts of Cairo, in a kitsch marble convention centre, the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU) has just announced to Egypt and the world that it has come of age. EFITU was born in the inspiration and chaos of Tahrir square, exactly 12 months to the day. Since then they have been organising, organising and organising. Today was a chance to show the results and I was blown away.







