Any organisation, like our Trades Council, which must depend entirely on volunteers, fears one threat above all others – that there will be no-one available to take on the roles necessary for it to function effectively.
At this year’s Annual General Meeting, which took place last week, we found ourselves within a whisker of this position.
We decided to carry on, because we did not want to simply disappear without giving local Branches and organisations a measure of warning and a chance to be involved in any decision, whether that be through act or omission. But we have resolved that our October meeting later this year should consider a formal “winding up” motion.
It will be up to that meeting how it votes on this question. If Branches want the Trades Council to survive, however, they know what to do. They must firstly make sure that they are affiliated. They must then ensure that they send at least one delegate – preferably, somebody with enthusiasm who might be interested in taking on some responsibility in an official role.
Here is a copy of our affiliation form:
We are happy to welcome observers from Branches if anyone wishes to get a better idea of what is involved.
Our predicament is a consequence of the general state of Trade Unions today. Whilst it is not neccessary for Trades Council delegates to be local shop-stewards or Branch Officers, this is their most common background. Yet we have been loosing numbers in this cohort, both absolutely and in relative terms.
The National Institute of Social and Economic Research has tracked the decline in the number of stewards up to the 2010s:
And also the extent to which “organised” workplaces have maintained a workplace presence of Trade Union representatives:
Most active Trade Unionists recognise that their efforts to be effective in the workplace relate in some degree to the wider social context and public attitudes. It is in these areas that Trades Union Councils hope to have a positive influence. But one consequence of declining membership over the years has been a loss within the population of attachment to Trade Union values. Writing in the NIESR Report “Trade Union Membership and Influence, 1999-2014” (published in 2015) John Forth and Alex Bryson commented that: “The percentage of all employees who have never been a member of a trade union has risen continually over the past 20 years such that, by 2009-10, over half of all employees were ‘never-members’. In addition, large proportions of employees have no contact with unions at their workplace. In 2014, almost three-fifths (58 per cent) of employees were located in non-union workplaces, with this figure being particularly high in private sector service industries, such as ‘Accommodation and food service’ and among young workers. Employees’ direct and indirect experience of unionism is therefore receding”.
Jimmy Reid’s daughter, Eileen, wrote in the “Scottish Review” in August 2021: “Something of crucial significance has disappeared from our politics and culture. This was brought home to me at Jimmy’s (my dad’s) funeral 11 years ago: a funeral that didn’t just mourn the man, the friend, the comrade, but was a lament for a lost era. Emotions ran high not in self-pitying nostalgia, but for a time, a place, a community. An era of solidarity that is gone”.
Our Trades Council is about trying to reverse that loss. We can only hope that local Trade Unionists will agree that it is something worth doing.