Rebooting the rank and file: why there's still hope for the Unions

interesting article about unions on Labourlist recently. I will post on a related fringe at this years Labour Party Conference.

"Throughout the 20th century, whether you were friend or foe of organised labour, there was no doubting it mattered. Unions mobilised, and sometimes moderated, the power of workers. They secured better terms and conditions and often flexed their muscles through strikes, routine events in the British economy of the 1970s especially. As a result, they were often resented and not widely loved—“somewhere between necessary and a necessary evil” is the memorable line from historian David Kynaston’s book Modernity Britain. But they were, in those more egalitarian decades, an essential part of who we were. As recently as 1983, only one worker in four had never joined a union. But if membership was once a norm to be complied with, then today—outside the public sector—to join up is to stand apart". - Gavin Kelly, Prospect