Compared to the last two TUC Congresses, which benefited from a mixture of being the first in-person one post-Covid, a backdrop of renewed industrial conflict, and the last knockings of the Tory government, this one felt fairly flat.
The wave of industrial action has petered out, the Tories are gone, and for many the experiences of Lockdown are a distant memory- even though its legacy still looms large. Equally, many within the trade union movement had anticipated that this Congress would happen either just before or during an election and would in-fact be setting the tone for the campaign for the wider Labour movement. Instead, it arrives in the liminal space of post-election but pre Labour’s first budget and the incoming employment reforms.
For all intents and purposes, many things are in a holding pattern, industrially and politically. It is too early for many trade unions to properly assess what this Labour government will mean for their movement and many of the large industrial disputes from the previous two years are currently paused with short-term pay deals. There are, however, tentative signs of a strategy. Due to a motion from the CWU, Congress is now committed to holding a special summit in 6 months time in order to plan how to use legislative changes to build a strategy for expanding collective bargaining.
One point of difference for this Congress was a more international tilt, with the TUC General Secretary using his speech to highlight his recent visit to Ukraine and the Palestinian ambassador addressing Congress on the last day (for which he received a standing ovation). There might have been more, but the President of the Nigerian Labor Congress, Joe Ajaero, was arrested by Nigerian law enforcement on his way to to address the event, he has since been released.
Debates were held with the usual efficiency, and there were the usual points of tension over climate and defence, which necessitated the typical behind closed doors amelioration. After Composite 5, composed of motions from GMB, Unite, and Aegis (and supported by the General Council) passed by a narrow card vote on Monday, there was a danger that similar fractures might show with motions 17 and 18 regarding the climate crisis on Tuesday.
As it transpires, the compositing process for 17 and 18 took longer than anticipated and the composite did not arrive in the rostrum until Wednesday afternoon (which was supported by the General Council with a reservation), By which point UCU’s proposed amendment of repurposing defence spending to support a just transition had been removed from the composite and GMB and Prospect, as unions with members in both industries, agreed to abstain, with both making it clear that they were not entirely content. Under the shadow of the Tata Steel redundancies announcement, the composite passed. The stitch-marks may have been visible, but the garment of unity remained intact.
The extent to which this sort of policy, when decided at TUC, has an impact on a Labour government is limited, and each union will go away and pursue their own industrial strategies regardless- allowing Congress to kick the can down the road. However,these arguments are an effective means of stoking tension amongst parts of the delegation and highlighting the different and sometimes competing industrial and political priorities of respective unions.
A further potential point of tension was Composite 17, regarding Palestine, which amongst other things, called for an immediate ceasefire, release of all hostages, immediately stopping the arms trade with Israel and imposing sanctions on individuals and entities who have made statements inciting genocide against Palestinians. This too has been the subject of considered private conversations before it arrived in the hall with the support of the General Council and a clarifying statement emphasising the ‘respect for international law’ and ‘recent legal findings’. Essentially, events had made this issue too big to ignore. Unfortunately, a UCU speaker felt the need to sign off their speech with a refrain of ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’; thus, a motion of historic importance and solidarity in response to a humanitarian crisis, and the Congress hall, will forever be tainted with anti-semitism.
Asides from the usual combination of tension and solidarity, this Congress, and the cautious optimism over the recently elected Labour Government, demonstrated that the trade union movement still faces multiple challenges. Whether that is the absence of workers’ voices in the climate transition, as articulated by GMB and Unite, the wider impacts of climate change on other workers, as pointed out by the UCU and NEU, or the growing danger of unregulated AI, which Equity and NUJ members are being confronted with on a day to day basis.
These challenges underline the existential issue of declining union membership. The latest figures for trade union membership continue the trend of broad steady decline, and put density at 22%, when a Labour government last came to power it was 32%, and it is far from certain membership density will go that high again, let alone the oft repeated 50% mark of 1979. It is not impossible that membership could dip below 20% within the next five years.
The good news for the trade union movement is that it has been here before, twice in fact. In 1914, trade union density was approximately 23% before reaching 48.2% density in 1920. In 1936, density was around 25% before reaching 43% in 1946. The bad news is that both of these surges in membership were dependent on a world war to cause the rapid expansion of the state, the need to negotiate with labour, and changing general patterns of production within the economy, all of which was underpinned by the general presence of larger more centralised industries. Currently, the trade union movement’s demands and aspiration are, as usual, modest in scope. The broad consensus is that there needs to be collective bargaining across the economy, and trade union legislation should be brought in line with ILO standards. Labour’s proposed changes to recognition legislation could make trade union expansion easier, but the same was assumed in 2000, and that has had limited success.
There may well be a world where the combination of the increase in industrial militancy from 2022 to 2024, a friendlier legislative and political environment for trade unions, and an increasing awareness of what organised labour can achieve lead to a revival in trade union membership and a better lot for workers. However, it is far from clear that we live in that world.