Strikers march to Glasgow Council's city chambers for a mass rally during a 48 hour strike by 8,000 GMB and Unison members over an equal pay claim, in October 2018
UNIONS have welcomed the fourth consecutive annual rise in membership, announced today by the Office for National Statistics.
The 120,000-member increase last year brought total union membership to 6.6 million, 400,000 more than in 2016, but half the 13.2 million peak reached in 1979, when the notoriously anti-union Thatcher government was elected.
TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said that the Covid pandemic had “brutally exposed the terrible working conditions and insecurity many workers face,” and that thousands had turned to unions during the crisis to protect their jobs, safety and rights.
Labour’s watered-down legislation won’t protect us from unfair dismissal or ban some zero-hours contracts until 2027 — leaving millions of young people vulnerable to the populist right’s appeal, warns TUC young workers chair FRASER MCGUIRE
KEVAN NELSON reveals how, through its Organising to Win strategy, which has launched targeted campaigns like Pay Fair for Patient Care, Britain’s largest union bucked the trend of national decline by growing by 70,000 members in two years
