THE latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveal a continued decline in UK union membership, which now stands at an estimated 6.4 million, or 22 per cent of the workforce — less than half the 1979 peak of 13.2 million and 55 per cent of the workforce.

For a long time, Unison, Britain’s largest union, mirrored these trends. Austerity, privatisation, and the fragmentation of public service provision drove existing members out of public-sector employment while restricting the union’s ability to recruit non-members in the growing private and third sector.

The Covid pandemic exacerbated this crisis, with widespread burnout among public service workers leading many experienced activists to leave their jobs, seriously weakening Unison’s established activist base.

However, Unison delegates gather in Liverpool this week with a renewed sense of purpose and optimism, thanks to a remarkable shift under the union’s Organising to Win strategy. First endorsed by Unison’s national delegate conference two years ago, the strategy puts in place the resources and methodology to build a stronger Unison through ambitious, targeted organising campaigns, with an emphasis on member empowerment to secure meaningful material wins.

This approach is exemplified by the Pay Fair for Patient Care campaign, which has so far secured over £162 million in back pay for 40,000 healthcare assistants across 60 NHS trusts, using escalating campaigns of member participation and, where necessary, industrial action.

The results speak for themselves. In the past two years, contrary to the broader trend of union decline, Unison has grown by 70,000 members — a net increase of over 5 per cent.

The union has also recruited more than 8,000 new workplace stewards and health and safety representatives, achieving the first growth in its activist base in over a decade. This resurgence is no accident; it is the direct result of a strategic shift towards proactive, member-led organising.

With its core areas strengthened, Unison is now turning its attention to organising the unorganised in the social care sector — a notoriously challenging environment for union organising due to its fragmentation and exploitative, precarious working conditions.

Yet even here, Unison is making progress. Over 600 Unison members at Enable in Scotland have just completed their first five days of strike action in the most significant social care pay dispute in Britain in over a decade.

One of the most serious threats to Unison’s progress, however, comes not from employers or the government but from the deliberate encroachment of the National Education Union (NEU) into the recruitment of school support staff.

In 2022, the TUC rightly upheld a complaint from Unison, GMB, and Unite, confirming that the NEU had been actively recruiting school support staff — an occupational group for which it holds no collective bargaining rights — in clear violation of established TUC principles against poaching members in areas of existing representation.

Despite receiving a £154,000 fine and a directive to desist, NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede recently declared at conference: “We have doubled our support staff membership since the formation of the NEU. I want to double it again, and then double that, and then double that.”

The latest ONS figures are a stark reminder of the need for strategic discipline and co-ordination within the union movement if we are to reverse the long-established trend of decline. Intra-union competition for members in already organised sectors does not rebuild our collective power — it weakens it.

The NEU’s approach to school support staff is particularly damaging, as it has the undeniable effect of leaving workers without representation and voice in established collective bargaining arrangements and the long-awaited Schools Support Staff Negotiating Body contained within the Employment Rights Bill.

It also diverts Unison’s energy and resources away from organising in sectors like social care — one of the largest and most exploitative unorganised sectors in Britain — as we are forced into a rearguard action to defend our core base of 250,000 school support staff from aggressive competitive recruitment by the NEU.

Unison’s Organising to Win resurgence demonstrates that revitalisation is possible. But to truly rebuild the union movement, in multiunion environments, we must reject divisive competition and develop new partnerships between recognised unions to maximise industrial organisation and workplace unity — and we must look outward beyond existing areas of collective bargaining and invest resources in new strategies to organise the unorganised and deliver meaningful wins for members.

Kevan Nelson is an assistant general secretary of Unison.