GOOD news for the TUC – there is a better than anticipated boost to trade union membership. Despite all the obstacles and barriers and ongoing internal problems in union organisations, workers are still joining.

The new findings of the Labour Force Survey released on Thursday shows an  increase of trade union membership in the UK by over 192,000 in 2025, moving national trade union density from 22 per cent to 22.4 per cent.  

Its not a decisive change, but represents evidence that unions can grow. However there are various health warnings in the figures.

The figures are an extrapolation from a survey of 35,000 households and 75,000 individuals. The actual figures will be revealed later in the year when unions are required to produce returns on membership for the Certification Officers Annual Report. 
The figures therefore are possibly going to vary in the summer report.

The first issue is that trade unions are still overwhelmingly concentrated in the public sector. Of the 192,000 increase only 72,000 are from the private sector.  

Unions still struggle to organise in greenfield and new industries, typically in IT, finance and service sectors – the growing areas of the economy.

The national workforce grew by 420,000 jobs in the last year according to the House of Commons Library. Between 70 and 80 per cent of jobs are in the private sector, so the challenge remains unmet in this majority part of the economy.

Conversely the figures released yesterday on youth “NEET” (not in employment, education or training), show that over one million fall into this category. Coupled with the figures that show that only 4.4 per cent of trade union members are under the age of 24, it is clear that the generational problem for trade unions is getting worse by the year.

Young workers are not joining trade unions and now young workers are increasingly not able to be active in the labour market.

The labour market projections are getting no better. Unemployment is at its highest level since Covid and projected to go beyond 5 per cent.

If unions are unable to make decisive breakthroughs in times of job growth it is not likely that it will improve during rising unemployment.

The 1980s experience of mass unemployment and its impact on trade union organisations cannot be forgotten.

The second issue for trade unions is the legal environment. For decades unions have been systematically taken apart by hostile legislation. The core of anti-union laws remain the Thatcher laws of 1980, 1982 and 1984. They have never been repealed or amended to trade union advantage.

There have been attempts to make them worse but the recent Employment Rights Act (ERA) has pushed those attempts back.

It is still the case that secondary picketing is illegal, solidarity strikes are illegal, the closed shop is illegal and that ballots and notices are required to avoid legal sanctions by bosses.

The campaign for an ERA2 is essential for trade union growth. But despite over 15 years of Labour governments since Thatcher there has been no impactful reversal of the severe restrictions on trade union solidarity.

The third issue is one of politics. The union movement sees no clear political alternative to a Burnham-led revival. Unison’s new general secretary Andrea Egan was elected on a platform of a clear break with the bureaucratic past and a commitment to more robust campaigning and organising.

Yet she has declared herself a “big fan” of Andy Burnham. This may mean something or nothing but it illustrates the pull from the Labour Party. Conversely Sharon Graham as general secretary of Unite positioning the union away from Labour has not been a decisive game changer and overtures from the likes of Burnham will likely be listened to.

Your Party became the sectarian project that many predicted and the Green Party has no meaningful connection to the union movement and despite recent overtures to union leaderships the Greens remain an unlikely path to trade union revival.

But there are movements out there that are politically vigorous and thriving.

The opposition to the Gaza genocide and the war on Iran represents the most dynamic movement in the country and coincidentally packed with young people. Many trade union general secretaries speak at Stop the War platforms.

Tying this commitment to an organising and recruitment plan for young workers has surely got to be a plan.

The wars are causing recession, living standards and jobs are threatened and only the unions have the organisational and financial muscle to end it.

For that reason the International Peace Conference in London on June 20 should be a moment too for the unions.

Along with the Together Alliance and the need to challenge Reform now as actual employers and not just as racist outliers there are plenty of reasons for the unions to combine industrial organising with political objectives.

Finally there is the need for unions to confront organisational failures. Ever since the TUC Organising Academy was established in 1995 unions have established a number of variations on the same ethos.

US-inspired community organising methods transferred onto British unions. These staff-led initiatives have made no decisive difference to the continued decline to the national membership of the movement at large.

The Labour Force Survey records some occasional single figure percentage up or down but the direction of travel is still the same. After the strike wave of 2022 and 2023 it went back to business as usual.

I discuss this in my book Our Trade Unions (Manifesto Press). We are still more or less at the same point. Unless trade unions reorganise themselves on the basis of empowering the activists and deploying their resources directly to activists then the movement will continue to be a 20th-century institution with a 20th-century culture of servicing and administration.

Officer-led organising can win small local disputes but cannot win national struggles that require mass mobilisations.

The Labour Force Survey outcome should encourage the unions to be much bolder and much more decisive.

In recent months the Indian trade union movement has organised yet again the largest general strikes in all of history, involving over 265 million workers. That can be our inspiration.  

We can look again in a future article on what this inspiration can mean.