Bernard Ingham: Why it doesn’t pay any more to be a part of the union

IMAGINE, if you can, you are being badgered to join a trade union. All your herd instincts will come into play, such as solidarity with your fellow workers and collective security. You may even feel it is the decent thing to do.

But with union membership at around six million, roughly half of what it was at its peak a generation ago, it is clear that people no longer readily say to themselves “Why not?” but instead ask themselves “Why?”

It is a very good question. With the end of the closed shop, they don’t have to have a union card to work. If they are in the private sector, they will find relatively few fellow trade unionists. Union membership is concentrated in the public services.

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Yet even in this, its last redoubt, we saw in last week’s one-day strike over pensions that the unions’ hold on their members is not what it was.

Government and TUC will always argue about the numbers participating in a public sector strike, but there is little doubt that the union leaderships found the turn-out disappointing. If it wasn’t a flop, it certainly failed to catch fire.

So why join this apparently failing institution? Let us examine what you could hope to get out of it in these days of minimum wage, employment tribunals, statutory redundancy terms, those pestilential no-win-no-fee lawyers and, on the basis of claims from the British Chambers of Commerce, the apparent scarcity of literate, numerate, qualified Britons with a work ethic.

In a competitive economy, employers have to offer a certain level of wages if they are to recruit enough staff – unless, of course, they can fall back on a reserve of skilled, hard-working immigrants.

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With the likes of Roger Daltrey, The Who’s lead singer, railing at Labour for leaving the British working man “screwed as he has never been screwed before” by immigrants, it seems the unions have done little to protect their members’ back door.

On the contrary, they have been as ready as the rest of the Left to accuse anybody who voices the slightest concern about immigration of being “racist”.

Experience shows that the unions are virtually impotent in the face of redundancy, whether companies feel the need to slim or shut down. They certainly failed to protect private sector pensions from the likes of Robert Maxwell and their very own Labour Chancellor, Gordon Brown, who wrecked the entire system at a stroke some 14 years ago.

For all their current bluster, it also looks likely that, apart from protection for the lowest paid already offered by the coalition, they will achieve little on public sector pensions in the face of a £150bn budget deficit and unsustainable costs linked to rising longevity. No amount of huffing and puffing can change the arithmetic.

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Nor have the unions prevented executives’ remuneration from rocketing out of sight of the pay of the rank and file.

Indeed, they are in no position to rant about it when they have waxed fat off their members’ subscriptions. Nothing, it seems, is too good for the workers’ representatives.

So why join? Why let yourself in for the occasional futile strike at your expense when the record shows the benefits are elusive? More importantly, why should you be recruited to massage the egos of Leftie firebrands who think it is good for the souls of the workers to show some fight?

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, has the misfortune to owe his job to these union barons. To his credit, he is clearly embarrassed by the fact. He is not as daft as some people think.

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In fact, for all his apparently inconsequential words and deeds, I detect he wants to turn Labour’s essential negativism – as so strongly represented by the unions – into a constructive, positive approach to real life.

So do I. He will have my support if he really does go down this route. But let us not underestimate the scale of the challenge in making himself electable.

Among other things, it means converting an obstructive union movement into one that facilitates growth and success with a fair share of the proceeds for its members.

A union leader, with clear conscience, castigating the bosses at a company annual meeting for their lousy profits and unenterprising performance would be something to see.

It would also be a good reason to join his union. At least he would be trying to protect your job and your pension in the only way possible – by demanding and enabling success.