Transforming union women: the role of women trade union officials in union renewal

Abstract

The article investigates the nature of the increasing involvement of women in the decision-making structures of the fifth largest UK union through a study of senior women union officials. It is argued that senior union women, operating within a feminist paradigm, balance both transformational and status quo objectives in working towards union survival and renewal.It is uncontested that union survival depends on widening trade unions' traditional recruitment areas to include the service sector generally and specifically to increase the proportion of women in trade unions. At the same time, trade unions have recognised that women are under-represented in union structures and steps have been taken to redress this imbalance through for example, reserved seats and proportionality. Notwithstanding such potentially transformative changes, union culture has been characterised as enduringly patriarchal. It is therefore timely to reflect on the impact of senior trade union women and the part they play in union survival and revival. In particular this article explores how union women operate within a feminist paradigm juggling both transformative and status-quo objectives. 1 Transformative 2 objectives are taken to be wide-ranging strategies to build a 'woman friendly' union. Status quo objectives are those which focus on the numerical strength and survival of the union in an essentially unchanged form. It draws on a qualitative study of the roles and activities of senior union women in the trade union, Manufac-. 2 The article uses the term transformative to mean being capable of altering the character and nature of the union. To transform or transforming relates to the process of character change and does not imply revolutionary change nor should it be confused with the process of union renewal which may or may not be the outcome of transformation.Transforming union women 31 turing, Science and Finance (MSF). The relevance of the study lies in the importance of women to union renewal in the context of their increasing share of the labour market and indeed of union membership.Recruitment is now an urgent and major priority for all trade unions. Overall union membership in the UK has steeply declined since 1979 from a peak of around 13 million members to seven, so that unions now represent only a third of employees (Labour Research: 16, 1996). The 1980s saw major economic and labour market restructuring with the heavily unionised, male dominated, manufacturing industries severely contracting and the low unionised, female dominated service sector rapidly expanding. Trade unions appear to have been at a loss to keep abreast with these economic and social changes and have thus far failed to recruit new members in sufficient numbers in expanding sectors to offset the losses in contracting sectors. This article is predicated on the assumption that unions are in a position to positively redress at least some of the decline in union membership via the extended recruitment and retention of women and explores how women union officia...

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