Union Workers, Union Work: A Profile of Paid Union Officers in the United Kingdom

Abstract

Twelve years ago, "Working for the Union" presented an analysis of paid trade union officers working for UK unions. This paper returns to the themes of this earlier study using a fresh survey of union officers carried out in 2002. It provides limited support for two of the principal findings of the earlier research: that union work is performed differently by officers with different demographic and attitudinal characteristics and that union management systems can be effective in encouraging officers to respond to a new bargaining and organizing agenda. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2006.

Organising methods and member recruitment in Irish trade unions

“…Upon request from the authors, all of the unions selected granted full access for the study. (Dundon et al, 1997;Oxenbridge, 1997) are a function of different organising methods and techniques (Heery et al, 2000a;Carter and Cooper, 2002;Oxenbridge 2000) that are in turn influenced by a number of factors such as necessary resources (Bronfenbrenner and Hickey, 2004;Heery et al, 2003b), support of union leaders (Kelly, 1998;Fiorito, 2004) and union officer commitment (Colling, 2006;Heery, 2006).…”

“…While the intention of union leadership may be to move away from servicing to organising, advising and representing individual members still remains a significant part of a union official's job (Colling, 2006;Heery, 2006;Higgins, 2008;Snape, 1994). For example, Carter and Cooper (2002) noted that officials surveyed in the Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union (MSF) in Britain were unhappy with the characterization of servicing as valueless and organising as 'good' and also with the belief of key national officials that it was possible to change practice overnight.…”

What are the consequences of a managerial approach to union renewal for union behaviour? A case study of USDAW

“…Thursfield (2012) found that while union officers related to traditional definitions of professionalism, the role was changing to become more managerial, despite their attempts efforts to resist such change. In practice, the managerialisation of union roles manifests itself in training and an increased emphasis on qualifications and implementation of formal organisational structures and reporting lines (Heery, 2006;Thursfield, 2012). This latter 8 dimension of managerialism also reflects practical developments and imperatives; for instance, the TUC's Leading Change training program, premised on providing management and leadership training to union officials lacking such capabilities (TUC Trades Union Congress, 2016).…”

“…Such performance management systems are argued to take place within a unitarist framework (Mather and Siefret, 2011), seeking to improve performance through the measurement of achievement (Decramer, Smolders, Vanderstraeten and Christiaens, 2012). WithiIn unions, these systems have been found to broadly encompass planning, targets and the monitoring and evaluation of performance (Heery, 2003(Heery, , 2006Waddington, 2003). These developments in unions have been influenced by initiatives promoting new public management in the public sector (Dart, 2004) and encompass undertones of disciplinary practice whereby performance management is used to assess accountability to control individual behaviour (Harper and Vilkinias, 2005).…”

“…In drawing on the notion of managerialism, we also acknowledge the problem of inconsistent definitions within the literature. The term is further undermined by disparate conceptual frameworks which tend to study aspects of managerial renewal in isolation, typically either: the professionalisation of union roles (Thursfield, 2012;Thomas, 2013); leadership-led or centralised renewal strategies (top down) (Charlwood, 2004;Simms et al 2013); or, the use of private sector performance management techniques (Heery 2005(Heery , 2006Bach and Kolins Givan, 2008). In contrast, we 3 conceptualise these three aspects of managerialism concurrently to empirically explore how they impact upon union behavior.…”