Union membership is on the rise—so why aren't young people as involved?

There is much to celebrate within trade unions as this year’s membership figures show an overall increase of around 102,000 new members. In spite of headlines prophesising doom for UK trade unions it’s the second year in a row that membership has grown, and the second largest rise on record. The total figure now stands at 6.35m workers. In the public sector alone, we have 149,000 new recruits. Good news indeed.

But wait. An overall growth of 102,000 with 149,000 in the public sector does not add up. The bad news is that means there’s been a decline of 47,000 members in the private sector.

Now, we know it’s harder to recruit in the private sector which hasn’t got the same strong culture and history of trade union representation. And we know the private sector has growing areas which have never been unionised. But the worse news is that the public sector is shrinking. Currently, the public sector employs just 15 per cent of the workforce compared to 85 per cent in the private sector.

Looking at these figures, the unions’ success story will be short-lived unless we work harder to shift our focus on this front. The other lesson is that we must particularly target our efforts on recruiting young people.

At last year’s Unions 21 conference, Gavin Kelly, Chief Executive of the Resolution Trust, Chair of the Living Wage Foundation and occasional Prospect contributor, gave us a stark warning—organise young workers or face up to a timebomb of demographics. And, as this TUC data shows, over the past 25 years union membership has fallen by 40 per cent amongst 16 to 24 year olds and nearly 30 per cent amongst 25 to 34 year olds.

This year’s trade union membership figures re-enforce the warning. Younger workers are more likely to switch jobs than ever before and yet only 14.1 per cent of people who have been with their employer for two years or fewer are union members, in contrast to 44 per cent of workers who have been with their employer for 20 years or more.

Despite the likelihood that young people will change jobs more often than their older peers, and despite the current low union membership among young people, we know from our recent YouGov polling that they are open to the idea of unions. Indeed, 58 per cent of young respondents said that they would join a union if there was one in their workplace. And we know that young workers need a union and collective voice more than ever—half of young workers within the EU are on temporary contracts, which is close to an all-time high, according to a recent Financial Times article.

What we also know, however, is that young people don’t always appreciate the main purpose of unions—to collectively bargain on behalf of workers. At this point in their working lives, they’re more interested in how unions can help with their individual experiences of precarious work and unusual working patterns.

We need a new narrative to convince our younger members to join and stay. So, part of the work we’re undertaking in the Commission on Collective Voice in the 21st century, which I chair, is to understand what motivates young people to join a union, what channels we can use to reach them, and what language makes sense to them.

Our commission’s remit extends, of course, beyond young people to reach every worker. We are working closely with unions to support innovation in worker organisation in the private sector.

As a movement, and within individual unions, we need to be open to experimentation, putting the members front and centre in our work. Unions have been trialling new ways of reaching new groups, but we need to speed up—and not be afraid of not getting it right the first time.

All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 1,797 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 15th to 16th May 2019. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all GB adults (aged 18+).