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Sources of variation in trade unionmembership across the UK: the caseof WalesHuw Beynon, Rhys Davies and Steve Davies

ABSTRACTirj_676 200..221

This article deals with issues relating to trade union density and the fact that whileover the past 30 years, union densities have followed a declining path in all regions,this retreat was not uniform across space. Analysis of the Labour Force Surveyreveals that Wales exhibits among the highest levels of union density in the UK. Thereasons for this are examined through statistical analysis, historical analysis andinterview data. These analyses reveal that there appear to be intrinsic differences inthe nature of workplace representation in Wales; one linked to a particular style oftrade unionism supported by the authority of a devolved state that continue tocontribute to higher levels of membership.

1 INTRODUCTION

The trend in trade union membership in the UK and in the United States is wellrecognised and has been the subject of continued debate among trade unionists andlabour researchers for some time. However, within all this, some rather fundamentalquestions about why people join trade unions have been overlooked, most notably theimpact of history and location and the patterning of kinship ties that affect collectiveunderstandings. This article attempts to cast light on these issues by focusing uponpronounced geographical variations in the density of trade union membership in theUK using Wales as an exemplar.

The article’s title follows that of the classic contribution from David Lockwood(1975) that considered sources of variation in working-class images of society. Whilemore profound in its scope (modelling as it did different kinds of working-class

❒ Huw Beynon is Research Professor at Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data andMethods (WISERD) and the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University, Rhys Davies is ResearchFellow at WISERD and Steve Davies is Lecturer at the Cardiff University School of Social Sciences andResearch Associate at WISERD. Correspondence should be addressed to Huw Beynon, Wales Institute ofSocial and Economic Research, Data and Methods, Cardiff University, 46 Park Place, Cardiff CF10 3BB;email: [email protected] article is part of broader project developed within the Wales Institute of Social and EconomicResearch, Data and Methods (WISERD) at Cardiff University aimed at examining the impact ofde-industrialisation upon the contemporary social structure. WISERD is funded by the ESRC and theHigher Education Funding Council of Wales with a commitment to the development of mixed methods andan interdisciplinary approach to the study of contemporary issues.

Industrial Relations Journal 43:3, 200–221ISSN 0019-8692

© 2012 The Author(s)Industrial Relations Journal © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

formation), it had a similar concern, seeing variation to be associated not simply withpatterns of employment but with the ways in which these combined with socialrelationships outside of the workplace. This underpins the approach here. Secondaryanalysis of survey data establishes the above average strength of trade union mem-bership in Wales compared with other parts of the UK, with significant support inunlikely parts of the service economy, and a strong rate of unionisation amongwomen. It confirms the contention of previous analysis that compositional effects arenot sufficient to explain the extent of the variation and argues that the spatial pat-terning of social and political factors needs to be incorporated into an explanation.Here, the industrial history of the country is seen to be an important factor, the legacyof which has become embedded in the newly emerging devolved state form. This givessupport for the view that political processes operating ‘beneath the statistical data’ arecontributing to the emergence of a significant sub-system within UK industrialrelations. In this, it is clear that devolution has had a significant effect and that this hasserved to integrate trade unions within the newly evolving state form. There is also asuggestion that the ‘propensity to join’ a trade union may be stronger in Wales that inmany other parts of the UK and that this, in no small part, relates to historicallyreceived understandings of collective action and support.

In this article we draw on materials collected from a relatively long-term period ofengagement with the Wales Trade Union Congress (TUC) and the leading officials ofthe major trade unions in the area. For several years, we have held briefing sessions withthe regional secretaries of the trade unions and raised with them issues relating todeclining membership and the potential for various kinds of organising strategies.These meetings built on previous experiences of working with trade unions (Beynon,2010; Davies, 2010) and a concern to develop a more systematic dialogue between theacademic research process and the day-to-day of trade union organisation (Huzzardand Björkman, 2012). As part of this process, we presented articles and facilitateddiscussions on a number of issues including the ‘partnership approach’ that was beingdeveloped in Ireland and the potential for such a development in the UK, andparticularly in Wales (Cardiff School of Social Sciences, 2008). The issue of trade unionmembership and density became a major concern after 2008 with the direct impact ofthe recession upon membership levels. At this point, we led a discussion, based onmembership data, and raised questions about the relatively high-density levels in Walesand the reasons for this. While we suggested that part of an explanation could liebeyond the unions and in the fabric of the local economy and society, the officialsgenerally sought an explanation in terms of the strategic behaviour of the trade unionsthemselves.

In taking this discussion forward, we were influenced by the research of Martinet al. (1996: 118) on the idea of ‘spillover’ and the way that it had been developedby Holmes (2006), in the context of the old coal and steel districts of West Virginiaand Pennsylvania. Here, in a situation similar to parts of South and North Wales, hedemonstrated how significantly high unionisation rates within care homes andgrocery stores could be linked to the unionisation of the old coal and steel sectors.While Holmes used statistical mapping techniques to demonstrate the spillover effect,we were concerned to involve the union officials in the process. Through focusing onexamples and cases, we involved several officials in discussions over the kinds ofevidence that might be available to investigate a spillover relationship operating in theunionisation process. These discussions took place in the summer of 2009 and wererecorded and transcribed. They were supported by prior statistical analysis of data

Sources of variation in trade union membership 201

© 2012 The Author(s)Industrial Relations Journal © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

from the UK Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the Workplace Employment RelationsSurvey (WERS). They produced interesting confirmation of some of the patternsidentified in the United States. They also highlighted an additional dimension bydrawing attention to the ways in which upward mobility into management positionswithin the devolved state (and in some private firms) could also be seen as ‘spillover’with an equally significant impact upon the level and pattern of unionisation.

2 UNION MEMBERSHIP IN THE UK: EVIDENCE FROM THE LFS

Regional trends in trade union membership between 1995 and 2010 reveal markeddifferences, and these are shown in Figure 1 where the data are based on three-yearmoving averages to improve the robustness of results. It can be seen that all countrieswithin the UK exhibit a decline in the proportion of employees who are members oftrade unions. Up until 2004/06, this decline was most apparent within Wales wheretrade union membership had declined by approximately seven percentage points since1995/97. In more recent years, union membership in Wales has remained relativelystable. In 2008, union membership in Wales was estimated to be 37 per cent, broadlycomparable with that observed in Northern Ireland, four percentage points higherthan Scotland and some 10 percentage points higher than England. However, thisdisguises the significant variations in union density that exists across the regions ofEngland. Based upon data for 2008/10, union density within the North East isestimated to be 35 per cent, broadly comparable with that observed within Wales.Rates of union membership are lowest in London, the East and the South East, eachexhibiting a union density of approximately 22 per cent. (Figure 2)

While the changing nature of employment has contributed to the downward trendin union density in all countries of the UK, it remains the case that the relative

20.0

25.0

30.0

35.0

40.0

45.0

1995/97 1996/98 1997/99 1998/00 1999/01 2000/02 2001/03 2002/04 2003/05 2004/06 2005/07 2006/08 2007/09 2008/10

%

England Wales Scotland Northern Ireland

Figure 1: Trends in Regional Union Density: 1995–2010 (per cent employees)

Source: Office of National Statistics Labour Force Survey, 2008–10.

Huw Beynon et al.202


concentration of employment among all the devolved nations within certain sectors ofthe economy contributes to their relatively high rates of unionisation. Previousresearch has demonstrated the increased likelihood of union membership amongthose working in high-risk sectors of the economy such as mining, construction andmanufacturing (Fiorito and Dauffenbach, 1982; Hirsch and Berger, 1984). Moregenerally, white-collar workers are less likely to join unions than those employed inmanual occupations (Fiorito and Greer, 1986). There is also a strong correlationbetween public sector employment and union membership. Those employed in caringor educational occupations are also more inclined to be union members (Van denBerg and Groot, 1992). Men, older workers, those leaning towards the left in terms ofpolitical ideology (Green and Soper, 1993) and those with unionised fathers (Blandenand Machin, 2003) have all been found to be more likely to be union members.

The relative concentration of employment within the public sector and traditionalheavy industries is therefore pertinent to our understanding of union membership inWales. Table 1 takes account of such differences in the composition of employment bycomparing the relative incidence of union membership among the four countries ofthe UK for particular groups within the labour market. Data from the LFS is pooledover a period of five years (2006–10) to allow estimates of union density to bepresented for relatively small subgroups of the population. It can be seen that withinboth large and small establishments, within the private and public sectors and withindifferent areas of economic activity, regional differentials in union membershipremain. This supports the conclusion of Monastiriotis that

Union densities followed a declining path in all regions but this retreat was not uniform across space.Moreover it does not appear to be sufficiently explained by developments in the most obvious areas, suchas the regional composition of employment [our emphasis, Monastiriotis, 2007: 145–146].

25.7

35.8

32.3

37.0

34.6

31.9

28.8

26.427.2

22.4 22.2 21.5

24.6

0.0

5.0

10.0

15.0

20.0

25.0

30.0

35.0

40.0

England Wales ScotlandNorthern Ireland

North-East

North-West

Yorks andHumb

East Mids

West Mids

East London South-East

South-West

%

Figure 2: Regional Union Density 2008/10 (per cent of employees)

Source: Office of National Statistics Labour Force Survey, 2008–10.



Table 1: Personal and workplace characteristics and nationalvariations in union density (per cent of employees)

England Wales ScotlandNorthernIreland UK

GenderMale 25.5 35.2 31.9 37.1 26.7Female 28.5 39.5 36.2 40.4 30.0

Age16–19 3.8 6.4 8.8 6.2 4.420–24 12.7 15.7 13.3 21.4 13.125–29 21.8 28.7 22.7 35.8 22.630–34 24.1 37.8 32.8 36.7 25.835–39 26.5 39.8 34.6 41.0 28.140–44 30.7 46.2 39.5 45.8 32.545–49 34.3 49.9 42.8 52.1 36.250–54 39.1 47.0 47.4 51.8 40.555–59 39.7 48.7 46.4 44.0 40.860–64 21.9 29.6 33.1 32.2 23.2

Workplace size1–10 9.2 17.0 18.0 20.2 10.611–19 19.9 29.2 24.4 28.6 21.020–24 19.8 36.4 25.1 35.5 21.525–49 27.3 36.0 31.1 37.6 28.250–249 31.4 41.0 39.9 45.7 32.9250–499 35.5 49.7 45.5 51.6 37.1500+ plus 42.5 59.7 50.9 63.7 44.3

SectorPrivate 15.6 22.0 18.9 21.5 16.2Public 57.3 66.8 65.6 68.4 59.0

IndustryAgriculture/fishing 8.5 0.0 8.3 3.5 8.2Energy/water 30.7 50.6 32.0 30.5 31.8Manufacturing 20.3 32.6 25.5 34.0 21.5Construction 13.5 13.9 20.9 15.1 14.3Distribution 9.7 15.4 10.8 12.7 10.1Transport/communication 39.9 48.6 43.8 47.2 40.6Banking/finance 14.5 21.4 20.5 30.4 15.4Public administration 48.9 57.3 57.2 62.2 50.5Other services 18.7 31.4 26.9 12.4 19.8Total 27.0 37.3 34.0 38.8 28.3

Source: Office of National Statistics Labour Force Survey, 2006–10.Note: Figures are weighted.



These accounts therefore emphasise a spatial component to the patterning of tradeunion membership. When we look at regional trends, we see that both density andunion membership have generally held up in Wales since 2005 in spite of severe joblosses in some areas. We discussed this matter with Jeff Evans, who was then WalesSecretary of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) trade union:

We have maintained our membership in Wales—so we haven’t expanded our membership—it’sremained at the same level, in the context of Gordon Brown’s 84,000 (public sector) job cuts across theUK. We reckon we’ve lost about five or six thousand civil service posts in Wales since the last four yearsbut we’ve maintained our membership. So our density levels have gone up

Evans was, of course, speaking of the public sector where, as we know, membershipis at a much higher level than elsewhere. However, in Wales, we see that the densityacross all sectors is generally higher than elsewhere in the UK (Table 1). These dataare all the more impressive given that those areas that experienced large-scale joblosses in the 1980s and 1990s, especially from traditional industries, dominate leaguetables for incapacity benefit and ‘real’ unemployment (see Beatty et al., 2007). Highlevels of union density in Wales are based upon a labour force that is denuded byunemployment and, most significantly, economic inactivity affecting older workersdisproportionately.

3 SPILLOVER

In considering ways of moving beyond a statistical measure of employment compo-sition to some more granular account of difference, we were impressed by the specificanalysis of membership retreat conducted by Martin et al. (1996: 118) who arguedconvincingly that

. . . industrial relations traditions of key groups of workers, firms and industries in a region are not selfcontained, but rather generate spillovers to other workers, firms and industries in the region through thecourse of time (our emphasis).

Andy Charlwood, in a more generally orientated article, also concluded that

Those resident in ‘prosperous England areas’ were much less likely to be willing to join a union thaneveryone else. Other things being equal, a resident of a ‘mining manufacturing and industry’ area wouldbe twice as likely to be willing to join a union as a resident of a ‘prosperous England’ area. Contrary toexpectations, these relationships were not mediated by either perceived instrumentality or politicalviews [Charlwood, 2002: 483].

This emphasis on particular types of places with different internal patternings ofclasses and class relations is important and something that is likely to be intensifiedthough social mobility and the operation of housing markets (Dorling, 2010).

Implicit in this approach is an understanding of the ways in which spatial differ-ences emerge through the operation of firms, the state and through the interactionsand historically received understandings of employees. This makes clear that anadequate analysis of regional differentiation needs to combine the personal with thestructural. As we have seen, Holmes, who offered a comparison of South Carolina—where only 5 per cent of the work force is covered by union contracts—with WestVirginia and Pennsylvania, where the percentages are over 10 per cent higher, dem-onstrates that ‘even within the same industries, unionisation rates are lower in SouthCarolina’.



In offering an explanation, he develops a thesis, which is summarised as ‘unionismis contagious at the geographic level’ (Holmes, 2006: 2). It is this, which in his viewexplains why:

In Pennsylvania and West Virginia it is easy to find unionised supermarkets and hospitals as well asmines and steel mills. These are virtually non existent in South Carolina . . . in Pennsylvania and WestVirginia . . . unionism in coal mines and steel mills spilled over into other establishments in the area (ouremphasis).

Holmes prefaces his analysis with an account of unionisation in the coal and steelindustries in the United States, and with the support of detailed statistical mapping,demonstrates that historical proximity to highly unionised workplaces spills over onto others that (in other locations) are unorganised and often seen as ‘un-organisable’.

In reflecting on these findings, Holmes (2006: 5) suggested that trade union mem-bership could best be understood as an ‘experience good’: something whose value canonly be fully appreciated though its direct experience or though appreciation of theway it has been experienced by kin and close associates. This sits with other researchthat has focused upon the importance of incumbency effects upon the development offavourable attitudes towards trades unions (Diamond and Freeman, 2001). In thisway, the ‘experience good’ aspect of unionisation has made an important contributionto understanding regional variations in trade union density. It explains how individu-als born into regions of relatively low union density will find it difficult to quantify thebenefits of membership, will face greater uncertainty regarding the benefits of mem-bership and will, in turn, consider their non-unionised state as being preferred (Brysonand Gomez, 2005). Regional variations in union membership therefore become path-dependent as do rising rates of non-unionisation that create a self-perpetuatingdecline in union density. If fewer workers experience unionism and see the truebenefits, then fewer workers support unions and union density declines. This increasesthe never unionisation rate and the cycle begins anew (Booth et al., 2010). Thispresents the possibility that a part of trade union membership in Wales can beexplained by the historical legacy of trade unionism and the ‘structure of feeling’(Williams, 1961) that has been transmitted though family members, local communi-ties and perhaps in the context of devolution, the local state.

4 HISTORICALLY RECEIVED UNDERSTANDINGS

In Wales, for a significant part of the 20th century, an ascendant industrial working-class came to dominate society—demographically and politically. This working-classwas largely a product of the quarrying in the North, coal mining and steel makingindustries in the South and the extensive rail and sea transportation system thatsupported them. In South Wales, in a band that swept from the edge of the scarp atBlaenavon in the North East to Saundersfoot in the South West, hundreds of thou-sands of men laboured in the coal mines and steel mills and furnaces. Such was the scaleof this production that in 1911, two-thirds of the population of Wales was living in thecounties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire. By 1921, a third of the men and boys inthe Welsh labour force worked in the mines and quarries. It was here that revolutionarysyndicalism received its most eloquent British testimony in The Miners’ Next Step;where (often violent) class war was waged by the employers as expressed by persistentlockouts and the legal attacks such as the Taff Vale judgement. Troops, militia andpolice were regularly deployed against workers in struggle, and workers responded



with the creation of powerful organisations in mining and quarrying, steel making andtransportation, too—of the original six branches of the train drivers’ union ASLEF(Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen), three were in South Wales(Pontypool, Tondu and Neath) (Williams, 1985: 242). The Labour Party’s first MP,Keir Hardie, was elected from the Merthyr Tydfil constituency in 1900 and the newNational Union of Mineworkers formed in 1944 had Welsh leaders through until 1970.

Aneurin Bevan’s life bridged this period, and he has written of how brought up inTredegar

We were surrounded by the established facts of the Industrial Revolution. We worked in pits, steelworks, foundries, textile mills, factories . . . We were the product of an industrial civilisation and ourpsychology corresponded to this fact [Bevan, 1952: 1–2].

Peter Stead (1973) had taken these words as a text and demonstrated how themaking of this ‘industrial civilisation’ out of a labour force of rural migrants fromWest Wales, Hereford, Somerset (including the great miners’ leader A. J. Cook) andCork was no simple matter. Men travelled from rural poverty to work in the minesand return with comparative riches. Within this process of monetary improvement,however, class lines were being drawn, and Welshness played a part in this. The Welshbecame established as wage labourers, employed in increasingly large units of pro-duction in a society dominated by powerful capitalist families. Large urban complexes(such as Glasgow, Manchester, Sheffield, Belfast) were absent and with them adeveloped middle class. Writing more generally about the growth of the labourmovement outside the big cities of early capitalism, Hobsbawm (1987: 40) noted that

we are talking about communities in the literal sense of the word: of Gemeinschaft rather than Gesell-schaft, of places in which people could walk to and from work, and sometimes go home in thedinner-hour, of places where work, home, leisure, industrial relations, local government and home-townconsciousness were inextricably mixed together. It was in exactly this sort of location that labourmovements established heir strongholds.

No more so than in Wales where industry was, for the most part, carried out invillages rather than towns. In relation to this, the Commission of Inquiry on IndustrialUnrest in 1917 suggested that

Owing to this absence of municipal centres and centralised institutions the development of the civicspirit and sense of social solidarity—what we may in short call the community-sense is seriouslyretarded [Chance, 1917: 141].

However, a new kind of community was emerging in the industrial valleys of SouthWales alongside a new kind of trade unionism that developed as the clearest expres-sion not only of the men’s economic power but also the spiritual value placed oncamaraderie. Disloyalty to the union was a moral offence (Stead, 1973).

In Stead’s view, therefore, trade unionism in Wales was never purely economistic;trade union issues spilled over into daily life and the organisation of localcommunities. This argument was developed fully by Dai Smith and Hywel Francis intheir account of mining trade unionism, which sees the South Wales Miners Federa-tion emerging from the struggles of the 1930s as

the body and the mind not of an anonymous mass of people conveniently labelled ‘the coalfield’ or ‘thecommunity’, or ‘the miners’, ‘the workforce’, ‘the immigrants’ or ‘the unemployed’ but rather of distinctsocial beings who maintained their localities, as they established their own dignified individuality, bycollective action and collective institutions [Francis and Smith, 1980: 41].



In part, of course, this was influenced by the nature of mining and mining labour asbeing formally unskilled. In the case of Durham, it has been noted:

No other unskilled group was able to organise so early and with such completeness as the miners did.However, where skilled groups built their organisations upon exclusion and the apprenticeship system,coal miners relied on political action to produce solidarity [Beynon and Austrin, 1994: 365].

However, in establishing the distinctiveness of South Wales, Smith and Francis callon the support of Will Paynter. Paynter was secretary of the Fed and then generalsecretary of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). An erudite man, well-readand vastly experienced in labour affairs, Paynter’s viewpoint is significant, and forhim, the organisation in South Wales was ‘unique amongst unions’ (see also Lane,1974; Paynter, 1972). In his view, the miners’ union (with its links to the steel workersin the East and the West) established a hegemonic presence in South Wales affectingnot only workplace bargaining but the character of social and political life in thecountry. Certainly, this was the view of the labour historian Gwyn Alf Williams, whosaw this process culminating in

. . . a Labour hegemony of a highly distinctive kind, wreathed in passionate left-wing talk, shot throughwith Marxism and great blood-red dreams of brotherhood, with at its side a small but highly influentialCommunist Party and all around it a tradition of pro-Soviet feeling and bitter class battles. TheWorking Class seemed to have become an organising principle for a Welsh people [1985: 265].

Here, the link between trade unionism, class and community is extended further toa national identity, a theme that was picked up in a perceptive article by Merfyn Jonesin 1992. Against the background of Thatcherism, he wrote of the remarkable way inwhich a Welsh identity had been retained in the absence of a Welsh state, and in this,he located ‘a distinctive self-image’:

an identity rooted in a specific combination of social and economic conditions. But the astonishing paceof change in the 1980s has served to undermine these apparently secure images and supplant them withuncertainties that might lead to a redefinition of national identity itself [Jones, 1992: 332].

Jones is referring here to the way in which the industries that underpinned thatprevious hegemony were closed down or seriously reduced in size. In 1921, there were271,000 coal miners in South Wales alone. In 1947, on nationalisation, the number hadreduced to 109,000. Before the strike of 1984–85, there were 24,000 working in 28collieries. Today, none of the old ‘National Coal Board (NCB) mines’ remain open. Allthat remains of a coal industry are a number of small drift mines operating in theSwansea and Neath valleys and the ever-present opencast sites that populate thenorthern rim of the old coalfield. Steel production has also been much reduced bythe closure of the works at Ebbw Vale, Shotton and East Moors in Cardiff. Whatremains are the large integrated works at Port Talbot and smaller facilities at Llanwernin the East and Velindre in the West. In this way, the established map of Wales’ regionaleconomy was ruptured.

Most of the closures took place in the 1960s, of course, and in that period, branchplants of Hoover and Ford and other multinational corporations were located in thearea. Public sector employment also grew with the consequence that the labour forceand social structure of Wales became more complex but not more stable. Many whofound work in the new manufacturing plants learned that they too could close as oneround of closures followed another in the 1980s and 1990s. The financial crash of 2008had a further knock-on effect upon manufacturing production, followed by threats toemployment across the public sector.



In this context, no single trade union has emerged as hegemonic, and none of themresemble the NUM in form. Heery and Nash (2005: 4) had summarised the situationin this way:

Wales has long been a bastion of trade unionism within the UK, owing to its tradition of heavy industryand the strong culture of collective solidarity this fostered. The country is one of the most rapidlychanging parts of the UK, however, and the problem of adjusting to occupational and industrial changeis particularly acute.

However, Huggins and Thompson (2011: 126) drew on the World Values Survey2006 to provide a detailed statistical examination of the impact of these changes. Theyconvincingly established that ‘Wales is generally more collective and equality driven’than the UK average and significantly more so than the south-east of England. Theyconcluded that:

Wales as a whole can be characterised by a community culture based on social cohesion, caring,femininity, collective action and a general desire for fairness and equality [2011: 124].

This account builds upon our brief consideration of the history of the working-classand provides some support for the possibility of historical spillover of union mem-bership from the unions of the Triple Alliance into the deindustrial world of contem-porary Wales.

5 HISTORICAL CONTINUITY AND SPILLOVER?

Following Holmes’ study, we considered the situation with grocery stores and theirsupermarket equivalents in the UK. This is the preserve of the Union of Shop,Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW), and the work force—female and part-time—is the kind identified by Heery and Nash (2005) as posing problems for tradeunions. With this in mind, we asked Nick Ireland, the regional secretary of USDAW,to reflect on his experience of trade union recruitment and to consider whether someplaces were more fruitful sites than others, and how these compared with his experi-ences outside Wales. He immediately responded with ‘a classic example’ that he hadexperienced the day before:

I went with Alan to do an induction for a Morrison’s store in Porth and it’s in Clydach, which wasobviously a mining village at one point and we’ve done two inductions there and recruited 75% of thestaff . . . which is double our current national average density in Morrison’s.

There are of course no coal mines working in the Rhondda valleys today—the lastone, Maerdy, closing soon after the end of the miners’ strike in 1985. However, thereremains a strong affinity with trade union membership and collective action. It wasfurther up the valley in Treorchy that the female workforce occupied and fought—unsuccessfully—against the closure of the Burberry factory (Blyton and Jenkins,2012). This speaks to a spillover effect of more than one generation and of a conti-nuity in forms of consciousness that transcends dramatic economic changes.

On a more contemporary level, and in line with the US data, we learned that inNewport, USDAW had organised two large supermarkets, and it was the one in theeast nearest to the giant Llanwern steel works that had seen the most compete andrapid unionisation. In the view of the union official, there was no question but that hehad found recruiting members easier in South Wales than he had in the south-west ofEngland and that proximity to the old coal and steel sites was a clear advantage.



We followed this with an investigation of care and nursing homes. In the USA, ofcourse, the United Steelworkers had a strategy of unionising these homes as a way ofdefending their members in ill health after they had left the mills. In the UK, the mainsteel workers union BISAKTA (British Iron, Steel and Kindred Trades Association)had realigned itself in a similar way with a strategy for extending membership beyondthe steel industry and into the local communities. It was with this in mind that itrelaunched itself as a new union—COMMUNITY. However, in this form, it has notattempted to organise the care homes, this being the preserve of the health workers’union UNISON, with some assistance from one of the other general workers unions.Here, we see a similar pattern to that of the supermarkets, although one complicated bylabour migration and a trade union strategy for recruitment that was less aggressivethan the one followed by USDAW. One official explained how he had visited a carehome in Tredegar:

About twenty five or thirty staff all minimum wage, all working really hard, never enough cover providedwhen somebody was off sick. All really keen to join the union, one of them asked me for applicationforms. I told Blaenau Gwent local government branch to go over and talk to them and get them organised.Not interested. Too much hassle, too much trouble. So, really disappointing. A number of them joinedbut didn’t get support from the local branch despite promptings from us about getting involved there.And it’s another example of a branch saying ‘we’ve got enough problems, we don’t want this’.

Here, we see further confirmation of a strong propensity to join but one not backed witha strong organising strategy from the trade union. In spite of this, the preponderance oftrade union membership within the care homes was located in the old coalfield districts,most often in those operated by local authorities rather than private firms.

Taken together, these accounts support a view of ‘geographical contagion’ devel-oped in the United States by Holmes. It is suggestive of a view that places, neighbour-hoods and communities can serve as conduits of trade union and collective forms ofconsciousness even if located away from the work place temporally and geographically.It is further strengthened by an examination of the postcode data for the membershipin Wales of PCS. This union recruits from large workplaces mainly located in Cardiffand along the M4 corridor in the South, between Newport and Swansea and the coastalstrip in the North. Data on residence, however, again revealed a strong concentrationin the old coalfield regions of the South and the North.

6 SPILLOVER, MANAGEMENT AND THE STATE

In our discussions with the trade union officials, we were interested in consideringother ways in which ‘spillover’ might offer an explanation of unionisation and wewere given a number of accounts suggestive of a continuity that transcended socialclass. For example, when we were discussing recruitment campaigns in the valleytowns of South Wales, Mike Payne of the General, Municipal and BoilermakersUnion (GMB) made the following comment:

We often find that a lot when we speak to managers in those areas: ‘my father was a trade unionist’ andso it just rolls on. I wouldn’t mind a pound for every time I’ve heard the comment that says ‘If my fatherthought I was trying to stop a trade union recruiting he’d turn in his grave’.

In this context, it is helpful to look at evidence from the 2004 WERS. Here, we findrecorded a higher level of support for trade unionism by employers in Wales than inany other of the regions of the UK. WERS provides a nationally representativeaccount of the state of employment relations and working life at British workplaceswith five or more employees. During detailed face-to-face interviews, managers are



asked about both their own views of union membership and the attitudes of manage-ment more generally to union membership at their workplace. Those respondentsfrom Welsh workplaces are most likely to report that management actively encour-ages union membership (20 per cent). After the north-east, respondents from Walesare also the second most likely to report that they believe that unions can help toimprove performance (30 per cent). (Table 2)

Here, of course, there is variation. Cardiff Business School’s survey of trade unionofficers in 2002 revealed negative attitudes towards trade unions being reportedamong management in manufacturing and construction. However, as Heery andNash (2005: 21–22) summarised,

The evidence demonstrates that the public sector continues to provide a more favourable environmentfor trade unions. It demonstrates too that the public sector casts a positive shadow that influences thebehaviour of other private sector employers who come within its ambit as contractors. There are partsof the service economy, according to these data, including voluntary organisations and business servicefirms that should provide relatively favourable territory for unions.

In our interview with Paul O’Shea, the regional secretary of UNISON, he was alsoclear that the context of trade union organisation in Wales was very different fromacross the border in England. In healthcare, the state plays an important role, and onethat has been devolved to the Welsh government. This, in his view, had a significanteffect both in the public sector generally and also in those organisations operating ‘inthe shadow of the state’.

This ‘shadow effect’ operates in different ways. On the one hand, private companiesdealing with the public sector have sometimes found it beneficial, sometimes enforcedthough contract, to develop positive policies for their workforces and include tradeunion recognition as part of it. At other times, the effect comes more directly. Forexample, we established that union membership in the ‘other services’ sector in Waleswas stronger that might be expected, and as such, we were interested to learn of aveterinary firm operating in the Rhondda Valleys that had been unionised. We askedthe organiser responsible how this had come about, and he explained how he had

had a phone call from somebody who had two jobs: one was in the local authority where she was aGMB member and then she worked at the vets in the afternoons as an admin assistant and she said: ‘Wegot problems in here. Would you come up and have a chat to us?’ So I went up and I sat down and Ithink one of the partners sat in on the meeting and we had this chat about what the union coulddo . . . and they signed a recognition agreement and we’ve got members there. I think there’s quite a fewof them now. There were only a small handful when I first was involved.

This example of spillover from the state sector into the private service sector is aninteresting one and points to ways in which part-time working with two or more jobsmay in some cases act as a conduit for trade union organising and development.Overwhelmingly, it points to the significance of the state sector as both a centre ofstate union organisation and an ‘umbrella’ for forms of collective behaviour andunderstanding which can be interpreted as a form of historical spillover.

These relationships could be seen to underpin another dimension of the ‘Welsheffect’, which may have been strengthened by devolution. In the postwar period, afterthe nationalisation of coal, steel and the railways and the formation of the NHS, thestate’s involvement in the economy of South Wales was greater than anywhere outsideEastern Europe. An ascendant left Social Democratic politics was accompanied by anattachment to the enabling role of the state and its capacity to ameliorate the conse-quences of what Bevan termed ‘accidentalism’. In this period, the NUM in SouthWales developed a trajectory that differed from the class warfare of the 1920s. Arthur



Tab

le2:

Att

itud

esof

man

agem

ent

toun

ion

mem

bers

hip

Man

agem

ent’

sge

nera

lat

titu

deat

the

esta

blis

hmen

tV

iew

sof

resp

onde

nts

Infa

vour

ofun

ion

mem

bers

hip

(%)

Act

ivel

yen

cour

age

mem

bers

hip

(%)

Uni

ons

help

impr

ove

perf

orm

ance

(%ag

ree)

Wou

ldra

ther

cons

ult

wit

hem

ploy

ees

than

unio

ns(%

disa

gree

)

Wal

es20

.320

.430

.48.

1N

orth

-eas

t16

.118

.934

.615

.4Sc

otla

nd25

.816

.224

.07.

8Y

orks

hire

and

the

Hum

bers

ide

21.1

14.2

19.0

8.2

Lon

don

22.7

14.0

28.5

11.2

Sout

h-w

est

16.5

11.0

26.2

4.1

Sout

h-ea

st13

.09.

320

.23.

6E

ast

ofE

ngla

nd19

.19.

119

.58.

2N

orth

-wes

t15

.68.

716

.27.

0W

est

Mid

land

s11

.76.

713

.56.

4E

ast

Mid

land

s9.

86.

718

.43.

9T

otal

17.4

11.5

21.6

7.2

Sour

ce:

WE

RS

2004

.N

ote:

Fig

ures

are

wei

ghte

d.



Horner spoke famously at the NUM conference in Blackpool of the need to get awayfrom the ‘class attitude toward management’, and there is no doubt that under theleadership of Will Paynter, Dai Francis and Emlyn Williams, the commitment tosocial democratic forms, of working within the state, affected the form that tradeunionism took, certainly up until the election of Thatcher.

During this time, there occurred a slow but growing institutional separation ofWales from England: from a Council for Wales, to a Minister of Welsh Affairs to aSecretary of State and a Welsh office. Small enough moves perhaps, but as MerfynJones has pointed out:

The Welsh office gradually acquired more and more functions and responsibilities: health in 1970,economic development in 1975, agriculture in 1970, education in 1970 and 1979, local authority fundingin 1980 and higher education in 1991 [Jones, 1992: 353–354].

Consequentially, in the period before devolution, a more socially ameliorativeapproach to policy making had emerged, which created a distinction betweenEngland and Wales. It was this, in the context of Thatcherism, that fuelled support fordevolution when it was offered as an option to the people of Wales by the NewLabour government.

Here, as we have seen, public sector trade unionism thrived. The relationshipbetween the state and trade unionism was raised in a new form with devolution. It wasstated most clearly by the First Minister Rhodri Morgan in 2008 when he wrote

For those who believe that the problem of the Labour movement in Wales is that we are too much likea Labour movement, I would have to say that this was not the complaint which was made to me on thedoorstep [Rhodri Morgan, 2008: 14].

The fact that ‘Wales is a small country’ is a common expression and the Welshpolitical elite is miniscule and in each other’s pockets. The weakening of the ascen-dancy of the Labour Party has served to emphasise that on many of the key issues, thefour parties have common views. They would, for example, all endorse the principlesof the ‘social model’.

Trade unionism sits alongside this. In the last European election, Plaid Cymruborrowed the Labour party’s idea of a pledge card and issued its own—Plaid’sWorkers’ Pledge—which was directed at labour in the work place. The pledge con-tained five commitments in support of equal rights, health and safety, greater con-sultation and the protection of pensions and public sector jobs. As a consequence, thejoint Labour–Plaid Cymru coalition (2007–11) did not alter the easy access, whichtrade unions leaders had to ministers and civil servants. Writing in 2007, Foster andScott commented on how the

. . . emerging relationships between senior trade union figures and the administration at regional levelcertainly seem to be of a closer, more inclusive and collaborative kind than visible within the UKnationally [Foster and Scott, 2007: 366].

Paul O’Shea endorsed this view by contrasting Wales with his previous experiencein England:

I think a big difference in working in Wales was demonstrated to me on the first day I started when Ihad a phone call from Rhodri: could I spare him an hour that afternoon to talk about how things weregoing.

He expanded in this way:



[T]he big difference we find in unions in Wales is accessibility and access to people who make decisions.This whole idea of devolved democracy. When I was regional secretary in Taunton, we might see an MPonce a year, we’d never see a minister. In Wales, we’re meeting ministers, Assembly Members, andMPs—certainly Assembly ministers—on almost a weekly basis and the access to people even like theFirst Minister, regular access, regular access to all the people who make most of the decisions affectingour members.

This ease of access was associated with recognition by the senior civil service inWales that the unions were now ‘major players’. This was made most clear within theWelsh government when in response to a request from the PCS, a note was issuedthrough the intranet strongly endorsing membership of the recognised trade unions,asserting that the government ‘values its partnership agreement with the unions andis committed to further developments of those arrangements’. The newly appointedPermanent Secretary Gill Morgan was quoted directly:

I recognise the value and contribution that our unions are making in representing the views of staffwithin the organisation.

Bernard Galton, the director of human resource management, went further:

We encourage staff to join one of our recognised trade unions so that can engage in the matters thataffect them and help shape the future of the organisation.

In the view of PCS official Jeff Evans, ‘It went further than any Permanent Secretaryendorsement of trade union membership that I’ve ever seen’. This support was madeevident during the periods of strike action taken by the PCS in March 2010 and thenagain in April and November 2011 when Labour and Plaid members of the assemblyrefused to walk though picket lines, formally closing business for the period of thestrike.

In discussing these developments, one union official explained that

They [the senior civil service] understand the political set up in Wales and really being nice to tradeunions is part of the wishes of their political mistresses and masters they serve.

Moreover, and in his direct experience,

It’s obviously a friendly approach and a lot of the managers we deal with—particularly those with aWelsh connection—are part of the culture as well.

These features came together markedly in the wake of the financial crisis in 2008.Here, the benefits of ‘the small country’ were mentioned frequently in discussions withunion officials. ‘Everyone knows each other and so if you’ve got an idea, it’s easier toget things done, less obstacles’. In October 2008, the Welsh government established itsfirst Tri-Partite Economic Summit. The Wales TUC (2008: 4) explained how

. . . our emergency response programme was the focus for discussion. We identified seven areas foraction; skills, infrastructure, housing, energy efficiency, procurement, funding and business rates. As adirect result of our proposals the Welsh Assembly Government implemented a number of measures ineach of these seven areas.

Most significant in this was the fact that the Wales TUC helped develop a financialplan that brought forward capital spending:

. . . the innovative £48 m ‘ProAct’ scheme . . . is providing financial support for training and wages tohelp keep people in work and prepare companies for the upturn. This is a model the TUC believesshould be replicated across the UK. [Wales TUC, 2008: 5].

7 A DEVOLVED SYSTEM OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS?

What emerges here, which is additional to an account of spillover, is the suggestion ofa patterned variation from the norm of UK industrial relations. Table 3 provides



Tab

le3:

Reg

iona

lvar

iati

ons

inth

ena

ture

ofun

ion

repr

esen

tati

onin

the

UK

Reg

ion

Man

agem

ent

inte

rvie

wE

mpl

oyee

surv

ey

Per

cent

age

ofem

ploy

ees

wor

king

atw

orkp

lace

sw

ith:

Em

ploy

ees

repo

rtin

ga

unio

nat

the

wor

kpla

ce(%

)N

oun

ion

Non

-rec

ogni

sed

unio

nsR

ecog

nise

dun

ions

wit

hout

stew

ard

Rec

ogni

sed

unio

nsw

ith

stew

ard

Nor

th-e

ast

27.0

8.2

15.8

49.1

51.0

Yor

kshi

rean

dth

eH

umbe

rsid

e27

.414

.613

.744

.349

.2W

ales

31.9

11.7

14.4

41.9

56.0

Scot

land

32.1

12.1

15.4

40.4

49.4

Eas

tM

idla

nds

39.5

13.9

8.4

38.2

43.5

Sout

h-w

est

40.6

14.3

8.0

37.2

43.3

Nor

th-w

est

41.6

12.5

6.8

39.1

42.9

Eas

tof

Eng

land

42.6

10.7

15.8

30.8

38.3

Wes

tM

idla

nds

44.2

13.8

6.2

35.8

39.9

Lon

don

47.4

11.2

11.5

29.9

38.4

Sout

h-ea

st52

.112

.38.

926

.734

.3T

otal

40.3

12.5

10.8

36.4

42.8

Sour

ce:

WE

RS

2004

Not

e:F

igur

esar

ew

eigh

ted.



regional comparisons of the nature of worker representation in the UK as provided bymanagers interviewed in WERS. Figures are weighted on an employee basis todemonstrate the coverage of these practices. Overall, 60 per cent of employees workwithin unionised establishments, with this figure increasing to73 per cent in thenorth-east. In addition to the detailed interviews conducted with managers, WERSalso issues self-completion questionnaires to a sample of employees within each of thesurveyed workplaces. Employees are asked whether or not there is a trade union orstaff association at their workplace. Perceived levels of the presence of unions amongemployees is lower than that reported by managers, possibly reflecting a lack ofawareness of non-recognised unions among employee. Nonetheless, it can be seen inthe final column of Table 3 that Wales has the highest proportion of employees whoreport that a union is present at their workplace (56 per cent).

Further information provided by respondents to the employee questionnaire ispresented in Table 4. It can be seen that within unionised establishments, Wales hasthe most complete membership returns (69 per cent) closely followed by the NorthEast (67 per cent) and Scotland (66 per cent). In contrast, less than half (48 per cent)of employees in unionised establishments in the south-east are actually unionmembers. This variation in the extent to which the availability of a union translatesinto union membership is further evidence of a higher propensity to join among theworkforce in Wales. There is also evidence that this characteristic of the labour forcein Wales in aligned with a particular type of union character. The WERS data supportthe view that in Wales, they deal with a management that is significantly moresupportive than in other parts of the UK, with 55 per cent of employees reporting thatthey perceived management to be in favour of unions, a figure that increases to 79 percent among unionised establishments within Wales. Here, it seems that they have alsobeen asked to join with a greater frequency with 68 per cent in unionised workplacesreporting that they had been asked to join a union several percentage points higherthan other highly unionised regions.

WERS data therefore reveal trade unions in Wales being most active in talking withnon-members, and across Wales, there has been a strong emphasis upon ‘organising’and retaining membership in the context of a supportive state and generally favour-able responses from managements. In discussing this, the trade union officials agreedthat it was possible to identify something that could be called a ‘Welsh effect’. Putmore prosaically, there was a strong sense that ‘Wales’ had considerably moremeaning than the regional areas of England and that this identity as a country had animpact upon trade unionism. Paul O’Shea explained,

I think it’s quite ill-defined what ‘country’ means but I think there is this sense of being Welsh asopposed to a sense of being somebody from the south west or somebody from east of England whichis pretty meaningless. So I think it’s a sense of belonging, a sense of self and the huge impact devolvedgovernment has had on the way unions operate—huge, huge difference . . . But there’s a sense ofinclusiveness I think, including the faith community. I’ve come across representatives of the faithcommunity much more actively involved in politics with a small P in Wales than anywhere I’ve foundin England.

This, together with the experience within the state sector, builds support for Baconand Samuel’s characterisation of the position in Wales as

a form of state-sponsored social partnership, and the emergence of an embryonic, yet politicallydistinctive, social democratic approach to industrial relations [Bacon and Samuel, 2009: 238].

It seems likely that approach will be strengthened in the coming decade, fuelled bythe long recession and by tensions between Cardiff and Whitehall. Straws in this wind



Tab

le4:

Reg

iona

lvar

iati

ons

inun

ion

mem

bers

hip

Mem

bers

hip

Man

agem

ent

infa

vour

ofun

ions

Hav

eyo

ube

enas

ked

tojo

ina

unio

n?

All

wor

kpla

ces

Uni

onis

edw

orkp

lace

sA

llw

orkp

lace

sU

nion

ised

wor

kpla

ces

All

wor

kpla

ces

Uni

onis

edw

orkp

lace

s

Wal

es41

.668

.555

.479

.642

.467

.6N

orth

-eas

t34

.266

.946

.577

.435

.458

.9Sc

otla

nd35

.965

.837

.559

.033

.057

.6Y

orks

hire

and

the

Hum

bers

ide

31.3

61.1

43.4

65.7

36.1

63.6

Eas

tM

idla

nds

25.7

55.6

31.7

56.3

30.3

59.9

Sout

h-w

est

29.4

59.3

29.5

53.4

29.9

62.5

Nor

th-w

est

26.0

63.0

32.9

64.3

30.8

64.0

Wes

tM

idla

nds

27.1

58.5

22.0

42.8

26.2

58.3

Lon

don

21.9

58.0

32.5

62.3

26.5

61.0

Eas

tof

Eng

land

19.9

52.6

27.0

47.9

26.5

58.7

Sout

h-ea

st14

.047

.627

.958

.721

.655

.4A

ll26

.359

.533

.159

.629

.660

.5

Sour

ce:

WE

RS

2004

.N

ote:

Fig

ures

are

wei

ghte

d.



were evident at the turn of the year in 2011 when George Osborne, the Chancellor ofthe Exchequer, announced a review of regional public pay adjustments in a distinctattempt to move away from the (UK) national wage. In response, the First MinisterCarwyn Jones described it as ‘code for cutting pay in Wales’. He made it clear:

That’s not acceptable . . . ultimately we may have to look at taking over pay and conditions here inWales. It’s not as easy as it sounds . . . But if we’re forced into that situation, better that than havepeople’s pay cut by the UK government in London [BBC Online, 2011].

In 2012, further upset was caused by Labour front bench discussion of Beveridgeand the need to radically alter the welfare system. This produced a strong responsefrom Jeff Evans, a senior national officer for the PCS union. Writing in his Facebooksite, he said that

It is time for the Welsh Labour Party to consider a formal separation from the UK Labour Party, withserious consideration being given to full divorce. I am sick to death of shadow ministers like Byrne andMurphy mimicking Tories and, frankly, I want nothing to do with them. At least we remain true to ourcore values here in Wales and long may that continue.

When interviewed by the Western Mail, he explained that

I think the progressive approach to devolution and the policies pursued in Wales have been excellent,and I’m very happy to support the Welsh Government in what it’s trying to do . . . It seems to me thisis part of a greater divergence going on between the Welsh party and the UK party. I think it’s time fora debate on what kind of relationship the party in Wales should have with the UK party as a whole[Shipton, 2012)].

Just straws in the wind, of course, but it is a wind that seems to be blowing in onedirection suggesting that any possible break-up of Britain may be pre-figured insignificant changes in the organisation of politics and the industrial relations system.

8 CONCLUSION

While this article has focused on Wales, its purpose has been a more general onerelating to the explanatory model used to account for spatial variation in trade uniondensity. Most generally, explanation has come to rely on compositional employmenteffects, on the one hand, and the idea of membership as an ‘experience good’ (densitybreeds density), on the other. However, we suggest that these economic processes needto be combined with a careful investigation of the historical and social processes thatmay be particular to regions and be affected by current constitutional changes. Tothis, we would add the importance of agency and the particular character of the localtrade union organisation and labour movement. Our hope is that this approach willsuggest similar analyses of Scotland and Northern Ireland as well as some of themajor English regions, and the development of comparative, interdisciplinaryanalysis.

The article also hopes to make a methodological contribution. On the one hand, itfits well with current concerns to develop analysis through the combination of differ-ent kinds of data, methods and techniques. Here, secondary analysis of survey datawas critical in providing both the parameters of the discussion and the framing of theresearch questions. The availability of these data gave much greater focus to thediscussions that we had with the union officials and altered the nature of our rela-tionship with them. They were not simply interviewees, but actors actively engaged inthe research process. As Huzzard and Björkman (2012:162) had put it, they ‘were notjust objects of study but co-producers of knowledge’ and party to a particular style of



‘action research’. Their interests, of course, were in the lessons of this analysis fortrade union organisation and action in the future.

The leadership group of officials was extremely interested in the idea of spilloverand in discussing ways in which it could influence the way they worked. In this, thequestion of the past becomes significant, and with it, the idea of ‘borrowed time’, thefact that while the inherited past had provided advantages for trade unions today, itcan not be relied upon forever; traditions have to be supported and renewed.Throughout our discussions, we found a commitment to maintain trade unionstrength through an organisational approach but one that was largely concerned withextending membership through ‘infill’—recruiting new or lapsed members withintheir already established centres of organisation. Welsh unions remain committed tothis approach because of its organisational effectiveness and they point to its successin maintaining union density since 2005 in the face of severe job losses. An awarenessof ‘spillover’, however, suggests that there may be advantages in also building supportthrough local communities, where the union voice can be strengthened to representand include a range of social and economic problems. In the context of the recessionand continued public expenditure cuts, there are signs that this approach might havea future.

This article is, in many ways, provisional: a report from the front line of work inprogress. Most noticeably absent is any detailed consideration of the direct experi-ences of local activists, trade union members and employees in workplaces acrossWales. This will be developed in the next phase of the research project. For themoment, we present this as an interesting, if limited, comment on an importantdevelopment in the patterning of industrial relations in the UK in the 21st century.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.Material from the Quarterly Labour Force Surveys is Crown Copyright and has beenmade available from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The authors acknowl-edge the Department of Trade and Industry, the Economic and Social ResearchCouncil, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service and the Policy StudiesInstitute as the originators of the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Surveydata. Both data sets have been distributed through the UK Data Archive. None ofthese organisations bears any responsibility for the authors’ analysis and interpreta-tions of the data.

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