This piece by Tim Webb appeared in Saturday’s Guardian. It’s a corrective to some of the boosterism, described so well in this piece, that passes for analysis.

As talks over pay and conditions at British Airways broke down this week just days after the long-running Lindsey oil refinery dispute dominated the headlines, it looked as if Britain was heading for a summer of discontent. But unions say the recession has actually made many workers more reluctant to go on strike because they fear they will lose their jobs.

Union representatives are reporting far fewer strike ballots than 2008. Many workers also say they cannot afford to take home the reduced pay packet if they take action.

The recession has seen staff opting to take a pay cut or to work part time instead of occupying the picket lines to save their jobs. Almost 7,000 British Airways staff – a sixth of its workforce – have responded to pleas by the chief executive, Willie Walsh, to volunteer for unpaid work, part-time hours or unpaid leave to help keep the airline afloat.

The recession has so far seen unions increasingly having to negotiate with companies about freezing or even cutting members’ pay to save their jobs rather than withdrawing labour to force the hand of unco-operative employers. The downturn has brought into focus many of the challenges faced by trade unions in 21st-century Britain and how they should adapt to the changing circumstances.

Last week, union leaders and their traditional foe – management (in the shape of human resources directors) – held an unlikely gathering at the TUC in central London. The aim was to bring the often warring sides together for a friendly debate on the future of union and employer relations.

The old tensions were never far from the surface. One human resources director grumbled to a colleague that one of the union speakers who had railed against the private sector was a “cross between Arthur Scargill and Gandhi”. But on the whole, it was the union representatives who found themselves on the defensive. Freddie Josland, of the British Transport Police, told them: “The trade union movement has a desperate need to relaunch and refresh itself.”

There was humour, too, for the company representatives at least: the head of human resources at the security conglomerate G4S (formed by the merger of Group 4 and Securicor) told fellow company representatives that if they thought British unions were extreme, they should count themselves lucky that they didn’t have to deal with members in developing countries, who often kidnap G4S managers in an effort to secure improved terms. It brought laughter – but only from one side of the room.

Unions are still a force to be reckoned with in the UK, particularly in the public sector and former nationalised industries such as power and transport. After a dramatic slump in the 1980s, membership has levelled off at about 27% of the workforce – just under 7 million employees.

But Mike Clancy, the deputy general secretary of the Prospect union, says that unions’ traditional two key selling points to members – collective bargaining on pay and personal representation – are under threat as never before. Employment law, which unions helped to push through, protects workers from unfair dismissals and other forms of employer abuse.

Clancy said unions played a key role in helping to enforce employment law for members, but they found themselves competing with lawyers or organisations such as the Citizens Advice Bureaux.

On collective pay bargaining, he said many employers, particularly in newer industries and those which rely on temporary workers, were very reluctant to recognise unions’ right to negotiate a deal on behalf of all workers. Activism in general had also declined, with new causes such as climate change also competing with the trade union movement, said Clancy.

In some respects, unions have failed to move out of their traditional heartland and some are out of step with modern Britain. Of the 60 TUC affiliated unions in the UK, only 13 are run by a woman, although this is a marked improvement compared with a decade ago. Nevertheless, Sally Hunt, the general secretary of the University and College Union, said last week that the movement still had an appalling record on appointing women to senior roles.

On ethnic diversity, unions are worse: there are no black or Asian leaders. Other speakers made noises about electing more leaders from ethnic backgrounds, but one young black woman at the event said change was much too slow. Her personal experience of being a union representative had put her off working full-time for a union. When she was elected as her university’s black and ethnic minorities officer, the graduate said that unsuccessful white candidates claimed the vote had been rigged. She is now thinking of working in human resources.

Trade unions are by no means the only organisations to be over-represented by middle-aged white men. But Andy Cook, managing director of industrial relations consultancy Marshall-James, said the profile of many union leaders meant most failed to connect with a younger audience.

“When you look at union leaders, most are white and male in their 50s, who talk about class struggle,” he said. “That is fine but are they representative of the workforce? Probably not. There is a big issue of how to attract young people who have grown up under Thatcher’s Britain to unions, when the leaders are not talking their language.”

Official figures appear to support this assertion: since 1995, the number of union members aged 40 or under has dropped significantly.

The drop in official strike action also demonstrates that unions are proving effective in protecting members’ interests, as well as being a symptom of the recession and workers’ changing attitudes. When a company is in genuine financial difficulties and needs to make cuts to secure its future and that of its workforce, the chances of convincing staff of the need to accept a pay freeze are much higher if they have good relations with the union.

Adam Lent, head of economics at the TUC, admitted this had not been an easy adjustment for unions. “It’s turning the normal process of pay bargaining on its head,” he said. “But unions always try to avoid redundancies and, if a pay freeze can do this, then unions will always opt for solidarity.”

Mike Emmott, the employee relations adviser for the human resources industry body CIPD, claimed the confrontational trade union model was “bust”.

He said: “Private-sector unions have little purpose if they don’t think their members will
come out on strike. The fact is, many employees are not that cross about their employer and, in this recession, most staff don’t hold their management directly responsible for their company’s financial problems.”

However, many workers are unlikely to recognise this rosy view of employer-employee relations, particularly the growing number of temporary workers on the minimum wage who do not enjoy the rights of permanent employees.

Tony Woodley, joint general secretary of Unite, the UK’s largest union, said the anti-union legislation passed under Margaret Thatcher weakened the movement. “There is no doubt that it has allowed trade union leaders to be cowed,” he said. “It has allowed our members to feel, what is the point of being in a union because they are not being represented?”

All the unions fear another Conservative government, worrying that compulsory union recognition in the workplace, which came into force in 2000, could be overturned by a new Tory administration. Unions may be adapting to the recession, but they know they would be forced into much more painful changes under the Tories.