Women are leading the way in union membership

Increasing union membership among women is keeping overall unionisation steady, according to the latest edition of the Department of Trade and Industry’s Labour Force Survey (LFS).

The autumn 2005 survey reveals that “union density” (the proportion of employees in unions) rose from 28.2% in 2004 to 29.0%. The increase followed a smaller rise, of 0.1 percentage points, in 2004.

The 2005 increase is due entirely to a rise of 0.8 percentage points in women’s union density: this now stands at 29.9%, while the figure for men fell by 0.3 percentage points in the same period to 28.2%. Union density among women even rose in the private sector, from 12.8% to 13.5%.

The LFS also shows that workers who join a union are increasingly better off. On average, union members earned £11.98 an hour in autumn 2005, compared with £10.19 earned by non-members – a union “wage premium” of 17.6%, up from 17.1% the previous year.

The survey also produces figures for the percentage of employees whose pay is subject to collective bargaining. This rose slightly in the year to autumn 2005, from 35.0% to 35.3% – and, unusually, the increase took place in the private sector.