Job cuts lead to membership drop

Manufacturing job losses helped put a brake on union membership growth last year.

A TUC analysis of the government's Labour Force Survey figures in the latest issue of the TUC's research series Trade union trends shows that there are 44,000 fewer union members in manufacturing compared to a year ago. And while there has been growth in sectors such as business services, public administration and retail, this has not been enough to outweigh declines in manufacturing, finance and mining.

In total the Labour Force Survey revealed that the number of employees who are union members is down by 30,000 to 7,550,000 - a fall of 0.4%. (The LFS figures include unions and staff associations that are not members of the TUC.)

Meanwhile figures provided by individual unions to the TUC show a membership fall of 37,000 to 6,685,353 - a drop of 0.5%. TUC general secretary John Monks said: "Unions always need to run fast simply to stand still as there is a big turnover in membership each year...This year we have not run quite fast enough, and these small falls are disappointing."

However, there were membership increases in six of the largest 10 TUC unions, including significant increases at the NASUWT teaching union (9%), the NUT (5.4%) and the PCS (5.3%).