Young workers and Trade Unions - a discussion meeting in Blackburn Library

Energetic and successful Trade Union actions, like the recent Village Hotel strike, have shown that young workers are perfectly capable of sticking together to win improvements in their working lives.

But there is cause for concern when we look at the broader picture. Union membership in 2023 was just 5.2% in the 16-19 age range, 11.5% at 20-24, and 16% at 25-29.

Writing in the NIESR Report “Trade Union Membership and Influence, 1999-2014” (published in 2015) John Forth and Alex Bryson commented that: “The percentage of all employees who have never been a member of a trade union has risen continually over the past 20 years such that, by 2009-10, over half of all employees were ‘never-members’……… In 2014, almost three-fifths (58 per cent) of employees were located in non-union workplaces, with this figure being particularly high in private sector service industries, such as ‘Accommodation and food service’ and among young workers. Employees’ direct and indirect experience of unionism is therefore receding”.

According to the Department for Business and Trade "The distribution of trade union membership across age groups has changed since 1995. In 1995, those aged 35 to 49 were the most likely to be trade union members, whereas in 2024, it was those aged 50 or over".

A TUC Equality Audit in 2022 found that age monitoring was not much employed by Trade Unions, but it said that "Of the unions that were able to provide sufficient data on the representation of young workers among workplace/ branch activists, virtually none showed young members being proportionately represented at any level". The TUC believes that "over half of union reps are 50 and over, which means over the next 10 to 15 years we will lose over half our reps". This threatens to continue a long decline in the number of shop-stewards - the basic connective tissue of trade unionism. In the 1980s, according to NIESR, we had over 300,000 shop-stewards. By the start of the C21st, there were less than 100,000.

If Trade Unions are to survive, they need to be relevant to young workers now. We hope you will join us at our meeting in Blackburn Library, at 7.00pm on Thursday 23rd October, to discuss what can be done. We hope then to also share the results of a local Young Worker Survey, that we shall be running between Monday 8th September and Friday 3rd October.

Our Panel will be:

Fraser McGuire - Chair of TUC Young Members Committee

Zaihera Chaudhry - UNISON North West Young Members Committee

You don't need to register to attend the meeting, but if you do it can help us keep an eye on capacity and contact you with any updates leading up to it.

Host or Publisher Blackburn and District Trades Union Council