By Steven Littlewood, Senior Research Fellow | 5 min
For our first piece of insight work on industrial action, we started with exploring members' views.
To help us with this, Unions 21 commissioned exclusive polling by Survation reaching out to union members from across the UK, in the public and private sectors and at a variety of salary and qualification levels to get the best and widest view of what members think.
What struck us, in the results, was consistency of views across the board with the only significant variable being age (which we will delve into in a future blog). As with most polls, while we think this is a pretty good indication of what their members think, whatever sector you organise in, unions should see this as a reliable guide.
Firstly, we asked whether members had been balloted on industrial action in the last 18 months. We chose this timeframe in order to capture the spike in industrial action and its increased prominence in media reporting from the end of 2022.
Polling revealed a near even split among respondents on balloting for industrial action in the past 18 months: 44% had been balloted, while 48% had not, and 8% could not recall.
Among those not balloted, 23% believed their union should have conducted a ballot to address specific workplace issues, whereas 17% felt a ballot should have been held to make a stand against their employer. Meanwhile, 37% did not think a ballot was necessary, and 23% were unsure. The striking thing here (pardon the pun) is that a total 40% of members thought their union should have balloted, so even though this indicatesthat there was not majority support for industrial action, thereis still a sizeable minority in favour of action. Even more interesting is that out of those who wanted to ballot a decent chunk (one in six members) wanted to ballot purely as a protest. This gives much to think about for unions who take the decision that balloting on industrial action is not the right strategic choice for them in any given dispute. This may well be the right decision, but there will be a substantial constituency of members who will need to be convinced, some of whom will have very different ideas about the aims of taking action.
For those who were balloted, a significant majority (70%) reported that their union did indeed take industrial action. This shows that once unions embark on the path towards industrial action, the odds are that it will materialise. Most unions who ballot on industrial action do so with the hope that it will unlock a path to resolution of their dispute as both sides work to avoid the disruption and loss of pay that comes with industrial action. These figures should caution unions to be ready for taking industrial action as soon as a ballot is called,as the likelihood is they will be required to do so. These findings will have implications for dispute resolution strategies and resource management.
The motivations for participating in industrial action were largely driven by personal conviction, with 73% of members saying that the issue was the most important thing rather than union directives. Only 19% of respondents said that they would take action because the union asked them to. This shows the low levels of deference to union instructions around industrial action. Unions will need to be even more careful to pick disputes that are widely and deeply felt if they are to secure the backing of members.
These results also run counter to common media narratives around industrial action which often position a union ‘baron’ calling members out to picket lines. What we see here is that in fact, for the most part unions are channelling, not creating the feelings of members in disputes. This demonstrates that unions are not nearly as hierarchical as might be believed, and in some ways, it also gives a greater legitimacy to the decision of unions to take industrial action as we have evidence that the mandate flows from the membership and is bottom up, not top down.
Finally, the polling highlighted the perceived effectiveness of industrial action. Among those who took part, 85% believed the action had a strong impact, with 35% rating it as very strong and 50% as fairly strong. Furthermore, 76% of participants felt the industrial action was worth it, and 69% indicated they would participate again if they believed the dispute was winnable. This is clearly a positive result for unions who have taken action, and the results will be encouraging for unions who make the decision to call a ballot as they should be pushing at an open door to convince members of the value and efficacy of industrial action. But there is a note of caution too. In cases where industrial action will not provide an easy win or a path to a good resolution there will still be a feeling among members that it is the best tool for the job and they may perceive it as being effective even in situations where it will not be. Unions must think carefully about how to manage this expectation.
I hope this summary is helpful to union officials in thinking strategically about industrial action and how to engage with members. I will continue to look at key trends from these results over the coming weeks, including focussing on what they tell us about young members and what members want from union communications.
If you would like to have a presentation of our results for your union, you can contact me on steven@unions21.org
