By Steven Littlewood, Senior Research Fellow | 3 min
“How do we recruit young members?” has been a perennial question in the union movement since the (increasingly distant) days when I was a young worker myself, and probably before then too.
However, we don’t often talk about the actual experience of young workers in unions. In my last blog, I laid out the broad results of the Unions 21 polling from Survation on member experiences during industrial action. One of the key areas of difference in the results came from the age of the member, which is what I want to explore now.
The results of the polling were pretty consistent across a range of demographics including sector, qualification level, salary level and geographic location. However, age was the one variable where there was some significant variance on certain questions.
For example, when we asked members who were not balloted on industrial action in the last 18 months if their union should have balloted them 40% of respondents said yes. For members over 50 that number shrunk to 25%, but for workers aged 16-24 it was just over 50%, indicating a greater willingness to take industrial action by young workers.
This trend continues when we look at the question on whether members who had taken industrial action would take action again. As a whole 23% of respondents said “yes even if I thought it was not winnable”, but for those aged 16-24 this rises to 38%.
Industrial action also appears to be a bigger factor in decision about joining union for younger workers. When we asked why respondents joined their union 52% of 16-24 year olds said they had joined to take industrial action, whereas only 10% of those aged 50 and over said the same.
However, the idea of militant youth might not be the whole picture, as 27.5% of those aged 16-24 said they had joined a different union to avoid taking industrial action against just 7% of those over 50. Industrial action has clearly been more of a factor for young members in which union they join but unions need to appreciate the nuances of this rather than assuming that industrial action will automatically deliver young members.
Unions should be especially mindful of how they explain the process and aims of industrial action, as only 55% of 16-24 year olds balloted on industrial action said they had a clear understanding of the aims, versus 83% for those over 50. There might need to be more of a focus on educating younger members who do not have previous union experience.
That said, there is potential to recruit new activists and increase the diversity of age in the activist base as 86% of 16-24 year olds who took industrial action said they wouldconsider getting more involved in their union compared to 56% of over 50s.
Clearly young workers are thinking about industrial action and have a better appreciation of its role in a union than they are sometimes credited with. These results reaffirm the approach that young members should be considered full members of the union helping to set the strategy and direction of the union. However, they are inevitably less experienced and need some support in order to be fully informed in helping shape decision making.
