Local Trade Unionists in Action: Patterns of Union Democracy

Union democracy is a controversial subject. It has been brought to public attention in the 1980s with the introduction of legislation by the Conservative government to ‘give unions back to their members’, but it has also been the subject of a long-running debate among political theorists and sociologists since the time of the Webbs. It is not the intention of this chapter to make a contribution to the philosophical debate on the meaning of union democracy, instead the purpose is to describe and account for variations in democracy among a number of workplace union organizations. In analysing trade union democracy we have adopted a participatory framework, rather than the more prevalent competitive and representative model.2 The participatory model provides a better basis for the study of local democracy where sub-groups and competition for election may not exist.3 Such an approach draws attention away from the potentially ‘empty shells’ of the formal democratic machinery and from factionalism and instead emphasizes the continual interaction between workers and their delegates in their struggle over the conditions of employment. Furthermore, as Fairbrother states (1984, p. 23) membership involvement ‘is the essential ingredient to the vitality and success of unions’.