Union Strategies to Involve Women and Minority Groups - Assignment Example

?Critically appraise union strategies to involve women and minority groups Over the past thirty years the feminist history has experienced an advance, but despite this progress the traditional belief of excluding the women from the formation of trade union still prevails. In the latter half of the nineteenth century the trade union history still remains dominated by the male hierarchy. It has been argued that during the time when women tried to challenge the male hegemony and attempted to make in a way into the labour representation, it was solely because of the persistence of the middleclass reformers. (Reynolds, 2006, p.187) Thirty years ago, the Working Women Charter in Australia coined the slogan of “Women need unions need women.” The slogan pointed out the responsibility of representing women and women’s gendered needs. But most of the union leaders had problems with the women workforce participation in the union. The most significant agenda of equal pay for both the sexes was going on for over a century in the world economy and even then it has been noticed that the male union leader had stood by the employer while denying equal pay for women (Rea, 2005, p.50). Not only women are under-represented in the trade union, the union has also failed to represent the minority ethnic community. The trade union has always demonstrated a racist attitude towards the ethnic minorities. In the 20th century the trade unions developed a politics of unity, but it was always constrained by the ethnic understandings of the workforce. The unity in the union workforce has always been constrained by protecting the gains and growth among workers. Recently there has been an effort concerning industrial relations, philosophy of rights, racisms, and social inclusion (Lucio & Perrett, 2007, p.4; Healy, Bradley and Mukherjee, 2003). The trade union in the recent past has started addressing these issues in a more supportive and strategic manner. The paper discusses the union’s effort towards inclusion of women and minorities in the workforce. The survival of the union depends upon the expansion of the trade union. In order to expand the trade union’s recruitment the traditional areas have to include the service sector in its domain. The inclusion of women in the trade union would also ensure the expansion of the same. The trade unions have recognized the under representation of women in the union structures and hence adequate measure have been taken in UK and worldwide to redress the imbalance. In UK seats have been reserved for women in the union structure and proportionality has also been adopted. Despite such likely transformation the trade union are highly characterized as patriarchal. The major priority of all the trade union now is the recruitment. The trade union has experienced a steep decline in its membership since 1979. It was at its peak of around 13 million memberships which decreased down to seven million- that is only one third of the employees. UK witnessed a major restructuring in the economic and the labor market, where the manufacturing industries were heavily unionized with male domination, and the industries were undergoing a severe contraction, where as the service sector was mostly dominated by female and the sectors were less unionized as compared to the manufacturing sectors. In the phase of the social and economic changes the trade union had failed to recruit new members from the expanding sectors thus resulting in a decreasing union membership. (Kirton and Haley, 1999, p. 31) The gender gap in the union membership has narrowed down from eleven percentage points in 1990 to five percentage points in 1996. In UK the women membership is around 40 percent of the total union membership. The recruitment policies of the union have undergone a change in order to attract more women members and thereby retain them. (Kirton and Haley, 1999, p. 32) It is also noteworthy that over the last three decades most part of the global south has undergone an event known as the “feminization of agriculture.” (Selwyn, 2009, p. 189) The nation witnessed an increase in the participation of women in the agricultural wage labor force in absolute terms and thereby an increased participation in the union. (Selwyn, 2009, p. 189: Kirton and Healey, pp. 1-2; Munro, 1999, pp. 3-6) UK has always been characterized by women working force; study conducted reveals that the European labor market has become feminized most recently. The nation has experienced a steady growth in its women employment, but despite of the increased participation of women in the workforce, the status of women and men in the work place did not remain the same. There still exists discrimination over several aspects. (Kirton, 2006, p.12) The development of the female labour resulted in the expansion of the service sector. The dependency of women on men declined. This also resulted in the rise in the level of education among women. The European employment strategy worked for promoting equality between men and women in the workforce and hence new employment policies were undertaken. Though the guidelines pens down a formal equality but in reality true equality does not exist. Despite the fact that seats are reserved for the women members in the unions it has been observed that there is still under- representation of women in the trade union in the sphere of decision making. The alleged under representation accounts for the reasons like the prevalence of the prejudice which is conveyed to the members by hostile reactions and attempts to dissuade the members against taking responsibilities in decision making. There exist some rules which are rigid in nature. The existence of a structured trade union in the workforce does not help the women much. (Women in trade unions: Making the difference, n. d, p.21; British trade unions under new labor, 2009, p. 137) The trade Union of Manufacturing, Science and Finance (MSF), was formed on 1988 in UK resulting from a merger between the unions of TASS (Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Staff) and ASTMS (Association of Scientific, technical and Managerial Staff). In the year 1990 MSF was introduced with overwhelming female members following its merging with Health Visitors Association. MSF is the fifth largest union of UK and consist of 480,000 members. Women act as an important source of new member for MSF, which derives half of its memberships from the expanding feminine sectors and occupations. The union has reserved four seats for women, which was introduced in 1988. The union mandates that women are allowed to serve for only two consecutive terms in the reserved seats. The whole idea behind this is to restrict the women member from getting elected into the regional and industrial seats. As being a senior leader accruing to a term of more than 2 years make them eligible to contest for the responsible positions. The 32 percent of the seats out of 34 NEC seats are filled by women member, which list NEC among the unions who has been able to maintain the proportionality between the female and the male member of the union. But attaining the proportionality has not been of much help as the true picture reveals that women are not proportionally represented in the official responsible ranks. The female members of the MSF women were of the opinion that there should some measures taken by the union to ensure election of the women member in the leadership position. (Kirton and Haley, 1999, pp. 35 - 37) Strategies like training the women and rising awareness among them in terms of spread of equality has been made by the different trade unions. This according to the confederation has yielded a positive result. The organizations have also adopted the measures of training the women in order to enhance them with the knowledge of trade union activities. The strategy undertaken by the organization to reserve seats or quotas or double candidatures has also proved to be beneficial in pulling the labor force in joining the unions. The organized campaigns by the association have also proved to be beneficial in raising the membership of the union. Despite these measures and steps taken by the organization the lowered women participation in the decision making bodies can be owed to the reasons like lack of time due to the improper division of labor in the household chores, the lack of confidence which is a distinguishable characteristic among women. (Women in trade unions: Making the difference, n. d, p.42) The union strategy in involving women in the trade union claims praises but at the same time it has hardly made any differences in the status of women in the work place and in no way have proved to be a solution for the problems that the women were facing. The union has taken up strategies to handle the issue of under representation of women in the decision making process. The execution and creation of Women’s conferences and Women’s community has increased the women membership in the union. The creation of Women’s department and appointing persons responsible for equality has helped the women by taking part in the process of decision making. The reservation of seat has guaranteed proportional representation between male and female in the trade union and thereby educating and enhancing women in exercising responsibilities. Despite of all these advantages that women work force had after the membership of the union, still there remains the problem and difficulties which arises from within the trade union members. Some are of the opinion that a correlation exists between the internal equality and the external equality. Others are also of the opinion that the women trade union sometimes fears of the responsibility and thereby avoid their involvement in women’s right. Some critics also say that in the way men’s interests have been accepted as a “class interest” (Women in trade unions: making the difference, n. d, p.23), the same way women interest can be regarded as “Sectional interest” (Women in trade unions: making the difference, n. d, p.23), and hence promoting the concerns of women will result in promoting disunity. (Wills, 2001, pp. 465-466) There have been many instances of minority ethnic group being ill treated by the employers which necessitated the inclusion of minority representation in the union. Though the South east has witnessed an increase in the economic prosperity it has failed to address the issue of widening inequalities in the region. London has experienced a boom of jobs in the finance and insurance sectors but at the same time the job at manufacturing sectors has declined. This imbalance in the job opportunity has resulted in uneven employment opportunities. The lack of evenness in the job opportunity adversely affected the black and the minority ethnic (BME) workers. And the gender disparity in the working sectors often puts the BME women all the more in a disadvantageous situation. (Handling double disadvantages: Minority ethnic women and trade unions, n. d; Black and minority ethnic workers and trade unions, 2006) This all situation has elevated the importance of including the minority in the trade union so that they can protect them and raise their voice for their own rights. The trade union has tried to address the issue by restructuring and re-formulating their strategies but the main lacunas in the strategies are that they at times do not have the democratic inclusive strategies. (Holgate, n. d, p.7; Lucio and Perrett, 2009; BME employment rates rising steadily but pay and poverty still a concern, 2009) According to a research conducted the BME interviewed were of the opinion that trade union are reserved for white men and they also opine that there were several barriers present to the membership of the BME in the union. There is an absence of any BME full time union officials which make the situation worse for the BMEs. Hence more recruitment of the BME in the union membership is required. In the recent times an increase in the BME membership in the trade union has been observed which implies the increased interest from the BME in participating in the trade union. (Holgate, n. d, p.33) The strategies adopted by the unions to include the BME were more disjointed, clumsy, and tokenistic and the strategies are all executed by whites. Apart from this the recruitment in the union is done through shared identities, that is “like for like” (Lucio and Perrett, 2007, p.10), that is people recruit people whom they know and as the union is mainly dominated by the male whites, they would try to recruit people from their social back ground only. Some of the trade unions like T&GWU have taken up the strategy to develop focused leadership development campaigns which they thought would help in developing the BME trade unionists. The developments of strategies like this are supported by equal opportunity audits and effective monitoring programs which would ensure proper execution of the strategies. This development makes an effort to bring in the trade union bureaucracy persons from BME communities which would ensure representation from the BME who will be able to voice for themselves. This technique also have their own problems as assisting the development of such trade union groups of can bring into more diverse and contradicting opinions. Hence it will be better to inculcate and absorb the BME workers in the mainstream trade unions. And all the trade unions have not taken up this method of addressing the issue of under- representation of BME other than few democratic unions. There is again another issue that crops up as different trade unions follow different techniques and their addressing of the issues are always different. (Holgate, n. d, p. 11; Perrett and Lucio, 2009, pp. 1297-1298) The trade union representation, therefore, is not just reflection of the problem of societal inclusion but the main focus has to be on the understanding of the problems and the situation giving rise to the sets of problems. The involvement of BME and women are perceived in different ways. Some unions follow an open and transparent approach based on the re-assessment of the structures; the main aim is to work with all the section of the society without keeping any distinction. The basic question which arises is not about which gender or class or race should be given importance but about the fact that the workers come in varied shapes and sizes which should be reason enough to eradicate the process of identification of classes. The eradication of reservation of any class or any group would ensure the arrival of a new and effective working class politics. The establishment of the universal politics for the working class is only possible under the circumstances when no distinction is made between the workers and work force is taken as universal. There is no use in segregating the issues on the basis of ‘women issues’ or ‘minority issues’. The issues that are to be addressed by the union should not be group centric, rather the union must be in a position to address issues like employment, spending power and defending of the sociological packages. It cannot be denied that gender equality and equality among different races and ethnic work forces needs to be properly incorporated in the work place and this should be ensured there are no discriminations made on the basis of gender and sects. At the same time the establishing of gender equality and racial equality should be a matter of regular attention and not an annual ritual. 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