Union updates by turning into self- help society

ONE of Britain’s oldest trade unions is turning its back on its historic links with the textiles and steel industries to reinvent itself as a modern day self-help society.

Community, created from the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation and the Knitwear, Footwear and Apparel Trades, is being launched in the new year.

Yesterday officials said the plan was to create a union to act as a mouthpiece for employees across the economy rather than for just one or two industrial trades.

Members will pay between £1 and £2 a week to join and receive services ranging from legal advice and educational training to guidance on domestic hazards at home.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Trades Union Congress in Brighton, John Lloyd, the union’s head of policy and strategy, said: “We are sliding towards being a charity, lobbying fi rm and education provider.

“The era of industrial trade unions, with an excessive political flavour, is not going to be attractive to the workforce of tomorrow. Those who don’t change will probably fade away. Anyone can join us. We are like a mutual society.”

Community, which styles itself as “the union for life”, wants to build on its historic base in the textile and steel industries which goes back to the 19th century.

The union is relatively welloff for its size, with 50,000 members and around £70m of assets, including property and £40m of shares.

A strategy of leafleting in town centres near its former industrial strongholds has already produced members in doctors’ surgeries, bookmakers and undertakers.

Mr Lloyd said that diluting the union’s focus was the only way to survive among a modern day “ atomised workforce” where the old class certainties had broken down.

“We think this goes some way to answer the crisis among unions of falling membership and growing irrelevance.”

Community’s optimism was countered by a gloomy outlook from other parts of the trade union movement at yesterday’s TUC in Brighton.

Speaking at a fringe meeting, Sally Hunt, general secretary of the AUT higher education union, said: “The movement is in crisis. We have less influence with this Labour Government than at any time in our history.

“If we were a dog we would have been put down or been seriously looked at. The trade union movement has no choice. We have got to change.”