ABSTRACT
Given the difficulties HERE has had in organizing HI workers, Lowery and Beadles (1996) suggest that unions’ past patterns of organizing need to be altered, as they may be targeting the ‘wrong’ workers (also Sinclair, 1995). In spite of the TUC’s positive attempts to encourage the trade union movement to target women, ethnic minorities (Kirton and Greene, 2002) and part-time workers (Walters, 2002) sex and race inequality remains institutionalized within trade unions (Dickens, 1997; Wacjman, 2000; Munro, 2001). If unions in Britain are to stem union decline, they must overcome their traditional antipathy towards nonstandard workers based on the fear that recruiting them would undercut full-time jobs (Sinclair, 1995). Such workers, including low-wage service workers, need to be the target of union recruitment and retention efforts (Waddington and Whitston, 1997; Oxenbridge, 2000; Simms et al., 2000). Fundamentally ‘rebranding’ towards non-standard workers is difficult, time-consuming and costly (Walters, 2002), even if unions change their organizing structure to facilitate their increased participation (Heery, 1998).
