ABSTRACT
In the highly competitive market place of the white-collar world, Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs (ASTMS) have to protect it against innumerable rivals. ASTMS is pursuing an aggressive strategy of becoming a general union for all white-collar workers, those who work more with their brains than their hands. ASTMS is sensitive about publishing a breakdown of its membership, so that sceptics believe the union inflates its true size for reasons of prestige. The decision of the Midland Bank Staff Association to merge with Jenkins’s union in 1973 widened the ASTMS bridgehead into that sector. ASTMS operates in a highly competitive, cut-throat market, where resistance to unions remains strong, but Jenkins has won a reputation for highly effective bargaining. In 1975, ASTMS opened a residential college called Whitehall in Essex, where it trains lay members in techniques of bargaining and the intricacies of new labour law.
