Organizing in electronics: recruitment, recognition and representation – shadow shop stewards in Scotland’s ‘Silicon Glen’

For much of the past two decades, unions in Britain and the US have faced a difficult economic and political climate, with union and member experiences reflecting retrenchment and survival, not expansion (Aronovitz 1998). More recently, however, recruitment and organizing have been resurrected on union agendas in both countries (Beaumont and Harris 1990, Nissen 1999), addressing the possibility that non-membership results partly from inadequate recruitment strategies (Mason and Bain 1991, Bronfenbrenner et al.1998).