ABSTRACT
Increasing academic attention has recently been paid to union organising in the USA and Britain (for overviews see Bronfenbrenner et al. 1998; Gall 2003a), largely prompted by trade unionists discussing how to address the challenges they face as a result of membership decline and changing labour markets. The shift away from manufacturing to the service sector has meant that employment growth has been strongest in areas where unions have been weakest. Moreover, the growth of female participation in the labour market, combined with the associated development of ‘atypical’ forms of employment, has meant that, if unions are to (re)establish their relevance in contemporary workplaces, they increasingly have to recruit groups of workers who have traditionally been underrepresented in the union movement. Reflecting these developments, academics have been interested in the conditions necessary for union renewal (see, inter alia, Fairbrother 2000; Heery et al. 2000a; Hyman 1997; Kelly 1998), agreeing that increasing membership and activism amongst these currently underrepresented groups are significant challenges. Women and part-time employees are two related groups that have been growing in the British labour market in recent decades, but which unions have struggled to recruit and represent effectively. Consequently, unions have invested resources in specialist training programmes (Heery et al. 2000b), often with an emphasis on ensuring that groups of workers that are underrepresented are effectively targeted (see Freeman and Diamond 2003; Holgate 2004b; Simms et al. 2000).
