Professional, Participative and Managerial Unionism: An Interpretation of Change in Trade Unions Available to Purchase

This paper offers an interpretation of the changing servicing relationship between trade unions and their members in postwar Britain. Its central claim is that union servicing has passed through three main phases, to which the labels professional, participative and managerial unionism can be given. The professional servicing relationship was dominant from the 1940s to the mid‐1960s and was characterised by reliance on professional negotiators to service a largely passive membership. The participative relationship emerged in the 1960s and flourished in the 1970s and was marked by an activist conception of union membership and a supportive or facilitating role for union officialdom. The managerial servicing relationship emerged in the 1980s and is still coming clearly into view. At its core is a view of union members as reactive consumers whose needs must be continually tracked and responded to by trade unions drawing on the techniques and practices of strategic management.