Unions on the Brink: the case of construction Available to Purchase

Although the history of trade unionism in the building trades extends back over 200 years, with building unions being among the first “new model” craft unions, the construction industry has never been highly unionised. The nature of the product and the labour process, with each workplace existing only for the period of the contract and a workforce composed of mobile and often casual labour, has made union recruitment and retention a recurrent problem. A recent study suggests a decline in union density from 34.6% to 30.4% between 1983 and 1989 (Green, 1992). Whilst figures provided by other studies may differ (e.g. Waddington, 1992, Millward et al, 1992), there is no doubt about the downward trend in union membership and density in an industry which has experienced a shift from direct employment to sub‐ contracting and self‐employment.