TWO years ago, the so-called summer of solidarity of widespread strikes was in full swing as the cost of living crisis bit.

Since then, more than five million days have not been worked in the biggest uptick in industrial action since the late 1980s. But what has been the impact on unions?

Strike waves of this size normally renew and revitalise unions but, unfortunately, that has not been the case here.

As previously analysed in The National, according to the authoritative annual Labour Force Survey, union membership overall in Britain in 2022 fell by 200,000 and then in 2023 rose by 89,000, so there was a drop overall. 

READ MORE: Door is opening for return of indy-supporting radical left

This also meant a decline in the proportion of workers in unions (called union density) from 23.7% in 2020 and 23.1% in 2021 to 22.2% in 2022 and then a tiny rise to 22.4% for 2023.

In the private sector in 2023, density was just 12.3% and in the public sector below half at 49.2%. In absolute terms, 6.4m workers were members in 2023, more than 50% lower than the peak of 13.2m in 1979.

The situation in Scotland was not dramatically different. Density in Scotland fell from 29% in 2020 to 28% in 2021 and then 26% in 2022 before rebounding to 29% in 2023. However, it should be recalled that in 1995, it was 39%.

All this has been a disappointing outcome. Much of the explanation for the failure of an expected rise in union membership to materialise can be laid at the door of the inability of unions to gain pay rises that are not only well ahead of inflation but also make up for more than a decade of the falling real value of wages.

And this necessarily then focuses attention upon the current active members of unions – because they are the key resource for mobilising the wider membership of unions in order to exert collective leverage of employers and government alike to gain bargaining demands.

So, turning to involvement by those who are already union members, their participation in terms of building collective strength can best be judged by turnouts in ballots for industrial action and in elections for senior union officer positions. This is more robust and rigorous than anecdotal accounts of new members becoming activists or taking up lay positions.

It may seem an odd thing to question given the strike uptick but it is somewhat surprising how many members did not vote all in ballots for industrial action over pay.

For example, in 2023 the GMB and Unison, the third and first-biggest unions by membership, ran 1838 and 4525 ballots respectively. Out of these, the GMB union lost 373 ballots – 20% – because members either voted against action or no members voted one way or the other at all. More than 75% of these ballots saw no votes cast at all. Then 63% of the 1838 ballots did not see at least a 50% voting turnout.

In the case of Unison, the statistics are even more startling. In 30% of its ballots, the vote was either lost or  no-one voted, with 71% of ballots seeing no vote cast at all. Then in 79% of its ballots, there was less than a 50% voting turnout.

The explanation for the no and non-votes concerns not the use of postal rather than e-balloting.

Instead, it concerns low union density and lack of workplace union reps. So, even though the bargaining units balloted were often small in size and thus potentially easier to get round, members did not have the positive arguments for action put to them directly and personally because there were no union reps in their workplaces to do so.

READ MORE: Threat of strikes that will loom over Keir Starmer as prime minister

This merely compounded the problem that with low union density – or lacking strength in numbers – members did not feel their action would make the necessary difference.

In the case of union elections for general secretaries and national executive committee members, the turnouts routinely remain below 10% despite reports of new members and new activists as a result of  strike action.

In the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, turnout for the election of a new general secretary in December last year was 11.5%. This was above the average but well below the 18.6% achieved in 2019 when the union held its previous election for general secretary.

The turnout in my own union, the University and College Union (UCU), for its general secretary election in February this year was 15.1%. In the election for the same role in 2019, the figure was 20.5%.

All this means there is still a democratic deficit in unions that is merely masked by the strike uptick. And without more participation unions are not strong enough to achieve their demands.

This is a pressing concern which union leaderships need to tackle. The first step is to put more resources into organising existing members so that they become more active in their own unions. With that done, they then may turn to recruiting more into their fold.

Gregor Gall is a visiting professor of industrial relations at the University of Leeds and author of Mick Lynch: The making of a working-class hero, (Manchester University Press, 2024).