The Labour Research Department of the TUC has been producing a series of annual reports on trade union recognition since 1995. These reports are intended to show “the pattern of achievements and campaigns to secure recognition agreements” and, in particular, the impact of the statutory union recognition legislation that was introduced under the Employment Relations Act 1999 and which has been in force since June 2000.
The recently published TUC 2005 report, “Focus on Recognition”, covers the period from November 2004 to October 2005 and is based on responses that the TUC has received from 35 trade unions representing 5.2m members (81% of the TUC’s affiliated membership).
As the attached table shows, there has been a sharp decline in the number of both voluntary and statutory recognition agreements that were reached by trade unions with the number of agreements reached in 2005 being significantly lower than in any year since the survey began.
According to the TUC, this shows that “unions are now having to concentrate on winning recognition in some of the more challenging workplaces, including those with little or no previous union presence” with the results suggesting that “unions are operating in the toughest recognition climate since these surveys began”.
For futher details, please refere to the attached document.