Thatcher Failed to Crush Unions

Margaret Thatcher first become Britain’s prime minister largely by campaigning against unions and pledging to slash their power. Her defeat last week within her own Tory Party was a humiliating end to her 11 years in office and a long-awaited delight to unions.

Also humiliating was that while she did help somewhat to weaken unions, they remain a potent economic and political force in Britain, and their strength will increase if her ultraconservative policies return the Labor Party to power, which polls show is quite possible.

Leonard Freedman, UCLA political science professor and a specialist in British politics, says unions are on the defensive now, their membership down. So new Prime Minister John Major will have no luck blaming excessive union power for Britain’s economic troubles, as Thatcher did.

Unions still play the dominant role in the Labor Party. They provide more than 90% of the money spent by the party’s candidates on elections, and they automatically get 40% of the votes in the party’s electoral college, which chooses its leaders.

The unions’ role in the party is increased further because they have many members in local party districts and in the House of Commons, and both the elected House members and the local districts are assigned their own quota of votes.

Neil Kinnock, the moderate Labor Party leader, wants to reduce the union vote in the electoral college, although they would still retain a majority if they united their forces. So that is less a serious challenge to organized labor than a public relations gesture to show that the party is not entirely controlled by unions.

Kinnock doesn’t want to eliminate the Thatcher-sponsored laws designed to weaken unions, but then the unions don’t either. Most of the measures are generally popular and haven’t had the crippling impact on unions she promised.

For example, one law requires a membership vote before calling a strike. Unions in the United States almost always take strike votes before calling a walkout, and such votes haven’t had a measurable effect on the number of strikes here, nor have they in Britain.

The number of strikes in both countries has dropped substantially, but mostly because of economic pressures. Members seldom reject their leaders’ recommendations to vote for a strike because most such votes are taken to pressure management into improving a contract offer, thereby perhaps avoiding a walkout.

Another law Thatcher hoped would get rid of some of her union enemies requires election of officers by mail ballot. But the law may actually have enhanced the public impression of unions as democratic institutions, and in any event, has had no noticeable impact on incumbent labor leaders.

The economic strength of British unions can be measured to some extent by the fact that, despite management and government efforts, unions have been primarily responsible for keeping wage and benefit increases in line with Britain’s damagingly high double-digit inflation rate of 10.9%, the highest of any major industrialized country.

In the early 1980s, wage hikes were restrained, but Thatcher was only indirectly responsible. She encouraged employers to take the initiative against unions, just as former President Ronald Reagan did when he fired thousands of striking air traffic controllers in 1981 and permanently replaced them.

Thatcher tried to set an example for management six years ago when she forced mine workers--who, like air traffic controllers, are government employees--to abandon a yearlong nationwide coal strike.

But several neutral British commentators say that, unlike most companies in this country, British employers generally accept unions as a fact of life and don’t fight organizing drives.

One fact that Thatcher might say is a measure of her success is that union membership has dropped substantially, to 40% of the work force from more than 50% when she took office.

But that 40% is more than twice the percent of unionization in the United States and still represents what might be called the critical mass of Britain’s work force.

Besides, Thatcher had little to do with the decline, which mainly results from a drop in jobs in the manufacturing sector--long the unions’ stronghold in Britain, just as in this country.

Nearly 2 million jobs in highly unionized manufacturing companies have been eliminated in Britain since Thatcher came to power.

Thatcher’s hard line against unions did have some beneficial effects. The unions once engaged in costly jurisdictional disputes among themselves and imposed rigid, restrictive work rules that damaged British productivity and led to Britain becoming known as the “Sick Man of Europe.”

During what was known as Britain’s Winter of Discontent--1978-79--unions called unpopular walkouts of garbage collectors, hospital employees and other public workers.

Those and other union actions helped Thatcher and her Tories win the 1979 election and has helped them stay in power since.

Her popularity persuaded most unions to modify their somewhat arrogant posture, and a recent poll reflects that change.

The poll shows that 58% of Britons blame bad management more than unions for their country’s economic problems, almost a complete reversal of a poll taken when Thatcher came to office.

Thatcher’s condemnation of most progressive social programs in Britain, her role in widening the gap between the rich and poor and her opposition to full participation in the European Community led to her downfall.

The new prime minister, Major, appears to be mostly a Thatcher clone. If that helps the Labor Party win the next election, the Thatcher-led war against unions will finally end, with only minimal damage done.

That should be good for Britain, because the unions lead most battles for progressive legislation, from national health service to programs for child care and the elderly.