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The subject of part‐time work is one which has become increasingly important in industrialised economies where it accounts for a substantial and growing proportion of total employment. It is estimated that in 1970, average annual hours worked per employee amounted to only 60% of those for 1870. Two major factors are attributed to explaining the underlying trend towards a reduction in working time: (a) the increase in the number of voluntary part‐time employees and (b) the decrease in average annual number of days worked per employee (Kok and de Neubourg, 1986). The authors noted that the growth rate of part‐time employment in many countries was greater than the corresponding rate of growth in full‐time employment.

The way in which the international teacher organizations evolved suggests both the advantages and the difficulties of maintaining a coherent and purposeful international organization for education advocacy (the abbreviations and acronyms for all the organizations are spelled out for reference in Appendix A to this chapter; the complex succession of organizations is traced in a table, presented as Appendix B to this chapter). The international teacher organizations began at the outset of the 20th century in Europe.¹ The first of these, founded in 1905 and centering on the concerns of primary school teachers, was the International Bureau of Federations of Teachers (IBFT; it became the International Federation of Teachers’ Associations [IFTA] in 1926). The second, founded in 1912, was the International Foundation of Secondary Teachers (known by its French acronym, FIPESO, the Fédération internationale des professeurs de l’enseignement secondaire officielle).

At the end of 1984, the Certification Officer listed 365 trade unions in Britain with a total membership of 10,753,993. Eighty‐nine of these organisations were affiliated to the Trades Union Congress (TUC) whose total membership at that time was 10,082,144 (p. 47), (p. 1). There are no up‐to‐date figures providing the numbers of full‐time officers and lay officials of TUC unions currently. But an estimate by the TUC in 1973/74 suggested that there were about 2,800 full‐time officers in affiliated unions at that time. There were also 400,000 voluntary officers in union branches or at their places of work, with an annual turnover of 20 per cent (p. 2). Given that TUC affiliated membership was just over 10 million at 31 December 1973, it can reasonably be assumed that there are similar numbers of full‐time officers and voluntary office holders today. The potential education and training needs of these 3,000 paid officials, but especially of the 300,000 work‐place representatives and 100,000 branch officials, as well as those of millions of trade union members generally, are very large indeed. And, given the limited resources available to satisfy them, they can only be marginally addressed by the trade union movement.

Nigeria is experiencing an expanding variety of what is termed collective bargaining, which is being propelled by socio-economic challenges and the emerging political dispensation that had long eluded the country, albeit the numerous contours needing some pragmatic approaches from the state, employers of labour and the trade unions at the local and national levels. Therefore, this study represents an attempt to illustrate the rising collective bargaining pattern in Nigeria.

This study drew on employee and employer sectoral associations examples together with labour union structures of the state to assess what underlined collective bargaining developments from the broad context of collective bargaining and the industrial relations implications. Content analysis was employed to analyse the secondary data (found in relevant company handbooks, policies, collective agreements, etc.) and primary data obtained through unstructured interviews.

A form of collective bargaining is emerging where the trade unions are embracing symbiotic agreements at plant levels to improve conditions of employment and thus weakening the hold of the national union from collective bargaining – a move that may challenge the conceptual framework of collective bargaining as conceived by many states in developing economies.

This is an investigative paper, carefully trailing the framework of collective bargaining from direct contacts with all stakeholders in the labour corridors of Nigeria – such as the Nigeria Labour Congress, Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association, Chemical and Non-Metallic Products Employer's Federation, Metal Products Workers Union of Nigeria and Personnel Practitioners, cutting across all the segments of the political and economic development of the country.

The purpose of this paper is to look back on 150 years of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and reflect on the recent challenges to organised labour.

Places unions in their current context and discusses how they have responded to the challenge of declining membership.

With declining membership levels and the lack of a “silver bullet” solution, unions continue to face many challenges, although there is some light at the end of the organising tunnel.

This paper introduces the special issue which reflects on 150 years of the TUC.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on how the UK’s Trade Union Congress, in the 150th year of its formation, has been responding to the significant changes in the labour market, working practices and union decline. The paper considers Trades Union Congress (TUC) initiatives to recruit and organise new groups of workers as it struggles to adapt to the new world of work many workers are experiencing. Although the paper reviews progress in this regard it also considers current and future challenges all of which are becoming increasingly urgent as the current cohort of union membership is aging and presents a demographic time bomb unless new strategies and tactics are adopted to bring in new groups of workers – particularly younger workers.

This is a review paper so it mainly draws on writings (both academic and practitioner) on trade union strategy and tactics in relations to organising approaches and in particularly the TUC’s initiatives from the period of “New Unionism” onwards.

The authors note that while unions have managed to retain a presence in workplaces and industries where they membership and recognition, there has, despite a “turn to organising” been less success than was perhaps hoped for when new organising initiatives were introduced in 1998. In order to expand the bases of organisation into new workplaces and in new constituencies there needs to be a move away from the “institutional sclerosis” that has prevented unions adapting to the changing nature of employment and the labour market restructuring. The paper concludes that in order to effect transformative change requires leaders to develop strategic capacity and innovation among staff and the wider union membership. This may require unions to rethink the way that they operate and be open to doing thing radically different.

The paper’s value is that it provides a comprehensive overview of the TUC’s role in attempting to inject an organising culture with the UK union movement by drawing out some of the key debates on this topic from both scholarly and practitioner writings over the last few decades.

The purpose of this paper is to examine why and how the Trades Union Congress (TUC) – the labour movement's peak body, “think tank” and exemplar – engages in alliance building with civil movements and groups. In particular, it investigates: the rationale for such; the nature of the alliances and the extent to which they inform TUC revival efforts or a new approach to trade unionism.

Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with eight senior TUC personnel. Most interviewees provided documentary evidence to elaborate on their comments. The dimensions of a thematic analysis of this and web site evidence were structured to reflect the above areas of inquiry.

The findings are that: interest in the TUC and labour movement in alliance building with civil groups is building at all levels; TUC engagement with, promotion of and guidance on civil alliances is largely emergent and sporadic; notwithstanding this, certain parts of the TUC have increased its promotion of and to a lesser extent direct engagement with alliances. It also is shown that: such engagement looks likely to continue to grow as a feature of other revival strategies and there is little assessment of whether alliance building can help strengthen the British labour movement.

The findings inform the paper's discussion of potential TUC and union revival purpose, policy and practice.

This paper provides an in‐depth empirical study of the TUC's involvement in alliance building with other social movements and groups. Policy‐maker and practitioner interest in such is growing rapidly, particularly in light of the debatable effectiveness of familiar British union revival strategies.

The labor regulatory framework in India provides a conducive environment for social dialogue and collective participation in the organizational decision-making process (Venkata Ratnam, 2009). Using data from a survey of workplace union representatives in the federal state of Maharashtra, India, this paper examines union experiences of social dialogue and collective participation in public services, private manufacturing, and private services sector. Findings indicate that collective worker participation and voice is at best modest in the public services but weak in the private manufacturing and private services. There is evidence of growing employer hostility to unions and employer refusal to engage in a meaningful social dialogue with unions. These findings are discussed within the political economy framework of employment relations in India examining the role of the state and judiciary in employment relations and, the links between political parties and trade unions in India.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a broad practitioner’s overview of recent trade union history in the UK, and to investigate organised labour’s prospects in the decades ahead.

The paper is based on a review of relevant literature and trade union documentation from the period 1964 to 2014.

This paper concludes that the past 50 years has been a period of change and turbulence for the movement, and suggests that this is likely to remain the case in the decades to come. Although external political and economic factors will have a significant bearing on unions’ prospects, the paper argues that unions remain powerful agents of change in their own right and that a revival of organised labour is not beyond question.

The paper is written with unique practitioner insight from the UK’s trade union centre.

The structure of employee organisations in Britain and the labyrinthine character of our industrial relations system presents to trade unions a communication problem of extreme complexity. Multi‐level union representation, often extending over many industries has, over the past two decades in particular, stretched to the limit traditional branch, district and national organisation. Without the phenomenal growth in numbers of unpaid shop stewards, representatives who frequently act with a sense of independence which may astonish observers from other countries, it would hardly have been possible to service the expanding membership and negotiating activity of that period. This development has brought its own elaborations of problems of communication between paid officials and the rank and file and laid increasing emphasis on those of multi‐unionism, at one time reasonably handleable at national level, but now extended into the more difficult area of the work place.