Legislation and the Election of Union Moderates

Abstract

In 1976, the Conservative Party expressed the view that trade unions were “… imperfectly democratic”. Subsequently they returned to this theme in a Green Paper on Union Democracy in 1983 which expressed strong reservations about the electoral practices of trade unions. The Conservatives were concerned that unrepresentative union leaders “misuse(d) the wealth and power” of their unions for their own political ambitions. They noted the growing proportion of trade unionists voting Conservative and contrasted this with the continued dominance of the trade union movement by leaders sympathetic to, if not actually members of, the Labour Party. From this the Conservatives concluded that the voting system used in union elections was defective.

Citation

Undy, R. and Martin, R. (1983), "Legislation and the Election of Union Moderates", Employee Relations, Vol. 5 No. 5, pp. 24-28. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb055022