IN MAY 1999 the TUC under John Monks produced a consultative document entitled British Trade Unionism — The Millennial Challenge.

It analysed the decline that had taken place in trade union strength and influence. “In 47 per cent of all UK workplaces there are no union members at all (the 1990 figure was 36 per cent).”

It continues: “Workplace representatives exist in 64 per cent of workplaces where unions are recognised (28 per cent of all workplaces). “At first sight, this suggests that shop stewards or similar representatives remain key actors in British industrial relations.

“However, in the main, stewards are confined to handling individual grievances, with a lesser role in negotiating over pay and health and safety, let alone consulted or involved in negotiation over such matters as training, employment planning or equal opportunities.

“This suggests generally that where union representatives have retained a recognised status they have often lost some influence over employer policies.”

The document then speculates on “what will the world of work look like in 2010?” “First, we are certain to experience the continuing expansion of the private services sector, not just in retail, leisure, and hospitality but also in professional and financial services.

“The future size and influence of trade unionism is likely to depend on how successful we are at increasing trade union density in these areas. There will still be substantial manufacturing and public-sector employment and some opportunities for trade union growth, but the key area will be private services.”

Futurology is something best practised with hindsight. Private services have indeed been key but it is because of the hugely greater decline in this area than in the public services.

Also, few could have predicted the massive expansion of privatisation and outsourcing of public services continuing apace up to encompassing the Royal Mail — a public service for 350 years — and now knocking at the gates of education and the NHS.

The document continues: “And what about the typical workers in 10 years’ time?” Here it is on the button. “He or she is likely to be less secure in employment given the increasing pressures of competition.

“He or she will have to save more to meet family education costs (ie student fees) and retirement … Job changes are likely to be more frequent — and what are regarded now as the less typical forms of employment — part-time, temporary, fixed-term, self-employment — will be ever more typical.”

Additionally, of course, there has been an explosion of zero-hours contracts. “Individuals and families will be struggling to reconcile work and family.”

The last statement is true but hardly does justice to the situation in 2010 when we still had not recovered from the crash of 2007-8 never mind our present condition of an explosion in the numbers who do not get enough money to feed themselves or their children and rely on the ever-growing number of foodbanks or the killing, literally, workloads of teachers doing 60 hours or more per week, and the resulting increase in suicides.

There was a conference called to which the general secretaries and presidents of all TUC-affiliated unions were invited. What was needed was radical change.

In the end neither the conference, nor the movement, grasped the nettle. Neither fully realised the depth and determination of the assault on our membership and organisation.

In his seminal book The Establishment: And how they get away with it, Owen Jones documents the context that has both caused and been affected by the decline in trade union membership.

There has been a planned wholesale transfer of wealth from workers, among whom I include teachers, and all those who sell their labour power to live, to a tiny minority — not even the 1 per cent, more like the 0.1 per cent.

Jones writes: “The average FTSE 100 chief executive was paid 40 times more than an ordinary worker by 2011. “It had surged to 185 times higher — even though share prices were lower. Over 400 people were paid over £1 million (2011) at just one business. There were less than 30 executives paid that amount in the whole of Japan.

“The director of British Petroleum was paid a jaw-dropping 3,006 per cent more in 2011 than his counterpart in 1979. The salary of the head of Barclays, meanwhile, had gone up by 4,899 per cent. “According to the Sunday Times rich list, the fortune of the wealthiest 1,000 Britons has doubled in just five years.

“The wealth of the top 1,000 was now eight times greater in relative terms than when the rich list was first published in 1989.” (Now nearly £500 billion.)

“Corporate Britain is sitting on a cash pile worth hundreds of billions of pounds in what amounts to an investment strike. Corporations are flush with money.

“By contrast, even before the financial crash workers’ wages were flatlining or even declining.”

Teachers’ real pay has declined by 15 per cent. Hopefully the conferences just starting will address this by giving notice of the intention of taking joint action if necessary to start the process of reversing this decline.

If they don’t, it will only get worse. But to effectively change things and to adequately confront and change the manifold problems teachers face — our pensions cut, our pay cut, our workload and working hours massively increased, unqualified staff being allowed to teach classes, Ofsted forcing schools to become academies, the setting up of free schools, bullying and denigration rife — teachers, as with other trade unionists, need to change how they work and organise.

This brings me to the central suggestions made in the Millennial Challenge document.

It says: “The prospect is that inter-union competition will increase, especially with the prospect of the new laws on representation and recognition.

“Could the TUC and affiliates set ourselves the millennial objective of having a more logical structure, promoting much greater solidarity? “The form of this structure could involve active promptings of mergers” and the creation of a completely new union by the TUC “to create fewer unions, desirably perhaps one union, in key sectors like public services, education, transport, private services and manufacturing … there could be huge advantages in such an approach in avoiding competition for new members.

And seeking real economies of scale in supporting and servicing members. “A more coherent structure might also open the door to other possibilities, such as steps being taken currently in the Netherlands through which a member once recruited who then takes up a new job in a different sector could change unions with full retention of benefits.

“The aim would be that once you have joined the TUC family of unions, you retain membership of an appropriate union for the whole of your working life.” What brilliant proposals.

It would not be a panacea for all our problems, but it would help us to have a better structure for recruitment and retention, ending the waste of competitive recruitment and enabling all our money to be spent on changing our present dire position, reversing our downward spiral.

Teachers can, I believe, set an example and lead in this restructuring. It is my belief that one union for education, with over one million members, would be a powerful force to take on the privateers and save state education. Finland shows both the power and the benefits that such organisation brings.

Our millennial challenge has not gone away. Let’s rise to the challenge.

•  Hank Roberts is the organising secretary of Unify.