THE huge surge of national and many local strikes has relit the union pilot light. For the first time since the miners’ strike of 1984/85 the union movement has risen back into the consciousness of many workplaces and sectors, prompting debate about what happens next. 

There was no knock-out victory, no emphatic change in the balance of power, rather a pause as many compromise settlements were accepted. 

Thus, the RCN, CWU, UCU and others have accepted a return to their various corners, like boxers waiting for the points verdicts.

Now the question is being posed – why are we not winning? Unison failed to reach the pernicious 50 per cent threshold in both NHS and local government ballots, Unite has seen many local disputes end in success but has not been tested nationally. 

RMT once again has won its national ballot but still seems to be resigned to losing ticket offices and not being able to defend all its current terms and conditions.

No union has won an inflation-busting pay rise across a sector. The Tories are still in power. 

The unions are having to regroup.

The fundamental weaknesses of trade unions – their long-term decline, the lack of power, the absence of young workers, the stark weakness in the private sector and the absence of a strong, organised leadership – have not been reversed by the upsurge in strikes.

In 2022 the trade unions lost 200,000 members, approximately 122,000 of them being women workers in the private sector.

Objectively many other things have not changed. The cost-of-living crisis is still hitting the working class. The economy and the government are falling further into political crisis, with escalating international violence providing a larger and more dangerous context. 

It might be expected that the long-term retreat will continue, like Napoleon’s “Grande Armee” returning at slow pace from Moscow, harassed and decimated along the way until final defeat. But there are some variations on such a pessimistic theme. It is possible that trade unions will revive in the light of their experiences and those of other parts of the movement. 

There is now less pessimism in the unions about defeating the 50 per cent ballot thresholds. Getting a 50 per cent turnout in large ballots has been achieved by RMT and UCU repeatedly, by RCN, NEU, CWU, Aslef, BMA and PCS. This has encouraged trade unions to believe that members are ready to back strikes in sufficient depth of numbers. Even the NASUWT who held a national ballot and failed to cross the threshold still recorded a vote over 40 per cent.  

There is a growing acceptance that the days of protest strikes are gone, that prolonged action is necessary to defeat intransigent employers.

The lesson of local strikes by Unison, GMB and Unite members is that it has taken between 4 to 12 weeks of strike action to win. The networks of solidarity that have sprung up to raise funds and support for striking workers have had an impact. Thus the “Strike Map UK” initiative has grown from a small operation to one of national importance.

This issue of co-ordination has now got into the mainstream debate and is of enormous potential if the unions grab it and use it. There was much discussion on picket lines about why don’t we all come out together? Sometimes this emerges as a debate about general strikes. But it never came into practice. 

It needs co-ordination and co-operation. The potential of this strategy could fuel the emergence of another strike wave. In our past this has been driven by a strong rank and file, the famous Pentonville Dockers strikes in 1972 being one of the most obvious examples of how this has worked. 

But the lack of that level of rank-and-file politics in the movement is presently an absence that hinders us. Activity to build that rank-and-file power is a must.

There could be a second national strike wave – the conditions may have changed inside the movement but not in the outside world. So there will most likely be a continuation of an upsurge of local strikes, where unionised workers feel more confident to assert their power and smaller ballots and disputes are easier to manage and to win.

But a second national surge now requires a national shift in trade union strategy, one that comes from a more militant and organised lay leadership. Our role now is to focus on that in this important regrouping phase.

Nigel Flanagan is the author of Our Trade Unions: What Comes Next After the Summer of 2022? (Manifesto Press).