Trades Union Congress

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) is an umbrella trade union organization in the UK . It unites 65 unions with around 6.5 million members.

The TUC is a member of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). In the membership list of the IGB, membership is given as 5,977,178 (as of November 2017).

history

The Trades Union Congress, shortly TUC, was in the 1860s as a coordinating body of British trade unions (Trade Unions) founded. Its immediate forerunner was the United Kingdom Alliance of Organized Trades , the first meeting under the abbreviation “Trades Union Congress” took place in 1868 in Manchester. Unlike in Germany, where trade unions often emerged as an appendix to political parties, in Great Britain the trade union movement that had existed since the 18th century was the driving force behind the establishment of a workers' party . Disappointed by previous liberal allies in parliament, the TUC created a “Labor Representation Committee” (LRC) in 1905, from which the Labor Party , which is still in existence today, later developed.

During the First World War , TUC delegates were part of the War Emergency Workers National Committee , in which the British labor movement formulated its responses to the upheavals in the war economy. Despite differing positions between total rejection and unconditional support for the world war, the war did not lead to a split in the trade union movement. On the contrary, the world war strengthened the position of the trade unions in the country's political system, because without the organized labor the challenges of the war economy would not have been manageable. In the British general strike of 1926, this increased self-confidence was shown for the first time in 1929–1931 under Ramsay MacDonald , also in Labor governments supported by the TUC . The TUC achieved a similar gain in status through the war effort of World War II , which also led to the election of a Labor government in 1945.

The building of a British welfare state since then goes back to demands and initiatives of the TUC and its unions. Since 1979, however, the TUC has been increasingly sidelined with the government of Margaret Thatcher , which launched a frontal attack on the social position of the unions. Due to the development of the Labor Party towards a “New Labor” with an increasingly liberal economic orientation, the TUC has also lost its long-standing parliamentary arm.

Function and way of working

The main decision-making body of the TUC is the annual congress, usually in September. All decisions between congresses are made by the 56 members of the General Council . This usually meets every two months. In the first post-congress session of the General Council , the latter elects the Executive Committee and the President of the TUC.

The Executive Committee is responsible for the implementation of the decisions, the finances and the day-to-day business.

The President chairs the General Council and Executive Committee meetings and is advised by the General Secretary .

The General Secretary represents the TUC to the public and other organizations.

Member unions

The members of the TUC are:

Seat of the TUC

A.

B.

C.

D.

E.

F.

G

H

M.

N

P

R.

  • RMT (National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers) [40]

S.

T

U

W.

Y

See also

literature

  • Ross M. Martin TUC: The Growth of a Pressure Group, 1868-1976. Oxford 1980.
  • André Keil: Between cooperation and opposition - The British labor movement and the “War Emergency Workers National Committee” during the First World War, in: Yearbook for Research on the History of the Labor Movement 13 (2014) 3, pp. 7-16.
  • André Keil: Between class struggle and system immanence. The British trade union movement and the state, in: Michael Ruck (Ed.), Opponent - Instrument - Partner. Union understanding of the state from industrialism to the information age (State understanding, vol. 106), Baden-Baden 2017, pp. 215–244; Nomos ( ISBN 978-3-8487-3055-1 ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ List of the national member associations in the ETUC , accessed on May 23, 2018
  2. ↑ IGB Membership List , accessed on May 23, 2018
  3. ^ André Keil: Between Cooperation and Opposition - The British Labor Movement and the "War Emergency Workers National Committee" during the First World War, in: Yearbook for Research on the History of the Labor Movement , Volume III / 2014.