The return of the unions
What’s happened?
he cost of living crisis; rising taxes and prices, especially for energy; redundancies and other hardships imposed by the government’s response to Covid-19; the increasingly insecure nature of work for many; decades of inflationary monetary policy; war and supply-chain disruptions – all have laid the foundation for a revival in trade-union membership that may mark the start of a new golden age for the movement. Union membership rose by 118,000 to 6.6 million in 2020, the fourth year in a row that it has increased, says Anne Cassidy for the BBC. In the US, the overall level of
