Trade unions
Why is Britain making it harder to strike?

Fewer workers protest in this way but the government is clamping down

Free exchange

No, I'm not going to give you any more lunch money

TRADE unions in Britain have lost much of the clout that they once wielded. Since 1979 membership has dropped in both the private and public sectors, while the number of days lost to strikes has plummeted (see brown line on chart). And under the Trade Union Bill, announced today by Sajid Javid, the business secretary, things are going to get even more difficult for them. The rules for striking will change. Under the current rules, all unions need to do to strike is get a majority of those voting. The new bill, though, would impose a minimum 50% turnout. In the case of “essential” public services they would need the support of 40% of eligible members.

Why, if so few days are lost to strikes, is the Conservative government so keen on a crackdown? Let's leave aside ideological or political motives (which are extremely difficult to divine) and focus on something crunchier. One explanation could be that striking workers are getting more visible. New figures released this morning show that the number of workers who went on a strike in a given year (as a proportion of the total population) has been on an unsteady increase since the 2000s (see blue line on chart).

Using behavioural-economics theory, I reckon that it is more annoying when you have lots of different workers striking a little bit, than when you have few workers striking a lot.

Let's use an example to explain what this may mean. Imagine if someone asked you for a five-pound note on Monday, because they had forgotten their lunch money. Now imagine that five different people ask for a pound on five different days for one work-week, for the same reason (i.e. person 1 asks on Monday, person 2 on Tuesday, etc.). Would you not end up more annoyed by the second scenario, even though you ended up giving the same amount of money both times?

The same thing may be going on here. Yes, working days lost to strikes have not increased (in fact they have fallen). But with a larger number of workers getting involved in strikes, the problem seems bigger. Hence the crackdown. Maybe.

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