Great Britain: coronavirus boom in trade union membership.

On 20 April, one of the UK’s largest trade unions, Unison (public sector), released a statement showing a record number of people seeking to take out membership. Since the start of 2020 almost 16,000 workers have applied for membership and Unison has noted ‘record numbers signing up in the last few weeks,’ or more specifically in March and at the start of April when the Covid-19 pandemic really started to take a hold of the UK. Unison general secretary Dave Prentis commented, “People are joining the union for advice and security at this worrying time”, and he noted that this strong rise in numbers is also “a sign of how worried people are.” The union indicated that of the 15,755 new members, roughly a third work in schools confirming the union’s status as Europe’s leading public service trade union body. Unison currently has more than 1.3 million members.