Green shoots from the grass roots? The National Shop Stewards Network

• Published date: 01 March 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12024
• Date: 01 March 2014

Green shoots from the grass roots?

The National Shop Stewards Network

Jo McBride and John Stirling

This paper presents an analysis of the significance of the Internet

in rebuilding a shop stewards movement in a time of circum-

scribed trade union organisation and power. It takes the

National Shop Stewards Network as the focus for empirical

research and places the argument within the broader context of

two historical periods of trade union activity. The study finds

significant historical parallels in terms of the key questions of

the relationship between a network and a movement and the

virtual and real worlds. It suggests that the Internet is particu-

larly significant in forging horizontal rather than vertical links

between shop stewards and unions and also provides the poten-

tial for mutual support and solidarity. However, the empirical

research suggests different levels of engagement with the

network, which the paper categorises and it also illustrates how

a political party can become engaged in the networking activity.

Keywords: shop stewards movements, union renewal, unions

and the Internet, labour movement revitalisation, worker

activism, solidarity.

Introduction

This article explores the implications of the Internet for rebuilding a shop stewards

movement in Britain in the context of declining union membership and organisational

power at the workplace. Shop stewards as workplace organisers have represented an

important source of trade union power particularly in two periods of activism, in the

first decades of the 20th century and in the 1960s and 1970s. Such power was linked to

more general upsurges of militancy and embedded within a broader mobilisation of

workers. As this article will argue, these particularhistorical examples posed questions

of the relationship between shop stewards and their own unions alongside broader

socialist, political arguments that remain relevant today.

However, since the 1980s, there has been a substantial decline of shop stewards/

workplace union representatives in UK workplaces (Charlwood and Forth, 2008) as

well as a reduction in their workplace role and duties (Kersley et al., 2006). Thishas led

to suggestions that any associations of shop stewards are, in this context, very unlikely

to be able to help in the revival of the UK labour movement. Darlington (2010: 129) has

suggested, for example, that the long and ongoing economic crisis has accentuated an

‘atrophy of organization’. Furthermore, McIlroy and Daniels (2009) argue that work-

Jo McBride (Jo.McBride@newcastle.ac.uk) is a Senior Lecturer in Industrial Relations, Work and

Employment of Newcastle University business School, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK. John Stirling

(strirling406@gmail.co.uk) is a visiting fellow at Ruskin College, Oxford, Oxfordshire and Bradford

University School of Management, West Yorkshire, UK.

New Technology, Work and Employment 29:1

ISSN 0268-1072

© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd NSSN: green shoots from the grass roots? 25