WHITHER THE TRADE UNIONS?

The TUC Congress is coming up next week and the director-general of the CBI, Digby Jones, has had a pop at the comrades (click here). It's routine silly-season stuff, of course, but he's got a serious point (though I hate to admit it) . The unions have failed miserably to recruit whole swathes of skilled employees in new IT-related parts of the private sector – and the trad left posturing of the likes of Kevin Curran and Tony Woodley is a wholly inadequate response. Forget the reception the delegates give Tony Blair after his speech: the real question facing the unions is whether they can demonstrate their relevance to anyone outside their traditional public sector and private-sector manufacturing strongholds.