State of the Unions

Trade unions are more powerful than ever before – just not the ones you’re thinking of

To visit a trade union headquarters is to bask in the familiar nostalgia of a time when men ruled the world, smoking was permitted on tube trains and national strikes were an accepted part of everyday life. They are often run down offices in unfashionable parts of London, with slogans and urgings hanging from every wall. The inhabitants look like chippy council workers, eager to refuse your request to overturn a parking fine.

A visit to the headquarters of the doctor’s union – the British Medical Association – is a somewhat different experience. Situated in Bloomsbury, the glass walls and smartly turned out receptionists remind one of a corporate HQ. The place oozes money – which is unsurprising given its £150M annual revenues

Doctors are part of an elite group of professionals whose unions enjoy special privileges that other, lowlier, unions do not. Solicitors (via the Law Society), Surveyors (via RICS) and many other professions combine a membership, lobbying AND regulatory function allowing them to operate as a closed shop. When the government attempts to institute changes that would be detrimental to them or their members (but almost certainly better for the public), they are resisted or defanged. When the regulatory function for solicitors was removed from the Law Society (to the SRA), the obligation for lawyers to remain members of the Society was not. The Royal Medical colleges with their colossal property portfolios and vast wealth continue to regulate their members as well as provide succour and lobbying to preserve their privileges.

Wealthy, well-educated and powerful, it is unsurprising that these unions remain a closed shop regulating themselves and resistant to change; adamant that their members deserve a job for life, free from the prying eyes of independent regulators. Their ability to divert public and private money to their members’ pockets remains unsurpassed. The NHS may have been the creation of a Labour government, but it was designed and implemented by doctors for the benefit of doctors. Just witness the howls of anguish from the BMA when even minor changes to doctors working conditions are proposed. And try and constrain legal aid to avoid the most egregious abuses and before you know it the woke left are on the streets demanding justice for all. No one thinks to suggest that a barrister might possibly take a pay cut.

The answer to removing the power from these most powerful unions and their members is unlikely to come from politicians or an outraged public. It will most likely come from technology and particularly AI which will encroach on their knowledge and surpass their wisdom. Why would one trust the opinion of a doctor who has seen hundreds of cases, when a computer can tell you the insights from millions and instantly remember the efficacy of different treatments? Why spend years learning every nuance of case law when a bot will do it for you?

Of course, as the technology threatens privilege, the privileged will restrict the technology. Only they will be able to access it and provide the masses with its insights. But eventually, as it disseminates, these professions and their wealthy privileged unions will disappear.