Over recent years, it has become fashionable in many quarters to write off Britain's trade unions, to label them as obsolete institutions out of touch with new realities and incapable of change. In today's world of individual employment contracts, performance-related pay schemes, Human Resource and Total Quality Management and all the other ingredients of the so-called 'new' workplace, trade unions are often regarded as anachronistic obstacles preventing success of the market economy. As collective voluntary organizations that represent employees in the workplace, it is argued, trade unions no longer serve a useful purpose.

The main priority of this essay is to represent the arguments for and against the relevance of trade unions in todays working society. Furthermore, I shall comment on the future of the trade union movement, based upon the facts and findings that helped construct this text.

Trade unions exist because an individual worker has very little power to influence decisions that are made about his or her job. The

"Its duty under the Employment Protection Act is to promote the improvement of industrial relations and in particular to encourage the extension of collective bargaining. Also to develop (and where necessary to reform) collective bargaining machinery. Its main functions are: advisory work, collective conciliation, individual conciliation, arbitration, and extended investigation into industrial relations problems."

Taylor, R (1994) The Future of the Trade Unions

Armstrong, M & Murlis, H (1991) Reward Management Second Edition

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1583
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)