Review: "The future of unions and worker representation: The digital picket line" by Anthony Forsyth, Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2022.

Abstract

The 'digital picket line', the subtitle of this significant new monograph by Professor Anthony Forsyth, nicely evokes the themes that permeate this study of the future of trade unions and worker representation. As Forsyth observes, the term is 'emblematic of the transformation in union forms and tactics ... needed to ensure that unions continue to play an effective role as the representative of workers into the future'. Forsyth sets out the challenge for the trade union movement to identify 'how the revitalisation of unions can be achieved and what collectivism must look like to ensure the effective representation of workers' interests into the future'. Adopting Visser’s categorisation of four possible futures for the union movement (marginalisation, dualisation, replacement, revitalisation), Forsyth contends that revitalisation for unions is viable provided the union movement commits to the underlying preconditions to enable revitalisation to occur.