UNIONS: TUC urges female recruitment drive

Unions could recruit an extra 400,000 women members by 2001 if they rise to the "major challenge" of attracting female workers, according to a Trades Union Congress report released yesterday. The TUC advised unions to adopt intensive recruitment initiatives aimed at increasing female membership.

Although women make up half the workforce, only one-third are union members, with young women least likely to be members, says the report, published at the start of the TUC women's conference in Scarborough. The number of women in unions fell by eight per cent, to 3.1 million, between 1989 and 1995. Matthew Brace

Women and the New Unionism, available from the TUC, Congress House, Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3LS.