In Parliament, on 16th January 1979, Mrs Thatcher denounced compulsory membership of unions.
CUSU is the official students’ union of the University of Cambridge. The very idea of an official union for a particular profession or group of people is abhorrent.
CUSU claims that all students are automatically members. You can resign, but CUSU’s support from the University won’t be reduced proportionally. CUSU is essentially a compulsory union.
If CUSU was really wanted by students, membership would be voluntary, and we would see how many students took it up. My guess is, very few.
As Hugo Gye wrote to Varsity,
Surely the University has better things on which to spend its money than on this outdated and largely useless behemoth? There is an urgent need to maintain and increase spending on teaching, research, facilities sporting and otherwise, and – perhaps most of all – the bursaries scheme, which is a far more effective way of ensuring fair access to all than any of CUSU’s access programmes, important as these can be. Perhaps we do not need CUSU – after all, College JCRs and MCRs do the same job on a local level. Perhaps we do: in that case, let CUSU charge a subscription fee like other trade unions, and let us pay directly for its services rather than indirectly through the University, a far more democratic modus operandi. Given, however, that turnout in last year’s Internet-enabled CUSU elections stood at a woeful 16%, we may see that students do not care for their union enough to keep it alive; in that case, let it die. But we cannot sanction the University leaking money to a dinosaur which may have outrun its use.
To protest compulsory membership of CUSU, no one should vote in the current CUSU elections.
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=103924
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/multimedia/displaydocument.asp?docid=111293
[T]here is no right to intimidate any citizen in this country. But that intimidation is taking place.
“We are finding that essential ingredients—fat, salt and vitamins—are not being allowed through in a number of cases.”
They are not being “allowed” through. The report continues:
“‘It is a very alarming situation.’
One Reading feed firm was told its nonunion driver would have to pay £16.64, a year’s membership subscription to the Transport and General Workers’ Union, before he would be allowed in to collect animal feed at Southampton docks.
Mr. Charles Cooper, a director of the firm, Walter Parsons and Sons, said: ‘I think it’s blackmail. I thought this was a free country. If our chaps want to join a union, they can. We don’t see why we should force a chap to join’.”
No union has any right whatsoever to do that. I believe that it is an offence against the law to do it. Action should be taken to ensure that lorry drivers are not threatened and to ensure that they are not told that they cannot get through unless they have a union card or take one out.
…
I want to remove all possibility of violence on picket lines. I want to re-establish the circumstances under which people may go about their business without interference and without fear of losing their jobs. At present they are in grave fear.
…
I believe passionately that no one should be compelled to join a trade union as a condition of keeping his job. The Government do not share that belief. The Government believe—they introduced legislation to this effect—that a person should be compelled to join a trade union and that if he does not he should lose his job. That is in the 1974 and 1976 legislation [the Trade Union and Labour Relations Acts]. The Hon. Gentleman knows that people who have worked for British Rail for years in a perfectly satisfactory manner have lost their jobs without compensation because the Government passed legislation that enabled that to happen. We must seek to change the law and the extent to which the trade unions seek to operate it.
Bravo. Might I suggest the Harvard policy as a model? Harvard University offers an “opt-in” box (I believe it is opt-in; it may now be opt-out) for students to check on their term bill at the start of the academic year. If they check the box, a charge of $75 will be billed to their account on behalf of the Harvard Student Council. If they opt out, no such charge will be levied. I believe the majority of Harvard undergraduates opt-in, but a significant minority choose not to.