My guest is Mike Clancy is a general secretary of the Prospect Trade Union. Welcome to the podcast, Mike.

Good to be here and thanks for having me on. Right. Well, it is a prospect trade union. So you must get this a lot. This is not Prospect, the political affairs, current affairs magazine. So in a few words, Mike, tell us what Prospect is, please.

So Prospect represents 158,000 people

across the UK and a little bit more broadly. We represent people in aviation, energy, defence,

large membership in the creative sector. All your favourite film and TV programmes are made by our

crew, who are often self-employed and that brings a different perspective on

the world of work. We are not politically affiliated. We obviously trade union congress members,

but we don't affiliate to the Labour Party, which I often say means that we can have

agreement or disagreement just about anybody. Right. Okay. People question, you know,

in the 21st century, the 2020s, what is more broadly beyond prospect?

What are the role of trade unions in society and the economy these days?

In broad term, beyond, say, your own particular trade union, what are trade unions for these days?

Well, I think what hasn't changed is that trade unions are about representing people collectively and individually at work.

A lot of the headlines around trade unions are about disputes, but that's only what we do,

10 or 15% of the time.

Most of the time we're working collaboratively with employers to solve the issues of the day

in the workplace, whether that be organizational design, fair terms of conditions or the future

of industry.

And one of the things which I sometimes bemoaned about the trade union movement is we spend too

much time talking about the conflict that sometimes happens and too little time about

the problems we actually solve in the workplace.

So in that respect, the trade union product hasn't changed.

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