https://doi.org/10.1177/0309816819852281 Capital & Class 1–9 © The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0309816819852281 journals.sagepub.com/home/cnc The union default solution to declining union membership Gregor Gall University of Leeds, UK Mark Harcourt University of Waikato, New Zealand Abstract The continued stasis in the now much reduced aggregate levels of union membership in Britain and elsewhere has such portent for widening inequalities in wealth and power under the neo-liberal variant of late capitalism that a union default requires introduction. In all countries around the world, the de facto system is a non-union default. Under a union default, all workers would be defaulted into membership of the appropriate union. This is not a proposal for compulsory membership, a contravention of individual liberty nor the return of the closed shop by the backdoor because workers will have the right to opt out of membership. The right to be the appropriate default union to which workers would be defaulted into in any workplace would be gained by the union passing a low minimum support threshold. This would bring with it the right to bargain over pay and conditions. Keywords labour-capital relations, labour unions, union membership Introduction The continued stasis in the now much-reduced aggregate level of union membership in Britain received little attention in the media, whether mainstream, radical or social, when the figures for 2017 were published at the end of May 2018 by the Office of National Statistics (ONS 2018). Maybe, this was precisely because the figures were but Corresponding author: Gregor Gall, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK. Email: gregorgall@outlook.com 852281CNC 0 0 10.1177/0309816819852281Capital & ClassGall and Harcourt research-article 2019 Behind the News