Labour relations: Fight the glower WHEN HSBC moved to Canary Wharf in 2003, it discovered some troublesome neighbours. London Citizens, a collection of local community groups, rallied the bank's cleaners to demand a higher, "living" wage. The bank said no. So they bought shares, and at the annual general meeting the chairman found himself being addressed by the man who cleaned his office by night. Later nuns brought a bank branch to a standstill by paying in the week's collection in trolleys full of pennies. HSBC agreed to pay its cleaners more. London Citizens has since grown to encompass 237 institutions - most religious or educational. Neil Jameson, its monkish director, focuses on causes uniting this colourful patchwork of London life. Though broadly leftish in tone, it is uninterested in ideology and has admirers from across the political spectrum. Mr Jameson's mantra is "power before programme." His organisation is one of several that now harry firms over workers" pay, as well as things like tax avoidance. In some ways they are taking the place of trade unions - which, these days, have programmes but little power. Britain's unions are shrinking and ageing. Since 1979 their membership, including retired and unemployed folk, has dropped from 13.2m to 7.3m. The decline of heavy industry and the rise of subcontracting has driven them from much of the corporate world: today only 14.1% of private-sector workers are members. The growth of the more heavily unionised public sector under the last government slowed the overall fall. But austerity is now eating into the bosses" public-sector power base (see chart). The public is fairly well-disposed towards unions, says Paul Nowak of the Trades Union Congress (TUC). But many "just don't think we're relevant." Worse, some unions are becoming more intransigent as their strength fails. Stand-offs with employers have replaced the partnerships of the late 1990s. John Monks, a former general secretary of the TUC, blames the shift on irresponsible behaviour and excessive pay in boardrooms. But union bosses have hardly helped matters. Edmund Heery of Cardiff Business School says it is often cheaper for unions to poach each others" members than to recruit new ones. Since the unions frequently compete on toughness, that encourages them to become ever more bolshie. For a Labour Party dependent on union donations, this is a problem. Unite, the party's largest source of cash, is controlled by the left. Len McCluskey, its general secretary, is hunting for a successor. Some reckon he is steering Unite towards a merger with the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, whose militant boss, Mark Serwotka, could run the new colossus. Earlier this year the PCS threatened the London Olympics with a strike by airport border guards. With other unions, it now advocates a general strike. The CBI, an employers" group, cites such provocations when calling for rules that would make it harder for unions to call industrial action. A few unions are resisting these trends, however. One is USDAW, whose partnership agreement with the supermarket Tesco (Britain's largest private-sector employer) is a model of union-management concord. The two sides work together not just on pay and conditions, but also on training, neighbourhood initiatives and union recruitment. Tesco's staff are well-paid by supermarket standards, and USDAW is Britain's fastest-growing union. Likewise, the recently-announced restructuring at Tata Steel's factories is a case study in co-operation: Community, the union, is working with the firm on employee retraining. The growing union for professionals, Prospect, is similarly constructive. As decentralised, pragmatic outfits with engaged members, such unions are closer to their movement's roots. They also resemble groups like Mr Jameson's. Indeed, London Citizens grew out of the east London neighbourhoods whose gasworks, docks and match factories spawned the mass labour movement in the 1880s. Britain's most modern unions are also its most traditional.