Its that time of year again....

TUC Congress starts on Monday, and as usual most of the pre-Congress press coverage is focused on two types of stories.

The first is the potential for government/union splits; so for example, this week, TUC General secretary Brendan Barber's pretty straightforward observation that there should be, '... an orderly transition....And it should take place soon enough to allow a new leader to put his own stamp on the style of government', was turned into headlines suggesting that Tony Blair should pretty much vacate No 10 by the end of Congress next Thursday.

The other type of story is the doom and gloom 'union's are dead or dying' - and nothing anyone can do can ever save them. The FT had an article in this vein last week, as did a few other papers, mainly based around (some pretty good and informed) research and book by David Metcalf and others which was published this week.

By happy coincidence exactly the same story, based on exactly the same research, by exactly the same academic, was published at exactly the same time last year... looks like a rather bit of cute timetabling by the publisher's press people if you ask me, but then I'm a cynic. No doubt next year's release on the same issue is being worked up as we speak.

David Metcalf foresees a pretty bleak future for unions, particularly in the private sector. His recent report for the Work Foundation, was even bleaker, concluding that 'Perdition is more likely than Resurgence'. Perdition is, according to the dictionary, 'A state of punishment which goes on forever, suffered by evil people after death'. I know we face some challenges - but that's about a bleak assessment as you can get!

As you will have gathered if you have read this blog before I personally think the future for unions is a bit brighter. Of course that doesn't mean we have any room at all for complacency but I think two factors should give unions a bit of cause for optimism.

The first is that slowly but surely unions are already beginning to turn the corner. Our overall membership has stablised - with some unions in both the public and private sectors making significant membership gains over the last few years. USDAW has seen its membership grow by some 60,000 (mainly party-time women workers) since 1997. In the public sector PCS has grown by over 50,000 in the same period.

Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, there are clear signs that a number of unions are beginning to make the hard choices necessary to grow and thrive. A clear example of this is the TGWU's massive investment in organising both in in-fill and greenfield sites, which has included a comprehensive '100%' membership campaign and the union taking on 50 new organisers in the first 6 months of this year.

I'm not a mindless optimist, but at the same time I think it can be very damaging for unions to constantly talk ourselves down - 'oh no we're in crisis, people hate us, we'll never grow again etc etc'. The reality is that there are millions of people out there who would join a union if we gave them a chance to - the trick is reaching out to these people and showing them the real difference a union can make. Easier said than done I know, but it can AND IS being done!