hidden_voices

Hidden Voices: The CBI, corporate lobbying and sustainabilityCBI membership in terms of industry coverage is patchy with a disproportionately highnumber of members from financial services and manufacturing relative to their representationin the UK workforce but a disproportionately low number represented in retail and distribution(the UK’s second largest sector in terms of employment) 8 . The largest single group isconsultants and then lawyers. In total, more than 500 CBI members (well over a quarter) canbe classified as business services or consultancies.The CBI membership also includes a range of professional associations, universities andother public bodies – not obvious candidates to be embraced by the organisation’s boast ofbeing “The Voice of British Business”. These include several tourist boards, the BritishRacing Drivers Club, the Professional Cricketers Association, the Warwickshire Cricket Club,the British Library and the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.Sectoral imbalancesCBI membershipWorkforceOther sectorsFinance & servicesRetail, distributionManufacturing0 10 20 30 40 50 60percentage of totalFigure 1: CBI membership by industry sector compared to total UK private-sector workforce byindustry sectorWhat is surprising is that trade associations make up more than half of the CBI’s companymembers. These trade association members range from substantial bodies, such as theEngineering Employers’ Federation (EEF) and the Chemical Industries Association (CIA), totiny organisations, such as the Kaolin and Ball Clay Association. If you ignore the tradeassociations the CBI has only around 1,800 individual company members employing around4 million people which is similar to the British Chamber of Commerce(BCC). However, byincluding trade associations the CBI can then claim coverage of more than 40 per cent of theUK workforce significantly boosting its leverage over Government.What about representation?The question, then, arises as to how the CBI represents fairly the views of individualcompany members both within and outside the many trade associations. The difficulties interms of formulating policy to accommodate the diverse views of its membership often resultin the CBI employing the lowest common denominator or the ’business as usual’ position(see ‘Formulating and promoting policy’, page 13 and ‘Environment – it’s not our problem’,page 21).The problem of fair and equal representation of individual companies within tradeassociations is even more difficult. How do the individual company members within tradeassociations defer decisions to their leadership? Can the trade associations then act as‘block vote’, undermining the principle of ‘one member, one vote’?.A report from Green Alliance on the influence of company lobbyists commented:14