AMALGAMATED ENGINEERING AND ELECTRICAL UNION

(AEEU) the leading trade union in the manufacturing sector of the United Kingdom. It arose out of the merger of the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU) with the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunication and Plumbing Union (EETPU) in 1992. Of the two organizations, the AEU was much the larger and had a much longer history, though both originated as unions of skilled craftsmen and only later opened their ranks to all employees within their respective industries. The AEU's forerunner was the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, which was formed in 1851 through the merger of several unions, the largest of which dated back to 1826. The ASE was the most powerful and prestigious craft union of its time and continued to flourish until after World War I, when it merged with nine other unions to form the AEU. As crafts gave way to mass production, the AEU began to organize on industrial lines, opening its membership to all manual-engineering workers in the 1920s. Despite a 40-percent membership decline in the 1980s, the AEU was still the second largest union of metalworkers in Europe at the time of its merger with the EETPU, having about 700,000 members. The latter union, founded in 1889 as the Electrical Trades Union, was renamed EETPU on its merger with the Plumbing Trades Union in 1968. The merger of the AEU with the EETPU in 1992 resulted in a union of about one million members and was undertaken largely for defensive reasons, to better cope with the radically altered industrial climate of Britain in the late 20th century.