Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Are Trade Unions In Crisis?

Philippe Pochet 5th May 2015

Philippe Pochet, Trade Unions

Philippe Pochet

Over the last few decades, trade unions in most European countries (a noteworthy exception being Belgium) have suffered a more or less drastic drop in membership – a trend that has been barely affected in either direction by the advent of economic and financial crisis in 2007. But this ‘stability’ does not go far enough to enable us to make any final judgement concerning ‘the state of the trade unions’.

For a better understanding, it is necessary to analyse the three pillars of trade unionism and their interactions. The first aforementioned such pillar is membership size: the unions’ artillery power, so to speak. The second is formed by the institutions that enable collectively agreed gains (whether national or sectoral and including minimum wage provisions) to be extended to as large a section of the workforce as possible. The third pillar, finally, consists of the links between trade unions and political parties.

In relation to the drop in trade union membership, the matter can be approached from an opposite angle. Indeed, comparing this trend with that of other organisations constitutive of our democratic systems, we might well ask how it is that trade unions retain as many members as they do, given the plummeting membership figures of political parties: in the United Kingdom, for example, members of political parties currently total 534,000, while the TUC still has over 5.7m members. British party political membership has fallen by almost 70% in thirty years.

In Portugal, 340,000 people belong to a political party while 960,000 are trade union members. Nor should it be forgotten that Portugal, alongside Spain and Greece, is one of the few countries where – since the transition to democracy in the 1970s – rather few members leave their political party compared to other countries such as the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, or Norway, where the ‘political party drop-out rate’ over the last thirty years has been around 65%. This comparison is not made in any effort to conceal the magnitude of the trade unions’ membership losses but it does enable the phenomenon to be viewed from a different angle.

Nor does the comparison lessen in any way the trade unions’ need for an active recruitment strategy – even if such a strategy proves powerless to alter the underlying trend, and the best policies imaginable could never produce a return to former levels of trade union density. The point, simply, is that the trade unions are not faring so very badly, compared to the political parties, given the aversion to collective organisation displayed by the new generation of young people.

Regarding the second aspect, the institutions, the picture is extremely mixed. In most countries, according to the latest ‘industrial relations in Europe’ data from the European Commission, collective bargaining coverage rates are both stable and quite high. Two groups of countries stand out, however: those of central and eastern Europe where collective bargaining institutions were weak and have become even weaker since the crisis; and those receiving European financial assistance and hence under Troika control (Greece, Portugal, Ireland).

The same is true of Spain, where important changes implemented by governments have led to significant drops in the numbers of workers covered by collective agreements. Likewise with Romania in the wake of the new labour code endorsed by the American Chamber of Commerce and with Hungary since changes introduced by the Orban government in 2012. The weakening of the trade unions is in these cases the result of a clear political will to reduce the clout of institutionalised solidarity.

This brings us to the third point, the link between trade unions and political parties. Most of the trade unions in Europe have no formal party links; they are independent and yet ‘like-minded’ in a manner that introduces to public debate topics close to trade unionists’ hearts or aimed at facilitating collective bargaining and compromises with employers in a framework of social dialogue.

This is where the fracture – albeit not ubiquitous – seems most pronounced. Increasing numbers of left-wing or centre-left governments no longer see eye-to-eye with the trade unions. The choice made by the Italian government, under the socialist Matteo Renzi, to refrain from consulting the social partners is emblematic of a new stance; and the determination of the Belgian government (in a country steeped in ‘social concertation’ practices) to circumvent the social partners, or to partially discount the outcome of their negotiations, is equally symbolic of the advent of a new ballgame.

Then there are the newly emerging parties, Syriza in Greece or Podemos in Spain. While these lack the kind of historic relations with the trade unions that characterised traditional social-democratic parties, the situation forged by recent developments is one that can evolve. Syriza has, after all, promised to restore the institutional collective bargaining machinery in Greece. What we are seeing here is the positive side of new electoral behaviour that in other cases has led to a resurgence of right-wing votes.

The trade unions are in crisis; of that there can be no doubt. Yet we could do with some proper instruments to measure their representativeness; and we must take account of government action – or inaction – as well as seeking to gain a better understanding of the general political environment.

Philippe Pochet
Philippe Pochet

Philippe Pochet is general director of the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI). He is author of À la recherche de l'Europe sociale (ETUI, 2019).

You are here: Home / Politics / Are Trade Unions In Crisis?

Most Popular Posts

Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic
Orbán,Hungary,Russia,Putin,sanctions,European Union,EU,European Parliament,commission,funds,funding Time to confront Europe’s rogue state—HungaryStephen Pogány

Most Recent Posts

reality check,EU foreign policy,Russia Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—a reality check for the EUHeidi Mauer, Richard Whitman and Nicholas Wright
permanent EU investment fund,Recovery and Resilience Facility,public investment,RRF Towards a permanent EU investment fundPhilipp Heimberger and Andreas Lichtenberger
sustainability,SDGs,Finland Embedding sustainability in a government programmeJohanna Juselius
social dialogue,social partners Social dialogue must be at the heart of Europe’s futureClaes-Mikael Ståhl
Jacinda Ardern,women,leadership,New Zealand What it means when Jacinda Ardern calls timePeter Davis

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

ETUI advertisement

The EU recovery strategy: a blueprint for a more Social Europe or a house of cards?

This new ETUI paper explores the European Union recovery strategy, with a focus on its potentially transformative aspects vis-à-vis European integration and its implications for the social dimension of the EU’s socio-economic governance. In particular, it reflects on whether the agreed measures provide sufficient safeguards against the spectre of austerity and whether these constitute steps away from treating social and labour policies as mere ‘variables’ of economic growth.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The winter issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The sequence of recent catastrophes has thrust new words into our vocabulary—'polycrisis', for example, even 'permacrisis'. These challenges have multiple origins, reinforce each other and cannot be tackled individually. But could they also be opportunities for the EU?

This issue offers compelling analyses on the European health union, multilateralism and international co-operation, the state of the union, political alternatives to the narrative imposed by the right and much more!


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube