Peter HJ
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Re:Union density finally stabilising? - 26/10/2006 06:34
I've been doing a bit of research on this lately. The last ILO study was 1997, believe it or not. Since then the picture has changed. Taken together, we can produce comparable figures for 38 countries between 1998 and 2003. Of these, 58% have experienced trade union membership growth. I am amazed that this story has not been told!!
Density is a different question. Imagine that a factory suddenly took on a whole lot of new staff. Would it be fair to assume that the union was weaker as a result? Employers have more control over density than unions do, so density is not the ideal measure for the success/failure of the union movement. It's just one way of looking at the story.
This is not too far from what is happening. ILO data suggests that over 3 billion people are working or looking for work, a number which is expected to grow by 430 million by 2015, with almost all the new entrants coming from developing countries (which are the least likely to have proper union statistics).
And then there's the problem of China. Between 1998 and 2003 the membership grew by more than 50%, or 44,843,447 members!! This number tends to be ignored (the ICFTU can explain why). However many of these jobs are in manufacturing, and they used to reside in the developed world. So union members disappear in one country and their replacements aren't counted in the next. How do we do the maths? There is no easy answer, like most of the questions globalisation is throwing up at the union movement.
In a nutshell, the problem is not that unions are shrinking; it is that they are not growing as fast as they might. The real challenge for the union movement is not to save itself from collapse -- we have already done that. The problem now is to find strategies for growth at a time when the potential is fantastic.
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