Trade unions, yesterday, today and tomorrow

Union density is falling, and has been falling for decades, almost across the world.

New independent trade union movements made great advances in Brazil, South Korea, and South Africa in the 1980s; Sweden’s high level of union density continued to increase until about 1990; Brazil’s unions gained a rise in density between 2000 and 2006, after a decline in the 1990s; some Scandinavian countries, and Belgium, where unions are intertwined with the welfare system, have limited their losses; but generally the picture is of decline through the neoliberal decades from the early 1980s.

Mike Treen is National Director of Unite New Zealand, a union which has successfully organised young workers in fast food. In February 2008 he toured Britain speaking to meetings organised by No Sweat, and we published his speech to the London meeting Solidarity 3/127. After that meeting Mike Treen spoke to Colin Foster.