AFP, Paris :
European labour movements have been losing steam for decades, but can trade unions forge a new role for themselves leading the fight against wage inequality or protecting workers in the new “gig economy”?
“It’s wrong to think that unions belong to the old world,” says Thiebault Weber of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), an umbrella group for European trade unions.
Ahead of the annual Labour Day celebrations worldwide on May 1, he acknowledged that they face a “big challenge” in continuing to defend the strong social model found in Europe “without the strong membership base of the past.”
The decline began in the 1980s with a wave of privatisations of state companies, reductions in heavy industry and the rise of free-market economics made famous by US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
In France, Britain, Switzerland and the Netherlands, the level of union membership has fallen by over a third since the 1980s, according to the OECD.
Economists have tied this disaffection to rising individualism, unemployment and growing job insecurity, noting that workers on project-based, part-time or casual contracts are less likely to join unions.
They have also linked waning union clout to the decline in traditional political parties, particularly the big parties of the left including Communist movements which were the historic defenders of trade unions.
Across Europe, the picture is highly contrasted, both in terms of union sway and membership.
Nordic countries like Sweden and Finland boasting union membership rates of about 70 percent compared to around 10 percent in France and Poland and about 20 percent in Germany and Spain.
But Germany’s labour confederation DGB, France’s public sector heavyweight CGT and Italy’s CGIL still have the power to call mass protests and strikes.
European labour movements have been losing steam for decades, but can trade unions forge a new role for themselves leading the fight against wage inequality or protecting workers in the new “gig economy”?
“It’s wrong to think that unions belong to the old world,” says Thiebault Weber of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), an umbrella group for European trade unions.
Ahead of the annual Labour Day celebrations worldwide on May 1, he acknowledged that they face a “big challenge” in continuing to defend the strong social model found in Europe “without the strong membership base of the past.”
The decline began in the 1980s with a wave of privatisations of state companies, reductions in heavy industry and the rise of free-market economics made famous by US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
In France, Britain, Switzerland and the Netherlands, the level of union membership has fallen by over a third since the 1980s, according to the OECD.
Economists have tied this disaffection to rising individualism, unemployment and growing job insecurity, noting that workers on project-based, part-time or casual contracts are less likely to join unions.
They have also linked waning union clout to the decline in traditional political parties, particularly the big parties of the left including Communist movements which were the historic defenders of trade unions.
Across Europe, the picture is highly contrasted, both in terms of union sway and membership.
Nordic countries like Sweden and Finland boasting union membership rates of about 70 percent compared to around 10 percent in France and Poland and about 20 percent in Germany and Spain.
But Germany’s labour confederation DGB, France’s public sector heavyweight CGT and Italy’s CGIL still have the power to call mass protests and strikes.
