This book examines how different national trade union movements have responded to these challenges and reviews the impact of these responses.
Four inter-linked issues emerge from the responses of trade union movements to the challenges posed by the developments since the 1970s. These concern the articulation of trade union organisation and activity between different levels of operation, including the assimilation of a European level of activity; the development of forms of representation appropriate for ‘new’ groups of workers; the issues arising from closer working between unions and restructuring by means of mergers, which, in practice constitute a rejection of previous forms of organisation, such as industrial unionism; and the growing importance of union activity at the workplace, which has led many to question whether trade unions can support increasingly diverse memberships employed at a larger number of smaller workplaces.
