Trade union renewal

Multinational companies dominate much of the economies of the new EU member states of central and eastern Europe. They usually claim to respect trade unions at home and many have signed global agreements with international union organisations. It could be hoped that they would play a positive role, bringing better employment relations practices... Find out more

Key points Social media such as Facebook forces unions to increase communication with members and makes rank-and-file dissent highly visible. Challenges can arise as a result of different emphases on collective and connective logics between online networks and established unions. Union success on social media requires a careful balancing act... Find out more

Policy implications The risk created by expanding the labour pool to workers based in other countries can, if necessary, be dealt with by EU legislative action, for example, through substantive EU employment law. Furthermore, the risk created by expanding the labour pool to workers based in non-EU countries can be dealt with by the overriding... Find out more

Policy considerations EU competition law imposes limits on the scope of collective labour law, as it precludes self-employed workers from collective bargaining . There is a rising number of self-employed workers whose livelihood are characterised by increasing precariousness and whose working conditions could be improved by ensuring that collective... Find out more

This special issue, the third in a series of Transfer issues on ‘the state of trade unionism in Europe’, examines the international activity of European trade unions. Trade unions in Europe today operate in a complex and multi-layered institutional environment, ranging from the workplace, where the central concern is the representation of members’... Find out more