trade union

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Organization of workers that exists to promote and defend the interests of its members, to achieve improved working conditions, and to undertake collective bargaining (negotiating on behalf of its members) with employers. Attitudes of government to unions and of unions to management vary greatly from country to country. Probably the most effective trade union system is that of Sweden, and the most internationally known is the Polish confederation of trade unions, Solidarity. The largest union in the world is ‘Verdi’, in Germany, which in 2001 had 3 million members across 1,000 trades and professions.

Trade unions are particularly concerned with pay, working conditions, job security, and redundancy. Four types of trade union are often distinguished: general unions (covering all skilled and semi-skilled workers), craft unions (for those performing a specific type of work, for example electricians or printers), industrial unions (covering workers in one industry or sector, for example steel or car workers), and white-collar unions (covering those in clerical and administrative jobs). Unions may also be affiliated to a larger organization that negotiates with the government, for example the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in the UK and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) in the USA.

Trade union members in a place of work elect a shop steward to represent them and their concerns to the management. Trade unions also employ full-time officers who tend to cover a geographical area. Top officials are elected by a secret ballot of members.

Unions negotiate with employers over any differences they may have. Both parties may invite an outside body – such as, in the UK, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) – to conciliate or arbitrate in an industrial dispute. Alternatively, trade union members may take industrial action, for example going on strike or working to rule. In continental Europe, where syndicalism (the practise of transferring the ownership and control of production to the trade unions) was influential, the use of direct action in the form of a general strike directed against the government has been more typical than in the UK.

Trade unions try to get a larger share of the profits of their members' labour allocated to the workers rather than to management and shareholders. In economics, it can be shown that in a free market, assuming normal supply and demand curves for labour, a trade union that raises wages above the equilibrium wage will cause unemployment. However, many labour markets are not free and there is no direct link between trade-union membership and the level of unemployment in an industry or in the economy. Moreover, some contest that trade unions prevent the exploitation of workers by employers whose only goal is to minimize the cost of labour used in the production process. In Sweden, where around 75% of the workforce are union members, conflicts of unions within an industry (demarcation disputes) are largely eliminated, and unions and employers cooperate freely.

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