Trade Unions Decline Around the World

We can see that the trade unions in The United Stated are declining. They’re losing their influence and popularity in the U.S.A., but how about the trade unions in the rest of the world?


The organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development published an article whit a graphic from each country, on the graphic you can see how many employees are connected to a trade union. We don’t only see a downward trend in the U.S.A, but also in many other industrialised countries all over the world. Belgium is almost the only country where the influence of the trade unions remains quiet stable in the last few years. In a lot of other countries in Europe for instance France, Italy, Spain the influence of the trade unions and the employees connected to the trade union are declining a lot.
Even in Asia the trade unions are losing their influence. Which is very strange because in some countries the working conditions are not good, so it’s strange that the people don’t want to be in a trade union.


Sometimes I find the trade unions very aggressive and they want to achieve their goal no matter what, even if the employer can’t solve the problems. Most of the time they don’t want to give in. That I find wrong because you only can come to a good solution if everyone puts some water in the wine, but trade unions can’t always see that.


I find it very important that there are trade unions, because the employees must be protected from the employer, so that he doesn’t have all the power. Somebody must represent the employees in the company and defend their rights, so that’s why it is necessary that there are trade unions.


I don’t think they will disappear, because than there is nobody to protect the employees and I don’t think that the governments are going to let that happen.


Jonas Hillemans 2RP2

Source: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/trade-unions-around-the-world/?scp=1&sq=trade%20union&st=cse