European Trade Union Membership 1993-2003

By Eironline Observer

This report examines trade union membership trends in 23 EU Member States, two candidate countries and Norway over the 1993-2003 period.

It looks at the number of trade union members, the relative size of the main organisations and the breakdown of membership by gender, as well as the problems of assessing union density.

The membership of trade unions - both in absolute terms and as a proportion of their potential constituency among workers - has always been an issue of major interest to industrial relations practitioners and researchers. The size and representativeness of trade unions are key factors in national industrial relations systems, as are the relative membership figures of different trade union organisations.

Despite the interest in them, membership figures for social partner organisations (employers' organisations as well as trade unions) are arguably one of the most difficult and contentious areas of industrial relations data. Given the importance of the size of their membership in many aspects of their dealings with employers and public bodies, and in their treatment in comparison with other unions, trade unions are in some cases quite sensitive about their membership figures. This is also an area where methodological and conceptual problems abound - how trade unions and union membership are defined, how the data are gathered etc. Such problems make examination of national union membership figures problematic, and the difficulties are magnified when an international comparison is attempted.

The aim of this review is to provide data about trade union membership over the past decade in 23 EU Member States (excluding the Czech Republic and Lithuania), two candidate countries (Bulgaria and Romania) and Norway, looking where possible at the years 1993, 1998 and 2003. The membership figures provided are those made available from national sources - usually the trade union organisations themselves - and reported by the European Industrial Relations Observatory centres in each country. No attempt has been made to examine how these national data are calculated, to assess their accuracy or to harmonise them in any way - a major caveat which should be borne in mind when reading the information provided.