Is it fairly common or uncommon across business sectors or are there certain business sectors where unions are more relevant/powerful?
How much have they changed compared to the past?
Do people have a good opinion of them, especially among those who would be called working class?
Are there many trade unions or is the representation concentrated within just a couple of organisations?
5 comments
Not very common, but the advantages our unions get also apply to non-unionized people so there isn’t much incentives, barely 10% are unionized and it goes down to 3% for the under 30yo bracket
Opinion wise it’s 50/50
In my experience it’s common that the boss is directly telling you not to do it, or telling you not to do it “as a joke”. Dunder Mifflin everywhere…
4/5 danes are part of a worker agreement, 52% are members of unions that actually covers their line of work and 65% are members of a union.
The unions are pretty strong in Denmark, but they have lost terrain over the years.
Because we don’t have a minimum wage in Denmark, the unions do all the heavy lifting, and most people are covered by agreements made between the unions and the employers. Unions have a fairly good reputation, but sometimes they are viewed as to closely tied to the social democrats.
Very common. So much so, I’d say it’s the norm.
It’s not as prominent (yet) in newer professions like IT, but it’s more than common in most manual, older professions.
Unions are mainly centralized into 3 nation-wide organizations (FNV, CNV and VCP) and often work together to set up collective employment agreements for entire branches of labor which employers can adhere to.
The opinion towards unions is that they are just a part of everyday life and integral to workers rights.
It varies a lot in the UK. In some areas, such teaching, healthcare, public transport etc it is very common. Basically if you work in an industry where there’s a dominant supplier or customer, and one of these is related in some way to the public sector, then you’re quite likely to be in a union. In these cases collective negotiation can be really important, because workers may lack the ability to easily switch to another employer if things are bad.
In other areas it’s much less common. I work in IT and and don’t know anyone in any company I’ve worked for who was in a union. There wouldn’t be much point, as there’s little standardisation of things like pay and job titles, and not much scope for collective action.
Unions used to be a lot more popular in the past. Over the last few decades they’ve had their powers constantly chipped away at by various governments though, and there’s a pretty common anti-union stance among newspapers.