A network of activists has been challenging the "myth" of trade union decline around the world, writes John Cradden

IF NOTHING comes from the planned end-of-summer meeting between the social partners and Taoiseach Brian Cowen - a last bid to secure a national pay deal - it may mean the end of social partnership as we know it.

Such a scenario, if it comes to pass, is not likely to please employers, but it's less clear how the unions feel about the prospect of returning to direct engagement on a large scale after 20 years of national pay deals.

Publicly they are bullish, but much has changed in the meantime, including a considerable drop in trade union membership "density" - the proportion of union members in the overall workforce, both in individual firms and in national economies.

The workforce in Ireland has doubled in size over the past decade, but membership of trade unions has only risen slightly.

Research shows that union density was at its peak in the early 1980s at about 62 per cent and has fallen steadily since then. Figures from the Quarterly National Household Survey show that between 2000 and 2004, density fell over 4 per cent to its current level of about 35 per cent.

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) admits that unions here, while enjoying more members than ever before, have failed to keep pace with the huge growth in the workforce and therefore overall trade union density has declined.

There is a strong perception that the trade union movement internationally is in decline too. The usual story is that the relentless pressures of globalisation, an increasingly mobile workforce, the influence of anti-union US multinationals and the lack of recognition of people's legal rights to join trade unions have all combined to put the trade union movement on the defensive.

However, one international network of trade union activists has been actively challenging what they regard as the "myth" of trade union decline around the world - at least over the last 10 years - by collating figures from a variety of sources that together show a significant rise in membership numbers, including developing countries.

The New Unionism Network (Nun) claims that the trade union movement, contrary to popular perception, is growing and that a lot more growth is going unrecorded. Its main source for this claim are figures from the International Labour Organisation and the European Industrial Relations Observatory, a network of research institutes in the EU. Together they show that between 1998 and 2003, trade union membership has grown in 23 out of 39 countries.

In Western Europe alone, membership has increased by 3.6 per cent. In Ireland, membership rose by 52,000, or 11.23 per cent.

Nun is quick to acknowledge that its figures are measurements of trade union membership numbers - but not membership density. However, it points to research that shows density worldwide only fell during the same period by 2 per cent.

Peter Hall-Jones, a spokesman for Nun, says that the media has tended to repeat the story that trade unions continue to decline, despite strong evidence to the contrary. "The media can legitimately point to membership decline since the 1980s. We are not claiming that this has been reversed. However, they are missing the point. The decline has stopped and unions have been growing, in more countries than not, for 10 years."

Hall-Jones particularly objects to the use of trade union density as the main measure of trade union strength. "If we want to talk about union growth or decline we need concrete membership numbers," he says.

"Union density in itself is not a useful measure of anything. It does not measure union membership, nor capacity, nor influence, nor bargaining power, nor does it reveal anything about the job market. It can be a useful figure over time, but that's about all."

He points to the British government's recent statistics for 2008 on trade union membership, which cites only density. According to the figures, trade union density has declined slightly (0.3 per cent). "What they didn't tell the public was that union membership rose again, by about 25,000."

Hall-Jones says accurate international figures on membership numbers are only available from the International Labour Organisation, but it has not updated them since 1997, despite continuous requests.

"Without ever explaining why, the ILO quietly dropped its role of publishing international union statistics," he adds. "No other body has had the experience, resources or reach required for this work. This leaves the public open to misinformation and for 12 years now, that is what we have had."

The data from the International Labour Organisation used to produce Nun's 1998-2003 figures are based on what he says are "raw" statistics that need a lot of data processing to make them comparable across countries.

An ILO spokesman has told The Irish Times that it does not have a mandate to keep statistical records of trade union membership internationally, but adds that keeping track of union membership figures is not easy.

The spokesman says it might be easier in countries with one national trade union representative organisation, such as the Ictu in Ireland and the TUC in Britain, but in others, such as Spain and Italy, there are two or three competing national trade unions with no links to each other.

"This may mean you end up with conflicting figures. The figures on membership may not always mean much in terms of union capacity to mobilise," the spokesman says.

Jerry Shanahan, national officer with the large private sector union Unite, says that membership density only tells part of the story about the influence of unions, particularly in relation to local bargaining influence.

"If, in a company of 100 employees, I have 40 members then that's a density of 40 per cent, but my influence is 100 per cent because my negotiations, my collective bargaining, is what sets the terms of the pay and conditions for everybody in that company, rather than management," he says.

The Ictu says that the focus on membership density doesn't show the unions here in a great light.

"The density debate in this country is a little bit irrelevant in the sense that it has declined, yes, but what we've also seen in this country in the last 10 or 15 years is the creation of a million extra jobs," says Macdara Doyle, Ictu spokesman.

He says there were about 900,000 in the workforce at the time when social partnership started in 1987. "So for anyone to expect any organisation or any institution to keep pace with that level of growth, which is unprecedented in post-war European history, is a bit silly."

However, Doyle says that recruitment is now the number one priority for unions here. Over the past two decades, unions neglected the business of recruitment, preferring to focus on servicing the existing membership.

"To some extent the eyes were taken off the bigger picture. The more you have in numbers, the greater your mandate and the greater your legitimacy. Obviously the reverse is true as well."

Next year will see the launch of a new type of collaborative recruitment campaign co-ordinated by Ictu and involving nearly all of the big unions (including Siptu, the TGWU, Impact and Mandate).

The campaign aims to promote awareness of an employee's right to join a trade union. Surveys have shown that the single greatest reason that people give for not joining a union is that they were never asked, Doyle says.