Significant increase in members
Unions are booming thanks to successful labor disputes
January 29, 2024, 10:11 a.m
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Unions have been losing members for years. However, recent labor disputes could turn things around. Some unions will at least have significantly more members in 2023.
The unions have recovered from the Corona shock and experienced a small onslaught last year: the large service union Verdi and the small food-pleasure-restaurants union (NGG) grew again in 2023 against the long-term trend and IG Metall also managed Almost 130,000 new entries almost broke even. Organizing in a union seems to be more of a trend again, especially among young people, than in previous years when, with a few exceptions, membership numbers were only heading downwards.
Like other social institutions, trade unions are fundamentally struggling with demographic developments. Older members are slowly dying out or are leaving when they retire. The transport union EVG and the IG mining chemistry energy also shrank in 2023 for these reasons. The German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) plans to present final figures for its eight member unions this Wednesday. A year earlier, a good 5.6 million men and women were organized there.
The baby boomers are leaving soon
Verdi boss Frank Werneke immediately warned that this was not yet a long-term trend reversal towards increasing membership numbers. The real test, the mass transition of the baby boomers into retirement, is still yet to come for the unions. “It won’t just be about continuing to attract new members,” warns tariff expert Reinhard Bispinck. “A lot will also depend on whether the unions can keep the new members they have gained so far.” In crisis sectors such as the construction industry, it is also very difficult to find new members.
Thorsten Schulten, head of the WSI collective bargaining archive of the trade union Böckler Foundation, sees a fundamentally strong position of employees in the labor market in the foreseeable future, which the unions could take advantage of. In view of the high demand, employees developed a “new self-confidence” about the value of their work and demanded corresponding appreciation. But they wanted to be actively involved in union work.
Strike times are good times to recruit members
Trade union researcher Hagen Lesch from the employer-oriented Institute of Economics (IW Cologne) does not want to speak of a long-term trend. Last year, the unions succeeded very well in using their increasingly aggressive labor disputes to recruit members. Good examples are Verdi or the NGG, which fought more than 400 industrial disputes in a fragmented low-wage industry in 2023 and often achieved double-digit wage increases. Strike times are good times for recruiting members; this also applies to the competing railway unions EVG and GDL.
Tailwind for employees could come from the EU Commission, which is aiming for 80 percent collective bargaining coverage in the member states through a directive. Germany, with around 50 percent of employees, is far away from this and only reaches this half because the companies bound by collective agreements apply the agreed salaries and regulations to all employees – and not just to the union members who have the sole legal right to do so. Lesch calculates that the unions only achieved a level of organization of 17 percent among all employees. Nevertheless, the state should hold back.
WSI researcher Schulten, however, sees several areas of action for the governing traffic light coalition that could ultimately benefit the unions. Subsidies and public contracts should only go to companies that adhere to collective agreements and once collective agreements have been concluded, they should be more easily declared generally binding for the respective industry. “And thirdly, the unspeakable OT memberships (without a tariff) in employers’ associations should be ended, with which the tariff evasion is practically officially made acceptable.”