The neoliberal agenda dominating the EU for the past 40 years has been a severe challenge for the trade unions, which have lost organisational strength. Even in Sweden, union density has declined, but the country still has the second highest unionisation rate in the world, only surpassed by Iceland. Almost seven out of ten employees in Sweden are union members.
In June of this year, the European Trade Union Institute (Etui) in Brussels and publishing house Peter Lang published an open-access book of almost 1200 pages about the trade unions in the 27 EU member states: Trade unions in the European Union. Picking up the pieces of the neoliberal challenge.
Professor Anders Kjellberg has written the book chapter on Sweden: "Trade unions in Sweden: still high union density, but widening gaps by social category and national origin". The latter part of the title refers to the growing unionisation gap between white-collar and blue-collar workers (white-collar workers now have a considerably higher union density than blue-collar workers) and between domestic-born and foreign-born workers.
Download the book in its entirety at peterlang.com.
The chapters can be individually downloaded from the Etuis website.
Visit Anders Kjellberg's page for more information about his research.