Differences between American and European trade-unions.

Essay by SmokanabeachUniversity, Bachelor's December 2005

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French and European trade-unions.

The power of trade-unions et its importance depend on the national habits. That's why we can oposed two main type of trade-unions in Europe: In the first hand, german or scandinav trade-unions which are reformists and priviligee negociations between employers and employees; and in the other hand, latin trade-unions, as the french one, which are more revolutionary and act through strikes in order to defend salarees

This difference makes us understand that there's a growing gap between the unionization rate of those two kind of countries. So, for instance this unionization rate represents less than 10% where as in Sweden it reaches around 80%.

In fact, if each trade-union has different caracteristics in each country, this trends ttends to be reduce. Effectively, the most part of european countries recognize trade-unions as privilegee partners in term of social and legal regulation.

French trade-unions.

Beyond working-class origins and strict revendications, trade-unions symbolize the best way for salarees to be represented and defended (From farmers trade-unions to trade-unions of tertiary sector).

That's why trade-unions is essential in the firms life, dealing with social organisms wich manage retirement, social services and unempoyment benefits.

The crisis of trade-unions since 1970

a) Some figures

Through this figures we can constat that the number of unionized workers has obviously decreased. For instance, CGT numbered nearly 1,870,000 unionists in 1973 where as they're only 639,000 today. Moreover, we can suppose that this decrease has influence the number of labor conflicts: in fact, workers are less involved in strike for exemple in strike because they're not protected by unionization

Through this second tabler, we observe that the uninization rate in France has been reduced to 56% this last past 20 years. At the opposite, in Sweden or Danmark it tends to grow. Finally, we...