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The Paradox of Post-Communist Trade Unionism: ‘You Can't Want What You Can't Imagine’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Epp Kallaste  and
Charles Woolfson
Epp Kallaste
Affiliation:
Estonian Center for Applied Research CentAR, Tallinn
Charles Woolfson
Affiliation:
Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society, Linköping University, Sweden
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Abstract

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This article explores employee attitudes towards trade union membership in the post-communist Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. It reports on a comparative empirical social survey of attitudes towards representation. We suggest that in addition to those employees who are union members and those who fall within an identifiable ‘representation gap’, there is a sizeable group of ‘undecided’ employees who could be persuaded to join trade unions, if they could see the relevance of collective representation. We argue that this relatively large group could be specific to the Central and East European countries, and employees who fall within the commonly understood representation gap in other countries can be found within this undecided group in Baltic countries. Trade unions therefore face a considerable challenge in proving their relevance to such employees, a problem that has wider resonances in a European context but may be more difficult to resolve in the Central and East European countries.

Type
Article
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , December 2009 , pp. 93 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2009

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