614214

research-article2015
WES0010.1177/0950017015614214Work, employment and societyBook review

Book review

Work, employment and society

Book review
1­–2
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0950017015614214
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A Hodder and L Kretsos (eds)

Young Workers and Trade Unions: A Global View
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015; £75.00 hbk, (ISBN: 9781137429513), 224 pp.

Reviewed by Jane Holgate, Leeds University Business School, UK

This book on young workers is a welcome addition both to the academic and practitioner
literature on trade unions, particularly as anyone undertaking a search on this topic will
find few resources with which to engage. It is surprising that given that so much has been
written about the crisis of trade unionism in industrialized countries, and the need for
unions to ‘organize or die’, that there has been little focus on the very constituency that
unions need to engage with to ensure a union movement still exists in the next few dec-
ades – that of young workers.
Throughout this edited collection of 12 chapters, we are provided with a wealth of
data relating to union density and membership of ‘young’ workers in different countries.
‘Young’ appears to be a concept that is hard to define as government statistics and trade
unions collect data in different ways such that young stretches to the age of 35. While the
editors and contributors to this collection are forced to work with the data available to
them, the expanding definition of ‘young’ is problematic in a number of ways – not least
that there are huge social and cultural differences between 18–20-year-olds and those
that are over 30 years of age. That said, the data provided demonstrate the profound
demographic crisis facing the union movement across the industrialized world as older
union members leave the labour market and are not replaced by those entering. With the
exception of Argentina, union density is exceedingly low among young workers in all of
the other countries written about in this book (Europe and Anglo-speaking countries) –
often 50 per cent lower than those in higher age groups.
Reading this book from start to finish, the reader hopes that a more positive story will
emerge when the next chapter is reached; however the story is unremittingly bleak. The
repetitiveness of the country chapters explaining why young workers are not members of
trade unions is not the fault of the writers, but demonstrates that the factors, despite
national differences, are remarkably similar. The forward march of neoliberalism and
structural changes in labour markets have created a precarious workforce among young
people – if of course they are ‘lucky’ enough to find themselves in work at all. While
youth unemployment is high in many countries, in places like Greece and Spain, youth
unemployment has risen above 50 per cent. However, an overriding message from the

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2 Work, employment and society 

book is that numerous surveys show that young people are not averse to trade unions and
campaigning for their rights – it is just that unions are either not organized where young
people work, or they are perceived (in many cases, rightly) as being primarily concerned
with defending the rights of more protected workers – the ‘old dusty men’.
Each of the chapters report on the fact that unions or union confederations recognize
the need to address the problem of young workers joining trade unions, and there are a
number of examples where attempts at engagement have taken place. These amount to
initiatives to bring on new leadership, giving space to young members to organize them-
selves into caucuses, or youth committees, but overall the sense is this is, in most cases,
too little and too late.
The editors make a brave attempt to be positive in their concluding comments, saying
that they ‘wish to avoid painting an apocalyptic picture, when talking about the future of
unionism’ (p. 196), but it is difficult, given the evidence provided, to draw an otherwise
conclusion. Unions, they say, appear scared of unleashing the self-activity of [young]
members, but this is precisely what is needed if the union movement is to attract this
constituency. The editors recognize this when their final statement says: ‘a radical strate-
gic re-orientation of trade union organization is necessary to recruit and organise more
young workers and to engage them in a respectable manner into the contemporary union
praxis. Such engagement cannot take place without drastic organisation change’ (p. 198).
This book shows that, given the chance, young workers are willing to join and be
active in trade unions, but evidence suggests quite strongly that unions will have to
change fundamentally if they want to exist as a powerful force in the future.

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