Participation in Trade Unions

Abstract

Alongside political parties and farmers’ associations, Scandinavian trade unions have been a cornerstone in class mobilization of the lower social strata and in the achievement of relatively high levels of political participation with small differences between social classes (Korpi 1981). But today, trade unions are claimed to be subject to much the same pressures as political parties — to differentiated interests and aggregation problems, problems of representativeness and member loyalty (Müller-Jentsch 1988; Bild et al. 1993), organizational obsolescence (Hancke 1991), and declining influence on public policy (Hyman 1991: 625–7).