A triple view on trade-union activism: Cause, individual and organisation

Current challenges of trade union activism are due to changing contexts and actors (changes in industrial models and organisational practices, globalization, crisis, durable mass unemployment, generational divide, changes in the labour force with an increased participation of women, higher levels of education, mobility, individualisation processes, weakening of institutions…) and to the diversification of the forms of social commitment (the model of traditional bodies versus the model of new social movements).

The communication is based a research conducted with trade union activists in Belgium. This research mobilised one hundred trade unions activists through a participative research methodology (group analysis). The analysis is inspired by an interactionist approach that looks at the same time: at the social characteristic of activists; at the causes that mobilised individuals; at the organisations that welcome, select, train and sort individuals. The key hypothesis is that, if the context matters, becoming an activist is also the result of the conjunction between the readiness of a person's, an interest in a cause and the relationships that will set up between individuals and an organization or a group. The communication we will discuss activism and union renewal through this interactionist perspective.

References

Cultiaux John & Vendramin Patricia, Militer au quotidian - Regard prospectif sur le travail syndical de terrain (Daily activism - Prospective approach to field activism in trade-unions), Presses Universitaires de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, 2011.

Vendramin P., Le travail au singulier - Le lien social à l’épreuve de l’individualisation (Work in the singular – Social bond facing individualisation), Académia Bruylant (Louvain-la-Neuve) - L’Harmattan (Paris) Collection « Sciences & enjeux », 2004.