Trade Unions’ ‘Deliberative Vitality’ towards Young Workers: Survey Evidence across Europe

The vast majority of studies dealing with trade unions and young workers explain the low unionisation rate of this membership category by focussing on what — supposedly — is the intrinsically low propensity or reduced opportunities of young workers to become unionised. This is a phenomenon to which unions could respond by, for instance, launching campaigns targeted at students and offering a sample experience of union membership, focussing on ‘like-for-like’-recruitment, and stepping up their efforts at greenfield organising. Yet the pressures for union revitalisation are not dependent upon environmental factors alone; internal dynamics within the unions themselves can also stimulate innovation (Heery, 2005). Until recently, research seeking to explain the wide underrepresentation of young workers in unions has paid less attention to such endogenous, union-related reasons. This chapter, which is exploratory in nature, contributes to this alternative approach by asking, as its central question, to what extent unions promote ‘deliberative vitality’ (Lévesque and Murray, 2010) aimed at their young members. This deliberative vitality — defined here as the integration and participation of young members in union life and the internal union structures — is crucial to unions. Together with cohesive (intergenerational) collective identities, it underpins one of the power resources available to unions, namely internal solidarity, which is a prerequisite for effectively influencing the regulation of work.