Young Workers and Unions in Spain: A Failed Meeting?

The decline in union membership in most of Western Europe has been widely discussed in the field of industrial relations (Fairbrother and Yates, 2003; Furåker and Berglund, 2003; Waddington and Kerr, 2002; Willman et al., 2007), with a dearth of research devoted to the situation of young workers, often poorly unionised. Some accounts have claimed that the low figures of membership to trade unions by young workers are the result of new individualist attitudes embedded in the transition to a Post-Fordist society (Pakulski and Waters, 1996). Such attitudes would become more common in working life, helping to disengage young employees from the collective values represented by the unions. However, recent research has suggested that the picture is somewhat more complex. Surveys carried out in different countries have shown that young workers maintain a positive view on unions when compared with other age cohorts, and the reasons why their membership figures are lower are the result of other factors, particularly their position in the labour market — linked to unstable jobs in the service sector (Furåker and Berglund, 2003; Tailby and Pollert, 2011; Vandaele, 2012; Waddington and Kerr, 2002). Therefore the poor unionisation of young employees is the result of a twofold process: on the one hand, their fragile position in the labour market, deeply affected by non-standard employment forms (Bradley and Devadason, 2008; Koch and Fritz, 2013), and the growth of precarious jobs (Kretsos, 2010; Standing, 2011); and on the other hand, the failure of trade unions to deploy strategies to engage and organise these workers (Johnson and Jarley, 2005).