ABSTRACT
What is happening to the Italian trade union movement? For a long time both Italian social scientists and union leaders themselves regarded the decline of the organized labour movement as a consequence of the loss of appeal of unions, contrary to other European countries. According to Visser (1993, p. 17) while unionism has been the largest and probably the most influential social movement of the twentieth century, as we approach the end of the century it seems to have lost its importance. After a large growth in membership during the 1970s, at the end of the 1980s most European unions lost members and unionization rates declined. This happened in Austria, Italy, Holland, France, Switzerland, Germany, United Kingdom, Ireland and even in some Scandinavian countries.
