ABSTRACT
Despite structural shifts in the economy and in politics at both the international and national levels, trade unions retain important functions for capitalist economies as well as for political democracies. The ongoing crisis unions are facing all over the industrialized and developing world is an important issue. There is a growing concern that the labour movement may have reached a historical turning point. For those who believe that strong unions are essential characteristics of an efficient and fair market economy as well as of a healthy political democracy, these developments are worrying indeed. Union decline threatens not only the collective regulation of industrial relations (safeguarding better wages, working conditions and job security) but it also affects, if more indirectly, the quality of the broader civil society and political life by weakening one of its largest and most significant civil actors or, in the developing world, by not developing unions to support the growth of civil society (Kelly and Frege 2004: 1). In fact, unions may even be more necessary than ever before in playing a pivotal role in the growing resistance to corporate-led globalization (cf. Turner in Frege and Kelly 2004).
