ABSTRACT
Burkina Faso has not been spared the ‘new winds’ that have been blowing across the African continent - sweeping a dictatorship out of the way here, sowing the seeds of IMF and World Bank Structural Adjustment Programmes there. Multi-trade unionism has been in existence here for many years, and it continues to evolve in a climate of relative social tranquillity. However, it may be that this apparent calm, of which Burkinabe leaders are so intensely proud, conceals social turmoil which trade unions, because of their lack of effectiveness, will have the greatest of difficulty in quelling.
