ABSTRACT
trade unions are formed because workpeople feel the need to join together in order to further common interests on the basis of common employment. But what is common employment and what are common interests, and what is the best form of organization for furthering them? The answers to these questions in highly industrialized democratic countries are so varied and complex that a simple logical plan of trade union organization has proved impracticable and is incompatible with effective freedom of association, with its implication of freedom for workpeople to form different types of unions and to choose which union they will join and have to represent them if they are eligible to join several. In the older industrial countries industry is so intricate and its parts so much interwoven that a complex trade union structure is inevitable. Some of this complexity is the result of historical factors, the movement being a slow, unplanned growth from small beginnings with opportunism leading to the adoption of almost every conceivable principle of organization. The difficulties have been aggravated by the rapidity with which industrial processes and techniques have been changing and new industries and occupations growing up in recent years.
