Unions around the world are facing massive changes in industries, sectors, supply chains, legislation, and workforces. Increasing cooperation between unions builds unity and can help lift the voice of working people at local, regional, national, and international levels. These materials look at different ways that unions might restructure or increase cooperation in order to build power.
Cooperation structures may need to be strengthened within a sector, supply chain, to work on policy issues such as climate change or to impact a multinational company. A proliferation of unions can lead to problems of cooperation, financing, lack of bargaining power and viability that needs to be addressed. Unions may need to restructure to support the organising of informal and non-union workers. Boundaries between unions may be increasingly blurred as a result of external changes such as the privatisation of the public sector, or the growth of subcontracted work or changes in production and distribution processes.
Union mergers may occur as a reaction to external events, such as the decline of membership or financial difficulties, or because a union wants to coordinate organising or bargaining in a key sector.
When we change union structures, we need to make sure that workers fully participate in building both the change process and the new structures. A restructuring process can open up opportunities to improve problems of underrepresentation of particular groups of workers and strengthen self-organisation structures within the union such as for women, racial/ethnic groups and youth.
The restructuring of unions usually occurs after careful analysis, deliberation and with a strategic plan as it can involve substantial political and material costs. Once you understand the potential benefits of structural change and have a mandate from union leadership structures, you can use these materials in conjunction with the Strategic Planning materials to create a plan that fits your situation.
There are many reasons that unions decide to restructure or increase their cooperation with other unions. It is important to be clear about the intended purpose and goals.
Driving external political, legal or economic factors and internal factors such as financial difficulties or membership losses need to be fully understood. You may need to gather information and research to help the union fully understand the broader reasons for the proposed changes.
If one of the reasons motivating the union to restructure is the inclusion of informal worker associations, the materials on Informal Workers will assist you. If you are motivated by the need to increase cooperation with other unions and to confront climate change, the materials on Climate Justice will be helpful.
What are the potential benefits to restructuring or increasing union cooperation in your situation?
Identify the major organising campaigns, collective bargaining, advocacy or other challenges such as climate change that your union will be facing in the coming years. Could increasing your cooperation with other unions and worker organisations help you succeed?
Check all reasons below that might apply and then prioritise the top one to three reasons that are driving the proposed change.
Discuss the key reasons in detail. Gather additional information and research to ensure that your decision to move forward is fully informed.
Improve internal democratic procedures by drawing from other union structures and cultures
Unions cooperate at the international, regional, and national levels through a variety of labour federations, national centres, confederations, associations and union networks.
National and regional union centres help unions coordinate policy and legislation, bargaining, campaigns and organising as well as the sharing of information and skills between unions. They often help labour movements coordinate and pool resources during organising campaigns and electoral work.
The ITUC (International Trade Union Confederation) is the global confederation of national union federations that builds union cooperation at the international level.
A Global Union Federation (GUF) is an international confederation of national and regional trade unions organised by specific industry sectors. Global Union Federations are particularly important in helping unions coordinate their work across national borders within a multinational company or supply chain. GUFs keep up with global changes in their industries and provide critical research and resources to affiliated unions. They also assist unions with internal union growth, trade union education, support for underrepresented groups by gender, race and ethnicity and age, and help unions face global challenges such as climate change.
Global Union Federations coordinate between themselves to impact global supply chains and cross-industry transnationals. For example, transport workers, warehouse workers, tech and administrative workers need to work together to have the maximum impact on logistics giants such as DHL. The global union federation for transport, the ITF (International Transport Federation) and the global federation for postal and logistics, UNI (Union Network International) have together created an international network of unions in delivery companies such as DHL, TNT, UPS, and FedEx.
Unions can access additional power resources by coordinating nationally and regionally.
In 2007, three global union federations – the Union Network International Asia-Pacific Regional Office (UNI-Apro), Building and Wood Workers International Asia-Pacific (BWI-AP), and Public Services International Asia-Pacific (PSI-AP) – came together to formally establish the ASEAN Services Employees Trade Union Council (ASETUC). ASETUC aims to influence the discourse on regional integration by “institutionalising” labour’s voice in the integration process in the pursuit of a more social Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
To date, “institutionalisation”, either formally or informally, of this voice is manifested in several key accomplishments at the regional level. These include, among others, ASETUC’s annual conduct of the Regional Tripartite Social Dialogue Conference (RTSDC), which continued to be part of the annual program of the ASEAN Senior Labour Officials Meeting for the period 2016-2020, and ASETUC’s Consultative Relationship status with the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), the overarching ASEAN body on human rights.
Serrano, Melisa R. 2017. Trade Unions in Transformation—Institutionalizing Labour’s Voice in ASEAN: The ASETUC Initiative. Berlin: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Global Policy and Development. Available at: library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/13753.pdf.
European Works Councils are worker management representative structures that are established under European law in multinationals that have over 1,000 workers in two or more countries in Europe.
In one EWC, the unions negotiated improvements in training hours and apprenticeships. In Belgium the unions were able to use the EWC agreement to prevent threatened layoffs and avoid concessions on working conditions during a major restructuring due to an economic crisis. Learning from the Belgian experience, Italian unions stopped the company’s attempt to increase outsourcing and instead implement an overtime bonus. The EWC helped unions in Britain win improved working conditions for agency workers and stop workers from having to work longer hours in Germany.
“The European Framework Agreements create a common platform where … people can learn from practices in different countries and try to adopt them … or spin off into further national legislation.”
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959680116685955
Unions also cooperate bilaterally within an industrial sector at the national, regional, and international levels.
The German and the US auto workers’ unions have established a “Transnational Partnership Initiative (TPI) with a goal of increased cooperation and organising of non-union auto workers.
Fichter, Michael. 2017. Transnationalizing Unions: The Case of the UAW and the IG Metall. FES Trade Unions in Transformation. https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/14342.pdf
What union federations, associations or networks does your union already participate in at the local, national, regional, and international levels? Is your union a member of a Global Union Federation? A national and/or regional centre?
Does your union participate in campaigning and organising, coordinated bargaining, advocacy, or other work through these structures? How are workers involved?
How does this cooperation increase your power resources?
There are a number of ways unions can join together to cooperate and increase their power, each with varying levels of commitment. There are choices to be made about what level of integration is best and when it should be implemented.
Discuss which of the options listed below could benefit your situation.
If there is more than one option that could benefit, list the top three advantages and disadvantages to each. Discuss which option might be best to start with.
The ITF Network of Aviation Unions in Latin America is a network of unions and federations that has been working together for over 15 years. Over the years, the network has demonstrated several different types of successful union cooperation.
The Aviation Union Network was started by unions in the largest aviation company in Latin America, LATAM, which operates in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The network includes mechanics, ground staff, baggage handlers, administrative workers, dispatchers, cabin crew and pilots. In 2015, the network expanded to include unions from the second largest aviation company in Latin America, Avianca. As the network has grown it has also incorporated key aviation workers such as air traffic controllers and air traffic services from the public sector and subcontracted ramp workers.
The network shares information on working conditions, legal frameworks, union strategies, structures and advocacy work in the various countries and sectors. Together the unions plan coordinated campaigning, organising and collective bargaining work together. When LATAM filed for bankruptcy in the United States in May 2020, the network coordinated the union strategy to jointly intervene in the US legal process.
A high level of trust and mutual learning and solidarity has developed among the unions which has allowed the unions to win key organising and collective bargaining demands.
Through the network the unions have increased their sharing of information and solidarity work by sector. Both the cabin crew and the mechanic unions hold international meetings to compare the details of working conditions and salary levels between countries. This has enhanced their power at the negotiating table and created increased support for each other's industrial disputes. In the 2014 strike by the Peruvian mechanics union, members of the Argentina, Brazil and Chilean aviation mechanic unions worked closely with the Peruvian union, talking to workers together and planning strike strategies at the international level. This enabled the unions to greatly increase the wages of the Peruvian mechanics, together fight social dumping, and bring the Peruvian conditions to a level comparable to Argentina and Chilean mechanics for the first time in the history of the company.
The unions in the network have also increased their cooperation at the national level. In 2010, the Argentine unions demanded joint bargaining take place with LATAM. The unions went on strike at the airport and were able to win the right to joint bargaining, the reinstatement of fired union leaders, and collective bargaining for all LATAM workers for the first time as well as improved salaries and working conditions.
In another example of increased national cooperation, in 2016 the cabin crew, administrative, dispatcher and mechanic unions in Peru began sharing office space together in order to pool their resources and intensify their work together. In Colombia, in 2012, the unions merged the smaller mechanic, cabin crew, dispatchers and administrative unions into a national industry union, SINTRATAC. With the increased negotiating power of the industrial union, the company agreed to negotiate a union contract for the first time and the workers won protection from being fired or subcontracted as well as improvement in salaries and working conditions.
Feller, Dina and Conrow, Teresa (2017). The Power of Aviation Unions in South America: The ITF LATAM Union Network. Berlin: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Global Policy and Development. Available at: (https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/13817.pdf)
The Nagkaisa labour coalition in the Philippines is an example of union cooperation at the national level.
In April 2012, over 40 labour organizations comprising labour centres, federations, and other workers’ organisations came together to launch the Nagkaisa (United) labour coalition, the biggest alliance of labour groups and workers’ organisations in modern history of the trade union movement in the Philippines. Three of the four Philippine trade unions that are affiliates of the International Trade Union Confederation – the Federation of Free Workers, Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, and Sentrong Nagkakaisa at Progresibong Manggagawa (Center for United and Progressive Workers) – are part of the coalition.
The launching of Nagkaisa was the culmination of years of talks and dialogues among the labour organisations. The labour organisations comprising Nagkaisa remain independent and their collective actions and demands as a coalition are therefore issue-based. At its launching, the various trade unions and workers’ organisations committed themselves to cooperate on four issues: advance workers’ security of tenure, reduce the price of electricity, empower public sector workers, and improve workers’ living wage.
Through campaigns, mobilisations, and lobbying work, Nagkaisa has had some notable achievements, such as the tightening of regulations on the use of subcontracted/agency work (i.e., the issuance of Department Order No. 174 by the Department of Labour and Employment), the ratification of ILO Convention 151 Labour Relations (Public Service) in 2017, and the enactment of Republic Act No. 11210, or the “105-Day Expanded Maternity Leave Law”, which extends paid maternity leave from 60 to 105 days.
With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns imposed by the Philippine government, Nagkaisa mobilised several protest actions (while observing physical distancing measures and other health protocols) to pressure the government to provide social assistance to displaced workers and other vulnerable workers and to ensure workers’ health and safety as they return to work.
Nagkaisa demanded the government recognise COVID-19 as an occupational disease so that workers infected by coronavirus can get compensation from the Employees’ Compensation Commission and to grant a 14-day paid pandemic leave to afflicted workers. In April 2021, Nagkaisa won Commission approval for inclusion of the coronavirus disease in its list of compensable occupational and work-related diseases. Meanwhile, House Bill No. 7909 or the Paid Pandemic Leave Law of 2020, was approved by the Committee on Labor and Employment of the House of Representatives in March 2021. The bill will have to go through some legislative hurdles in the House and in the Senate before it can be introduced as law.
If unions are fragmented or only represent workers at one company, they may be able to increase their power resources by industry-wide or sectoral bargaining or union mergers. This can help remove wage competition and encourage companies to compete in terms of quality and productivity rather than by lowering working conditions.
Industrial bargaining and industry-based union structures can help increase negotiating power, provide a deeper working knowledge of the industry, develop industry standards and benefits, increase union participation in industry policy and legislative issues, and can help the union survive and fight layoffs or bankruptcies in any one particular company.
The global union federation IndustriALL explains the importance of industry-wide bargaining using the example of the global textile and garment industry. “The best way to balance competing interests at national level in any sector is tripartite industry-wide collective bargaining; employers’ association, unions and the government negotiate legally binding agreements which cover the entire sector. Rather than negotiating factory by factory, all the unions negotiate with representatives of all the factories, like in South Africa, for example. The obvious benefit for workers is that is raises conditions. But it is also good for industry: by taking wages and workers’ conditions out of competition, it improves the quality of the industry by forcing out marginal producers. It rewards those who invest more in productivity, in machinery and in training, and who make long-term commitments.”
IndustriALL further explains “This model needs to be extended to all producer countries, and the element of wage competition between countries must be addressed. Global brands need to pledge that if a country introduces collective bargaining and wages rise as a consequence, that they're not going to shift production to another country to save money. If a critical mass of brands agrees to remove wages as a factor by making wages a fixed cost, then the basis of competitive tendering becomes quality, production speed, turnaround, and proximity to markets.” http://www.industriall-union.org/special-report-changing-the-balance-of-power-in-the-textile-and-garment-industry
In Romania, banking unions have been able to restore industry collective bargaining in the midst of massive restructuring and digitalisation of their industry. High turnover and a tight labour market contributed to the signing of a multi-employer agreement covering the majority of the big banks with a breakthrough commitment from the employers for increased professional training, upskilling and reskilling that will provide a more stable workforce.
Guga, Stefan and Marcel Spatari. 2020. Back to Bargaining in Banking: How digitalization plays Romanian Trade Unions an Upper Hand. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. Available at:
In some countries, separate unions are organised for each type of work and for each company. In countries without legislative barriers to industry bargaining, unions may be able to represent all worker in an industry simply by changing their own constitution and structures.
In Chile, a negotiating framework was developed during the time of the Pinochet dictatorship in which dozens of different and separate unions could be working to impact any one employer. Chilean legislation was changed in 2017 in order to allow more possibilities for unions to conduct negotiations with several employers at the same table. Employers have been reluctant to bargain under this new legislation, but Chilean unions continue to push towards industry rather than company unions.
A step towards industry-wide bargaining is to coordinate bargaining dates so that contracts expire during the same time period. Sharing information about bargaining, planning bargaining campaigns together, and supporting each other’s bargaining campaigns can help build increased cooperation and power within an industry.
Clear and strong demarcation lines by industry or geography can lessen conflicts between unions when organising and representing workers.
In Nigeria, two petroleum and gas worker unions joined together their organising and campaigning strategies and formed a joint national executive council to bargain for and win gains for precarious workers in the sector.
Aye, Baba. 2017. “Nupengassan”: Combatting precarious work in the Nigerian oil industry. ILO Working Paper.
Would your union benefit by strengthening industry-wide union structures or bargaining?
How can you increase the level of cooperation with other unions in your sector or industry?
Is there a need to change your union constitution or structures to include other workers in your industry?
If you are not engaged in industry/sectoral bargaining or coordinated bargaining, what steps can be taken to begin to do so?
Unions may decide to merge in order to work jointly, pool their resources and increase their strategic power in an industry or geographic area. They may decide to merge due to legislation requiring a particular density of membership within a company, sector or industry. One union may be facing serious financial difficulty or repression and needs to merge with a more solvent union in order to survive.
Decide if there are other unions or structures you want to work with more closely. To work together for the long term, it is important to share common purpose and build strong relationships at all levels of the union – elected leaders, staff and rank-and-file workers. Not all unions will share enough of the same mission, values, politics and decision-making structures to make a merger feasible. It may be helpful to create a strategic planning process for the union prior to, or as part of, a merger process.
In a merger process, it will be important to fully understand the other union(s) that you are merging with. The materials on Analysing Power Resources can be used to look at the structural, associational, institutional, and structural power of the other unions. A successful merger will build power for the unions involved.
It is particularly important to understand the organisational cultures of the unions involved in a potential merger. The culture of an organisation is defined by the key assumptions and beliefs shared by an organisation’s members. To learn a union’s organisational culture, learn what stories are told about the union and the history of the union, what jargon and behaviours are common to union leaders and members, and what is commonly considered to be the union’s strengths and weaknesses.
The Ugandan Amalgamated Transport and General Workers Union (ATGWU) successfully merged a number of mass membership precarious transport worker associations into the union through an affiliation process.
The process of transformation through the affiliations can be summarised “as a union with declining associational power, but with residual structural and institutional power, that combined with informal workers’ associations possessing considerable associational and structural power, but with no access to institutional power. Both benefit and the result is a union transformed into a large and potentially very powerful organisation uniting informal and formal economy workers.”
Spooner, Dave and John Mark Mwanika. 2017. Transforming Transport Unions through Mass Organisation of Informal Workers in Uganda. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. Available at: http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/13643.pdf
The merger process must be analysed from the workplace and membership perspective. The question of how workers will be better off under the proposed merger must be discussed and analysed.
Unions differ in their level of central vs local control of decision-making and resources. The merger process requires that such differences be resolved. You will need to look at the feasibility of merging information, membership and financial technologies and fee structures as well as decision-making and leadership structures. Political fragmentation and alliances will need to be examined and addressed and unity of purpose strengthened. Staff and resources may need to be reallocated in the new union. Union mergers can result in increased levels of bureaucracy if not carefully planned.
Plan for a significant amount of time prior to or during the merger process for the unions to work together on specific joint campaigns or areas of work. Inadequate communication and transparency between the unions involved can lead to difficulties in the merger process. Working together can help increase communication, cooperation and understanding of each other’s strengths and weaknesses and improve the merger process.
List any unions or worker associations that you might want to merge with.
Learn more about each of these unions.
Understand the specifics of how each of the unions uses their structural, associational, institutional, and societal power, including your own union.
Use the power resource questions in the Tool Kit to assist you.
What might be gained if you merged with these unions? What might be lost?
Seek the help of people with facilitation, negotiation and mediation skills, respected leaders, and elders to assist with the merger process.
A union merger can be organised as an acquisition or as an amalgamation.
An acquisition involves the transfer of membership, property, and funds from one union to another. When the transfer takes effect, the transferring union ceases to exist. A vote is needed by the members of the transferring union only.
A union amalgamation occurs when two or more unions merge their membership, properties and funds, creating a new amalgamated union. Once amalgamated, the previous unions cease to exist. The amalgamation requires a vote by members of all the amalgamating unions.
In Australia, unions made a conscious decision to merge in the 1990s, resulting in larger, more industry-based unions. Merger activity was coordinated by the Australia Council of Trade Unions.
“The following are some observations from an Australian union about what to consider when considering or planning a merger:
“Growing Together: Managing Trade Union Co-operation and Merger” Public Services International (PSI).
These general steps in a merger process can be adjusted to fit your situation. Plan carefully how members, leaders and staff will be involved in the merger-planning and decision-making.
Decision to merge
Preparing the union
Merger partners
Negotiations
Merger
Post-Merger
How can these steps in the merger process be adjusted to fit your situation?
A tentative agreement or memorandum of understanding for a union merger can include some or all of the following clauses:
Elected positions can be distributed amongst the different unions during the first election period if it is important to ensure representation at the beginning of the new union. No matter how it is structured, the election process for the new merged union will need to be clear, detailed, and transparent to avoid confusion and conflict.
The merger process provides an opportunity to address how the new merged union can support groups that have been under-represented in the unions by gender, age, ethnic or racial group, type of work or other criteria. Support for self-organisation, quotas, access to union resources and other mechanisms can be improved in the new merged union.
The merger memorandum should include written agreements regarding any contentious areas such as finance and membership systems, internal decision-making processes, election processes, as well as details on how key areas of work and resources will be coordinated. Workplace representation, trade union education, and decision-making involving industrial action, bargaining, and organising may be included.
The more you prepare for possible conflicts resulting from the merger process, the less likely they are to occur. Identify the possible areas of conflict and together brainstorm potential solutions. A grievance and arbitration clause allowing for an independent third party to resolve future grievances can be included in the merger agreement or memorandum of understanding. The evaluation and review process should include an analysis of how the merger has impacted the lives of workers and working conditions.
What would need to be included in the written merger agreement?
What subjects are areas of potential conflict?
How can you reduce conflict in those areas by advance communication and planning?
The timing and steps of a merger process can be planned to best meet the needs of the unions involved.
If a possible merger is in your future, how might you time the process to best fit your situation?
What would be the advantages and disadvantages of each scenario?
What might the timing of the merger process best look like in your situation?
What steps need to be taken to prepare the timing of the merger process?
These materials were adapted from
“Growing Together: Managing Trade Union Cooperation and Mergers”. Public Services International.
https://www.ilo.org/public/english/staffun/info/meetings/international/gva0905/growing.pdf
“Union Amalgamations: A Guide to How and Why. 1993. New Zealand Council of Trade Unions”
LO-Norway. 2012. A Guide on Trade Union Mergers Processes: Lessons from Africa and Norway