Rethinking trade unionism: Union renewal as transition

Peter Fairbrother

The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 2015, vol. 26, issue 4, 561-576

Abstract: Union renewal has been the subject of debate over the last two decades. Via a review of these debates, a revision of the union renewal thesis is presented, suggesting that union renewal should be examined as a process of transition. Three analytic dimensions of renewal are identified and presented, each arising out of a consideration of the debates: union organisation, union capacity and union purpose. The proposition is that an understanding of contemporary unionism involves a consideration of the ways renewal involves a multi-faceted transition in relation to the political economy of trade unionism. The way to understand this characterisation is to reconsider theories about unions in terms of a dialectic, addressing the inter-relationships and integration of union organisation, capacities and purpose.

Keywords: Labour relations; neo-liberalism; social justice; trade unions; union renewal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1035304615616593 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecolab:v:26:y:2015:i:4:p:561-576

DOI: 10.1177/1035304615616593

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Economic and Labour Relations Review
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().