The Commercial and Clerk Union – Strategies for Union Revitalization

Abstract

The decline in union membership in Europe started in the 1980’s but in fact union density peaked in Denmark in 1994. From 1995 to 2010 union density fell from 73,1 to 67,4 per cent, so now one third of the employees in the Danish labour market are unorganised. In contrast, only 25 per cent of employees decided to stay out of unions in 1995. In the same period, the Danish ‘Commercial and Clerk Union’ (HK), has lost about 15 per cent of its members and HK have reorganised its internal structure and formulated a new strategy for revitalization of the union. A research project – organised in Carma at Aalborg University – is evaluating the process and the results of HKs revitalisation project by looking at the work of one local union in HK: HK Østjylland. The methodology of the research project is based on union membership theory, the classic union membership theory, the conventional demand and supply framework, theory dealing with the ‘Free Rider problem’ and, finally, the social custom approach to unionization. The different kinds of theory of determinants of union membership stress two motives of joining the unions: individual utility optimization, where the union is satisfying the needs of the individual – both collective and individual needs – and motives based on collective values, and class consciousness. It is shown that the strategy pursued by the local HK union points in quite different directions, which in part is due to the fact that the local HK union consists of four different sectors; two for the private sector and two for the public sector. Some of the strategies have inspiration from the theory individual utility maximization and other parts of the strategies are more or less based on the classical theory of collective values and class consciousness, especially the use of the so called ‘organising model’. The paper suggests that HK and the local union have no common strategy for recruiting and retaining members, but all the different strategies are relying on initiatives at the workplace level, carried out by the shop stewards in co-operation with the local union.