this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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Its crazy for me to think that there is a first world country with big companies that have no unions. In europe this is practically unheard of as far as I know.
German here. The percentage of unionized jobs has fallen to around 18% here. So it's not as great as you think. We didn't see any real raises (corrected for inflation and productivity increase) for many years. Might be one of the reasons the far right is on a rise here.
Who would guess that by the end of the Merkel Chancellorship, unions would emerge weak?
She was always going on about the need to build strength for the working class, and to protect welfare and wages by fighting against the austerity narrative propagated by elites.
She was a true friend to workers.
Pole here. Only about 10% of workers are in a union. Most of them are in Solidarność which is notoriously a right wing union and a comprador to capitalists and capitalism.
It's very, very anti communist. And a socdem-ish union like Związkowa Alternatywa is being threatened and attacked by the government constantly, wasting their resources.
So I'd say the figure of truly unionized workers is even lower... not to mention our weak labor laws...