Break up to Get Back Together: The Impact of Unionisation Through Innovative Service Provision on Union Membership and Industrial Relations. Comparative Report

The issue of the renewal of union membership has been at the heart of the debate on industrial relations for many years. Among the possible strategies for revitalising collective action, the literature has mainly focused on organising; less attention has been paid to servicing. Servicing goes beyond the supply of individual goods as a form of "selective incentives" to join the unions. Instead, it is a strategy based on the supply of services, which aims to bring both workers who are most distant from the unions and those who are located in a marginal position or outside the labour market. Unlike organising, in which the renewal of membership is pursued through the creation of new communities of worker-activists, the rationale of servicing is to increase the perceived usefulness of membership in the union. This work presents the results of a comparative analysis of the research activities in five countries – i.e. Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Lithuania, and Spain.