How Trade Unions Around the World Attract New Members: General Confederation of Trade Unions Holds Discussion at the "World" Platform of the "Trade Unions. XXIst Century" Forum
"As our colleagues around the world say, the truth is that only a negligible number of workers join unions for ideological or class reasons. The rest want to see daily, tangible personal benefits from joining a union," Usova reported on October 10th during the VII Intellectual Forum "Trade Unions. XXIst Century. Motives and Incentives."
For the second time, the GCTU became the general partner of the forum and organized the "World" platform, dedicated to finding the most effective union motivational projects in the Commonwealth of Independent States and globally.
Margarita Usova provided examples of various tools used by national trade union centers in CIS countries to attract new members. These include incorporating additional benefits and guarantees for all workers and specific categories of employees into legislation and collective agreements, developing discount systems and preferential programs available only to union members. Unions also engage well-known politicians, writers, athletes, actors, and other opinion leaders to promote their ideas and initiatives. Additionally, unions organize leisure activities for workers and their children, conduct educational events, and advocate for the right of legislative initiative.
At the "World" platform, Muradil Jumadilde uulu, Chairman of the Federation of Trade Unions of Kyrgyzstan, spoke about the experience of deep reforms within the FTUK. After being elected chairman in February 2024, he renewed the team of specialists at the trade union center and began to actively introduce new tools, including digital mechanisms for collecting and analyzing data on union membership and processing member requests.
"As part of our large-scale reform, we conducted an inventory of union membership and purged the register of inactive union organizations. As a result, we arrived at an honest figure of 347,500 union members. Now we can confidently work on increasing this number. We are building our work with union members on new principles. One of the main ones is constant contact with people, identifying their most pressing and relevant problems. By solving these problems, we earn the trust of citizens," he said.
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