If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain

With few exceptions, on a global scale, the rates of trade union density (1)and workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement (2) are plateauing, or, declining. These two metrics constitute the core of what is being called the crisis of trade unions, and of labour representation as a whole. One explanation that has been put forward for this trend is that after having achieved the highest level of human material welfare in recorded history, the call for collective action to fight for better conditions loses momentum. With the universalisation of minimum wage, paid vacations, limited workdays and workweeks, the focus has shifted to other kinds of benefits. Benefits which are growingly personalised and tailored to the individual: we are demanding that the job adapts to our schedule and not our schedule to our jobs.

Another possible explanation is that what enabled the existence of trade unions was the surge of the factory as the physical place where capitalist production happened and where labour could be formally organised. When labour is concentrated and the production techniques standardised there exists a rationale for the trade union and collective bargaining, in the traditional sense. With deindustrialisation, robotisation and the dispersion of the workforce, much of these advantages were lost. In a sense, gone are factories and with them the unions: unionism is continuing to grow in east and southeast Asia, hand in hand with its rapid industrialisation.

Increasingly, the digital platform, the user base and the platform-management businesses are gaining ground in the way we organise our work and leisure. And this is a trend which continues to grow with an increasing number of services and with new standards of on-demand consumption. Some trade unions have already seen this as an opportunity, like the case of 3F and Hilfr (3) in Denmark or GMB and Hermes (4) in the UK, and have shown how advantageous agreements can be achieved if all parties work together.

Yet, so much more could be accomplished if we fully embrace this new platform economy and recognise each others role in it, benefiting customers, businesses and workers in the process. We could unlock the platform’s capabilities and tools to fight poverty with easier job registration, stronger social safety nets and overall formalisation of the shadow economy. We could build better and more responsive social security systems, with better unemployment, capacity building and job training programmes. We could empower fraud detecting and law enforcement efforts with better identity validation and tax compliance protocols. We could empower unions and communities through innovative preference aggregation methods like delegated voting and online forum discussions. We could expand benefits by tailoring health insurance, retirement programmes and rest days to each individual need. When we realise that the challenge is not whether we can resist or precipitate change but how we can cooperate, then we can start the truly arduous job of figuring out what values we deem essential and must preserve, and what things we allow to be swept away.

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1. ILO Data center
2. ILO Data center
3. Hilfr (housekeeping app) and 3F (one of Denmarks’ largest trade unions, signed a collective bargaining agreement in 2018.
4. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47110934