Trade union membership and density in the 1990s

After an initial boost by German unification, aggregate trade union membership in Germany fell by almost 3.5 million between 1991 and 1998. Only one of the four main trade union organisations has been able to increase membership since 1991, while union density reached a record low of 32% in 1998.

In Germany, workers' interests are represented by four large trade union organisations which regularly publish membership figures. In descending order of size these are:

• the German Federation of Trade Unions (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, DGB), which consists of 12 large industrial unions organising all sectors and occupations;

• the German Federation of Career Public Servants (Deutscher Beamtenbund, DBB), which recruits not only career public servants but also blue-collar and white-collar employees in the public sector;

• the German White-Collar Workers' Union (Deutsche Angestellten-Gewerkschaft, DAG), which organises white-collar employees; and

• the Christian Trade Union Federation of Germany (Christlicher Gewerkschaftsbund, CGB), which follows the long-standing tradition of Christian trade unionism and organises across all occupations and sectors.

Membership figures for these union organisations point to strong changes in unionisation in the 1990s.

Membership fluctuations since German unification

Total membership of the "big four" trade union organisations stagnated around the 9.5 million mark in the 1980s in West Germany. After German unification, West German trade unions expanded into East Germany, taking over East German trade unions and most of their members. As a consequence, total union membership rose to more than 13.7 million in 1991.

Since then, however, total membership has fallen every year, as indicated by table 1 below. From 1991 to 1998, German trade unions lost almost 3.5 million members. A large share of these losses seem to stem from eastern German workers leaving the unions because of unemployment and disillusion with the western-type unionism, but since not all unions provide separate figures for eastern and western Germany, it is hard to draw definite conclusions. Membership is also falling because unions have severe problems in recruiting younger workers and employees in the growing private service sector.

The substantial decrease of aggregate membership masks different developments in the four main union organisations:

• the DGB unions have been most severely affected by membership problems. From 1991 to 1998, they lost almost 30% of their members. Nevertheless, DGB remains the strongest and most influential union organisation. Its largest affiliate, the metalworkers' union (Industriegewerkschaft Metall, IGM), is still Germany's largest trade union, with almost 2.8 million members;

• DBB is the only organisation which has been able to increase membership in recent years, partly by organising the relatively large public sector in eastern Germany. DBB membership had almost reached 1.2 million in 1998;

• membership figures for DAG have fallen below 500,000, which means that they are now even lower in the united Germany than they were in the 1980s in West Germany; and

• CGB did not profit much from unification but has not shown a substantial fall in membership, which has stagnated around 300,000.