Public institutions and trade unions in particular are often portrayed as facing a deep crisis. In order to better understand to what extent unions are still perceived as legitimate institutions from the society as a whole (working and non‐working individuals), we analyse the determinants of confidence in unions across 14 European countries between 1981 and 2009. Confidence in unions is explained through individual‐level variables (by a rational and an ideational mechanism) and contextual‐level factors (relevant economic and employment relations characteristics). Using data from the European Values Study (EVS) merged with contextual datasets, we develop a series of regression models to examine the main determinants of confidence in unions. We demonstrate that confidence in unions cannot only be traced back to the support from members and left‐wing oriented individuals but it is also related to non‐working individuals and vulnerable social groups, in particular when confronted with economic shocks. Our findings challenge both the ‘crisis of confidence’ in institutions and the ‘crisis of unionism’ narratives. Implications for union representation and organizing strategies are discussed.

Advocacy campaigns are central to unions' efforts to impact labour rights beyond unionized workplaces. Social media and on-the-ground campaign dynamics are intimately related. Thus, if unions can become leaders on social media, they could have more impact on campaign framing and mobilizing. Drawing on primary data and applying a sequential mixed method, we analyse unions' ability to emerge as opinion leaders in Twitter dialogues on the Fight for $15 (FF$15) campaign. We track FF$15-related activities of Twitter profiles over seven months and compare union actions to those of others along three dimensions: level of activity, prevalence of tweeting versus retweeting and endorsement within FF$15 community and in the Twitter universe. Regression results show unions prefer advancing their own ideas over supporting those of others, and their messages are more endorsed than others' messages in the Twitter universe. Indepth interviews and a focus group reveal that while their actions are slow and conservative, unions can count on internal support and institutional reputation to gain leadership. The article concludes by noting the implications of the findings for unions' strategies to become opinion leaders on social media.

This article examines changes in levels of confidence in unions and proposes an intra-national comparison between Quebec and the rest of Canada based on the analysis of the three most recent waves of the World Values Survey (WVS) database, of which Canada is part (i.e. 1990, 2000, 2006). After noting differences in the trends of confidence in unions in these two regions, we applied the same logistic regression model to both regions, based on the 2006 WVS wave, in order to bring out the determinants of the propensity of individuals to express confidence in unions. The results show both similarities and differences between the two regions. As for the similarities between Quebec and the rest of Canada, it should be noted that involvement in politics and the fact of being unionized had a positive effect on the respondents’ propensity to have confidence in unions whereas most of the socio-demographic variables had no significant effects. As for the differences, the fact of reporting a higher income had a significant negative impact in Quebec, but was not significant in the rest of Canada. The fact of supporting the NDP in the rest of Canada had a more structuring effect on the propensity of individuals to have confidence in unions than the fact of supporting the BQ in Quebec. Moreover, the greater the extent to which citizens in Quebec identified with left-leaning ideological positions, the more likely they were to have confidence in unions. Finally, the respondent’s level of education was not significant in the rest of Canada but, cetiris paribus, was highly significant and positively related to confidence in unions in Quebec.

This article analyses so-called ‘subjective union membership’ among employees and non-employees in Italy between 1972 and 2013. Unlike trends drawn from administrative data (‘objective membership’), subjective membership, based on the declaration of the respondent, takes into account respondents’ awareness of being affiliated to a union, their sense of belonging and the social desirability of stating their membership status. Instrumental and ideational rationales inform our cross-sectional and longitudinal hypotheses. Using an ITANES pooled dataset based on 11,073 observations over 40 years (1972–2013), two major findings emerge. First, only a minority of politically engaged left-wing individuals have maintained the same probability of declaring themselves union members since the early 1970s. Secondly, subjective membership has sharply decreased over time not only among employees, but also – in clear contrast to administrative data – among non-employees. Subjective measures are thus particularly useful in improving our understanding of union membership.

Comparing Canadian, German and Swedish automotive unions, this article examines why since the 1990s unions have increasingly accepted High Performance Work Systems (HPWS). 'External' factors such as globalization, outsourcing and state neoliberal policies are important, but drawing upon Gramsci and Burawoy, the article adopts an 'internal' perspective emphasizing (a) how the mystification of the wage relation is a basis for capital's workplace hegemony and (b) the role of union agency via 'defend and restore' and 'modernize and adapt' strategies. The article argues that by incorporating union resistance, HPWS has acted through unions as much as it has acted upon them.

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Since 1970 Article 18 provided important employment protection for workers in larger firms in Italy. Its core aspect (i.e. reinstatement in the case of unfair dismissal) was recently overturned by the Jobs Act for employees hired after its approval. To explain Article 18’s abolition, the authors assess the explicative power of (1) stronger exogenous pressures from economic international institutions, and (2) weaker endogenous pressures from unions and business organizations. Documentary analyses and semi-structured interviews with key informants reveal that while these two forces are critical, they tend to ‘read off’ the state policy decision making role, which, the authors argue, is central to explaining the overturning of Article 18.

In this mixed-methods study, we examined the employment trajectories of immigrant employees in the construction sector in Milan and the role of unions in promoting their labour market inclusion. Drawing on a unique dataset of 417,004 contracts representing more than 166,000 construction workers over a 12-year period (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011), we employed Growth Curve Modelling (GCM) to explore national group differences in contract, firm and sector tenure trajectories. We found Egyptian and Romanian workers suffer from lowest tenure levels. To investigate these results, we conducted 15 interviews with key informants. Results suggested firm characteristics and position along the production process (mono-task), pervasive immigrant hiring queues (mono-national) and union's use of class strategies are interlocking forces that shape deep labour market segregation. We recommend unions develop and apply tailored ethnic strategies to empower highly segregated immigrant groups.Immigrants are an important component of the workforce in most Western countries, especially in sectors such as construction, but are frequently disadvantaged because of limited labour market opportunities (Buckley et al. 2016;Meardi et al. 2012;Piore 1979). The debate on the union response to immigrant workers has shifted from whether unions should include them into their folds and invest resources in organizing them (first two dilemmas proposed by Penninx and Roosblad 2000) to how unions can be an effective