Trade unions – between the Scylla and Charybdis of politics

Abstract

In an analysis of their own participation and level of influence in the political life of a society, unions cannot be viewed in isolation because they have always acted in a particular social environment, functionally interconnected and interdependent, on the basis of the principle of feedback. Capitalism as a social system has changed, opening new issues connected to all social factors, trade unions among them, and encompassing the issue of the political role of trade unions and their relations to other factors in political life-political parties, the state and civil society organisations, among which they also belong. The changes that have occurred in capitalism, in the nature and character of its legal system and in the mechanisms of the political, economic and social order of society, which give us the right to conclude that capitalism today is different to capitalism in the nineteenth or at the beginning of the twentieth century, have 'pushed' unions in the field of political action and have also had a significant impact on the content and form of this type of activity.

Strikes and the power/lessness of the union

“…2 Notwithstanding all its numerous developmental forms, it is indisputably a method of workers' or trade union action which implies the interruption of work until certain demands are fulfilled. For example, the current law in Serbia defines the strike as an interruption of work organised by employees to protect their work-related professional and economic interests (Marinković 2001;Marinković 2012;Ivošević 2009).…”