Research question/goal:

The international research project aimed at providing an empirical base to a long-term and comparative understanding of changes and variations in union movements in twelve West European countries and at the European level. The main results were published in a number of contributions to journals and a comparative data handbook. National and comparative databases were made available on CD-ROM. The handbook provides information on the context and history of union development, the changes in the structure of post-war unionism, the long-term trends in union membership and union density, and the shifts in the cross-sectional composition of union membership. The CD-ROM includes selected tables from the handbook and provides additional databases with organisational data and membership series of major national and European union organisations. As a comprehensive and up-to-date data collection on postwar union movements, Trade Unions in Western Europe since 1945 serves not only as a reference for current users but also as data source for further analysis in future research on trade unions.