TRADE UNION FUNDING UNDER DEBATE IN LIGHT OF SOME INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCES

Since the 2017 labor reform, Brazilian trade unions have been facing increasing funding difficulties. To cope with this scenario, union leaders, politicians and intellectuals have been discussing and drawing up alternative funding proposals to the union tax. This article aims to present some international funding experiences in order to provide qualified information for the debate on forms of funding trade unions. Its object of analysis is the experience of the following countries: Japan, United States, Germany, Spain, and Argentina. The article is divided into three sections. In the first, we briefly discuss the form of organization in force in the countries analyzed. In the second, we present the cases of countries that depend only on the funding of their members and on the funds they receive for provision of services (which are provided even to non-members), as occurs in Japan, the United States, and Germany. In the third, we discuss the case of Spain and Argentina, countries that, besides union dues, can count on public subsidies or that receive compensations for the management of public funds. It’s not a question of assuming that any of these models can be automatically adopted by Brazil, but of learning about other experiences and reflecting on the different possibilities that exist.

KEYWORDS
Trade union funding; Trade unionism; Unicity; Trade union pluralism; International experiences