How does revitalization affect identity in the trade union movement?

The trade union movement has been put under considerable pressure the past thirty years. Thetrend is global: trade unions’ political influence and bargaining power have been pushed back asa result from globalization, and membership numbers have plummeted. As a response to thedevelopment, numerous attempts to "revitalize" the trade union movement have beenemployed. Scholars of industrial relations have taken an interest in these revitalizationprocesses and analyzed the strategies to reverse the trend. However, the research field hastaken less an interest in the internal changes that such renewal processes imply for the unions,a gap in our knowledge about trade unions that this paper aims to fill. More specifically, the paper aims to investigate how self‐perceptions changed as a result from a thorough renewalprocess in the Swedish trade union formerly known as SKTF (Svenskakommunaltjänstemannaförbundet), nowadays Vision. In order to capture self‐perceptions I examine the internal educations of SKTF. There are severalgood reasons for focusing on educations when analyzing identity: organizations’ educationalsettings constitute the forum where members – new and old – are taught the aim of theorganization and how to act as organization members, this is the arena in which values arediscussed and ideological schooling takes place. Consequently, material used in such educationsshould express identity and culture of the organization, and if we want to study how renewalprocesses impact self‐perceptions, this is a good material to use. I analyze the internaleducations of SKTF during the time period 1970‐2015