The trade union movement in British Columbia, as in many other advanced economy jurisdictions, is grappling with a host of challenges. Accelerating technological innovation, stagnant productivity, shifts in business practices and the nature of work are changing the landscape for unions seeking to grow their membership.

The evolution of “union coverage” is revealing. It measures the proportion of employees who are part of a collective agreement negotiated by a union. Union coverage is a gauge of unions’ “market share” within the overall work force.

Unions have generally been losing ground on this core metric over the last few decades. Data collected by the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) shows overall coverage declining by roughly half since 1985 across the organization’s broad membership. Several factors help to explain this pattern:

British Columbia has not been immune to these trends.........

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