German unions fail to halt drop in members

The DGB, the main German union confederation, has produced figures which show that its membership fell from 6.78 million in 2005 to 6.59 million in 2006. Although this fall of 2.8% is less than the membership decline of the previous two years it still means that the "turning the tide" initiative on recruitment and organisation, which the DGB launched in 2005 has not yet produced positive figures.

However, it is the services union Verdi which has experienced the largest losses among Germany's three biggest unions. It finished the year with 2.27 million members - 3.6% down on a year earlier. IG Metall, the metalworkers' union, remains Germany's biggest union with 2.33 million members at the end of 2006 (despite a fall of 1.8%), while the chemical and energy union IGBCE lost 2.7% of its membership over the year, falling to 729,000.

Meanwhile in Italy, CISL, the country's second largest confederation and the first to publish figures for 2006, has announced that it has increased its membership by 1.3% to 4.35 million. Exactly half of these members are pensioners but the number of employed members has grown by 2.15% - a more rapid increase than for the pensioner membership.

In response to the figures, CISL's organisational secretary Nino Sorgi said: "This is a significant increase in membership, the highest of the last six years."