Labour official urges unions to rethink recruitment of youth and women
By Kisean Joseph kisean.joseph@antiguaobserver.com Caribbean trade unions are being challenged to fundamentally rethink how they engage young workers and women, with a regional labour official warning that traditional recruitment methods have become obsolete amid a generational shift in how people communicate and consume information. UNI Americas Regional Vice President Trevor Johnson issued the call during […]
Black News 
By Kisean Joseph
kisean.joseph@antiguaobserver.com
Caribbean trade unions are being challenged to fundamentally rethink how they engage young workers and women, with a regional labour official warning that traditional recruitment methods have become obsolete amid a generational shift in how people communicate and consume information.
UNI Americas Regional Vice President Trevor Johnson issued the call during a visit to Antigua and Barbuda, the final stop on a four-country Caribbean tour by UNI Global Union. Johnson said the failure to modernise outreach is not a reflection of disinterest among young people, but a failure of unions to meet them where they are.
“We need to discover what will attract a young person today, which is not the same thing that necessarily would have attracted me,” Johnson said, noting that notice boards, phone calls, and in-person meetings the traditional tools of union recruitment hold little appeal for a generation that communicates primarily through mobile devices and social media platforms.
He said unions that continue to rely on those methods risk extinction, drawing a pointed analogy between union density and the survival of species.
“Any race, any species that does not reproduce after its own kind, that’s how some animals become extinct,” Johnson said. “You must reproduce or, in terms of union, organise after your own kind.”
Johnson said the challenge extends beyond youth outreach. He noted that women now constitute a significantly larger share of the workforce than in previous generations, yet most collective bargaining agreements continue to be framed around the needs and experiences of male workers. He called on unions to identify and address the specific issues affecting women in the workplace as a prerequisite for growing female membership.
Despite the scale of the challenge, Johnson expressed confidence that the fundamentals of trade unionism remain sound. He argued that unions remain as relevant as ever, offering workers protection, representation and clearly defined workplace rights and that the challenge is not the value of membership, but convincing workers of it.
“The product that we offer is still a valid product. We simply need to repackage it to ensure that the people out there understand what we’re about,” he said, “because the reality is that unionised workers are always better protected than non-unionised workers.”
Johnson said unions need not wait for young workers to come to them and suggested that physical union offices may no longer be the measure of membership growth. What matters, he said, is reaching workers wherever they are and securing their membership and protection from there.
