Bulgaria: empowering base-level trade union leaders to ensure growth in membership numbers

This article outlines the empowerment of base-level trade union leaders in the agricultural sector in Bulgaria as an innovative strategy towards attracting new members and retaining existing ones. The approach has been adopted by the Federation of Independent Trade Unions in Agriculture (FNSZ) with the aim of creating proactive union structures that not only defend workers’ interests but also engage in meaningful initiatives defined by the members themselves. Empowering workers to interact and to deal with such topics positions unions at the heart of civil society. Thus organising can be initiated through base-level structures and a bottom-up organising strategy can complement the top-down strategy already applied within FNSZ. The empowerment of members has already contributed to some positive outcomes and is believed to be a major weapon against a spreading individualist workplace culture and stagnating membership figures over the last decade. Information for this article has been gathered through desk research and an in-depth interview with the chair of FNSZ.