SOCIAL WORKER UNIONISM. PATTERNS OF SOCIAL WORKERS REPRESENTATION IN A CONTEXT OF TRADE UNIONS' LEGITIMATION CRISIS: A COMPARISON BETWEEN ITALY AND SPAIN

This research wants to investigate on the relationship between trade unions and self-organized group of workers in the context of the trade unions’ crisis of representation in a specific and peculiar sector: the outsourced social services. One wants to look at the role of social movements in revitalizing trade unions in Southern Europe. It is especially there that unions used to rely on privileged relationship with the institutions, which had been declining during the last economic crisis. For this reason, the article will focus on two organizations with a similar path of institutional development, but with different labour movement trajectory during the crisis: CCOO in Spain and CGIL in Italy. In fact, Spanish trade unions had to relate with a wave of movement highly critic against them, while it did not occur in Italy. The main research questions are 1) which are the main factors influencing the relationship between trade unions and self-organized workers and 2) whether the occurrence of a social movement wave of contentions at national level do influence the way the various actors interact at local level.