Europe 1973

Synopsis

On 8 February 1973, 17 European members of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions joined to form the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). As European nations moved toward greater cooperation and unification, European labor unions also recognized the need for a union federation that represented them at the supranational level and offered a trade union counterbalance to the forces of European economic integration. One of the ETUC's primary tasks was to act as a liaison with the European Economic Community and other pan-European institutions. This European focus created some concern among the international labor community that the ETUC could isolate European labor from the rest of the world. The ETUC would later come to represent some 90 percent of European labor unions and was thus the only central labor union organization recognized as an interlocutor by the European Union.

Timeline

• 1958: China's Mao Zedong...