Trade unions today stand before the considerable challenge of renewing and improving their associational power, which is a task that requires improvement of both outward strategic purpose - organising and winning in workplaces and communities - as well as an internal renewal to account for the movement’s diversity and cohesion as a vehicle for solidarity and social justice.

With ailing public services, fully marketised industrial and labour policy and declining living standards, the conditions for the establishment of anti-democratic and reactionary movements in the UK and Germany are ideal. The 2026 Senedd elections promise to bring political change to Wales. Labour’s hegemony since the inception of the devolved parliament looks to be under threat from the populist right as well as forces on the left flank. Trade unions must make the case for the kind of society they want to win, and not defer to political actors.

To explore how unions can build stronger associational power to strive for a democratic society and economy, and to counter reaction, trade unionists from across Wales and across the movement belonging to Black, Women and Young Worker Activist Development Programmes visited Berlin, Lausitz and the Ruhr region of Germany to exchange with their colleagues on the current conjuncture of structural transformation, the erosion of democratic norms and the strategic power of the workers’ movement.

Trade unions today stand before the considerable challenge of renewing and improving their associational power, which is a task that requires improvement of both outward strategic purpose - organising and winning in workplaces and communities - as well as an internal renewal to account for the movement’s diversity and cohesion as a vehicle for solidarity and social justice.

With ailing public services, fully marketised industrial and labour policy and declining living standards, the conditions for the establishment of anti-democratic and reactionary movements in the UK and Germany are ideal. The 2026 Senedd elections promise to bring political change to Wales. Labour’s hegemony since the inception of the devolved parliament looks to be under threat from the populist right as well as forces on the left flank. Trade unions must make the case for the kind of society they want to win, and not defer to political actors.

To explore how unions can build stronger associational power to strive for a democratic society and economy, and to counter reaction, trade unionists from across Wales and across the movement belonging to Black, Women and Young Worker Activist Development Programmes visited Berlin, Lausitz and the Ruhr region of Germany to exchange with their colleagues on the current conjuncture of structural transformation, the erosion of democratic norms and the strategic power of the workers’ movement.