Youth and trade unions - case study in a post-conflict country as Colombia

Sammanfattning: This paper aims to explain how interpretations and perception of unionsdiffer depending on the age of the audience as well as identifying what kind of development ideas and visions are detectable in union communication and practices. The paper also examines to which extent unionstriesto rejuvenate themselves and how they relate with gender issues. The case of the Colombian central union organization, CUT, is used as an example of a trade union. Within the framework of theories related to intergenerational value changes, rejuvenationand gender discourse two different analysis are made. The first one being a textualanalysis ofthe unionscommunication and the second one being a qualitative surveyanalysis of perceptions of unionsby youth. These two analyses are made separately to subsequently proceed to merge the twoand discuss how they interactwith each other. The results of this research show that the perceptions of unionsamong youth is more negative in comparison to the perception of an older generation even though the respondents did feel represented by the unionswork and shared many of the development-related issues mentioned by the unionscommunication. Intergenerational value change is a theory applied in this research that could be an answer to youth low affiliation to unionsbecause of their hierarchical structures but was however an explanation notable when it comes to differences in value priorities, where the priorities between the target groups were not radically different