GTUC’s 220,000 members represent 11% of formal sector workers. The conditions for growth exist; the strategy to achieve it is less clear.
The Georgian Trade Union Confederation represents approximately 220,000 workers across 28 affiliated unions. This membership base represents approximately 11 percent of formally employed workers in Georgia — a density that places the country in the lower third of Eastern Partnership countries (Moldova is at 23 percent, Armenia at 15 percent) and far below the EU average of approximately 23 percent. The gap between Georgian union density and regional and European comparators is not primarily a legal or structural barrier — the right to organise is formally protected and Georgia has ratified the relevant ILO conventions. It is primarily an institutional and strategic challenge.
The sectors where GTUC affiliation is strongest reflect the legacy of Soviet-era union structures: mining, education, and healthcare each have relatively high union density, exceeding 20 percent in some subsectors. The sectors where density is lowest are those that have grown most rapidly in the post-independence period: information technology, financial services, logistics, and tourism. These are sectors with young, educated workforces who have no historical connection to union culture, who frequently work on individual contracts with performance-based pay, and who may perceive union membership as irrelevant to their employment situation.
GTUC has identified youth membership and private sector expansion as strategic priorities, and has developed a younger-facing communication approach in recent years. The union’s social media presence has grown substantially, and it has engaged visibly with issues — minimum wage, platform work, housing costs — that resonate beyond the traditional union constituency. Whether this rebranding translates into membership growth in new sectors remains to be demonstrated.
The structural conditions for union growth in Georgia are actually more favourable than the density figures suggest. Public opinion surveys consistently show that 45–55 percent of Georgian workers would consider joining a union if one was available and effective in their workplace. The gap between expressed interest and actual membership reflects not so much a rejection of collective organisation as a lack of access: most Georgian workers have never been approached by a union, have no union in their workplace, and have no practical mechanism through which to organise one without significant personal risk.
The risk dimension cannot be ignored. Georgia’s Labour Code prohibits anti-union discrimination and dismissal, but enforcement is weak. The Solidarity Network’s caseload includes a consistent stream of cases involving dismissal of workers who have attempted to organise, with the Labour Inspection Service typically unable to establish causal connection between organising activity and termination in the absence of direct evidence. The chilling effect of even a small number of such cases on organising in other workplaces is substantial.
GILS Position: Doubling union density from 11 to 22 percent within five years is an ambitious but achievable target. The preconditions are: stronger enforcement of anti-union discrimination provisions (specifically, the introduction of a rebuttable presumption that dismissal within 12 months of union activity is discriminatory); legal recognition of organising rights in workplaces with fewer than 20 employees, where the current threshold effectively excludes a large portion of the Georgian workforce; and GTUC investment in dedicated organising staff for the technology and logistics sectors, where worker demographics align most closely with potential union interest.
Read the full GILS analysis: https://labour.edu.ge/org-gtuc/