Union democracy from below: Grassroots use of digital platforms renew trade unions
A new article in European Societies shows how grassroots use of social media offer new forms of union democracy from below with potential to transform union organisations, comparing Danish nurses’ Foreningen af Danske Sygeplejersker (FDS) and the Spanish hotel housekeepers’ association Las Kellys.
In the article 'Union democracy from below: social media, gender, and online grassroots activism', Mark Friis Hau, Nana Wesley Hansen, Oscar Molina and Oriol Barranco examine how digital platforms reshape traditional patterns of grassroots labour mobilisation. Drawing on social media data and interviews, the study analyses two cases: the 2021 formation of Foreningen af Danske Sygeplejersker (FDS) by Danish nurses and Las Kellys, an association of Spanish hotel chambermaids.
Both organisations used digital platforms to maintain multiple forms of engagement at once: building collective identity among dispersed workers, challenging union leadership, and gaining public visibility. Yet their trajectories diverged. FDS’s targeted social media approach drew on nurses’ strong professional identity to pressure their union into adapting wage demands, ultimately achieving accommodation within established bargaining structures. Las Kellys’ broader community-building strategy reduced worker isolation but produced organisational fragmentation, with some chapters becoming formal unions and others remaining associations.
The comparison reveals how similar digital tools can produce different organisational outcomes depending on workers’ structural position and unions’ capacity for democratic renewal. The findings show how digital platforms enable sustained grassroots engagement while underlining the continued importance of institutional contexts and internal union democracy in shaping labour movement trajectories.
Read the full article 'Union democracy from below: social media, gender, and online grassroots activism' by Mark F. Hau, Nana Wesley Hansen, Oscar Molina and Oriol Barranco, Published in European Societies, September 2025.