The TUC, as the umbrella organisation for the trade union movement, is a broad church.

BBC: TUC: General strike demands dominate union gathering

Zimbabwe's trade union movement says it has reduced to just one day a general strike called to press the government to restore law and order.

BBC: Zimbabwe unions scale back strike

The powerful trade union movement is starting a new party.

ECONOMIST: Apparitions in Zimbabwe

This is because they involve two leaders, on the Greek and Turkish sides, who have known each other for years (through the trade union movement), and are both publicly committed to compromise and reaching a deal.

ECONOMIST: European politics

In the words of one of their leaders, Christine Blowers, general secretary of the NUT, to the LRC meeting, she said she hoped it would be "the time for the sleeping giant of the trade union movement to wake up".

BBC: Labour conference: Left frustrated by 'Red Ed'

The SPD is the political home of Germany's powerful trade-union movement.

ECONOMIST: From bad to worse | The

The trade-union movement, until recently narrow-eyed about foreigners of any sort taking its members' jobs, has now become much more sympathetic to Latinos, who make up an increasing number of those members.

ECONOMIST: Special-interest groups

"Thatcher's economic policy cured the specific British disease of vulnerability to bouts of high inflation and a Luddite trade-union movement, " said Howard Davies, formerly a deputy governor of the Bank of England and a head of the London School of Economics.

WSJ: Thatcher's Economic Overhauls Still Debated

So on the top floor of a trade union building in Rabat, the 20 February movement has been plotting their next move.

BBC: Is Morocco next in line for mass uprisings?

AFL-CIO union movement in the United States, which might push for trade sanctions if it considered that labour rights were being violated in Venezuela.

ECONOMIST: Venezuela