This paper aims to study the career patterns of trade union leaders in Europe, with a particular emphasis on individual and structural resources embedded in those positions that they held throughout their career. We claim that the career trajectories of trade union leaders in Europe have changed over time, whereby 'traditional' pathways of rising through the trade union ranks upon initial blue-colour worker positions are increasingly replaced by trade union leaders with previous careers in business or politics. Next to different individual resources that these trade union leaders gain by their education, by their own experiences at the trade union's basis, and by holding political offices, also structural resources of trade union leaders vary over time. These resources include their formal participation opportunities in arenas for governmental policy-making but also the professional staff supporting national executive boards of trade unions.
Empirically, our paper compares the individual and structural resources of trade union confederations' executive board members in four European democracies with a strong corporatist tradition, i.e. Austria, Germany, Norway, and Sweden, from 1945/49 to 2015, totalling approx. 120 trade union leaders. We employ a sequence analysis to study their career trajectories and determine the individual resources that they obtained before coming into office. In addition, we estimate the structural resources available to them during office by mapping their formal participation opportunities in arenas for government policy-making, such as compulsory memberships in governmental expert commissions, but also the development and professionalization of staffs supporting the trade union confederations' executive boards. We conclude that trade union leaders mobilise increasingly mixed individual resources, relying on various backgrounds for the executive board members. More importantly, these mixed individual resources interact with changing structural resources that provide shrinking opportunities for formal influence on policy-making but growing organisational capacities in their permanent support staffs.
