About twelve per cent of the membership are under 25 years of age and the unions are strengthening their youth sections. Juris Radzevics, the lawyer who became LBAS president in 1998, is only 30 years old. Radzevics joined the union movement nine years ago when Latvia regained its independence. Although the tripartite bargaining model is more developed in Latvia than in its neighbouring Baltic States, the Latvians have rather few agreements covering entire industries and enterprise-specific agreements have a more established status. There are more than one thousand such agreements.
Most employees rely on individual employment contracts.
The protection which these provide is underpinned by a law which, in certain situations, entitles the unions to forbid the dismissal of an employee. One of the major goals of LBAS and its 26 affiliated unions is to increase the number of collective agreements. One obstacle to this identified by Radzevics, however, is the weakness of the employers' federations.