The General Labour Federation of Belgium (French: Fédération générale du travail de Belgique, pronounced [fedeʁɑsjɔ̃ ʒeneʁal dy tʁavaj də bɛlʒik], FGTB; Dutch: Algemeen Belgisch Vakverbond, pronounced [ˈɑlɣəmeːn ˈbɛlɣis ˈfɑkfərˌbɔnt], ABVV) is a socialist national trade union federation in Belgium.
[2] The first noteworthy historic date when talking about the history of the ABVV/FGTB is the founding of the Belgian Labour Party (BLP) in 1885.
Thus Belgium's second largest labour union noticed a modest decline in membership of 17,340 compared to 2016.
On the regional level 726,410 of the aforementioned membership comes from Flanders, 600,945 from Wallonia and 190,613 from Brussels.
[4] Through the foundation of the Mouvement populaire wallon during the Great Strike that took place in the Winter 1960-1961, the Walloon working class now also demanded federalism as well as structural reforms.