uth groups, and cultural clubs, as well as Masonic lodges and Rotary and Lions' clubs. Virtually all of the nation's fire fighters are volunteers, with the exception of members of a few fire departments in the largest cities. Government statistics greatly understate the number of community organizations because they refer mainly to those having some contact with one or another state office. According to the official estimate for 1991, there were about 22,000 such organizations, the main ones being sports clubs neighborhood councils, mothers' clubs, and parent centers. Government publications do not report membership figures for these organizations. Most of the important urban areas in Chile also include a broad sample of the local chapters of a wide variety of occupational associations. These include labor unions and federations, public employee and health worker organizations, business and employers' associations, and professional societies of teachers, lawyers, doctors, engineers, dentists, nurses, social workers, and other occupational groups. Membership in labor unions, which declined significantly under the military government, has been growing rapidly since the late 1980s, a change directly related to the transition to democracy. Affiliation with organizations recognized as unions in labor legislation was officially estimated in 1990 at 606,800, a 20 percent increase over 1989. That figure did not include individuals affiliated with public employee associations (including health workers). But these two groups usually have been closely tied to the labor movement through the national confederations of labor. Thus, about 19 percent of a total labor force of 4,459,600 was linked to unions or union-like associations in 1990. With the continuing increases in union affiliations, which are especially significant in rural areas, a conservative estimate is that the unionized population (in legal as well as de facto organizations) stood in 1...
