Brief Outline The research was carried out by“Free Public” Law-Protective Youth NGO/ APR Group, which was aiming at identifying the problems, challenges and needs of Armenian TUs. Qualitative methods of information collection and analysis were applied in this research. Main Findings The history of Armenian TUs begins as early as 1905-07. After the formation of the Soviet system in Armenia, the structures known as“Trade Unions” adopted the characteristics of given public bodies. The TUs were defined by their attachment to the ruling party(Communist Party) and their function as a re-allocator of part of economic capital, as well as their role in dealing with the reallocation of social benefits without concern for membership issues, as the latter was regulated“automatically” based on the“voluntary-mandatory” principle. During the given period when the state had been ensuring mass employment, directors and employees enjoyed equal rights in regard to the workplace. In this case, TUs were supporting the“state” through the supervision over working conditions both for employees and directors. Therefore, the Soviet-era TUs enjoyed a quite high level of prestige among all groups of society. After the collapse of the Soviet regime, the structures known as“Trade Unions» lost much of their power, but their historical past held an indelible impact on current TUs, including the perception of their role and working style. Presently, TUs do not possess their former prestige, as they do not carry out functions corresponding to their previous stereotypes, particularly in terms of the allocation of social benefits and the supervision of working conditions. But the nostalgia for their past prestige is still preserved among TU leaders and drives them to build their future vision through the prism of their predecessor. The decline of TU prestige in the post-Soviet period, as well as the decrease in the level of the employed population resulted in a sharp decrease in TU members. In the future, the parallel of the establishment of democracy, the basis of existence and functioning of TUs began to be outlined. On December 5, 2000, the RA Law on Trade Unions was adopted, which clarified the main function of TU, particularly,“to present and defend employment and employment related social and other interests and rights of employees at employer and/or third person…”. Although the law contributed to the development of a closer alignment between TUs and more activities in defense of human rights, TUs could not easily overcome previous stereotypes, however. Moreover, today, when on the one hand, the shortage of vacancies and infringement prevalence puts employees and TUs in greater dependence on employers, and on the other hand, the level of legal consciousness of society is low, neither employers nor employees realize the meaning of TUs regarding the defense of labor rights. Although the prestige and level of membership in TUs have decreased since the Soviet period, it is worth mentioning, however, that as of 2009, the number of registered members of TUs was 251,187, which is 23.4% of the employed population of the country. 7