Union Influence in Post-Socialist Europe

Examining enterprise-level union influence in post-socialist countries, the authors hypothesize that calculative human resource management (HRM) is more strongly associated with low levels of union influence than collaborative HRM. Using the United Kingdom as a benchmark, they find that in the countries under study, calculative HRM is indeed more damaging to union influence than collaborative, although to a much lesser extent than in the United Kingdom. They also find that union influence corresponds to enterprise union density and is most apparent when the business cycle is unfavorable; they explain their findings by reference to East European members' continued attachment to unionism for nonbargaining reasons.