Abstract
There is poignancy in reading this book from the UK in early 2020. Following the UK’s Conservative Government’s pledge to ‘Get Brexit Done’ in the December 2019 General Election, the UK officially left the EU on 31 January 2020. The updated 2018 edition of Trade Unions in Western Europe: Hard Times, Hard Choices includes a new Afterword that reflects on the social, political and economic shifts since it was first published in 2013. The UK’s referendum on EU membership in June 2016 that resulted in a narrow approval for the UK’s withdrawal, represents one of those shifts, generating uncertainty and speculation for trade unions in the UK and the wider national employment system.
A recent example corresponds with the conceptual framework of trade union resources advanced in the book. The official view of the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) was to remain in the EU, arguing for the need to uphold existing workers’ rights and to express solidarity with migrant workers in the UK. As has been common on other employment-related issues, the TUC partnered with the main employers’ organization, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), to send a joint letter in March 2019 to Prime Minister Theresa May. The letter argued against a ‘no deal’ (hard) Brexit, and for the Conservative Government ‘to protect the jobs, rights and livelihoods of ordinary working people’. Though not novel, the relationship between the TUC and CBI in this instance demonstrates the potential of institutional power for unions through employer solidarity. As the authors illustrate with examples across Western Europe throughout the book, employers’ organizations have become an important influence, though not always positive, in the development of trade union structures, activities and strategies.
Brexit aside, this book presents an overview of the state of play for unions in Western Europe. Chapters cover different European industrial relations systems; social, political, economic and structural challenges (hard times); renewal of union power resources; restructuring of union structures through mergers; approaches to bargaining; the relationship between unions and party politics; the international dimension of unions; and prospects for union strategy and democracy (hard choices). The book is based on extensive mixed methods research on unions in 10 countries, grouped in four categories typified as ‘Nordic’ (Sweden, Denmark), ‘Central’ (Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium), ‘Southern’ (France, Italy) and ‘Anglophone’ (Britain, Ireland). Despite the variety of cultures, norms and path dependencies of national industrial relations systems, the book’s underlying premise is that unions in Western Europe have been in decline since the latter part of the 20th century. This decline has unsurprisingly prompted a reassessment of the purpose of trade unionism.
A contentious development in union strategy discussed in the book and returned to in the Afterword, particularly in relation to collective bargaining, is that of ‘competitive corporatism’; a concept borrowed from welfare reform literature. Gumbrell-McCormick and Hyman apply the concept to denote a shift in the bargaining strategies of unions towards a greater focus on productivity improvements at the workplace, which in turn are disproportionately shaped by a competitive economistic logic. Competitive corporatism arguably reflects a defensive strategy by unions: bargaining processes of this kind are typically viewed as unions negotiating with the state and employers on the basis of securing the ‘least worst’ outcomes (p. 103). While unsure how this process differs in function from other strategies, such as integrative bargaining or the move towards union-management partnership initiatives, unions have undeniably moved from ‘boxing to dancing’ (p. 106) – as to gain leverage unions must frame their demands around shared interests with employers. Discussions around the emergence of competitive corporatism hence appear to represent a consolidation of the uneasy alliance European unions have entered with the state and employers since the turn of the 21st century; obliged to resist, compelled to concede.
The authors usefully describe important moments that reflect these shifts in bargaining strategy. In Italy, a historic tripartite compromise that broadly indexed wages to the cost of living (scala mobile) was abolished in 1992. The authors highlight how the Confederazione generale italiana del lavorno (CGIL) were under pressure to negotiate new forms of wage restraint for fear of being blamed for the economic crises. The case of Ireland is another example referenced, where tripartite ‘partnership’ became institutionalized and ‘inspired a shared discourse of competitiveness’ (p. 122). One union leader is quoted in the book as describing these partnership agreements as a ‘lazy route to influence’ (p. 122) for unions. Such examples illuminate how unions have embraced their role as economic actors and have typically accommodated to state and employer demands.
Another role of unions discussed is that of political actors, describing unions as ‘necessarily protagonists in the political arena’ (p. 132). Three mutually reinforcing developments have caused fragility in the relationship between trade unions and political parties. These relate to an ideological blurring resulting from a crisis in social democracy, structural economic changes that have undermined unions’ traditional core support in industrial communities, and the adoption of neoliberalism by centre-left as well as right-wing governments. The book presents electoral data from recent European parliament elections, updated in the Afterword, which demonstrate that although the category of ‘social-democratic’ party is imprecise, there has been a decline in parties traditionally associated with the left, which by extension has meant weakened political influence for unions. Instead, the authors propose that unions explore alliances with other actors and express their coalitional power in other political arenas by collaborating with community and religious groups or non-governmental organizations. Despite the book’s proposals for extending union influence through other means, it remains evident that unions across Western Europe continue to value their inherent links with party politics. As noted in the Afterword, however, the rise of far-right parties in Western Europe has created a paradox for ostensibly progressive, anti-racist trade unions. That is, far-right parties draw a large proportion of their vote from working-class constituencies, which have been the traditional basis for union membership. As the book discusses in closing, this illustrates the tender balance that must be redressed by unions in the future, between effective strategy and a commitment to democratic principles. Hard choices indeed.
