Abstract
This article seeks to explain variations in trade union approaches to membership recruitment in Central and Eastern Europe, focusing on the automotive and retail sectors in Estonia, Poland, Romania and Slovenia. The analysis accounts for cross-country and sectoral differences in organizing approaches by reference to the role of institutional contexts, union organizational resources and trade unionists’ social agency.
Keywords
Introduction
In the 1990s, trade unions in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) rarely engaged in organizing activities, for a range of institutional, organizational and structural reasons (Czarzasty, 2010; Gardawski, 2001; Krzywdzinski, 2010; Meardi, 2007; Ost, 2005). In particular, they were considered unable to overcome their post-socialist legacy as passive organizations, and could not attract members in the new capitalist reality (Ost, 2002). However, in the past decade some trade unions in the region have become more involved in recruiting unorganized workers (Pedersini, 2010). In Poland, such organizing efforts began in the late 1990s (Gardawski, 2001). In other countries, they developed in the 2000s and accelerated in 2004–2007 as workers’ bargaining power increased, a result of economic recovery, falling unemployment and mass emigration from the new EU member states (Meardi, 2007). As documented by existing studies (Mrozowicki et al., 2013), active attempts to recruit new union members continue despite the current global economic crisis.
Debates about the effectiveness of different models of trade union organizing in CEE are relatively new. There has been surprisingly little research on the problems of transferring to Eastern Europe the organizing model(s) originally developed in the 1980s in the USA and Australia, and partially applied to the UK (Simms et al., 2012) and other countries, including CEE. In the early 1990s, activists from NSZZ Solidarność were trained by representatives of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in organizing techniques and principles (Gardawski, 2001: 210–211). In the 2000s, a similar transmission of practices, this time from Western European trade unions, took place in some other CEE countries (Mrozowicki et al., 2013). Yet it is debated how far are these organizing models the right path to trade union revitalization, given their limited results in terms of halting membership decline (Gall, 2009; Turner, 2007; Voss, 2010).
This article contributes to this discussion by comparing trade union organizing strategies in two sectors, automotive and retail, in four CEE countries, Poland, Estonia, Romania and Slovenia. The former is marked by a relatively well-organized labour force (Silver, 2003), the latter by precarious and poorly organized labour (Carré et al., 2010); a comparison thus enables us to evaluate the influence of the sector-specific organizational factors on trade union organizing strategies. The diversity of industrial relations and the structure and history of trade union movements in the countries studied makes it possible to understand the role of both institutional factors and trade union resources (Lévesque and Murray, 2010) in determining approaches to membership recruitment, and also to compare the relatively well researched experiences of union organizing in Poland (Czarzasty, 2010; Gardawski, 2001; Krzywdziński, 2010) with other countries, in which no traditions of independent unionism existed before 1989.
The article is based on empirical data collected in the four countries in 2009–2012. The data derive from interviews with national trade union leaders in the two sectors, semi-structured narrative interviews with company-level activists and corporate and media reports. In the next section, I critically review the literature on trade union organizing in the Western countries and CEE. In the body of the article, I discuss the results of the empirical research; finally, I present conclusions.
Trade union organizing: Institutions, organizational resources and worker agency
In the last two decades, the industrial relations literature has increasingly focused on trade union strategies to halt and reverse membership decline (Fairbrother and Yates, 2003; Frege and Kelly, 2004; Hyman, 2001; Turner and Hurd, 2001). A central theme of trade union renewal in the Anglo-American context was organizing. The original model emphasized workers’ empowerment by (self-)organizing and acting collectively, often in cooperation with new social movements. US experience demonstrated that trade union success was dependent upon comprehensive recruitment campaigns, involving person-to-person contacts, house calls, small group meetings and internal and external pressure tactics involving members both inside and outside the workplace, locally, nationally and internationally (Bronfenbrenner and Hickey, 2004: 21).
The American organizing approach was grounded in the institutional and organizational context of US trade unions. There has been much debate on how far this model can be transferred beyond the context of Anglo-American liberal market economies (LMEs) (Gall, 2009; Simms et al., 2012; Turner, 2007). I review three aspects of these debates which are important for understanding organizing approaches in CEE: institutional contexts, union organizational resources and social agency.
Institutional contexts of trade union organizing
Heery and Adler (2004: 57–58) define the institutional contexts of trade union organizing in terms of the structure of collective bargaining and the degree of its centralization or decentralization, the legal status of collective bargaining and the framework of worker participation. They suggest that incentives for trade union organizing are higher in the decentralized collective bargaining systems of liberal market economies (LMEs), where trade union workplace access and recognition depend on union membership; and in single-channel systems of worker participation, in which trade unions alone represent worker interests in the workplace. By contrast, in coordinated market economies (CMEs), where trade union influence on social policies is secured through (neo)corporatist arrangements, trade union organizing is less important for revitalization efforts (Baccaro et al., 2003). More generally, if unions can achieve their strategic goals without investment in membership recruitment, for instance through sectoral collective agreements, political coalitions or internal restructuring, incentives to organize unorganized workers are limited.
Krzywdzinski (2010: 278) identifies five potential facilitators of trade union organizing in CEE: ‘decentralized and conflict-oriented collective bargaining systems, low bargaining coverage, limited union access to companies, high inter-union competition and restricted access to the political system’. He further suggests that these conditions are particularly evident in Poland, which explains the relatively early moves towards the organizing approach there. However, some of these conditions are also present in the other CEE countries which I examine (see Table 1).
Industrial relations and trade unions in Poland, Slovenia, Estonia and Romania.
Sources: Poland: Wenzel (2009), Romania: Chiviu (2010), Estonia: Nurmela (2010), Slovenia: Stanojević (2010), for historical data. For most recent data: EIRO country profiles and reports and Kohl (2009).
In Slovenia and, to lesser extent, Romania, sectoral collective bargaining was well established at least until the mid-2000s (Stanojević and Klarič, 2013; Trif, 2013), enabling unions to secure advances without major investments in organizing. However, the significance of sectoral bargaining in Romania has decreased following legal changes imposed unilaterally by the government in May 2011 (Trif, 2013). In Poland and Estonia, collective bargaining is predominantly company-based and coverage is low. Trade union influence on policy-making in Slovenia was secured in social pacts and agreements on income policies in 1994–2009. Recently, the system began to change towards greater decentralization, but ‘it is still resisting the neoliberal turn’ (Stanojević and Klarič, 2013: 225). By contrast, union political power was much more ‘illusory’ in Poland, Estonia and Romania (Ost, 2011). Legal barriers on union access to some categories of workers, such as self-employed freelancers or employees in micro-enterprises, are most pronounced in Poland and Romania (Kohl, 2009). Nevertheless, in none of the countries do unions need to win support from a majority of employees before gaining recognition (as in the case of USA), reducing the incentives for organizing. Trade union rivalry is strongest in Poland and Romania and less present in Slovenia and Estonia, creating stronger incentives for membership recruitment in the former two countries.
Most of the institutional incentives mentioned by Krzywdzinski are present in Poland and Romania, and some also in Estonia. The fewest institutional factors that should motivate unions to invest in organizing the unorganized are to be found in Slovenia. However, as suggested by comparative research (Hickey et al., 2010), macro-level institutional factors alone are insufficient to explain differences in approaches to union organizing. Here, the question of trade union resources becomes relevant.
Union organizational resources and union organizing
According to Lévesque and Murray (2010: 335), trade union organizational resources involve ‘fixed or path-dependent assets that an actor can normally access and mobilize’. They distinguish four basic types: ‘internal solidarity’ (collective cohesion and deliberative vitality), ‘network embeddedness’ (links with other unions, social movements and organizations), ‘narrative resources’ (the stock of stories that frame understandings and union actions) and ‘infrastructural resources’ (material and human resources available to unions). This notion is closely linked to what Simms et al. (2012: 75) describe as ‘internal’ and ‘external’ factors influencing union organizing. The former are connected with the history, politics and structure of the union; the later relate to the sectoral specificity of the potential trade union constituency.
The experiences of American and British unions point to the central importance of network embeddedness and narrative resources for organizing. In the USA, organizing campaigns were led by a new generation of labour leaders with a background as left-wing activists in the 1960s (Simms et al., 2012: 39). Network embeddedness, including transnational trade union contacts and cooperation, mattered for the transfer of organizing approaches across institutional contexts, for instance from the USA to the UK in the 1990s. Union organizing acquired some consensus within trade unions (internal solidarity) and sufficient infrastructural resources to carry on expensive recruitment campaigns. The adoption of the organizing model required ‘shifting priorities away from servicing current members and toward unionizing new ones’ (Milkman and Voss, 2004: 7).
Given their different historical roots, CEE trade unions lacked the internal resources which supported organizing in the Anglo-Saxon countries. The post-socialist legacy meant that traditions of the servicing model of unionism were strong; for unions to act as ‘welfare agencies’ with semi-obligatory membership had not required active recruitment efforts (Ost, 2005: 121–148). Consequently, skills and expertise related to union organizing were limited. Even if such traditions existed, as in the case of Poland, they tended to be identified with unions’ anti-communist struggles and not with the representation of workers’ interests in the new capitalist reality (Ost, 2005). In addition, economic restructuring and the closures of large, unionized state-owned enterprises eroded trade union material resources. Limited resources for centrally led organizing campaigns also reflect the dominant procedures for distributing membership fees, with 60–90 percent retained by the company-level union structures (Kohl, 2009: 23).
As Krzywdzinski (2010) and Czarzasty (2010) have demonstrated in their studies of NSZZ Solidarność, organizational barriers were partially overcome in Poland thanks to a new generation of activists and international trade union cooperation, enabling the transfer of organizing principles to this union in the mid-1990s. Yet existing research has not explored how far the transfer of expertise and discourses of organizing from Western trade unions also mattered in other countries.
Comparative research is also needed to assess the role of ‘external’ factors in shaping models of organizing in CEE. The UK experience suggests that in sectors dominated by high labour turnover and low-skilled jobs, such as retail, organizing campaigns tend to be much more resource-intensive and require more coordination and central strategic planning (Simms et al., 2012). Existing studies show that the centrally led approaches have also been crucial in organizing workers in the Polish retail sector (Czarzasty, 2010). However, comparative analysis is necessary to explore how far strategic choices of organizing approaches are sector-dependent, irrespective of national employment relations context.
Agency and trade union strategic choice
The final set of factors refers to agency. According to Archer (1995: 118) ‘the most important aspect of “agency” is the capacity to “make a difference” to society. . . even if the latter is just by mere presence of certain actors in a given place and time’. In the context of the debates on trade union revitalization, the notion of agency relates to the capabilities of a set of union leaders and activists to exploit resources (Lévesque and Murray, 2010: 335). In the organizing literature, the role of grassroots worker activists as compared to professional union organizers and paid staff has been much debated: grassroots activism has been emphasized by those studying organizing in the Anglo-Saxon context (Fairbrother and Yates, 2003: 26), as well as by resource mobilization theories (Kelly, 1998). However, other research has questioned this assumption. As Hickey et al. (2010: 76) note in their analysis of organizing campaigns in the USA and the UK: Depending on the specific context, either grassroots or leadership-driven strategies, or both, may be critical for success. At the same time, top-down factors, such as the role of union staff in directing and implementing organizing campaigns, seem to be universally important across the cases, regardless of context.
In CEE, Ostrowski (2013) and Mrozowicki et al. (2010) have emphasized grassroots workers’ mobilization as important in helping unions to overcome the legacy of passivity under unfavourable economic conditions, even before EU enlargement. Although trade unions face more general problems of rebuilding civil society in the post-socialist context, a bottom-up union activism has been noted in private companies (Ostrowski, 2013) and among women workers in the retail and public sectors in Poland (Hardy et al., 2008: 103). There is also some evidence for the new forms of cooperation between labour and new left-wing and feminist social movements (Hardy, 2009). These developments shed new light on the research by Gardawski (2001), who explored the role of top-down trade union organizing campaigns led by the Union Development Office (Dział Rozwoju Związku) of NSZZ Solidarność and the former official OPZZ (Ogólnopolskie Porozumienie Związków Zawodowych) in the early 2000s. While the majority of existing studies focus on the situation in Poland, comparative research in four CEE countries makes it possible to explore whether centrally coordinated strategies are universally necessary.
Researching trade union organizing
Since trade union organizing in CEE has not previously been studied in a comparative manner, this research was based on a combination of inductive and deductive techniques within the overall framework of grounded theory methodology (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). Empirical data were derived from three types of sources. First, we undertook 20 interviews with national leaders of the major trade union federations active in both sectors (see Table 2) supplemented by interviews with some regional union leaders for the context. These interviews covered NSZZ Solidarność, OPZZ and Sierpień 80 (Free Trade Union August 80) in Poland, CSNRL-Fratria and CNS Cartel Alfa in Romania, EAKL (Eesti Ametiühingute Keskliit) in Estonia and ZSSS (Zveze Svobodnih Sindikatov Slovenije) in Slovenia. Second, company case studies were constructed through interviews and press and historical reports. We selected companies where unions were either newly founded or had achieved significant gains for their workforce (in terms of wages and influence on work organization) after the phase of restructuring and privatization. These ‘positive’ cases made it possible to explore in detail the factors which contributed to organizing success.
Trade union organizing strategies.
Trade unions partially covering the sectors under study; membership data for the whole sector.
No comparative data available. Estimate of trend based on union leaders’ statements.
Although the trend seems realistic, the data seem to be overestimated.
In the automotive sector, we collected three cases in Poland and two each in Romania, Estonia and Slovenia. In the retail sector, we focused on hypermarkets, mostly in the food segment, and collected overall eight cases across the countries. Except for one company in Estonia and one in Slovenia, all were multinational companies (MNCs), which reflected the dominant locations of union organizing efforts (Krzywdzinski, 2010; Ostrowski, 2013). All company cases are made anonymous on the explicit request of some informants.
In each company studied, semi-structured qualitative interviews (two to three per company) were conducted with workplace union leaders, to explore the development of activists’ subjective perceptions and their reflexive commitment to unionism as important factors enabling or constraining institutional innovation within trade unions. Overall, 43 interviews were undertaken. Data analysis was based on the twofold coding procedures (open coding and selective coding) developed by the grounded theory methodology of Glaser and Strauss (1967). The ultimate goal was to provide a theoretical understanding of the union organizing mechanism in relation to institutional and organizational contexts and strategic trade union choices.
Trade union organizing at sectoral level
The comparison of trade union organizing efforts at sectoral level should be viewed in the context of the characteristics of the two sectors. The automotive sector is very well established in Poland, Romania and Slovenia, involving both car manufacturers and a network of parts suppliers. In Estonia, the sector is less developed and consists of small and medium enterprises oriented towards components manufacturing. Unionization rates are moderate. Density in Poland is around 30 percent in the case of car producers and some 5 percent in parts suppliers. In Romania, around 30 percent of employees are trade union members, in Estonia about 20 percent and in Slovenia around 30 percent. Employees were covered by sector collective agreements for the metal sector in Romania (until 2011), Estonia and Slovenia.
Globally, the food retail sector is often low-paid, with such non-standard forms of employment as part-time and temporary work and self-employment and with less developed employee representation than in other sectors, even in core capitalist economies (Carré et al., 2010). In CEE also, common features include low wages, low unionization (18% in Slovenia and only 1–2% in the other countries), around 60 percent feminization, and problems with union recognition and organizing in MNCs because of employer hostility (Czarzasty, 2010; Hardy et al., 2008; Ostrowski, 2013). Thus the retail sector is a good place to study precarious employment (Mrozowicki et al., 2013), or ‘employment that is uncertain, unpredictable, and risky from the point of view of the worker’ (Kalleberg, 2009: 2). Sectoral collective agreements exist in Slovenia and did so until December 2011 in Romania, where this was the direct and tangible effect of organizing campaigns. Table 2 presents an overview of trade union organizing strategies in both sectors, and some of their outcomes.
The interviews with national union leaders in both sectors made it possible to explore both trade union practices and their outcomes in terms of membership numbers. The most interesting feature of trade union organizing in the automotive sector is its largely bottom-up character. The role of national and sectoral organizations in recruiting new union members is usually restricted to legal and practical support for the grassroots efforts of workers to unionize their companies. This was made most explicit in Estonia, where the president of Eesti Metallitöötajate Ametiühingute Föderatsioon (EMAF, Estonian Metalworkers’ Federation) said: ‘sometimes young people come to us on their own and tell us that they want to establish a trade union even though they don’t know what trade unions are’.
The most often repeated theme in interviews with sectoral union leaders was the lack of sufficient financial resources for membership recruitment. In line with Anglo-American experience (Milkman and Voss, 2004), union leaders also emphasized the internal opposition of sectoral federations and company-level unions against transferring a part of membership fees to organize new members. According to interviewees, this internal opposition reflects both the expectations of members to obtain traditional services for their fees (such as Christmas parcels), as a heritage of post-socialist legacies (Ost, 2005), and the attempts of some union leaders to retain their positions at the expense of the efficiency of the larger organization.
Only two unions have a special budget for organizing: NSZZ Solidarność (5% of the budget of regional branches) and the Sindikat kovinske in elektroindustrije Slovenije (SKEI, Slovenian Metal and Electro Union) (2% of the budget at all levels of union structures). In NSZZ Solidarność, organizing takes place through its regional Union Development Offices (Dział Rozwoju Związku, DRZs) established at the turn of 1990s and 2000s. However, the DRZ did not target automotive companies with its comprehensive campaigns. At present, neither the National Automotive Industry Section of NSZZ Solidarność nor the Metalworkers Federation of OPZZ is directly involved in organizing. However, company-level union leaders take part in seminars and workshops supported, among others, by German IG Metall and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, which occasionally include the exchange of knowledge and experiences concerning membership recruitment.
SKEI launched a new organizing project in 2010, consisting mainly of training for regional union officers in the techniques of membership recruitment and initiatives aimed at promoting union activities; it does not include any centrally led organizing efforts. For potential members, SKEI prepared posters and booklets explaining why it is worth joining a union, what a sectoral collective agreement is and how a legal advice can be obtained. The SKEI leader explicitly mentioned the need for proactive campaign: ‘we cannot just sit and wait in the office until somebody comes and knocks the door’.
The organizing of special groups, such as those employed by temporary work agencies in Poland and Slovenia, is carried out mostly at the level of large companies in the sector. In SKEI there is also a special body to organize young employees. Yet in all cases, the quantitative outcomes of organizing were limited. Membership growth was observed only in the Federaţia Sindicatelor Automobilului Românesc (FSAR, Romanian Automobile Federation), whose leaders were involved in direct recruitment at the workplace, trying to gather ‘those 4–5 people’ needed to set up a union branch.
The picture in the retail sector is different, with the emergence of coordinated, centralized organizing efforts in Poland, Romania and Estonia, carried out with the financial, human and expert support of international trade unions. In Poland, early cooperation with the SEIU in the 1990s helped to establish the DRZs at national and regional levels. Since the early 2000s, the office has targeted comprehensive, US-inspired campaigns in large hypermarket chains. A more recent campaign aimed at unionizing the Kaufland hypermarket in 2010, with direct workplace recruitment by organizers employed by the DRZ, pickets and blockades of the hypermarket distribution centres. This resulted in over 1000 new members in one year (2010), a pay increase of €25–50 per month and the replacement of temporary contracts by open-ended contracts for all employees.
The Estonian Union of Commercial and Service Employees, ETKA (Eesti Teenindus- ja Kaubandustöötajate Ametiühing), has been cooperating for a decade with the Finnish service sector union PAM (Palvelualojen ammattiliitto) and since 2011 with the Baltic Organizing Academy project financially supported by the Nordic federation of industrial unions (Nordic-IN). Both initiatives involve training in trade union organizing and target mostly regional union officers. In Romania, national and company-level leaders from FSC (Federaţia Sindicatelor din Comerţ) took part in the projects aimed at organizing multinational companies. These projects were initiated by UNI Europa, ver.di in Germany and HK (Union of Commercial and Clerical Employees) in Denmark, providing training and funds to employ organizers. Currently, up to 45–50 percent of the union’s budget is spent for recruitment purposes (mostly on travel costs). Its president is the most important agent in creating new union branches; his normal tactic is to approach employees during breaks, to identify an opinion leader and trigger the further organizing process.
Recruitment activities in retail were centralized in all countries studied except Slovenia. In the latter case, trade unions focused on protecting workers by a sectoral collective agreement, and left recruitment to company-level union leaders. Both in Slovenia and Estonia, unions facilitate union membership by allowing workers to join the national federations directly; a similar approach is used by OPZZ in Poland. In NSZZ Solidarność, like ETKA in Estonia and ZSSS in Slovenia, retail unions were also involved in mass media campaigns against the expansion of low-paid and temporary employment in the sector in recent years (Mrozowicki et al., 2013).
There are two important similarities in both sectors studied. First, union organizing is increasingly accompanied by leadership training, financially supported by Western trade unions, as well as the European Social Fund and various EU programmes such as the Human Capital Operational Programme in Poland. Second, it is rarely based on coalition-building with new social movements. To explain this, union leaders mentioned the lack of strong new social movements in their countries and the reluctance of some officials to engage in unstable coalitions which might be criticized as too radical by union members.
In the case of NSZZ Solidarność (SKH), ETKA, FSC, as well as KP OPZZ, significant membership growth over recent years was achieved as a result of the combination of different recruitment techniques. In other unions, which focused on routinized recruitment at company level, membership declined. This seems to confirm that the combination of centralized organizing with other techniques, such as direct workplace contact, continuous mobilization and mass media campaigns, is the best means of membership recruitment (and retention) in sectors such as the retail, dominated by a highly unstable, flexible workforce; this conclusion holds regardless of institutional context.
Company-level organizing: Organizational contexts and union activism
The analysis of sectoral data suggests that a bottom-up approach predominates in the automotive sector, as compared to top-down, comprehensive sectoral campaigns in retail in Poland, Estonia and Romania. The diversity of approaches to trade union organizing is confirmed by the analysis of company-level developments in (see Table 3). Four general observations can be noted. First, the idea of active recruitment is received by company union leaders with some reservation; they often stressed that workers should themselves decide to join trade union organizations. According to an Estonian retail union leader (Laura, EE3), ‘the person must be ready to join the union’. Another leader, in a Romanian hypermarket (Alina, RO3), emphasized that it was a common tactic to approach new employees and explain to them trade union role in the firm: ‘after a month or two, they approach a new employee, explain to him or her what a trade union is about. . . and that members are needed to give the trade union strength’.
Organizing employees at company level.
Notes:
no data on trends in membership.
dates of major protests (strikes; strike threats, pickets).
Good quality services for existing union members, as well as favourable collective agreements, were mentioned as a way of attracting new recruits in five automotive and three retail companies, regardless of institutional context. Contrary to some earlier suggestions by US researchers (Milkman and Voss, 2004), membership recruitment does not necessarily mean abandoning the servicing approach. Indeed Ost (2002: 48) has argued ‘the East European experience suggests that it was the abandonment of servicing and the embrace of social movement unionism that drove members away’.
Nevertheless, another important way of recruiting workers to unions was by mobilization in protest actions. Although protest-based organizing was intensified in the time of economic boom (2004–2007), our evidence suggests that it continued during the economic crisis. In the case of three large, post-socialist car producers, PL1, RO1 and SI1, the high level of solidarity among their core workers enabled the use of strikes and strike threats to exercise pressure on employers, which in turn ensured an inflow of new members. In the retail companies, the possibilities of engaging in open industrial conflicts were more limited given high labour turnover, low union density and anti-union management. As a result, protest actions relied on external union networks involving activists from other retail companies and sometimes from other sectors.
In the case of almost all newly established trade unions (PL2, RO2, PL4, PL5, RO3, RO4, EE3, EE4, SI4), the process of union formation was accompanied by conflicts with management over issues such as work organization, bonuses and working time. Despite the involvement of the sectoral federations in providing legal and practical help, union branches were established as a result of bottom-up mobilization and in the course of workplace conflicts. The emergence of protest-based organizing before the period of economic prosperity (Mrozowicki et al., 2010; Ostrowski, 2013) and its persistence in the times of economic hardship after 2008 seems to confirm the relevance of worker agency for union revitalization (Kelly, 1998; Turner, 2007). The central role of a small, informal network of grassroots activists who decide to turn to unions for help and mobilize other workers is very well illustrated by a story of union formation at RO4 (in 2011): We are all young, at the beginning of the road. And we started noticing that management was putting obstacles in our way as employees. We went out once for beer with my colleagues and. . . we said, ‘OK, what should we do?’ ‘Let’s make a trade union!’. . . Now we’re waiting for the battle to start. (Andrei, RO4)
Third, in the context of rather limited attempts by the sectoral unions actively to organize employees, large automotive production plants and supplier firms tend to adopt the tactic of ‘cluster’ or locality-based organizing. This relies on support for the organizing activities of unions in smaller companies from the leaders of stronger trade unions in larger enterprises. In the most cases (PL1, EE3, SI2), the links between smaller and larger companies reflect their business connections within a larger corporate group; in other cases (PL4) they were more informal and based on personal contacts in local communities. It can be suggested that ‘cluster’ organizing presents an innovative solution for the resource problems of large union federations which have too few financial assets to organize unorganized workers. In the words of the PL1 leader, Janina, ‘people join Solidarność here [in the inter-company union organization of PL1] because they want to be covered by my activity. . . . I have a big structure and negotiating power.’
However, there were also the cases in which locality-based organizing was openly rejected by the unions. One was at PL3, a large engine producer where the trade union decided not to extend its activities to supplier companies, explaining this by lack of time, insufficient staff and fear of harming a favourable partnership with the employer. In SI1, another exception, the union leaders were explicitly warned by management not to engage in organizing workers in supplier companies, as it would harm the economic interests of this large, multinational car producer. The ‘cluster’ approach to organizing was also absent in the retail companies and in smaller car components producers, in which unions were generally too internally weak to expand to other companies.
Fourth, there are considerable differences in the outcomes of organizing for the collective situation both within the automotive sector and between two sectors studied. In large automotive companies, the combination of ‘cluster’ organizing, servicing and militancy brought tangible pay increases and helped to secure favourable fringe benefits for workers through company collective agreements. In some larger automotive suppliers, such as EE1 and PL3, unions also managed to negotiate employment protection for permanent workers during the 2008–2011 global economic and financial crisis. However, their capacities to defend the jobs of precarious and temporary agency workers were much more limited. Despite some exceptions (PL1, PL5), unions are usually reluctant to become involved in organizing temporary workers, because of the high costs and limited gains in a context of high employee turnover. As argued by the an activist at SI2, Miroslav, ‘it is too complicated and we don’t have enough money, we would have many problems and it would mean an immense amount of work’. In combination with the limited organizing at sectoral level, this contributes to the solidification of an insider-outsider divide within companies (permanent versus temporary workers).
In the case of smaller automotive suppliers which lacked functional and geographical interconnections with larger organizations, as well as in the hypermarkets, trade union gains are usually limited to safeguarding the minimum regulations of the labour code. Nevertheless, some trade union achievements at company level also deserve mention. Union organizing led to collective agreements in two Estonian retail companies (EE3, EE4) and in RO3 and RO4 in Romania. In PL5, the union managed to negotiate the replacement of 5000 fixed-term contracts by open-ended contracts in 2011. In the last five years, wages in PL4 rose by around 50 percent, partially because of union pressure, with the current minimum wage being the highest in the retail chains. Notably, in Slovenia there has been no progress in collective bargaining at company level in recent years, as employers tend to keep to the minimum (wage) requirements of the sectoral collective agreement. Moreover, union achievements in all countries are partially overshadowed by the expansion of temporary agency work (in Poland) and the growing share of employees in the sector with fixed-term contracts (in Slovenia, Estonia and Romania) (Mrozowicki et al., 2013).
Conclusions
This article has addressed the institutional and organizational sources of the variation of the approaches to trade union organizing in CEE, focusing on the activities of unions in the automotive and retail sectors in Estonia, Poland, Romania and Slovenia. I have also discussed how far the organizing model developed in the USA can be transferred to CEE countries. With regard to the first issue, the analysis confirms the existence of cross-country and sectoral differences in organizing approaches. The former can be to some extent explained by institutionalist theories of union renewal, most evidently in the case of the retail sector. Comprehensive organizing campaigns were developed in the large hypermarket chains in Poland, Estonia and Romania, but not in neo-corporatist Slovenia where unions were able to secure their influence through sectoral collective bargaining. However, the automotive sector does not entirely fit the institutionalist hypothesis: despite exceptions, the centrally coordinated approach to organizing was generally weaker in all countries studied, while organizing practices based on the company and locality predominated.
These sectoral divergences can be partially explained by the specificity of trade union resources in both sectors (Lévesque and Murray, 2010). Unions possess limited financial resources, scarce organizing knowhow and weak links with social movements, and face employer hostility and internal opposition to organizing. Hence committed, new and reformed union leaders and internal solidarity among skilled workers were crucial for successful membership recruitment and retention at company level in the automotive sector. However, such internal solidarity was lacking in the retail sector: high labour turnover limited workers’ associational power at workplace level (Silver, 2003). Thus external resources, in particular financial and organizational support from Western trade unions in the 1990s (in Poland) and 2000s (in the other countries), were necessary to develop comprehensive organizing campaigns. The sectoral and cross-national differences confirm that there is ‘no panacea for success’ (Hickey et al., 2010) for union organizing, as trade union strategies tend to be adjusted to local, sectoral and, more often, company contexts. As a result, the transferability of ready-made organizing approaches from other political and institutional contexts to CEE can be questioned.
This enables some reflection on the economic context of trade union organizing. In contrast to earlier studies (Meardi, 2007), the analysis suggests that trade union organizing is not solely the outcome of the favourable economic conditions (low unemployment and growing workers’ bargaining power) in 2004–2007. Despite the negative impact of the economic crisis (Myant and Drahokoupil, 2012), organizing efforts continued in the companies studied in the years 2008–2013. As indicated by this and earlier research (Ostrowski, 2013), bottom-up organizing also occurred in the period of economic hardship before 2004. This confirms the relevance of worker agency for trade union revitalization. However, our analysis also shows the internal limits of bottom-up organizing tactics. Grassroots activism can reinvigorate trade unions in the short run; but in order to address new challenges, including the growth of precarious and temporary work, more central coordination and strategy are necessary in the traditionally better organized sectors as well as those with weak organization. Thus far, however, most trade unions in CEE remain reluctant to shift more resources to organizing. Except for NSZZ Solidarność, comprehensive campaigns are driven by the involvement of external actors rather than by a cultural change and strategic reorientation in their own ranks.
Finally, it should be stressed that membership recruitment is one of many possible strategies that could address the challenges of worker interest representation in CEE. As with the British experience discussed by Simms et al. (2012), organizing approaches were transferred to CEE countries as an apolitical toolbox aimed at membership recruitment. Deprived of political meaning as the means for worker empowerment, their latent function can be the expansion and reproduction of the neoliberal, Anglo-American model of decentralized employment relations in which they were originally embedded. The organizing approach centred around MNCs might gradually improve working conditions, especially as stable and predictable employment relations are also in the interest of MNCs (Nölke and Vliegenhardt, 2009: 684). Yet a company-centred approach will not solve the most urgent problems that unions face at the national level, including the expansion of non-standard and precarious employment.
The divide in CEE between a minority of newly unionized workers in MNCs and disorganized outsiders, including temporary agency workers and those in small and medium enterprises, can be considered a consequence of union organizing approaches which target mostly larger, easier to unionize firms. It therefore seems necessary to combine organizing approaches with attempts to secure more union influence at the higher, sectoral, national and European levels of political and industrial relations structures. Yet it remains an open question how European trade unions in general and CEE worker organizations in particular are still capable of reinventing and enforcing this high-level, neo-corporatist, ‘continental European’ political agenda, which according to some commentators (Ost, 2011) becomes ‘illusory’ even in the context of ‘old’, Western European coordinated market economies.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I am thankful to Réka Geambaşu, Triin Roosalu, Goran Lukić and Tatiana Bajuk Senčar who assisted me in the data collection in Romania, Estonia and Slovenia and discussed the results, as well as to two anonymous reviewers who provided critical comments on an earlier draft of this article. I am also grateful to Richard Hyman for his help and support at the each stage of the preparation of this article, including the editing of its final version.
Funding
This research was supported by the Foundation for Polish Science (Fundacja na rzecz Nauki Polskiej) as part of a grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the European Economic Area Financial Mechanism (grant number HOM/2009/8B).