Abstract
European labour markets have become increasingly marked by the growth of insecure employment, reversing the mid-twentieth century process of ‘decommodifying’ the employment relationship. This reversal has been driven in no small measure by the neoliberal bias of the European Union and the main international financial institutions, with their efforts to introduce new types of flexible contracts and to weaken or eliminate the regulatory effect of organized industrial relations systems. In many countries, precarious work (or indeed unemployment) has become the norm for new labour market entrants, in particular affecting young people and migrants. Can established industrial relations processes, and in particular trade unions, encompass precarious workers within the regulatory web? Three of the articles in this issue of the Journal address this question.
Chiara Benassi and Tim Vlandas examine the extent of union ‘inclusiveness’ towards temporary agency workers in 14 European countries, considering the extent such workers are unionized, the degree to which collective agreements achieve equality of treatment or contain provisions which compensate for labour market disadvantage. Using fuzzy-set quantitative comparative analysis, they identify two distinct pathways to union inclusiveness: a ‘Northern’ path involving strong institutional supports for trade unionism, and a ‘Southern’ path in which class-oriented ideology encourages relatively weak unions to engage with precarious workers. These findings challenge monocausal theories of labour market dualism, indicating that there can be alternative routes to progressive trade union policies.
The issue addressed by Anastasia Gorodzeisky and Andrew Richards is whether union members’ attitudes towards migrant workers differ from those of non-unionists: are they more, or less likely to endorse anti-immigrant views? Much literature has argued that trade unionists are more likely to perceive immigrants as a threat to wages and working conditions. However this study, also of 14 countries, finds that overall, trade unionists are more likely to endorse ‘inclusionary’ views. Only in two of the countries was the reverse the case. Interestingly, there is no clear North-South divide in the patterns, again suggesting that a complex of material and ideological factors can encourage progressive attitudes towards ‘outsiders’.
The article by Valeria Pulignano, Luis Ortíz Gervasi and Fabio de Franceschi focuses on two countries in the ‘Southern’ group, Italy and Spain. In both countries there is a high proportion of (particularly young) precarious workers; and while in both cases the unions adopt an ‘inclusive’ stance towards labour market outsiders, their approaches differ considerably. In particular the main confederations in Italy, but not in Spain, have established separate sections for precarious workers. These differences are attributed to the greater reliance of Italian unions on micro-level membership, whereas Spanish unions depend more on macro-level political dialogue and pressure. The authors also note variations between the Spanish unions, attributable to different ideological orientations.
The remaining two articles have a different focus. Bengt Furåker and Kristina Lovén Seldén examine participation in discussions at meetings of the executive committee of the European Trade Union Confederation. Unions from some countries appear much more vocal than those from others. In particular, Southern unions appear most active, in part perhaps because union pluralism encourages rival organizations to have their say. Conversely, those from Central and Eastern Europe speak least, probably because of lack of resources and linguistic difficulties. Of course, the most vocal unions are not necessarily the most influential.
The legislation enabling the formation of a European Company (Societas Europaea or SE) has been in force since 2004. Among its provisions are procedures for employee information and consultation rather more extensive than specified in the European Works Council (EWC) directive a decade earlier. The final contribution, by Catherine Casey, Antje Fiedler and Benjamin Fath, examines employee participation in 23 SEs. They find marked variations in the degree of employee and trade union involvement and influence; however, the impact of employee representative bodies seems overall rather stronger than reported in much of the literature on EWCs. The study also highlights the extent to which employee influence on transnational corporate management is politically driven and contested.