Is a new paradigm needed? A commentary on the analysis by Sławomir Adamczyk

Introduction

Before developing our commentary on the article by Sławomir Adamczyk, we should make two reservations. First, we need to stress that we both see the paper as an important academic analysis which goes beyond the status of a ‘practitioner opinion’ written by a union expert (an official of NSZZ Solidarność), despite the author’s assertions that this is not a scientific study. We take the liberty to disagree, as Adamczyk has an abundant academic record, mostly composed of contributions on issues of international trade union activity. Second, we must admit that we largely concur with the arguments which he develops and see his central question, whether ‘Social Europe’ can be built exclusively on Western perspectives or requires a new common paradigm, as essential for the understanding of the future of European labour movements. Therefore, our commentary is definitely not a polemic. Instead, we develop some of the points made by the author and suggest its connections with existing debates on East–West relations within the European labour movement and, more specifically, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC).

The paper by Adamczyk sheds light on an issue which until recently has been approached in quite an awkward way: the cleavages within the European labour movement formed along the former Iron Curtain. Although his focus on ETUC seemingly limits the perspective to the EU-level relations among the key national confederations, it is a good point of departure for a broader, multi-dimensional debate about the difficult coexistence of East and West within the EU. We assume that the need for such an in-depth debate is what the author has actually in mind.

The family metaphor employed in the title is not only colourful but also analytically useful, as long as we see it as an extended family, not a nuclear one. Only then we can clearly see the nature of the relationship between the wealthy core and the poor relatives in the periphery, where polite manners on the surface can hardly mask tensions and sometimes resentment stemming from divergent interests. Accepting the metaphor, we also need to bear in mind the danger of ‘amoral familism’ famously defined by Banfield (1958) as the inability ‘to act together for their common good or, indeed, for any end transcending the immediate, material interest of the nuclear family’ (p. 10). In the European labour movement context, this danger can be translated into the risk of the dominance of national – or regional – interests over the ethos of transnational labour solidarity. The article suggests that contrary to the rhetoric of Europeanisation, such a particularistic logic has not disappeared neither from the practices of Western, nor Eastern European members to the ETUC.

The ‘two worlds’ of European trade unionism: a recapitulation

We recapitulate the key themes of Adamczyk’s paper, as this will help follow the line of argument in our subsequent discussion. Adamczyk claims that the ‘enlargement of the EU in 2004 and 2007 to the post-communist states of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) brought an encounter between two distinct “trade union worlds” in terms of attitudes towards European integration’. The ‘Western world’ within the ETUC has been predominantly concerned to maintain the entitlements accumulated by labour in the past (or at least, to save as much as possible), and to export Western patterns of industrial relations to the East via ‘initiatives supported by the European Commission aimed at capacity building, training and negotiation skills’. On the other hand, the expectations of the ‘Eastern world’ have mainly revolved around using their ETUC membership to gain leverage for ‘collective bargaining and the pursuit of wage growth’. According to the author (who regularly fortifies his theses with quotes from his fellow CEE trade unionists active in the ETUC), both blocs have grown largely disillusioned with each other over the years. Western unions are disappointed by the sluggish progress (if any) made by their counterparts in the post-socialist ‘new member states’ in developing bargaining capacity that could translate into increased autonomous regulation of employment relations by collective agreements, with their failure to increase membership density (to be fair, the West has nothing to be proud of in that regard either, yet their descent has begun at much higher altitude), seeing them as still stuck in an ‘illusory corporatist’ maze and remaining politically entangled. CEE unions seem embittered with the continuously paternalistic attitudes of their Western counterparts manifested by their refusal to learn from the Eastern experiences and their neglect of the issues that matter most to labour in these countries (first and foremost, closing the pay gap), even though Eastern unions usually behave loyally at EU level (the specific cases highlighted by Adamczyk are discussed in detail below). In addition, the author claims that despite the long track record of cooperation between CEE unions and national confederations in various European countries, as well as within the ETUC, the flow of ideas, concepts and methods of union actions has mostly been eastwards oriented.

A commentary

It is important to note that Adamczyk writes as a representative of NSZZ Solidarność, a trade union which from its very beginning defined itself as a role model for independent unionism in the post-socialist Eastern Europe (Mrozowicki, 2017). It is enough to mention the ‘Appeal of the First Convention of Delegates to workers in Eastern Europe’ issued by NSZZ Solidarność in September 1981, in which the union expressed its support for the struggle for free unionism in all Eastern European countries. Later, in 1992, the union issued ‘Gdańsk Declaration’ in which it appealed to the ICFTU and WCL to refrain from cooperation with trade unions which had communist links or a communist past. The two documents can serve as a good example of the political ambitions of NSZZ Solidarność in the region. Its bitter reaction to the ETUC document of 1992 on the ‘Architecture of trade unions in Europe’, which initially included a reference to the need to ‘subject [central and eastern European] trade unions to a political education process for their Europeanization’ (Wolańska, 2008: 81), shows that the union has never considered itself to be ‘outside’ Europe. Conversely, it saw its role as the promoter of European values which, given its long-standing history of transnational cooperation, it has the legitimacy to articulate on behalf of the interests of Eastern European workers. This historical context, not mentioned in the article by Adamczyk, might be relevant in understanding the disappointment with the actually existing state of European integration and the functioning of the ETUC.

When discussing cross-border labour solidarity, one cannot overlook numerous instances of behaviour actually contradicting pompous declarations made not only at the EU level but also in bi- and multilateral relations involving trade unions from East and West, especially when the issue at stake would be relocation of activities, as multinationals were going East in search of a cheaper workforce. On the one hand, there were attempts to stop such relocations by organized labour in the countries from which production would be moved; on the other hand, one could witness barely concealed joy displayed by unions in the new host countries at the prospect of incoming foreign direct investment (FDI) and the creation of new jobs. On few occasions only, pan-European solidarity would prevail. Authors who discuss the reasons for the emergence of East–West labour solidarity point to the role of trust-building and common socialization experiences among workers’ representatives in multinational corporations (Pernicka et al., 2017) and European social dialogue institutions (Gajewska, 2008) and the relevance of cost–benefit considerations (Bernaciak, 2010). Yet, as convincingly argued by Adamczyk, there is much less debate about long-standing problems of reconciling the normative visions of Social Europe which are rooted in the divergent expectations about the role of European integration for the interests of workers in old and new member states.

The hopes of reinforcing national-level social dialogue and, more broadly, labour and welfare institutions by joining the European integration project were clearly present in the position papers issued by the major Polish trade unions before EU enlargement. As argued by Greskovits (2015: 281), the EU and international labour legislation was seen as a potential leverage which could be used by Eastern European trade unions to ‘frame their demands in European labour rights terms and use such regulations to externalize domestic conflicts’, in particular with respect to exercising pressure on national governments unwilling to cooperate with unions within the weak tripartite institutions. There are good instances of situations in which such a pressure indeed worked to the benefit of workers, for instance, in the recent case of the NSZZ Solidarność complaint to the European Commission concerning improper application of 1999 framework directive on fixed-term contracts, resulting (together with other instruments used) in changes to the Labour Code regulations of temporary employment contracts. However, it is difficult to deny that such cases are exceptions to the rule. Commenting on the social deficiencies of the European project, Adamczyk makes a reference to Meardi (2012), who exposes the failure of the EU to maintain the social dimension of European integration after the 2004–2007 enlargement, and bitterly observes that the most beneficial effect of enlargement for labour in the new member states is freedom of workers to emigrate. The workers would rather flee than seek to exercise voice, as multinationals penetrating the CEE more often followed the path of opportunistic adaptation in the environment of weak institutions than acted as agents of ‘Europeanisation’ of industrial relations by transposing patterns typical for their home-countries (Czarzasty, 2014).

Adamczyk recalls two meaningful events which provide illuminating examples of ambivalence displayed by trade unions from various member states, with the line of division mostly mirroring the frontier between the EU-15 and the accession countries. In chronological order, the first is the Bolkestein Directive issued in 2004, the second is posting of workers (ongoing). In both cases, as Adamczyk notes, pan-European union solidarity prevailed, even though the CEE unions had expressed vota separata before ultimately endorsing the ETUC positions. It must be stressed that in the latter case, the views were more divergent than in the former. Furthermore, in the posting of workers case, particularly interesting has been the dispersion of union views within the new member states. As Adamczyk points out, most unions (Polish included) opted to support ETUC position, yet some – the Hungarian unions in particular– stood united with their government and employers in their resistance against the revision of the Directive. Some (Solidarność again) would indeed say that the European Commission proposals should go even further. In the end, the ETUC positions largely reflect the Western point of view. In contrast, the dispute about delocalization triggered the Eastern resistance to the point of forcing the ETUC into an internal compromise. It is too tempting not to recall here one of the CEE unionists quoted in the paper, who claimed that the transfer of activities to the new member states in CEE in fact saved Europe from deindustrialization.

The implicit message of debates around delocalization is that both sides involved have still been struggling with the residual ‘neo-colonial’ mentality, splitting the world of European labour into ‘us’ and ‘them’: use of the very term suggests there is a deep-rooted conviction that the jobs transferred to the Eastern part of the continent are ‘lost to Europe’. Luckily, the problem seems to have been acknowledged, as the removal of ‘delocalization’ from the ETUC congressional documents, from Seville to Paris, indicates. There is more to be done in that regard, though, with the cross-border movement of labour being perceived either in terms of ‘social dumping’ or ‘brain drain’. This is indeed a case of the ‘duck-rabbit’ illusion, with various actors seeing the very same phenomenon as something completely different.

The East–West strain has another facet, which is accurately captured by the author: transnational company agreements (TCAs) as a platform for cross-border bargaining (for which union solidarity is the prerequisite). The platform has a potential that hardly anyone denies, yet they are not able to realize it, in a quite frustrating way. It is not a matter of blaming any party in the context sketched in the paper (East–West axis) but rather recognizing obstacles that transnational bargaining (even in such a rudimentary form) faces. The attitudes of the actors is one issue mentioned by Adamczyk, but there are more, including the fundamental problem whether or not to press for a legal framework (optional) or leave things as purely voluntary, which will probably lead to stagnation or even atrophy of TCAs. The decision of the European Commission in 2015 not to update their list of TCAs any longer suggests there is little hope left in the institution. Even if the ETUC shared that view, they should nevertheless stay persistent about the issue of transnational regulation. For instance, it could be an important feature of the European wage debate. At the peak of the debate on the proposed revision to the Posting of Workers Directive (June 2017), trade unions in the VW Martin site in Slovakia battled successfully for a wage increase, using large-scale strikes to their advantage and drawing support from major political forces in the process by advertising their action as a pioneering move that would hopefully trigger general pay pressure on Western multinationals. The Slovakian case was not the first (in late 2016 and early 2017, there were warning strikes in Daimler and Audi plants in Hungary), despite being arguably the best known, and will certainly not be the last (Descamps, 2017).

As remarked in the article on the Polish pathways to the ETUC, it is debatable ‘whether the ETUC’s identity has changed as a result of inclusion of new CEE affiliates in the last 20 years’ and ‘more time and efforts are needed to construct a polycentric identity of European unionism’. (Mrozowicki, 2017: 208) The same claim and thesis seems to underlie the paper by Adamczyk. While it is absolutely understandable for anyone to make a crude distinction into ‘East’ and ‘West’, that type of generalization leaves the reader not fully satisfied. Anyone familiar with the meanders of European trade unionism knows of other lines of division. On the one hand, the two blocs are far from being homogeneous. For instance, we can also mention the North versus South controversies, and there are hints of this in the paper, mostly in the section referring to the hardline stance of Scandinavian unions in the minimum wage debate. On the other hand, the ‘national systems’ of industrial relations are also becoming increasingly incoherent, taking into account the discussion about the most relevant level of industrial relations analysis and the key actors (the ‘countries or sectors’ dilemma, as put by Bechter et al., 2012).

The argument developed by Adamczyk about the East–West symbolic and material divide should not overshadow a more general challenge, present in the ETUC from the very beginning, of building unity in the context of the diversity of trade union identities and interests (Ciampani and Tilly, 2017). It is difficult not to see the parallels between the claims of some new member states, such as Poland and Hungary, to regain ‘political agency’ in the European Union, and the arguments of trade unionists quoted by Adamczyk on symbolic power imbalances within the ETUC. Identifying CEE unionists and policy-makers en masse with right wing nationalism would be misleading given the ‘banal nationalism’ (Billig, 1995) of Western European states which constituted the ‘old’ European Union. The current turbulences of the European integration project, in which national interests began to be more and more overtly expressed and at times overshadow the agenda of integration, demonstrate that a serious, fully democratic and pluralistic debate is indeed needed on the future of both the Europe Union and the ETUC.

Yet, another theme which could be better developed as compared to the original formulations by Adamczyk is the discussion about the transformative role of the ETUC for its membership organizations from the new member states, and the potential relevance of East European trade union experiences for transforming the agendas of their Western counterparts. We have argued elsewhere that the participation of the Polish trade unions in the ETUC helped to minimize inter-union rivalry between NSZZ Solidarność, OPZZ (Ogólnopolskie Porozumienie Związków Zawodowych, All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions) and FZZ (Forum Związków Zawodowych, Trade Unions Forum), to reorganize union sectoral structures and to professionalize the activities of union confederations (Mrozowicki, 2017: 207). Some of these positive outcomes remain relevant for shaping the organizational capacities of labour organizations also in other new member states (Bernaciak and Kahancová, 2017).

However, the reverse influence, of CEE trade union experiences on the Western trade unions repertoire of actions, is much less visible and debated. Here, Adamczyk’s contribution can be seen as developing further the idea of a common agenda of European trade unionism related to the technological transformations, in particular digital work, crowd employment and platform economy. Indeed, the experiences and strategies of trade unions in the CEE countries, with generally less established collective bargaining structures and, in some cases, very high levels of self-employment and non-employment contracts (such as ‘civil law’ contracts in Poland), might be important lessons for Western trade unionism in tackling the challenges of representing and organizing ‘non-employees’ within new economy 4.0. As argued by Bernaciak and Kahancová (2017)

despite their sometimes limited and/or localized impact, union innovations in the new EU Member States can serve as an inspiration for labour organisations from other parts of Europe and the world, motivating the latter to go beyond their traditional repertoires of action and tackle newly emerging problems. In the post-crisis reality marked by austerity and precarization, experiences from the region in which the defence of basic employee rights had constituted a daunting challenge long before the downturn might be particularly instructive. (p. 235)

Having this in mind, we can only agree with Adamczyk’s final thesis that such a ‘reverse’ transfer of knowledge would be difficult to imagine without the creation of an effective system of European industrial relations based on an authentic recognition, articulation and – to the extent that this is possible – reconciliation of diverse workers’ needs and interests within the EU member states.