Austerity and public sector trade union power: Before and after the crisis

Abstract

We use a power resources approach to examine the effects of the 2008–2009 financial and economic crisis on public sector trade union power in Germany, Spain, Sweden and the UK, comparing structural, organizational, institutional, societal and political power resources before and after the crisis. Unions’ power resources have (at least temporarily) weakened in Spain, with a similar but less pronounced trend in the UK; whereas in Sweden and Germany, one can detect ambiguous but slightly positive signals, which reflect neither the crisis nor opposition to austerity. As well as structural, organizational and institutional power resources, societal and political resources are decisive for public sector trade unions.

Keywords

Austerity Germany power resources public sector industrial relations Spain Sweden trade unions UK

Introduction

The international financial and economic crisis in 2008–2009 was a challenge for trade unions. In many European countries, they had already lost members and power in the decades before the crisis, in the context of the restructuring of production, work and labour relations in the 1970s, the neoliberal turn in the 1980s and 1990s, and the introduction of the ‘new public management’ (NPM) (Bach and Bordogna, 2016a). Nevertheless, there were notable cross-national differences, identified by comparative research on industrial relations in general and the public sector in particular (Bach and Bordogna, 2013; Gottschall et al., 2015; Vaughan-Whitehead, 2013). Bach and Bordogna (2016b) argue that the public sector is ‘no longer sheltered from internationalization, enabling shifts in bargaining power and reforms that favor employers’ (p. 25). Hence globalization, Europeanization and EU political pressure for austerity may have promoted similar outcomes despite persisting institutional differences. In particular, there have been moves towards ‘politically imposed convergence’ in public sector industrial relations (Schulten and Müller, 2012). However, we cannot assume a homogeneous impact on trade unions in the aftermath of the crisis.

We examine how the 2008–2009 financial and economic crisis affected trade union power in the public sector in Germany, Spain, Sweden and the UK, and the impact of different types of power resources. We focus on the aftermath of the crisis, but exploring and comparing changes requires a long-term perspective. Previous research (Bach and Bordogna, 2016b) suggests that in several countries, austerity policies were pursued already before the crisis. Our main research questions are as follows. First, whether the crisis has caused a decline in trade union power in the public sector? Second, how different forms of power resources affect developments in public sector trade unions in each country? Third, what value do a comparative perspective and the power resources approach add to our understanding of (post-crisis) trends in trade union power in this sector?

We chose two countries from the eurozone (Germany and Spain) and two outside (Sweden and the UK). We consider this differentiation important because within the single currency, exchange rates cannot be used to adjust national competitiveness, whereas countries with their own currency can use devaluation. A further difference is that after a sharp decline in gross domestic product (GDP), Germany and Sweden recovered quite rapidly, while Spain and the UK did not. In Germany and Sweden, real GDP exceeded pre-crisis levels by 2010, in the UK only in 2014 and in Spain in 2016 (Eurostat, 2017). Germany was also selected because of its exceptionally influential position in the eurozone, and Sweden because of its large public sector (we chose not to select Denmark because its krone is linked to the euro). The UK is of special interest as a pioneer of neoliberal ideas and NPM. Finally, we chose Spain because, at the time of selection, it seemed to be less affected by the crisis and with fewer domestic problems in the public sector than Greece, but more affected than Italy.

Our case studies follow a comparative approach, using both primary and secondary sources of information. Our primary sources are more than 80 structured interviews with trade unionists, employer representatives and industrial relations experts in the four countries, conducted in 2014 and 2015 within a research project in which we investigated public sector industrial relations before and since the 2008 crisis. We also draw on documents such as collective agreements and legal texts, and statistical sources. In all four countries, we collected the data following the same content-related structure and discussed the findings within the team.

The trade union power resources approach

The literature on trade union power resources (Silver, 2003; Stokke and Thörnqvist, 2001; Wright, 2000) often distinguishes between structural and organizational power. Structural power emanates from workers’ position in the labour market and within the production process, which shapes their ability to exert power by leaving a company or by disrupting production. Trade union structural power thus depends on its members’ vocational skills and positions in the production process as well as on the unemployment rate. In public sector trade unions, structural power is also affected by resource allocation and budgetary balances, including sovereign debt, which shape public sector employers’ ability to pay. In Spain and the UK in particular, we thus expected a weakening of public sector trade unions.

Collective organizational power is the other main source of class and trade union power; cooperation in trade unions strengthens even low-skilled workers. Union density is a relatively good measure of trade unions’ organizational power, but the level of union dues and the size of strike funds are also important, as is the proportion of activists among members. It can be expected that austerity and cuts cause discontent; however, labour history shows no compelling evidence how this affects the organizational power of public sector employees.

Comparative studies have also shown that institutions modify the way external impulses, such as NPM, affect public sector industrial relations (Dell’Aringa et al., 2001). Hence, we must also consider trade unions’ institutional power resources: the rights established by law and collective agreements as well as institutionalized channels of worker representation such as works councils. Institutional power is derived from former struggles or otherwise conceded by the state, for example, by a union-friendly government. In times of declining trade union power, the institutionalized results of past struggles may be beneficial for trade unions.

As Schmidt et al. (2011) show, societal support is an important source of power for public sector trade unions. This is a reason to adopt the power resources approach of Schmalz and Dörre (2014): societal power is a resource for public sector trade unions if they can rely on other workers’ solidarity, a broader labour movement or a cultural hegemony of union-friendly ideas. If available, societal power is, of course, useful for employers too, and society is therefore an important arena of discursive conflict. We assume that trade unions will receive societal support when their objectives are seen as of general interest, whereas defending public sector ‘privileges’ will lead to a withdrawal of public support.

When applying the power resources approach to public sector unions, we also find it necessary to include political power, because governments and party politics influence public sector employers by law and regulations. Political power is related to societal power but cannot be reduced to it (Hyman and Gumbrell-McCormick, 2013). For instance, if we define the impact of a union-friendly government merely as a special case of societal power, we conceptually blur the boundary between society and state. Our theoretical assumption is that all relevant impacts on public sector trade union power can be displayed by the power resources approach if supplemented by the resource of political power.

With reference to the five types of power resources, there are significant differences between public and private sectors. Employees in private companies produce profit and thus can disrupt profit production by strikes. A state may own profit-producing assets too, but as far as services are publicly financed, a public sector strike differs from private sector industrial action in a fundamental way, as it may help authorities to save expenses, rather than causing costs to the employer. Therefore, public sector unions must gain political support and rely on the citizens’ understanding and solidarity. Citizens can punish political representatives who are hostile to unions’ demands, but there is also the risk that they vote against union-friendly politicians. However, paradoxically, solidarity support, as by parents caring for their children themselves during a nursery strike, may have the same, albeit unintended effect as strike-breaking.

Hence, workers’ structural power is lower in the public sector than in the private sector, because – in Marxian terminology – disrupting the production of surplus value is categorically a matter of the private sector, whereas in the dimension of use value, there are few differences between public and private sectors but pronounced differences between distinct occupations. For instance, physicians can cause immediate and considerable damage by a strike; their structural power is stronger than for those whose work is easier to replace. However, neither of them can disrupt the production of surplus value if their activities are financed by taxes. In practice, this means that although the societal dimension is relevant for private sector industrial relations too, societal and political factors are more essential for public sector labour relations. Also, structural power in the public sector depends on political decisions and societal interests. In consequence, especially for groups without the right to strike (such as Beamte in Germany), party politics and lobbying are essential methods to increase trade union power.

Trade unions and industrial relations in the four countries

Germany

Germany possesses a highly institutionalized industrial relations system; in the private sector, this includes the legal rights of works councils, and in large companies, board-level representation of employees and trade unions. In the public sector, staff councils (Personalräte) are elected by the entire workforce; their members need not be trade unionists, but in practice, they often are. The public sector is widely covered by national collective agreements; despite some decline, the aggregate figure is still close to 100 percent. The employers’ side is constituted at three different levels: represented by the minister of the interior (Innenminister) at federal or national level; by the Tarifgemeinschaft der Länder (TdL) at the level of the states (Bundesländer); and by the Vereinigung der kommunalen Arbeitgeberverbände (VKA) at municipal level. In 2005 and 2006, two major collective agreements were concluded, one for the federal and municipal levels (TVöD), and one for the states (TV-L). However, the employment conditions of established civil servants (Beamte), accounting for about 37 percent of the public sector workforce in 2016 (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2017) are defined by law rather than collective bargaining.

From the early 1990s, the major trade union in the public sector, ver.di (and its predecessors) was faced with public sector restructuring, privatization and ‘early austerity measures’ (Keller, 2014), an inter-sectoral decrease in union density¹ and collective bargaining coverage. Societal recognition and political support for trade unions decreased too. Lehndorff (2015) speaks of German unions as ‘the most important pre-crisis losers in the eurozone’ (p. 160). Privatization reduced the scope of codetermination and collective agreements, this affecting not only unions’ institutional but also their structural and organizational power resources. Since employees but not Beamte (administrators, teachers and police officers) were mainly affected by privatization, ver.di was structurally under stronger pressure than the representative bodies for Beamte (dbb), for education (GEW) and for police (GdP). Taking the bleak prospects of industrial relations in private services into consideration, but also in order to help the public sector cope with competitive pressure from the private sector, ver.di promoted the statutory minimum wage (Mindestlohn), which was introduced in 2015.

Public sector collective bargaining resulted in major changes such as status harmonization for manual and non-manual workers (Schmidt et al., 2011), performance-related pay (PRP) (Schmidt and Müller, 2013) and decentralization through the Föderalismusreform (Federalism Reform) in 2006 (Czerwick, 2007; Keller, 2014). Apart from these changes, trade union institutional power resources have hardly deteriorated: collective agreements are usually implemented without noteworthy deviations, which means, there is little need for local union activism and the use of organizational power. Instead, the latter was further weakened when large parts of public transportation and refuse collection were privatized and the unions lost two of their most active ‘battle groups’.

The crisis had a comparably weak impact on trade unions in the public sector, but later developments were unexpected, like pay rises, virtually non-existent in the last years before the crisis. While the state is still indebted at all levels and privatization continues, higher fiscal revenues and low interest rates mean that austerity is not pursued as strictly as before. Although there are some negative developments, such as increasing pay differentials for Beamte in the different Länder, these changes cannot be seen as a reaction to the crisis but as a consequence of pre-crisis, longer term policy: the Föderalismusreform authorized the Länder to determine conditions for Beamte at Land and municipal levels. Because of differing regulation levels for Beamte (Land level) and other employees (national level), the hitherto close connection of wage increases between both status groups has become decoupled (Gottschall et al., 2015; Schmidt and Müller, 2018). Yet, even though the Föderalismusreform has been described as a change from ‘cooperative to competitive federalism’ (Bosch, 2013: 214), with respect to collective bargaining and from a comparative perspective, it resulted only in ‘limited decentralization’ (Keller, 2016: 208).

The CDU–SPD coalition, in office from 2013 to 2017, was not anti-union. However, despite low interest rates, Wolfgang Schäuble, the minister of finance, insisted on strict budget discipline (schwarze Null) that limited the ability to pay higher wages. Nevertheless, unions’ structural power increased slightly thanks to low unemployment. For instance, societal and political appreciation of pre-school education led recently to a growing demand for nursery personnel and created the opportunity and the willingness for kindergarten staff to fight for better conditions. The decrease in institutional, societal and political power also seems to have stopped, but the signals are not unambiguous. Whether there will be a sustainable increase in organizational power is still an open question, and trade union policy after the 2017 election is currently unclear.

In the past, German trade unions attempted to compensate the erosion of societal power and the threat of losing political support by securing institutional power. The protection of national agreements was their major objective. Concession bargaining, by waiving pay rises and approving PRP, was a consequence. As union representatives explained to us, ver.di is in a process of strategic change, for example, adopting ‘conditional collective bargaining’ (bedingungsgebundene Tarifarbeit), which requires the creation of workplace-level support before pressing bargaining demands (Dribbusch, 2016: 358). Organizing campaigns are however difficult to run within the public sector because national agreements already exist. ver.di combines claims for better working conditions with campaigns for social recognition of public services. Aiming at support by a wider audience (societal power resources) is, according to our interviewees, a deliberate and promising strategy.

In contrast to ver.di, the dbb relies primarily on institutional and political power resources. Its preferred instruments are lobbying and legal action, as well as arguing with the constitutionally enshrined ‘traditional principles of a professional civil service’. Interviewees from dbb emphasized that they are not aiming for the right to strike. In order to organize also non-Beamte, however, it sometimes deploys ver.di’s mode of action.

Spain

Trade unions in Spain became influential actors with the progressive institutionalization of industrial relations in the transition to democracy in the 1970s. Structural power emanating from workers’ position in the labour market and within the labour process is contingent upon the private sector in Spain and was widely undermined during the recent crisis because of the deterioration in labour market conditions. The combination of both persistent high unemployment and labour regulatory reforms reduced Spanish unions’ negotiating capacities. ‘The balance of power between labour and capital has changed dramatically in favour of the latter’ (Banyuls and Recio, 2015: 67). This also occurred in the public sector, where the long tradition of dialogue and social pacts had brought material gains.² Unions had to adapt their demands and expectations to the changed socioeconomic context, given their limited disruptive capacity, and their possibilities to influence political decisions were reduced.

As a result of their low membership levels, Spanish unions possessed relatively weak organizational and collaborative resources at workplace level (Pulignano et al., 2016). Despite an increase in affiliation in the public sector before the crisis (Beneyto, 2009), the scope for action was reduced by diminishing numbers of activists and inadequate technical skills in an increasingly decentralized and demanding industrial relations environment (Bernaciak et al., 2014). Unions have therefore relied on macro-level political dialogue to reinforce their role (Ortiz, 1999). However, ‘impelled by the threat of financial collapse of the Spanish economy’ (Suárez Corujo, 2013: 4), concession bargaining may have undermined their already weak organizational power.

Union representativeness in Spain derives more from the results of employee representation elections (‘audience’) than from membership (‘presence’) (Pedersini, 2010). A high collective bargaining coverage stems from the rule that agreements are generally extended beyond the contracting parties (erga omnes) and reflects the importance of institutional power. Unions’ institutional power resources were nonetheless weakened as a direct consequence of deregulation and decentralization after the crisis, when the government in 2012 unilaterally imposed a deterioration in employment conditions and drastically reduced the scope for collective bargaining in the public sector. The unions submitted a series of complaints to the International Labour Organization (ILO, 2014), some of which were upheld. Because unions’ strength was so dependent on institutional resources backed by the state, they faced special difficulties in a context of political turbulence. The hostility of the conservative Partido Popular (PP), elected in 2011, caused a strategic dilemma because militant action could provoke the loss of the hitherto important institutional and political power resources. In our interviews, representatives of both central government and the unions declared their wish to restore effective bargaining, but real practice has been limited to a few politically motivated interactions.

Trade unions representing public sector employees have tried to find new grounds for future agreements but have also opposed the situation in which they are placed: they have attempted to combine strategies of both negotiation and pressure. The latter included ‘new actions either of a transnational character or related to typical social movements’ activities’ (Gago, 2016: 46) in defence of public services. A wider and more flexible repertoire expressed in terms of ‘inclusive strikes’ (Cerrillo Vidal, 2013) emerged with new forms of contentious collective action and resistance to austerity. Demonstrations received key support from ‘the structures that the largest trade unions have within the public sector’ (Köhler and Calleja Jiménez, 2017: 77). Our interviews showed that unions had a genuine disposition to participate in broader social platforms or initiatives at the expense of their own separate visibility. However, their mobilizing capacity decreased because of ‘fatigue effects’. The predominant perception of interviewees was that options to reverse the worsening of working conditions were rather limited.

A distinct characteristic in the public sector is the ultimate political prerogative of the government to regulate working conditions unilaterally, after using other extrajudicial mechanisms to solve disputes (Alfonso Mellado, 2007). The government used the public employees to demonstrate policies of cost containment to the rest of the citizens as well as their European counterparts. The multiple facets of the state as sovereign institution, regulatory entity, policy-maker and employer brought more complexity to the development of public sector industrial relations. Interviewees pointed to the existence of a hostile conservative political climate since 2011, which has contributed to discredit unions and hinder revitalization. They also recognized left-wing critics of the institutionalization of union organizations as a detrimental factor for recovering society’s confidence.

In sum, as a consequence of the crisis, despite some ambivalent effects on the societal and political arenas in terms of social support and resistance capacity, trade union power resources have diminished. The challenge for trade unions is thus renewing their role as an effective social force (Köhler and Calleja Jiménez, 2013: 16). Given unions’ vulnerability and serious limitations to labour concertation (Luque Balbona and González Begega, 2016), only internal renewal aimed at strengthening their organizational and the societal power resources may provide new opportunities.

Sweden

Swedish trade unions have long been influential actors, operating within a coordinated economy and supported by institutionalized industrial relations. Employee codetermination was introduced with the 1976 Medbestämmandelagen (Codetermination Act, MBL) which authorized the local branches of the trade unions to handle all relevant issues at workplace level, including adaptations of wage bargaining and negotiations over firm-level additional remuneration. The MBL gave the unions the right to information and consultation on all important matters of a company. A special act for public employment, the Lag om offentlig anställning (LOA), was introduced in the same year.

Growing organizational trade union power was thus ‘invested’ in institutional power and given the long social democratic political hegemony from 1932 to 1976 in political power resources as well. These resources have further merged into societal power, although the latter has often been challenged not only by employers’ associations and right-wing political parties but also from the left.

There are discrepancies between the public and private sectors, but not very salient ones. The coverage of collective agreement was still 89–90 percent in Sweden in 2015: in the public sector, it is 100 percent (Kjellberg, 2017). Landsorganisationen i Sverige (LO) organizes blue-collar workers in both sectors, while white-collar workers are members of Tjänstemännens centralorganisation (TCO) and professionals with university education of Sveriges akademikers centralorganisation (SACO), but with some notable exceptions such as trained nurses who belong to a union affiliated to TCO. The Municipal Workers’ Union (Kommunal) is the second largest union after the TCO-affiliated union organizing salaried employees in the private sector, Unionen. The largest public sector union for salaried employees is the Teachers’ Union (Lärarförbundet). As in Kommunal, more than 80 percent of the members are women. In the public sector, 80 percent of employees were organized in 2016, compared to 64 percent in the private sector. Since 2006, union density has declined by 8 percent in the public sector and 7 percent in the private sector, with the largest drop among blue-collar workers (Kjellberg, 2017). The main reason was that in 2007 the centre-right government introduced changes to the union-administered unemployment insurance funds (the so-called Ghent system) which significantly increased the costs to members. In the past, there has generally been an increase in union density in times of economic crisis; but the recent financial crisis did not stop the downwards trend (Kjellberg, 2017). Thus, organizational power resources have declined in both sectors.

In the wake of the financial crisis in the early 1990s and the subsequent restructuring and downsizing of the public sector, mass lay-offs occurred for the first time in this sector (Thörnquist and Thörnqvist, 2018). Because of marketization and sub-contracting, various forms of atypical employment, such as fixed-term and part-time employment, as well as stand-by arrangements have become a growing problem as well. This is a high priority for Kommunal, which organizes workers also in the privatized but still tax-financed parts of the municipal sector. However, many small private providers, especially in the low-skilled service sector, lack collective agreements in order to gain a competitive advantage (Thörnquist, 2015).

Although still strong by international comparison, Swedish unions have lost power ever since the late 1990s. In the words of Bengtsson and Ryner (2017), Sweden’s response to the early 1990 crisis was ‘a shift into a supply-side oriented competitive corporatism’, which the unions accepted as ‘the lesser of possible evils’ (p. 171). The decentralization of wage-setting was more rapid in the public than in the private sector (Thörnqvist, 1998). In the nation-wide bargaining rounds in 1993, it was agreed that at least half the total wage sum in the public sector should be individually distributed at local level (Elvander and Holmlund, 1997).

The Swedish labour market displays a form of pattern-bargaining (Traxler et al., 2001): employers and trade unions in the export industries set a framework for wage increases in each national bargaining round, referring to a ‘Europe norm’ based on the competitiveness of Sweden compared to other European countries (Elvander and Holmlund, 1997). This has resulted in a low inflation rate and peaceful bargaining rounds. As Anxo (2015) points out, healthy public finances and the strong Swedish social safety net have mitigated the negative effects of ‘external macroeconomic shocks’ (p. 266). Moreover, the recent financial crisis was short, and unlike that of the early 1990s, did not generate significant austerity measures. Our interviews indicate that neither the trade unions nor the authorities use the notion of ‘austerity’ when discussing the recent crisis; when they talked about the ‘period of big retrenchments’, they referred to the early 1990s.

Unions in the export industries accepted a wage freeze in order to help Sweden out of the crisis. The following pattern-bargaining rounds matched this outcome, not always for the good of the public sector unions. Moreover, different conditions for different occupational groups within LO have caused frictions ever since the early 2000s. Although unions in Sweden still are comparatively powerful, their overall power resources are thus threatened by internal frictions; the public sector unions claim that their members get less ‘real’ remuneration compared to the export industries. This was the main reason why Kommunal decided to withdraw from the coordinated wage bargaining round within the LO in 2015 (Thörnquist and Thörnqvist, 2018). However, public support has become an increasingly important power resource for unions in the public sector, which has been obvious especially in labour conflicts. Another reason, mentioned in the trade union interviews, is the harsh working conditions in the welfare sector and the increasing problems with work-related ill-health, especially among women (SWEA, 2017).

United Kingdom

The British economy was severely hit by the financial crisis. Real GDP dropped but unlike in previous recessions, employment was not significantly affected. The unemployment rate increased only slightly and was half a decade later almost back at pre-crisis levels (ONS, 2017c). In the public sector, however, in the course of the Cameron governments’ austerity measures, employment shrank from about 6 million to about 5.4 million between 2008 and 2017 (ONS, 2017b) and thus weakened the structural power of public sector unions.

The long-term decline in union membership entails a continuous loss of organizational power. Unions responded with mergers or took measures such as organizing campaigns or the development of new fields of activity. In the years before the crisis, some unions managed to stop the decline or even achieved an increase, particularly in services like education and the National Health Service (NHS). However, the long-term erosion accelerated again with subsequent staff reductions and further outsourcing. ‘In 2016, public sector union membership fell to its second lowest level during the period 1995 to 2016 (the lowest being in 1998), continuing the broadly downward trend in public sector membership levels since 2010’ (BEIS, 2017: 13).

Despite decreasing union density and a significant decline of industrial action over the last 30 years, a strike wave in 2011 showed that unions and workers are still relevant actors in the public sector, albeit the larger disputes tended to last for a single day only (ONS, 2015). In the ensuing years, lost working days decreased distinctly but were still always higher in the public than in the private sector (ONS, 2017a), even though trade unionists interviewed state that, in particular, in the NHS, the willingness to strike is rather low because of a sense of responsibility for patients.

In contrast to organizational power, institutional power resources were traditionally less important in the UK than in other countries, as reflected in the principle of ‘voluntarism’, according to which the state abstains ‘from modelling the processes of interaction between the parties through collective bargaining, and agreements made between them will not normally have the force of law’ (Snape, 1999: 268). In the public sector, multi-employer agreements still play a relevant role. However, their scope is being reduced and regulatory powers are weakened (Bach, 2011), not least through a long-term decentralization trend which has gained momentum since 2010. In 2016, the pay of about 15 percent of employees in the private and 59 percent in the public sector was ‘affected’ by collective agreements (BEIS, 2017). Moreover, there are alternative mechanisms of centralized pay determination in the public sector, the pay review bodies (PRBs).³ Unexpectedly, a trade unionist interviewed described this mechanism in positive terms, arguing that good results had been achieved. Nevertheless, the unilateral pay freeze imposed by the Cameron government as an austerity measure showed that the outcome of PRB recommendations was contingent on the government’s willingness to implement them. ‘One irony is that the resilience of centralized systems of national pay determination has facilitated paybill control during a period of austerity’ (Bach and Bordogna, 2016a: 142).

Unions’ institutional power was curtailed by legislation, in particular, during the Thatcher governments (Dickens, 2008). Despite some improvements, this was never fully restored by the succeeding Labour governments and the Cameron governments followed in Thatcher’s footsteps with the 2016 Trade Union Act, which increased the obstacles to unions’ ability to take industrial action and hampered the functioning of their organizations (Gall, 2016).

Public sector unions largely depend on political power resources and on which party is in government. The employers’ association for the British municipalities, the Local Government Association (LGA), at first glance similar to the German VKA, is also heavily dependent on central government because of the limited financial autonomy of municipalities. An increase in anti-union government interventions in the field of labour relations, a further decline of tripartite bodies and a trend towards unilateralism and retrenchments indicate at all levels the depletion of trade unions’ political power resources under the Conservative governments. Even under Blair, who also had pursued market-oriented public sector reforms, Labour was clearly less anti-union than the Thatcher and Cameron governments. Indeed, the Blair government facilitated union recognition, introduced the national minimum wage and expanded public spending in areas such as the NHS and education. A ‘growth of public sector unions took place alongside the more rapid decline of private sector unions’ (Coderre-LaPalme and Greer, 2017: 253), even though Labour policies can be viewed as an attempt ‘to square the circle of neoliberalism with a human face’ (Grimshaw and Rubery, 2012: 106–107). The recent left turn of the Labour Party revitalizes ties with trade unions. However, the UK is societally and discursively split. Confronted with the statement of an HR manager of a big German city, a senior representative of the VKA, saying that he would like to see as many services as possible directly delivered by the municipality, the HR manager of an English city stressed the necessity to save costs and replied that ‘most councils in the UK would agree that how we’ve delivered services in the past will not be the same in future’, adding ‘I would disagree with my colleague from Germany; the situation here is different’.

In the UK, unions’ access to societal power is rather ambiguous. Opposing the government’s harsh austerity policies, which hit public sector workers and recipients of welfare benefits the hardest (Grimshaw, 2013), and pointing to damaging mid- and long-term consequences for society (CLES, 2014) may not increase societal support, as this means having to shape public discourse against the hegemonic ideology of neoliberalism. In elections, the Conservatives were able to mobilize societal power on their behalf, but the fact that the Cameron government took up the issue of a living wage (TUC, 2013) shows that unions are also able to deploy societal power resources successfully. The trade union policy of the May government is less clear and the possible consequences of Brexit are still uncertain.

Comparison and conclusion

There were pronounced differences between the four countries in terms of the importance of particular trade union power resources before the recent crisis, and developments since the crisis have been diverse. Table 1 displays the patterns for each of the five power resources in the four countries, as regards both long-term trends and more recent developments since the crisis.

Table 1.

Public sector trade union power resources before and since the crisis.

		Germany	Sweden	Spain	UK
Structural	Importance^a	Medium	Medium	Weak	Rather weak
	Long term^b	Decreasing	Decreasing	Increasing	Increasing
	Recent^c	Increasing	Increasing	Decreasing	Decreasing
Organizational	Importance^a	Medium	Strong	Weak/medium	Medium/strong
	Long term^b	Decreasing	Decreasing	Increasing	Decreasing
	Recent^c	Stagnating	Decreasing	Decreasing	Decreasing
Institutional	Importance^a	Strong	Strong	Strong	Weak/medium
	Long term^b	Decreasing	Decreasing	Increasing	Stagnation
	Recent^c	Ambiguous	Stable	Decreasing	Decreasing
Societal	Importance^a	Medium	Strong	Weak	Ambiguous
	Long term^b	Decreasing	Decreasing	Ambiguous	Ambiguous
	Recent^c	Ambiguous	Ambiguous	Decreasing	Ambiguous
Political	Importance^a	Medium	Strong	Medium	Alternating
	Long term^b	Decreasing	Decreasing	Stagnation	Stagnation
	Recent^c	Ambiguous	Ambiguous	Decreasing	Decreasing

Relative importance compared to other countries.

Long-term trend (before the crisis).

Trend since the crisis.

The long-term change in public sector industrial relations was more limited than in the private sector, and institutional power played a more stable role. Accordingly, the effects on organizational power were small. In the comparatively low-institutionalized UK, the differential decline in trade union density between the private and the public sectors is most distinct. However, a similar tendency can also be observed in the other countries. Apart from Spain, trade unionism was in decline already in the 1990s, and austerity measures and public sector economies were imposed in all four countries. Before the crisis, this was most pronounced in Germany and in Sweden (since the early 1990s), and not significant under ‘New Labour’ in the UK, and because of pre-crisis prosperity not yet widespread in Spain. In the aftermath of the crisis, austerity measures were mainly carried out by the Conservative governments in the UK and Spain. Trade unions in both countries opposed cuts and pay freezes, yet not very successfully.

To a certain extent, all trade union power resources can be derived from the structural position of labour in the production process and the labour market. A lasting crisis, austerity measures and high unemployment therefore cause problems for (not only) public sector trade unions. But even changes in structural power resources interact with gains or losses in other types of power. Most trade unions with strong structural power have other types of power resources at their disposal. Conversely, unions with weak structural power are in more need of organizational, institutional, societal and political power resources. Different combinations of power resources entail different strategies. Because of functional equivalences, however, different strategies do not necessarily lead to differing outcomes.

Relying mainly on political support and institutional power implies a high risk for trade unions, as shown in the Spanish case, which combines the most lasting crisis and most severe austerity measures among our four countries with weak trade union organizational power. Even in highly unionized Sweden, the challenges to the Ghent system by the previous centre-right government damaged union membership markedly. The British case most impressively illustrates the relevance of political power as a resource. ‘While there is no evidence that the innovations under Labour governments helped unions to revitalize themselves, [there] is much evidence that the actions of Conservative governments have weakened them’ (Coderre-LaPalme and Greer, 2017: 262).

Although institutional power resources are very important for Spanish and Swedish unions, their stability differs in several ways: The Spanish industrial relations system is more recently established; in Sweden, institutionalized industrial relations and unions are long established and highly accepted. Spanish unions depend on strong political support, whereas in Sweden political and societal support has been transformed into institutional power. In Sweden, public services are highly esteemed and public sector employees differ little from other workers. In Spain, civil servants were viewed as privileged during the crisis and trade unions to some extent as belonging to a declining system. In accordance with our assumptions, societal support for public sector trade unions is therefore more stable in Sweden than in Spain.

In Germany and Sweden, where the effects of the crisis on public sector trade unions seemed as limited as on wages and working conditions, these unions are in a process of strategic reorientation. An exhaustion of neoliberal ideology paralleled with a public sector which is regaining societal appreciation may well increase their structural power resources. It seems that public sector trade unions, if not primarily defending privileges (such as better pension systems for civil servants) but supporting modern public services, valued by society (such as pre-school education) can regain the initiative. In the UK as well as in Spain, the unions’ short-term prospects depend on their structural power resources, which are currently strongly affected by austerity policies.

Although there are regional differences within the UK and Spain regarding public sector unions’ responses to austerity before and after the crisis, there is no evidence that crisis and austerity foster union revitalization. No strong signs of union recovery can be detected in any of the four countries. However, even stronger latent political and societal power resources do not strengthen trade unions if they do not seize the opportunity. And as Schmalz and Dörre (2014) emphasize, power resources alone cannot explain how trade unions act because they must also develop strategies to utilize their power resources. Taking such limitations into account, we conclude that our five-part power resources approach has proved a helpful instrument for researching public sector industrial relations.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

A previous version of this article was presented at the 2015 Industrial Relations in Europe Conference (IREC) in Gothenburg. The authors thank the workshop participants for helpful comments.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The authors are grateful to the Hans-Böckler-Stiftung for funding the project ‘Crisis, State and Labour Relations: Austerity Policy and Public Sector Labour Relations’.

Notes

Author biographies

Werner Schmidt is a Senior Researcher at the Research Institute for Work, Technology and Culture (FATK) in Tübingen, Germany.

Andrea Müller is a Researcher at the Research Institute for Work, Technology and Culture (FATK) in Tübingen, Germany.

Irene Ramos-Vielba is a Research Fellow at the FATK and at INGENIO (CSIC-UPV), Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain.

Annette Thörnquist is an Affiliated Researcher at the Research Institute for Work, Technology and Culture (FATK) in Tübingen, Germany.

Christer Thörnqvist is a Researcher and Lecturer at the School of Business, Skövde University, Sweden and affiliated to the FATK.

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