Gains and pitfalls of coalitions: Societal resources as sources of trade union power in Croatia and Poland

Introduction

In applying the conventional quantitative measures for trade union power, the situation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) looks bleak. Unions are losing members, their members are getting older and they are suffering from the erosion of collective bargaining. While this tendency is shared by many Western unions (Gumbrell-McCormick and Hyman, 2018), it has advanced much faster in the ‘new’ EU Member States. Central and Eastern Europe unions have certainly not meekly accepted their fate. A variety of revitalisation strategies have been tested, including organising non-standard workers, increased focus on law enforcement, changing the forum for social dialogue, acquiring external financial grants and, last but not least, strengthening coalitions with non-union societal groups (Mrozowicki, 2014; Bernaciak and Kahancová, 2017). This article focuses on the latter, hitherto less studied strategy in two countries from the ‘New Europe’: Croatia and Poland.

Societal power resources are defined here in a broad sense. They can include not only formal and informal alliances with political parties and civil society associations but also union-led referendum campaigns, street protests and media campaigns aimed at improving their influence on the policy-making process. Studying these societal power resources is because they had been underappreciated in the past (Levesque and Murray, 2010). In Croatia and Poland, most of the strategies listed above that are rooted in organisational, structural and institutional power have hardly produced satisfactory results. Furthermore, since 2008 in both countries actions relying on societal power showed clear aspects of union revitalisation, defined by Kumar and Schenk (2013: 16) as ‘adaptations and change initiatives undertaken by unions to restore their strength and influence’.

The decision to conduct a comparative analysis of these two specific countries stems from the realisation that their trade unions underwent a similar trajectory of their involvement in the broadly understood social and political processes. This implies a diminishing extent of organisational, institutional and structural power resources. However, in addition to these similarities, there are also historical differences between the two countries which are important for a comparative analysis. Due to the delayed transition and integration into global economic and political structures, the organisational and institutional power of Croatian trade unions is still greater than that of its Polish counterparts (Bohle and Greskovits, 2012). The privatisation process in Croatia is less advanced than in Poland, leaving the country with a sizable public sector and a stronger trade union presence.

In this article, our main research question is what happens to union power when trade unions, in a situation of ongoing decline, reorient themselves towards political action and coalitions, by comparing three similar campaigns in two countries with different political landscapes. Starting from the view that weak institutional power resources stimulate unions to experiment with revitalisation strategies within the ambit of societal power resources (Weil, 2005; Eaton et al., 2017), our initial premise is that Polish trade unions should score better in this area, as in an earlier analysed case of trade union organising strategies (Mrozowicki, 2014).

The economic crisis in Croatia and the threat of a crisis in Poland acted as a catalyst for trade unions to build societal power by drawing on their societal power resources, primarily through the development of new alliances. In the Polish context, room for coalition-building with liberal forces was limited since these forces implemented neoliberal austerity policies in the post-crisis period. The situation was similar in Croatia. Nevertheless, since the political context in Croatia was more conventional, only in Poland were populist parties able to serve as serious potential union allies, given that they captured a significant part of the protest vote. A problem with such alliances is the risk of union agendas cupture by the populist parties, which may substitute union functions with illiberal policies. Furthermore, alliances between trade unions and populist parties frequently diminish the union capacities to influence key political actors (Gumbrell McCormick and Hyman 2018: 225). Ultimately, close alliances between unions and illiberal forces raise the question of union legitimacy in the long run.

We first review the literature on trade union revitalisation and power resources as sources of trade union power with a particular emphasis on societal power resources. Afterwards, we reflect on the developments within the structural, organisational and institutional union power resources in both Croatia and Poland. In the article’s central part, we analyse the societal power resources in both countries starting with an assessment of their historical backgrounds. Subsequently, we focus on three prominent union campaigns that strengthened societal power by addressing union opposition towards the increased retirement age, Sunday trading and working conditions of precarious workers. Arguably, these three campaigns in both countries were amongst the most visible, successfully addressing major issues that concern workers across the EU. The fact that all three campaigns were implemented in both countries allowed us to engage in an in-depth comparative analysis of these cases. The article’s conclusion reflects on the specific configuration of power resources and the subsequent revitalisation attempts deployed by the unions within the selected campaigns in the face of the inadequacy of traditional patterns to represent worker interests.

Conceptualising trade union power and revitalisation

The power resources approach (PRA), based on the theoretical considerations of Wright (2000) and Silver (2003) and further discussed by other scholars (Levesque and Murray, 2010; Schmalz et al., 2018), ‘is founded on the basic premise that organized labour can successfully defend its interests by collective mobilization of power resources’ (Schmalz et al., 2018: 113). Notably, there needs to be a distinction between trade union power and trade union power resources. Power concerns, according to Max Weber (1968: 53), ‘the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance (…)’. Power resources, in turn, reflect ‘fixed or path-dependent assets that an actor can normally access and mobilize’ (Levesque and Murray, 2010: 335). Thus, power resources can be translated into power only by means of agency – or actors’ capacity to make use of them to influence the actions of other actors, such as employers and the state. Turning to novel forms of societal power is a response to the erosion of the conventional sources of workers’ (and trade unions’) power: structural, organisational and institutional. Structural power ‘results simply from the location of workers within the economic system’ (Wright, 2000: 962). Organisational power is directly related to what and whose interests the trade unions and other workers’ organisations represent (Ibid.). Last but not least, institutional power represents the result of ‘struggles and negotiation process based on structural and organizational power’ (Schmalz et al., 2018: 121).

Societal power seems to be of crucial importance when discussing recent union revitalisation strategies in Poland and Croatia. It is based on ‘societal power resources’, defined as ‘the latitudes for action arising from viable cooperation contexts with other social groups and organisations, and society’s support for trade union demands’ (Ibid. 122). Principally, there are two ways of using societal resources for the sake of union revitalisation. The first concerns coalition-building with other societal groups, such as political parties, NGOs, professional associations or employers. This can translate into societal power by extending the scope of interests and agendas that unions seek to represent, enabling them to ‘broaden their appeal to the poorly represented segments of the labour force’ (Frege and Kelly, 2003: 9). The second involves actions aimed at influencing policy-making, either directly or through shaping the public discourse for political ends. These could be mass protests, demonstrations, advocacy campaigns, referendum campaigns, innovative use of media and ICT, etc. This can be understood in terms of political action, as a special kind of revitalisation strategy providing ‘access to power resources, resulting in more favourable labour legislation or in corporatist labour market regulation’ (Ibid.).

Mobilising these resources could result in attaining two kinds of societal power: coalitional and discursive (Schmalz et al., 2018: 122). Coalitional power requires cooperative relationships with non-union organisations that share similar goals with unions, though differ from them structurally (Gumbrell-McCormick and Hyman, 2018: 31). There are several reasons why unions may seek such alliances: i) to gain financial and physical resources, ii) to access new constituencies, iii) to draw on specialist expertise, iv) to gain added legitimacy and v) to strengthen their mobilisation capacity (Frege et al., 2004: 140).

Discursive power, on the other hand, relies on the ability of trade unions to provide interpretation patterns and solutions to burning social problems (Schmalz et al., 2018: 123). The development of discursive or moral power requires the presence of a normative vision that needs to be communicated. The key issue here is the subversion of a dominant neoliberal narrative frame, which is based on the notion that money is the measure of all things (Gumbrell-McCormick and Hyman, 2018: 153). Therefore, the central purpose of trade union actions has to be presented as the pursuance of social justice, defence of workers’ rights against the imperatives of profit, the struggle for industrial democracy, etc. (Ibid.). It has to be based on ‘the existing stock of stories that frame understandings (…) and inform a sense of efficacy and legitimacy’ (Levesque and Murray, 2010: 336).

As indicated by Frege and Kelly (2003: 9), there are six major trade union revitalisation strategies: organising, organisational restructuring, coalition building, partnership with employers, political action and international links. Additionally, providing new services to employees was identified as a revitalisation strategy in its own right (Meardi, 2007). These revitalisation strategies, in particular coalition building, political action and international links, closely correspond with novel ways of using societal power resources. Moreover, the engagement of trade unions with different revitalisation strategies, which may strengthen or increase their power, requires the presence of particular power resources – or their lack thereof. For example, it was argued that reliance on organising is more likely in a context in which trade unions cannot rely on institutional power secured through (neo)corporatist arrangements (Baccaro et al., 2003). Similarly, political action and coalition building with social movements and civil society organisations can also be seen as the result of limited organisational and institutional power, which directs trade unions towards actions in the scope of societal power resources.

A comparison of union power resources in Poland and Croatia

Our study assesses the potential and pitfalls of strategies based on political action by looking at three similar campaigns (on pensions, Sunday trading and precarious employment), all at least partially successful, run by Polish and Croat trade unions, to ask if societal power resources, when effectively used, have the capacity to redress union decline. The fact that in both countries the campaigns resulted in successes provides a best case for investigating how far such strategies can help trade unions, also in contrast with previous ineffective organising strategies, while the different political landscape of the two countries (with a strong populist party in Poland but not in Croatia) allows to test if the outcomes are contingent on the party-political context.

The analysis is based on 37 semi-structured interviews (21 in Poland and 16 in Croatia) with experts, employers and trade union leaders collected in 2015–2016 in the following sectors: retail, steelworks, construction, health care and temporary work agencies. Furthermore, information from other research projects addressing industrial relations in CEE countries, contextual information such as secondary literature and statistics from official sources and opinion polls on the following 5 years was also used, including a number of follow-up interviews.

Judging from trade union density, the organisational power of Polish and Croatian unions is weak and declining (see Table 1). In Poland, staggering differences exist in the structure of union membership between the private and public sectors, that is, as low as 2% vs. 28% in 2017 (Feliksiak, 2017). In Poland. the Trade Union Act was amended in 2019 as a result of union political pressure to extend the right of association to all workers, not just to those with employment contracts. However, the effects of the enlarged constituency remain to be seen. Notably, since the late 1990s, Polish unions, including the largest confederations Solidarity and OPZZ, have engaged in some US-inspired trade union organising activities aimed at increasing their presence in the private sector. Though this resulted in the unionisation of some companies (mostly large and foreign-owned), it did not stop the overall union membership decline (Krzywdzinski, 2010). In terms of trade union membership, the situation in Croatia is better. According to the ICTWSS database (Visser, 2019), membership in the private sector was at 17% and 68% in the public sector.

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Table 1.

Trade union density in Croatia and Poland (in %), in 2008 and 2016.

	Croatia	Poland
2008	30.3	15.2
2016	22.7	12.7

In both countries, the structural power of workers could generally be assessed as weak. This reflects a relatively fragmented structure of the workforce, including the key role of SMEs providing employment for approximately 70% of all workers in both countries as well as the dependent position of national companies and subsidiaries of multinational firms (Bernaciak and Kahancová, 2017). However, recent years have marked a certain increase in structural workers’ power. In Poland, GDP growth accelerated after 2013, resulting in a growing demand for labour and increasing pay pressure. Outward migration and demographic decline continued in the post-crisis period, and labour market shortages were only partially compensated by the inflow of an estimated one million Ukrainian migrant workers as of 2021. Along with significant pay increases in the private sector, the minimum wage grew by 73% between 2009 and 2019. The start of economic recovery in Croatia in 2015 coincided with the opening of Western European labour markets following EU accession in 2013. This led to unprecedented emigration of over 300,000 people in 2012–2021, or around 7.4% of the total population, while in the same period immigration amounted to only around 200,000 people, that is, around 4.8% of the total population (CBS, 2022). In response to this new situation, private and public sector employers started to increase wages, and the minimum wage was raised by 22% in the last decade (Samardžija et al., 2017). Notably, the increase in wages in both countries was mostly driven by politically determined minimum wage growth and labour market shortages rather than by collective bargaining.

Institutional power is proxied, among others, by collective bargaining coverage. In both countries, this coverage has been stagnant since 2008 (see Table 2). However, the situation is significantly better in Croatia than in Poland. Single-employer agreements dominate the landscape in Poland, while sectoral bargaining is de facto absent (Czarzasty, 2019). A decentralisation trend in collective bargaining is also noticeable in Croatia. Still, the relatively high coverage should be attributed to the widespread bargaining practices in the public sector and to administrative extensions of the few still effective sectoral collective agreements (Samardžija et al., 2017).

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Table 2.

Collective bargaining coverage in Croatia and Poland (in %), in 2008 and 2015.

	Croatia	Poland
2008	49.1	18.7
2015	48.2	17.2

Societal power resources: A search for alliances

Precarious contracts

With the advancement of new technologies, employers are increasingly demanding flexible forms of work that are often not contained within the Labour Code and therefore lack the related protection. Therefore, we are witnessing the spread of precarious employment forms, which bear relevant differences in comparison to a standard employment contract (Trif et al., 2016). The initial reaction of many unions to this polarisation of the labour force was its acceptance as a means of enhancing the security of their core members, which by large have standard employment contracts. However, over time they understood that in order to preserve their power resources, they need to recruit and organise workers with precarious contracts (Behrens et al., 2004; Gumbrell-McCormick and Hyman, 2018).

Since the early 2000s, policy measures in Poland have attempted to counteract high unemployment by making the Labour Code more flexible. This was also in line with the European Employment Strategy’s recommendations and reflected the overall weakness of industrial relation actors and institutions. This was the result of an expansion of temporary and civil-law-based contracts. Poland used to have one of the highest shares of temporary employees in the EU (see Table 3). To address this issue, in 2012, Solidarity launched its ‘Sisyphus’ campaign on the Internet and in the traditional media against what they referred to as ‘junk’ contracts. The campaign was mostly targeted towards young people, encouraging them and others to report the misuse of civil law contracts by their employers to the National Labour Inspectorate. This effort encouraged further action such as the campaign ‘Poland without Exploitation’ launched in 2015 by the association Social Poland (Polska Społeczna) in cooperation with Solidarity and the OPZZ confederation. Its main demands included the introduction of a minimum hourly wage for all contracts, legal changes enabling the transformation of civil law contracts into standard employment contacts and increased penalties for breaches of the Labour Code (Marino et al., 2019). Both campaigns indirectly contributed towards improvements in the legislation and its implementation and a decrease in the share of temporary contracts. However, besides these efforts, improvements in the working conditions of precarious workers also came as a result of Solidarity’s backing of PiS in the 2015 presidential and parliamentary elections, as a part of the new populist government’s paternalistic, neo-etatist approach to social policy that at the same time leaves little scope for meaningful social dialogue. This kind of social policy, while it does include some gains for labour, is mainly oriented to traditional familism, as clearly visible in the pension policy and on Sunday trading (Meardi and Guardiancich, 2022).

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Table 3.

Temporary employees in Croatia and Poland as the percentage of the total number of employees aged 15–64, in 2013 and 2021.

	Croatia	Poland
2013	14.5	26.8
2021	13.5	14.8

Source: Eurostat (2022)

Croatia is also a champion of temporary contracts (see Table 3). The vast majority of these contracts concern work on fixed-term contracts under the Labour Code, and civil law-based contracts are not as widespread. An attempt to reduce the size of the informal economy by introducing a new atypical type of contract was launched by the government in 2013, when the Ministry of Labour drafted new legislation that was to regulate causal and provisional work, such as assistance in the household, which is traditionally performed as a part of the informal economy. The role model for this legislation was the mini-jobs in Germany, as a new form of work that is generally characterised as low-wage and part-time. The reactions of trade unions to this proposal were very negative out of fear that jobs currently performed under fixed-term contracts could gradually be transferred into this novel form of work, which is less favourable for workers. Furthermore, they underlined that instead of increasing employment, this kind of work merely splits existing employment. For casual workers, the path towards regular employment is frequently blocked, as are their opportunities to engage in work-related training. The trade unions coordinated their efforts and increased their presence in the media to raise public awareness about the shortfalls of proposed legislation. Eventually, they managed a win over the employers, who rejected this proposal over concerns about its effects on established employers (Butković et al., 2018). Faced with such coordinated efforts and strong opposition, the proposed legislation was dropped.

The advocacy campaigns against precarious contracts in both countries relied on alliances within the trade union movement, which could be understood as revitalisation strategies to reinforce their organisational power. Nevertheless, they also relied upon making alliances with non-union societal groups, which strengthened their societal power (both coalitional and discursive). This case therefore demonstrates the complexities and variations within coalition building as a revitalisation strategy that assumes a type of societal power resource that Levesque and Murray (2010: 336) call ‘external solidarity’ or ‘horizontal and vertical links with other unions, community groups and social movements’. In the case of Croatia, a common position of both social partners forced the government to give up on its desire to introduce mini-jobs into the legislation. In the case of Poland, alliances were made with civil society associations and the political party. The former brought increased visibility to launched campaigns while the latter proved to be of crucial importance for making improvements in legislation and its implementation. However, representing the interests of precarious workers has so far not translated into their increased membership in trade unions, which remains fractional within this employee group. It seems that securing advancements on that front will require major transformations in the way the CEE trade unions work and operate.

Discussion

In this article, we examined trade union new responses to the problem of their diminishing structural, organisational and institutional power in Croatia and Poland, focusing on three comparable post-2008 campaigns. In the circumstances of blocked social dialogue and a slow but continuous decrease in membership, trade unions in both countries reached towards societal power resources in order to rebuild their otherwise challenged position. These union revitalisation attempts involved seeking tactic alliances with non-governmental organisations, citizens’ groups and political parties (re-politicisation), thus building on the unions’ broad social networks. As an instrument for obtaining societal power, trade unions in Croatia, though to a lesser degree in Poland, frequently relied upon referendums. In Croatia, such actions were encouraged by the liberal referendum law, while in Poland the conditions were less favourable. Furthermore, street protests and media and Internet-based campaigns were also used.

The three cases of prominent socio-political campaigns were nearly identical in terms of content: against the extension of the retirement age, Sunday trading and precarious contracts. A convergence of union agendas and tools in these two CEE countries with different legacies of unionism and pathways of transformation requires an explanation in the course of further research. On the one hand, it may indicate the role of external political pressure in the EU, which involves watering down tripartism (Ost, 2011), the spread of austerity policies during the late-2000 crisis (as in the case of retirement age) and pressures to liberalise labour regulations (Lehndorff et al., 2018). On the other hand, it might suggest the relevance of the diffusion of ‘narrative resources’ ideas (Levesque and Murray, 2013) among the CEE unions favoured by a similar cultural context, as in the case of Sunday trading campaigns, taking into account the influence of the Roman Catholic Church in both countries.

In the campaign against extension of the retirement age, the Croatian trade unions succeeded in blocking the proposed reform at its very beginning. To do so, they relied on strategic use of their organisational resources through the establishment of a cross-union alliance and the use of union members for organisational purposes. They further relied on the use of societal resources by using the referendum as a tool and forming coalitions with non-union groups. Polish unions were also successful but with some delay. On their path, they relied on a similar combination of power resources, but due to their weaker organisational power, greater emphasis was placed on building societal power, particularly through coalition-building with a political party. The Sunday trading campaigns in both countries relied heavily on the strategic use of societal resources. The only difference is that the emphasis in Croatia was placed on creating an alliance with civil society associations, while in Poland the focus was on building closer links between a union (Solidarity) and a political party (PiS). In both countries, the campaigns further relied on the strategic use of organisational resources through the creation of cross-union alliances. The fact that over the past 5 years Sunday trading has been brought to the forefront of public discourse in both countries speaks of the increase in the unions’ structural power, directly stemming from the outward labour migration and labour shortages. This represents the broader context in which the Polish trade unions managed to put a ban on Sunday trading, while Croatian unions came close to achieving that goal. Finally, the cases of the successful campaigns against precarious contracts also primarily relied on the strategic use of societal power resources, while cross-union alliances served as a prerequisite for further actions. Still, while the Croatian unions focused on building an alliance with the employers, the Polish unions again aimed at political lobbying.

In terms of revitalisation strategies (Frege and Kelly, 2003), both Croatian and Polish trade unions combined coalition-building with political action, though in different ways. The success of union campaigns in both countries relied on the capacity of labour organisations to build intra-union alliances and solidarity to overcome their organisational fragmentation. The dominant revitalisation strategy of the Croatian trade unions was coalition-building, both internally within the trade union movement and externally beyond it. In the Polish case, a prominent place was reserved for political action supplemented by the development of intra-union cooperation. This distinction could be explained by the different political context. Political action was never really an option in Croatia because the illiberal populist parties, which present themselves as opposing the neoliberal policies, always had only a marginal role in political life. In addition, the cooperation between Croatian trade unions and social democrats initiated at the end of the 90s had ended in failure, resulting in union disinclination to cooperate with any political parties. Instead, Croatian unions rather relied on other, non-party forms of political action such as referendum campaigns.

If the effectiveness of union strategies is measured by the level of citizens’ confidence in trade unions, their assessment would be rather critical, in particular in Croatia. The results of the European Values Study demonstrate that the share of those who expressed confidence in trade unions in Croatia declined from 25.8% in 1999 to 17.7% in 2008 and further to 13.2% in 2017 (GESIS, 2021, no data for 1990) despite relatively high – as per Eastern European standards – levels of unionisation and collective bargaining coverage in the country. In Poland, the level of confidence was higher and its decline was less pronounced, from 34.0% in 1999, to 31.1% in 2008 and 28.8% in 2017 (Ibid.). It seems that both Polish and Croatian citizens are not associating the activities of trade unions with improved working conditions, which would support our hypothesis on the hijacking of trade union agendas by other political and social actors. Yet, despite lower unionisation and collective bargaining coverage in Poland, Poles expressed visibly greater trust in labour organisations than Croats.

Conclusion

Despite the strong similarity between the strategies of trade unions in these two countries, the outcomes differed slightly. In both cases there were substantial successes, but more clear in Poland than in Croatia, especially on Sunday trading. The different importance of the Sunday work campaign in the two countries confirms the expectation that the organisationally and institutionally stronger Croatian trade unions would be less keen on experimenting with novel actions in the ambit of societal power resources.

The cases allow to draw lessons for the outcomes of political coalitions for trade union power. In neither case the positive outcomes on the specific grievances had positive effects on union membership and organisational strength. The somewhat more favourable material outcomes in Poland could mostly be explained by the different party landscape of the two countries. In Poland, this is dominated by the absence of any strong leftwing party since 2005, and the presence of a strong rightwing, illiberal populist party (PiS), with whom Solidarity formed an alliance: as a result PiS took over part of the union agenda. In Croatia, socialdemocratic and leftwing parties exist while there is little space for rightwing populist forces opposed to liberalism. As a result, the search of union societal power occurred in a more conventional political context, where trade unions relied on the liberal legislative framework for the implementation of referendum, including, in some cases, conservative civil society associations. Both of these strategies are problematic in terms of their sustainability. The current referendum legislation could be changed to a more conservative setting, while alliances with conservative illiberal forces produce a polarising effect on the trade union movement.

The slight difference in the outcomes in the two countries suggests the ambivalent nature of political coalition in today’s politics. Alliances with strong populist parties may result in more substantial immediate results (as they did in Poland after 2015), but also risk fostering the marginalisation of trade unions as independent actors more. If labour organisations are weak and their autonomy vis-à-vis political parties is questionable, their demands can easily be hijacked by political forces wanting to increase their legitimacy rather than to increase the power of organised labour. And the more unions weaken, the less interested the government will be in cooperating with trade unions (Culpepper and Regan, 2014).

Without significant organisational and institutional resources that secure unions’ ‘veto power’ in industrial relations (Traxler, 2010: 51), trade unions can easily become clients of their political patrons rather than renew themselves as autonomous interest organisations. In particular, political alliances with populist parties in power, as in Poland, while tempting for the visibility of specific campaigns, threaten to undermine unions’ institutional power (eg in tripartite bodies) as well as inter-confederation solidarity that can leave the way to deeper political divisions. The more hedged strategies of Croatian trade unions, forging multiple alliances without relying on one party specifically or endorsing rightwing populism, seem to provide fewer immediate results but safeguard other institutional and organisational power resources better. In the context of a current anti-democratic drift in Europe, turning into populist forces might be very tempting for unions, but for the rather weak Eastern European labour movements, this could prove to be a dead-end route.