Organizing through conflict: exploring the relationship between strikes and union membership in Germany

Abstract

German

French

This article explores the possible link between trade union organizing and industrial action. The focus is on Germany and the period between 2004 and 2015. During that period there was a significant shift in German strike activity from manufacturing to the service sector. Special attention will therefore be given to the United Services Union, ver.di, the second largest union in Germany. The article argues that major preconditions for organizing crystallize during industrial disputes. Strikes constitute decisive moments in which the diverging interests of employers and employees are directly experienced, and in which unions are called on to demonstrate their effectiveness as collective organizations. There is evidence that ‘organizing through conflict’ has the potential to support union building and that within such an approach industrial action can work as a catalyst. The conclusion is that successful strikes offer opportunities within a comprehensive organizing strategy without however being the magic bullet with which unions can easily close the representation gap.

Keywords

Trade unions organizing industrial dispute strikes trade union membership industrial relations collective bargaining

Introduction

The expression ‘organizing through conflict’ (Organisieren am Konflikt) was in Germany coined by the former Commerce, Banking and Insurance Union (Gewerkschaft Handel, Banken und Versicherungen, HBV) in the 1970s to denote the work of building the union through engaging with concrete workplace or bargaining conflicts (Bayer, 1980: 180–181).¹ It became common knowledge amongst union officials that contentious bargaining rounds offered particular opportunities for organizing and since the mid-2000s the amalgamated United Services Union (Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft, ver.di) has recorded specific increases in membership in the context of industrial disputes.

There are few case studies on the association between strikes and union growth. Historical research indicates that in some countries union membership surged when strike frequency was high (e.g. Cronin, 1979; Kelly, 1998). Analysing the relation between labour militancy and union membership levels in 16 countries from the 1880s to the 1990s, Gerald Friedman (2008) concluded that militancy and in particular mass strikes were the key to union growth. He has been criticized for his largely one-dimensional approach and his neglect of the complexities of the subject (see Howell, 2008; Piven, 2009). Southern European strike history since the Great Recession of 2008 also teaches us that political mass strikes are neither necessarily an expression of unions’ strength nor the trigger for union growth (Hamann et al., 2012). The association between membership development and strike activity is therefore less than perfect (see Kelly, 2015: 725).

Given the limited scale of industrial action in many countries the explanatory potential of aggregated national data is limited and a focus on the industry and company level is much more promising. Darlington’s qualitative study of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) (2009) shows how the union grew through a strategy in which successful mobilizations for industrial action played a crucial role. An unpublished dissertation (McCarthy, 2010) on the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) finds positive quantitative effects of strikes on new members, although it is based on comparatively limited data.² Cregan’s (2013) survey-based study which analyses the impact of industrial action at the workplace on joining or leaving the union in some Australian workplaces points in a similar direction but is also limited in scope.

The aim of this article is to explore more closely the possible link between trade union organizing and industrial action. The focus of the study is on Germany and the period between 2004 and 2015. During that period German strike activity significantly shifted from manufacturing to the service sector. Special attention will therefore be given to ver.di, the second largest German union with 2,040,000 members in 2015. The study expands on and refines previous work (Dribbusch, 2011).

Our study is close to the mobilization theory developed by Kelly (1998). It draws on an actor-related approach in which the prime focus, with appropriate consideration for the contextual conditions, is on the range of choices and interventions available to unions (see, for example, Undy et al., 1981; Ganz, 2000; Heery et al., 2000; Brinkmann et al., 2008). First we present a theoretical approach to the relationship between strikes and union organizing; and secondly, an investigation of the degree to which strikes and processes associated with industrial action are reflected in changes in union membership.

Unions in Germany have traditionally been very reluctant to disclose their organizational strength on the ground and disaggregated membership data are not publicly available.³ The author is therefore grateful to all the unions that granted access to their records. Without their support the study would not have been possible. Insight into the course of disputes and negotiations was gained through numerous often informal talks with union activists and officials and participant observation in the metalworking and retail industries.

Union organizing and strikes – the argument

Many opinion polls and surveys confirm that employees have a broadly favourable view of unions and their necessity in social and economic life (for Germany, Frerichs and Pohl, 2001; DGB, 2007). However, there is a large gap between the extent of this approval and actual union membership. This so-called representation gap (Towers, 1997) indicates that a number of preconditions have to be met for approval to be converted into actual membership. Organizing requires intervention. It is a complex process over which unions can exercise considerable influence, but cannot fully control (Dribbusch, 2003: 23–56; Simms et al., 2013). The central characteristic of union organizing is that it takes place at the site of the conflicts which are inherent to the employment relationship, and at the same time intervenes in the distribution of power between employees and employers. As a consequence, organizing is in most cases a contested process within a specific historical, economic and institutional setting.

Conceived in ideal-typical terms, there are two subjective and one organizational precondition for employees to organize in a union: they are all closely interlinked. The first is the perception of conflicts or problems related to the employment relationship, termed ‘perceived injustice’ by Kelly (1998: 27–29). What is critical is not the objective nature of the wage-labour relationship but whether employees subjectively perceive conflicts, grievances or problems, or at the least do not exclude the prospect of these occurring in the future, and – crucially – can hold their employer or management responsible for these circumstances (Kelly, 1998: 45–46). For many wage-earners, therefore, a trade union is a collective ‘conflict insurance’ (Van de Vall, 1966) against the risks intrinsic to wage labour. This does not mean that normative motivations are irrelevant. Such considerations certainly play a significant role for members who engage more generally in and on behalf of their union (for Germany, Prott, 2006). However, for most employees, as indicated by a number of surveys covering a wide range of unions in various European countries and industries, the main factor in joining a union is the desire for ‘support should a problem arise at work’ (Waddington, 2014). Conversely, it would follow that employees who do not view their employment relationship as being problematic or who locate the causes of fundamental problems at work as lying outside the workplace are less likely to join a union. Perceptions of conflict are influenced by employers’ strategies and practice, but also by union representatives who are able to engage with these problems, highlight them as more general issues, and suggest options for resolution (Kelly, 1998; Darlington, 2009).

The second prerequisite for joining a union is its perceived effectiveness (for example, Boxall and Haynes, 1997: 571; Cregan, 2005). Employees must be convinced that union membership can provide the collective support that they want and can strengthen their individual and collective position in relation to their employer. This subjective assessment will be influenced by the situation at the workplace, the employee’s position in the hierarchy, and last but not least by actions taken by management. This assessment will be shaped by the record of union activity at workplace and industry level, unions’ responses to wider social questions but also by successful strikes or prominent defeats (see Mason and Bain, 1993: 341).

The third, organizational, precondition for successful organizing is the availability of a trade union (Hancké, 1993: 596). In the absence of a union, there are, as a rule, no new members. Joining a union requires direct contact between employees and the organization, which is most effectively undertaken through personal contact at the workplace (see Mason and Bain, 1993; Dribbusch, 2003: 27–28). This may seem a true-but-trivial precondition, but it is one that frequently is not met (Mason and Bain, 1993; Dribbusch, 2003). To build a union presence in unorganized workplaces is therefore a key to union growth and remains the major challenge for unions.

The significance of strikes as catalysts for building union organizational power is based on the argument that the three basic preconditions for organizing crystallize and are more fully met during disputes. Strikes constitute decisive moments in which the diverging interests of employers and employees are directly experienced, and in which unions are called on to demonstrate their effectiveness as collective organizations. Conflicts and grievances are exposed and brought to a head. Preparations for such a conflict place greater demands on both union officials and activists, who are more visible at the workplace and whose activity becomes more directly evident to employees. Strikes represent a break with everyday routines and also imply and foster elements of self-organization, resistance and civil disobedience. For many strikers we spoke to in meetings and on the picket line the strike is not only about the declared objectives of the industrial action. By temporarily overturning the prerogatives of the company and their immediate managers a stoppage is frequently also a demonstration that there are limits to what employees are prepared to accept. Strikes have the potential to allow employees to experience their collective strength. This is the core of their importance for building a union presence at the workplace.

The strike as an exceptional event

Only few bargaining conflicts culminate in a strike. Strikes require a number of preconditions to be met, can entail serious risks and remain an exceptional event which in Germany only a minority of workers ever experience during their working lives. In a 2008 national survey of employees, only 20 per cent of respondents stated that they had ever participated in some form of strike – 9 per cent of respondents once and 11 per cent several times.⁴ Around three times more union members (44 per cent) than non-members (14 per cent) had been involved at least once in a strike. The fact that union members are much more prevalent amongst strikers is an indication of the fact that strikes tend to take place in well-organized workplaces and branches. This was confirmed in the 2015 works council survey by the Institute of Economic and Social Research (WSI), carried out in the first quarter of 2015 and representative of all private sector workplaces with 20 or more employees and having a works council.⁵ Eleven per cent of all works councils stated that either a single work stoppage (5.8 per cent) or several stoppages (5.3 per cent) had taken place in their establishment ‘within the previous 12 months’.⁶ There was a strong link between unionization and strikes (see Table 1).

Table 1.

2015 WSI works council survey: ‘Have there been work stoppages in your establishment in the last 12 months?’ % of all establishments surveyed.

Union density at establishment	Yes, once	Yes, several times
No union member reported	0.0	0.0
Union density between ≥ 0.1% and < 30%	2.8	2.9
Union density between ≥ 30% and < 70%	7.7	10.5
Union density between ≥ 70 and 100%	13.3	9.9

Source: 2015 WSI works council survey.

Strikes and power resources

Industrial disputes are always embedded in a specific historic environment and strongly influenced by the balance of power between workers, their unions and the employers. This is not the place to engage in a detailed discussion on power resource theory (e.g. Korpi, 1998; Silver, 2003; Schmalz and Dörre, 2014) but the position of workers in the labour market and within the labour process (∼structural power), union density and links to political parties (∼associational power) and the institutional framework (∼institutional power) are significant factors that shape industrial conflicts. They are, however, not determinants in the sense that favourable conditions would automatically generate union success. Unions also require what Ganz (2000) called strategic capacity. They must be able to identify opportunities and to campaign effectively. This includes the capacity positively to influence the public discourse and to mobilize community support if needed. Finally, power is a relational category and each dispute has at least two parties. It is never the workers or their union alone but also employers or the government that exert influence on the course and outcome of industrial disputes.

Strike pay

Strikes mean that employees risk losing earnings. In contrast to the practice in other countries, in Germany substantial strike pay has a long tradition. A number of surveys (DGB, 2007; ver.di, 2007) have established that strike pay is seen by union members as one of the most significant union benefits. Unions differ in the extent to which they provide this benefit. As a rule the amount of strike pay is related to the individual monthly contribution, which at most DGB unions amounts to 1 per cent of the monthly gross wage. The formulas differ in detail but strike pay is generally substantial. The German metalworkers’ union, IG Metall, pays between 12 and 14 times the monthly contribution per week depending on length of membership. Ver.di grants between 2.2 and 2.5 times the monthly contribution per day. As strike pay is exempt from taxes the benefit covers approximately 80 per cent of the net wage.

Strike benefit can be an additional incentive to join a union. Whereas IG Metall restricts strike pay in principal to members who joined at least three months before the start of industrial action, ver.di allows employees to join at the beginning or even during a strike.⁷ To prevent purely opportunistic entries members who received strike pay must stay in ver.di for at least 12 more months (those who join during the strike even for 18 months) or pay back the benefit.

Employees’ perspectives

According to a 2007 representative survey, employees have two main expectations of unions in relation to strikes (DGB, 2007). Eighty-one per cent of all union members found it ‘important’ or ‘extremely important’ that ‘the union makes use of strikes as a means of exerting pressure in the course of collective bargaining’. This view was also shared by 59 per cent of non-members. In both instances there was very little difference between responses from residents of East and West Germany. At the same time, 88 per cent of members, and 89 per cent of non-members, stated that it was ‘important’ or ‘extremely important’ for unions to be able to ‘achieve settlements without a strike’. The responses mirror both the wish for unions to negotiate as forcefully as possible with the employer, but also the expectation that they should do this in a way that does not culminate in a strike. However, should a conflict arise, then, as the repeatedly high votes in favour of industrial action in strike ballots show, employees exhibit a high level of willingness to strike.

Social partnership and militancy

Industrial relations in Germany have traditionally been characterized by a strong sense of cooperation and ‘social partnership’ not least through the institution of the works council, board level co-determination and the strong position of unions in public services. This has never excluded substantial conflicts if one side has seen its core interests violated or if bargaining interests had to be fought out. The key question for unions always was the degree to which they were respected by employers as partners on equal terms. This differed over time and between sectors and companies depending on varying balances of power.

Since the mid-2000s we can identify a remarkable shift of industrial action from manufacturing to the service sector (Bewernitz and Dribbusch, 2014) – a ‘tertiarisation of industrial conflict’ as Bordogna and Cella (2002) label it. At the heart of this development is ver.di – a union so broad in scope it resembles a confederation. It is organized along 13 Fachbereiche (∼ trade sections, in the following ‘TS’) which together cover 68 Fachgruppen (∼ trade groups, in the following ‘TG’). In 2014 the union was party to some 20,000 collective agreements (ver.di, 2015: 171); a relevant number of them, however, constituting parts of packages were not negotiated separately. According to the annual WSI estimate on industrial action between 2004 and 2015, about a third of all workers involved in industrial action and some 85 per cent of all strike days can be attributed to the service sector.⁸ Almost all strikes which attracted public attention between 2004 and 2015 were related to disputes in services.

Over the same period the ver.di executive approved industrial action for more than 1500 collective bargaining disputes. While in 2004 the annual number of approvals was 36 it had more than quadrupled by 2009 and with the exception of 2010 has remained at this level ever since. This development confirms that industrial action is established within ver.di as an option in the course of collective bargaining. However, internal assessments by ver.di and a monitoring of ver.di websites indicate that a relevant proportion of approved applications for industrial action are not put into practice. Estimates range from 30 to 40 per cent for the years since 2011.⁹ Even then, however, a very large number of disputes remain. In comparison the largest German union, IG Metall, centrally recorded between 2004 and 2015 fewer than 50 strike disputes including, however, 16 often very large waves of warning strikes involving hundreds of thousands of metalworkers. In addition to these, there were an unknown but significant number of local strikes across the organizing territory of IG Metall. In 2015 alone we found 56 stoppages lasting between one and up to 24 hours which, as no strike pay was involved, were not reported to the head office and therefore not in the records.

The fact that ver.di is more often involved in industrial action than IG Metall is related rather to different characteristics of their respective organizing territories than an expression of fundamentally different approaches to industrial action. Both IG Metall and ver.di regard the strike as a regular part of their repertoire of action. But industrial relations in the service sector have become less stable and are much more fragmented than in manufacturing. To give just one example: until privatization in the early 1990s the then Federal Postal Services (Bundespost), which besides running a major savings bank, monopolized postal and telecommunication services, which were governed by one package of collective agreements. In 2014 ver.di was party to some 120 collective agreements in postal services and a further 450 in telecommunications (communication to the author).

Although there is a growing awareness within the union apparatus of the chances positively to combine successful industrial action with organizing and recruitment efforts (Kocsis et al., 2013), it would be misleading to assume that the union would engage in industrial action only for the sake of membership gains. The bargaining landscape has profoundly changed for ver.di (Dribbusch and Schulten, 2007). At the core of a great number of conflicts are employers opting out of collective bargaining or – as in the paradigmatic case of mail order giant Amazon – simply refusing to bargain collectively.

Strikes and membership growth – the evidence

Strikes are rare in the early stages of organizing when the degree of union presence and employee willingness to take industrial action are often undeveloped. In situations where the issue is to consolidate or expand a union presence, however, industrial action can play an important role for organization (Birke, 2010: 83). To give just one well-documented example: a token strike followed by a 14-day all-out strike embedded in the retail bargaining round played an important role in the course of an organizing project at the logistics company Hermes Warehousing Solutions (HWS) (Lange, 2009) evidenced in the emergence of new union activists and a significant increase in membership levels. Unions in other branches had similar experiences (Dribbusch, 2011). As might be expected, large increases in membership are more likely to be found in branches and workplaces in which there is a longstanding unmet need for union organization. In addition to the existence of an issue that provides the basis for mobilization for a strike, one other precondition for success appears to be a signal that the union is in earnest. This was perceived by officials of the construction workers’ union IG BAU as a decisive factor in the first national cleaners’ dispute in 2009, when the union recorded above average numbers of new members far beyond those workplaces where stoppages took place. Beyond these individual examples to which of course could also be added cases of mixed successes or even failures we turn now to the quantitative picture.

The quantitative picture

This section begins by stating a qualification: it is almost impossible to determine reliably the precise quantitative effect of strikes on union membership. When employees enter the union they are not asked for their motives. The following section is therefore less engaged in measuring exactly these effects but rather looks at chronological links. Being aware that correlation does not always imply causation (Franzosi, 1989) we chose examples where we could be confident that membership increases were indeed related to bargaining conflicts and not caused by, for example, the reorganization of union statistics.

We turn now to the union which in the period under observation was most frequently involved in industrial action. Most strikes in which ver.di is involved are related to company-level disputes, are frequently brief and involve comparatively few employees. The largest turn-outs of strikers are recorded during warning strikes in the public sector bargaining rounds and the greatest strike volume in terms of days not worked during a few long-lasting disputes which are usually restricted to only parts of the union.

We therefore focus on a trade section which saw recurring disputes within our period of observation, that is, Fachbereich 7 ‘Gemeinden’ (‘municipalities’, in the following TS 7). This section, with about 245,000 members in 2015, organizes in the basic tier of local government covering mainly municipal administration, social services and child care. The remaining municipal employees in local transport and refuse disposal are allocated to other sections within ver.di. Municipal employees are covered by a package of collective agreements which also covers all central government employees, but not those employed by the federal states (Länder). Between 2005 and 2015, public employees were involved in several large waves of warning strikes in the context of the national pay rounds in 2008, 2012 and 2014. In 2005/2006 municipal employees mobilized to resist demands by employers for longer working hours. The dispute culminated in 2006 in Baden-Württemberg in the run-up to the then longest ever public sector strike in Germany.

Social services and child care

Since the mid-2000s the union has reinforced organizing employees in municipal social services and child care facilities. Fachgruppe 702 ‘social services and child care’ (in the following TG 702), a subdivision of TS 7, was at the centre of two emblematic disputes – the first national strike of municipal child care and social service workers in 2009 and its sequel in 2015 (Kutlu, 2015). ‘Organizing through conflict’ left the most visible traces here (see Figure 1). We compare the development at national level with that of three selected regions.¹⁰

Figure 1.

Ver.di membership development TG 702 (social services and child care), national level, Baden-Württemberg (BW), North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW) and Saxony/Saxony Anhalt/Thuringia (SAT), 2005–2015, indexed (2005=100).

Between 2005 and June 2015 national membership in TG 702 more than doubled. The most significant spikes can be observed in 2009 and in the first half of 2015. Both disputes focused on better working conditions for staff in social services and in particular child care facilities. What is remarkable is that, although the 2009 dispute ended with a compromise which was not enthusiastically received and only approved by a small majority of members in a final ballot, membership levels did not collapse but recovered after some decline in 2012. The 2015 dispute was embedded in a broader union campaign which focused on a financial upgrading of social work and child care. A popular argument was that employees who care for people should not be paid less than those who care for machines – an allusion to the wages of car workers. The campaign resonated extremely well amongst the employees concerned. After a first wave of new entries during the 2014 pay round for the public sector, membership figures reached unprecedented highs in the course of the 2015 strike. There were clear peaks of new members immediately prior to and at the beginning of the strike but employees continued to join the union over the whole course of the disputes.

Regional differences

The development in TG 702 was much less significant in eastern Germany (see the data for SAT in Figure 1). East German regions not only had a hard time with public sector job cuts but also found it more difficult to mobilize for strikes. Industrial action has a different tradition in eastern Germany where the strike was for decades severely prosecuted and walk-outs were widely absent when the regime was toppled in late 1989. Strike activity remained very scarce after 1990 and was widely absent in the service sector. There is anecdotal evidence that in 2015 eastern German child care workers weighed up their salaries against the fact that often husbands and acquaintances were unemployed or earned less whereas in relatively prosperous Baden-Württemberg these benchmarks were substantially different.

Amongst the West German regions Baden-Württemberg has a reputation for its emphasis on membership mobilization and innovative strike activity and has one of the top organizing records in the public sector. Here the first rise in membership can be seen during the 2006 regional dispute on working time whereas in the large North-Rhine Westphalia membership soared above average in the course of the 2008 pay round.

Local differences

Local differences become visible if we now turn to the aggregated membership developments of TS 7 within the successful Baden-Württemberg region (see Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Ver.di membership TS 7 (municipalities) at various levels*, 2004–2015, indexed (2004=100).

Between 2004 and 2015 we see an overall decline of 18 per cent in the municipalities section TS 7. This is the effect of significant membership losses in ‘public administration’ (TG 701) in particular in eastern Germany which could not be compensated by the national gains in TG 702. In the Baden-Württemberg region (the dotted line) the development was more positive with a growth of 16 per cent over the same period. Within the region, a large urban district (which we term ‘District A’), which has a reputation within ver.di for its proactive organizing and bargaining approaches, even saw a growth of 48 per cent.¹¹ In the same period, however, membership in ‘District B’, a more rural district which spans towns and villages, declined by 2 per cent. Here the 2008 and 2012 warning strikes had left no trace in contrast to the 2015 mobilization.

The dynamic of organizing

We turn now to a comparison of annual rates of joiners and leavers in District A (see Figure 3). Interviews with those responsible for the public sector in District A revealed that already before the 2006 dispute a targeted effort had been made to widen the membership basis, to ensure that appropriate organizational steps had been taken, and that as many non-members as possible were approached about joining ver.di. The first major warning strike in December 2005 led to a tenfold increase in new members compared with the average for the preceding months. During the initial weeks in which the full strike was called in February 2006, the number of new members also increased substantially. The drop in membership in 2007 might suggest dissatisfaction with the outcome or the resignation of those who had joined solely to obtain strike pay. However, although there was a noticeable rise in exits in the second quarter of 2007, for the year as a whole the more significant development for the overall total was the marked drop in new entrants. This pattern continued in the following years. Comparable developments in retail or in the commercial cleaning sector during and after the 2009 national strike by the construction workers union IG BAU suggest that organizations have only limited scope to sustain the mobilization built up in a dispute. Activists and full-time officials can only sustain the extra effort involved for a brief period, and once a dispute is settled employees also revert back to everyday routines.

Figure 3.

Ver.di TS 7 (municipalities): local district ‘A’ within Baden-Württemberg: annual rates of joiners and leavers 2004–2015 (%)*.

The relationship between industrial action and membership growth in the public service is not an isolated instance even if the details of local developments differ widely. Similar effects can also be identified in other sections within ver.di, for example in health care.

‘Conditional collective bargaining’

Since 2007 the health care section (Fachbereich 3, i.e. TS 3) has seen a steady growth in membership, becoming the largest trade section within ver.di (372,000 members as of 2014). At the core of this section are employees in public and private hospitals. When the privatization of health care (Schulten and Böhlke, 2012), which had started in the 1990s, took on a new dynamic in the mid-2000s the section reconsidered its organizing strategies. A new approach called ‘conditional collective bargaining’ (bedingungsgebundene Tarifarbeit) was developed (Dilcher and Gröschl-Bahr, 2013). The concept was originally designed for weakly organized workplaces where bargaining coverage never existed or had been lost. It is built around the idea that collective bargaining requires not only a sufficient union density but also a commitment of employees to the issues at stake. The focus is not so much on the works council but on setting up an establishment-level bargaining commission (betriebliche Tarifkommission). Ideal-typically the next step is to conduct a survey to identify problems and demands. These are presented at a works assembly where, contrary to traditional union practice, the most often very low level of membership is disclosed. The argument is then that meaningful bargaining can only start if a certain level of legitimacy, that is, membership, is attained. The approach is in a way a variety of organizing through conflict. The strike is part of the repertoire of action if necessary but membership growth stems essentially from the increased activity of the union and the prospects of better terms and conditions through collective agreements. The hospital trade group, Fachgruppe 302 (TG 302) in the regional district of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia (SAT) managed to turn the tide when this approach was implemented in 2009 (see Figure 4). At the heart of the increase were successful disputes at some major hospitals.

Figure 4.

Annual rates of joiners and leavers in ver.di TG 302 (hospitals), Saxony/Saxony Anhalt/Thuringia (SAT) region, 2005–2015.

Strikes and membership retention

As noted above, for many employees a strike is a rare – and therefore special – event in their working life. In particular, for employees in the highly fragmented service sector, it is also an opportunity to experience collective strength very palpably through demonstrations and strike assemblies. It is also a time when the union is very close to its membership. We would therefore expect members who were involved in industrial action to feel a stronger attachment to the unions than others. The available membership data of ver.di, however, do not so far allow this thesis to be verified with the necessary accuracy.

New forms of industrial action

Within ver.di new models for union work based on campaigning and rank-and-file participation have been linked with activating forms of industrial action (Renneberg, 2008, 2011; Dribbusch, 2009; Riexinger and Hägele, 2009; Riexinger, 2013; Kutlu, 2015). Whereas IG Metall as a rule does not enter into industrial action unless a substantial majority of workers in the bargaining unit is organized, this precondition is rarely met in the service sector. Apart from a few patches in dock-work, public transport or refuse disposal, unions in the service sector are often faced with the challenge to act from a minority position or to remain largely passive (see Riexinger, 2013). Assembling isolated strikers in meetings and organizing visibility via public rallies are therefore considered crucial to render a strike effective and strengthen the union in the course of the dispute (Renneberg, 2005, 2011). Tactics must aim at hitting employers where they are most vulnerable. This is easier for hospital doctors, train drivers, pilots or security staff at airports than for women in retail. As many disputes, not least in services, are decided by winning over the public, a skilful use of the media is important. Tactics are discovered whereby public sympathy is for example won by allowing trams and buses to continue to run but without controlling tickets (Hoepfner, 2014). The courts have so far left a wide scope for non-violent action. Non-strike forms of action such as flash-mobs which might also involve external supporters are successively making their way into the repertoires of action (Rehder et al., 2012). What would probably not attract a great deal of attention in France is considered a rather militant action in Germany and can send a strong signal to the public and employers. Without interpreting too much into it: a new employer aggressiveness favours a change of the ‘classic German’ way of strikes into a more ‘French’ logic of action whereby not only the threat, but the real proof of mobilization power becomes in many cases a precondition for successful bargaining.

Since 2008, ver.di has tacitly started to introduce various means for fostering participation, such as conducting member surveys or organizing national assemblies of strike delegates. In addition, there are new forms of networking and cooperation with external supporters (see Richter, 2014). Such strategies invariably run the risk of internal conflicts. Officials are sometimes sceptical towards activism and external support (Richter, 2014) not least because activated members are often more critical towards compromises than those who stand at the margins of a dispute (Dribbusch, 2009; Lange, 2009; Birke, 2010: 179–180). This conflict had to be borne by the ver.di leadership when a meeting of strike delegates (Streikdelegiertenversammlung) during the national 2015 strike in social services and child care rejected, against the intention of the union leadership, the agreed outcome of a joint dispute resolution procedure. A subsequent membership ballot confirmed the rejection by a 70 per cent majority. Only after a new round of negotiations was a compromise finally accepted. But apart from these inherent conflicts, active involvement in strike action has the potential to strengthen members’ ties to the union and promote further organizing. Long-term case studies might throw more light on such processes. In industries such as retail, where employees are confronted with powerful corporations but are scattered across a cosmos of small workplaces, successful organizing requires committed lay activists (Dribbusch, 2003). An outstanding example of a successful activist-driven organizing strategy is the Swedish H&M chain in Germany (Fütterer and Rhein, 2015). While only 15 outlets had a works council in 2002, the figure stood at 131 outlets in February 2015. H&M, with a largely young, female, migrant and thus allegedly difficult-to-organize workforce, became one of the pillars in the strike waves of the 2013 and 2015 retail bargaining rounds.

Conclusion: opportunities and limits

Disputes allow for the intensification and compression of ideal-type perceptions and understandings of conflict, to address grievances collectively and give unions a chance to demonstrate their capacity to prevail against an employer. Engaging in industrial action, including escalating disputes to a full-scale strike, can assist in undertaking challenging organizing processes. But besides these potentially positive effects of industrial action there are also limits to an organizing strategy based on strikes.

First of all most strikes are limited in scope. It therefore does not come as a surprise that small unions with a comparatively homogenous organizing territory find it easier to generate significant increases through some spectacular disputes. When the hospitals doctors’ union MB won in 2006 its first separate collective agreements through its first national strike ever this represented a turning point in their organizational history (see Martens, 2007). The extent to which the union met with the approval of its target group can be seen in the 22 per cent increase in membership recorded in 2006 and a further 10 per cent rise in 2007. Since then, the growth rates have slowed down and MB, with 116,000 members in 2014, appears to have attained its potential membership. Such a development is rather unlikely for a general service union like ver.di. Despite extraordinary strike-related membership gains, in particular in social services and child care, the union finished the year 2015 with an overall membership decline of 0.1 per cent.

Secondly, the employment relationship is characterized by a mixture of conflict and cooperation (see Kelly, 1998: 8). As a rule, employees do not want to be caught up in a permanent war with their employer (Crosby, 2005: 226). For the most part, employees have a highly pragmatic relationship both to the act of participating in a stoppage as well as to unions. They will support strikes from time to time as the necessary expression of counter power to the employer, but will also judge such action primarily in terms of its success or prospects for success. Schumann et al. (1971) found that the 1969 wave of wildcat strikes increased the self-confidence of the workers involved and their readiness to take similar action, not least because the strikes were overwhelmingly perceived as being successful and effective. But successful strikes are tied to certain preconditions and eventualities that are not always given. Strikes can have mixed outcomes or simply be lost. IG Metall experienced long-lasting negative effects on membership in eastern Germany following the historic defeat of eastern German metalworkers in the 2003 strike on the 35-hour week which ended without any agreement being reached (Raess, 2006; Dribbusch, 2007: 284). Even 12 years later an East German delegate recalled at the 2015 IG Metall congress how at the GM Opel plant in Eisenach membership cards ‘flew past our heads’ and that it took years to recover from this setback (IG Metall, 2015: 90). The defeat inflicted collateral damages on other unions. Overall, East German DGB membership dropped by 10 per cent in 2004 (compared to 5 per cent in 2003). The dispute was characterized by an unexpected resistance on the part of employers and exposed substantial disagreement within IG Metall about goals and tactics. It was a striking example of the limits of union voluntarism.

These limits are also illustrated by the case of Amazon which continues to refuse to conclude a collective agreement with ver.di. The dispute, which started in spring 2013 with only a minority of workers being organized, was still unsolved at the beginning of 2016 despite public sympathy for the strikers. The development of the dispute showed that ‘organizing through conflict’ is not a short-cut strategy especially when the employer is prepared to invest substantial resources in fighting the union (Boewe and Schulten, 2015). The company proved to be able to counter the effects of stoppages by moving its processing of orders, even to neighbouring countries.

But even where disputes turn out well for a union they do not automatically result in membership gains. A detailed comparison of local and sectional developments indicates that even within similar industrial and spatial settings both the intensity of mobilization and the development of membership can vary substantially. Particular union actors are apparently more successful than others at focusing on existing discontent on the part of employees and converting it into an organized mobilization. This points to the importance of strategic capacities and confirms previous studies on organizing and recruitment (Dribbusch, 2003).

Finally, for employees and unions strikes involve costs. Ver.di allocates 8 per cent of its annual income from membership fees (ver.di collected some €444m in 2014) to its strike fund. The year 2015 with its some 1.5 million individual strike days¹² cost the union more than €100m in strike pay and strike-related expenditures.¹³ Despite a substantial strike fund ver.di cannot cope every year with such expenditures.

The central challenge for German unionism remains to address adequately the shift of employment to the service sector. Building a broad-based union presence is difficult. But, as we have seen, there is evidence that ‘organizing through conflict’ has the potential to support the building up of that presence. And within such an approach industrial action can work as a catalyst. Industrial action is however not the magic bullet. It is not a substitute for day-to-day organizing activities but it can offer opportunities.

It remains an interesting question whether similar effects could be observed in other countries. To examine that in detail must be left to future research. We would not expect similar findings for unions which are strongly attached to a policy of industrial peace. A positive association between industrial action and union growth is also less likely in countries like France where the participation in industrial action is largely disconnected from individual union membership and unions’ finances rely only partly on membership fees. In the so-called Ghent countries, Belgium, Denmark, Finland and Sweden, where unions are involved in the administration of unemployment benefit the motivation to join is at least partly disconnected from union action. In the UK where unions rely on individual membership there is some indication that strikes may have similar effects to those in Germany (Darlington, 2009; McCarthy, 2010). Miracles, however, are nowhere to be expected.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author wants to thank two anonymous referees for their constructive and helpful comments.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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