Looking for European solutions. Trade unions in Central and Eastern Europe striving for cross-border solidarity

Introduction

In this article we analyse developments in the cross-border cooperation of trade unions from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in the EU after the post-2004 enlargement. The point we want to make is that trade unions from the region are still struggling to define their status vis-à-vis the world of labour of the ‘old’ Europe (EU-15) and have been torn between loyalty to western Europe rooted in the imitational modernisation paradigm and attempts to pursue their own agenda as latecomers to the world of modern capitalism. We are not going to indulge in far-reaching speculation regarding the future of the trade union movement in Europe or the shape of relations between unions from Central and Eastern Europe and the ‘old’ Member States. Instead, we aim to draw attention to the need to conduct deeper research on relations between unions from the two regions.

The structure of the article is as follows. We begin with a review of the literature on transnational union solidarity, summarising the evolution of the concept in theory and practice. Next, we narrow the perspective to Central and Eastern Europe, putting particular emphasis on the long period of preparation for the 2004 enlargement (by which we also understand the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007, and Croatia in 2013, as we see those events as subsequent stages of the same wave of EU expansion). We underline the fact that while formal incorporation of Central and Eastern European unions into the European Union proceeded faster than the political process, gaps between trade unions from the ‘new’ Member States of Central and Eastern Europe and ‘old’ Member States (EU-15) remain wide, and that the Central and Eastern European unions do not seem able to release themselves from the constraints embedded in the past.

We then focus on potential instruments for building cross-border cooperation in the EU space, using a case-study approach and looking at the European social dialogue (ESD), transnational company agreements (TCAs), posted workers and international truck drivers, wage gaps and wage convergence (European minimum wage) to illustrate differences in trade union approaches. Next, we move on to special circumstances faced by unions from Central and Eastern Europe, resulting from the strong position of multinational corporations in the region and their impact on industrial relations there, a feature that is less prominent in the EU-15. The role of and expectations addressed towards European works councils is also examined. The other ‘side of the coin’ of the process of striving for cross-border solidarity – defending national standards of industrial relations – is examined critically in the following section. Such attempts are taking place continuously in many EU-15 countries, but their feasibility is questionable, given the impact of economic transnationalisation and technological changes (often referred to as the ‘fourth industrial revolution’). Another threat to cross-border solidarity-building we highlight is the fact that Central and Eastern European unions may at some point abandon the path of loyalty to western Europe (that is, to models/patterns of unionism that scarcely fit the regional context), unless they see a chance to open up a debate on the need for qualitative change in (redefining) cross-border solidarity built around some goal agreeable to all. Finally, we draw some conclusions.

Transnational union solidarity then and now: tensions between theory and practice

From the moment Marx and Engels coined the slogan ‘Workers of the world unite’ and the founding of the First International soon after, transnational labour solidarity became a key issue in the debates within the trade union movement and ever since there has been a huge gap between theory and practice (Hyman, 2002). The periods of relative cohesion of global labour (for example, until the 1870s, then between 1945 and the early 1970s) were interrupted by periods marked by separatism and parochial localism. However, even when cross-border trade union cooperation prospered, it still remained confined to western Europe (Munck, 2002: 303). Nowadays, there are also divergent interests and ambivalent stances on the part of trade unions across the world. This was already observed in the 1990s (Hyman, 1991) and has grown continually since then (Hilary, 2014), although some counter-evidence to the trend may be identified, for example, cooperation between US and Mexican trade unions in the context of NAFTA and NAALC (Compa, 2001). With rapid changes in the economy and society, transnational union solidarity must be reassessed and adjusted to the demands of the new environment. As Hyman (2011) notes, ‘solidarity in one country is not enough’, because globalisation requires international solidarity. Authors associated with the New Labour Internationalism (NLI) paradigm of the 1990s and early 2000s (Breitenfellner, 1997; Gallin, 2000; Moody, 1997; Munck, 2002; Waterman, 2001; Hyman, 2002) strongly identified with that view, which is ‘broadly speaking […] characterised by networking and information-sharing communication, new recruiting targets and new concerns for gender and consumer issues, the environment and human rights’ (Ghigliani, 2005: 361), thus going ‘beyond a conception of transnational collective bargaining, involving a more “social movement” unionism’ (Munck, 2002: 154). While the former concept is relatively inconsistent (Ghigliani, 2005), the latter, despite being less alluring, appears more concrete and viable. Hyman (2005) reminds us that as early as the 19th century there were two competing models of transnational solidarity: bottom-up (agitator model) and top-down (bureaucratic model). The latter has its limits, as international solidarity cannot be left solely in the hands of international experts, while the former (NLI bears a close resemblance to it) seems to be working on the local level, but barely transcends the regional or transnational dimension.

Trade union relations between ‘East’ and ‘West’ (leaving Cyprus and Malta aside) within the European Union (EU) from 2004 onwards provide a meaningful illustration of the problem of cross-border union solidarity, and highlight the light and dark sides of both the top-down and the bottom-up model. Even before the 2004 enlargement, with the accession negotiations with the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe under way, there were concerns about the future of European industrial relations. The trade union focus was mainly on freedom of workers’ movement in the new, enlarged EU, riven by huge developmental and wage gaps. Some western European unions’ reactions to that challenge could only be described as de facto isolationist: for example, German unions successfully lobbied their government to impose the longest interim period (seven years) before opening up the national labour market to citizens of the new Central and Eastern European Member States (Bieler and Erne, 2015).

Examining the literature, we find, on the one hand, theses about the ‘Europeanisation’ of industrial relations thanks to the forthcoming enlargement or anticipated spillover effects of western European foreign direct investment (FDI) (for example, Galgóczi, 2003; Iankova and Turner, 2004; Tholen, 2007), but, on the other hand, also claims that the admission of the new Member States would result in a clash of different trade union agendas from both sides of the former Iron Curtain (for example, Meardi, 2002). Following the 2004 enlargement, the concerns grew even further, with a number of issues coming to the forefront of the debate, including a de facto neo-colonial form of EU expansion to the east (see, for example, Trappmann, 2013 on shutting down the steel industry as part of the accession deal; and Czarzasty, 2014 on the ‘double standards’ of multinationals operating in Central and Eastern Europe), the relocation of production (for example, Banyuls et al., 2008), and disparities in economic development levels prompting fears of ‘social dumping’ by ‘dependent market economies’ (Nölke and Vlegenthart, 2009) using cheap labour as a key comparative advantage.

European works councils are particularly interesting in this context. This supranational platform for collective regulation has been the subject of intensive debates since the adoption of the EWC Directive 94/45/EC (Streeck, 1997; Müller and Platzer, 2003). Opinions vary on the actual and potential effectiveness of European works councils (Jagodzinski, 2011; Mählmeyer et al., 2017), but, over time, the more pessimistic assessments seem to have prevailed (Köhler et al., 2015; Waddington, 2011), pointing not only to their limited functional capacities, but also their proneness to becoming a venue for clashes between particularistic national interests destructive to trans-border solidarity (for example, Adamczyk, 2011; Pernicka et al., 2017; Royle et al., 2016).

Transnational company agreements and their implementation are another case illustrating the difficulties of cross-border solidarity. At present, transnational company agreements are signed by the management of corporations with European works councils and other bodies (European trade union federations and national-level unions) despite the lack of a legal basis. These documents exist in parallel with legislation (Jagodziński, 2011: 28). European framework agreements make a useful ‘lens’ through which the asymmetry between the economic and social dimensions of European integration can be seen (Scharpf, 2010). Attempts to introduce an optional legal framework for transnational company agreements have so far been in vain due to irreconcilable differences among the parties of the European social dialogue, which can be partially attributed to the ETUC’s failure to come up with an official, uniform position on the issue (see below).

It is plausible to claim that the tensions between East and West are rooted in the dominant form of European integration, which has long been predominantly market-oriented and market-driven. Even the launching of the European social dialogue in 1985 is regarded more as a ‘sugar-coating’ aimed at harnessing the trade union movement in the process and demobilising European labour rather than a genuine attempt to build a European social model (Meardi, 2012). The ‘European social model’ has been criticised, with some pointing to its lack of coherence and arguing that the plural ‘European social models’ is more appropriate (Sapir, 2006). Assuming the critical approach to the European social model is correct, there is little doubt that the efforts of new Central and Eastern European Member States to implement, at least partially, the institutional arrangements of the European social model domestically look like chasing a dream.

Despite all that, trade unions from the new Member States long behaved in a cooperative and loyal way towards their western European counterparts (Adamczyk, 2018). Looking at the literature, two main, interlocking, reasons, come to the forefront: first, the general decline of unions’ associational, structural and – to a lesser degree – institutional power (Schmalz et al., 2018) in Central and Eastern Europe; second, the prevalence of the imitational modernisation paradigm defined in the societies of post-communist Central and Eastern Europe by a deep-rooted belief that ‘catching-up’ with the West would be possible only by following a marketisation route (Adamczyk, 2018; Czarzasty and Mrozowicki, 2018). Although various models of capitalism have emerged within the region since 1989 (Bohle and Greskovits, 2012), the general pattern remains stable, so Central and Eastern European capitalism may be labelled a ‘patchwork’ (Rapacki, 2019). That kind of ‘silent cross-border social contract’ seems to be slowly but steadily disintegrating. On the one hand, during the ‘posted workers debate’ European trade unions from both East and West stood together; on the other hand, disagreements on the European social model or divergent views on such topics as transnational company agreements or wages are symptomatic of particularistic attitudes and contribute to the growing frustrations among Central and Eastern European unions.

That is why we need to take a closer look at the practical aspects of transnational trade union solidarity. We understand it as the unions’ ability to take action that, while not running counter to the interests of their own members, mainly supports the interests of union members and/or workers in another country or countries. Building union solidarity linking organisations from specific Member States should not be analysed only in the context of the difficulties and challenges faced in the process. This is because national-level trade unions are at the same time object and actor of European integration. In other words, they are trapped in a situation that perfectly illustrates the agency–structure dilemma. In the process of EU integration, there has clearly been a clash between economic freedoms (freedom to provide services, in particular) and fundamental rights. ¹

Nevertheless, the legal position of trade unions in the EU is relatively good (even if restricted to the rhetorical level), because the values associated with a social market economy are explicitly mentioned in Article 3(3) of the Treaty on European Union (Muir, 2018). However, two general factors significantly impede attempts to build solidarity among European trade unions in the context of integration. On the one hand, the EU is seen as a deregulatory force dismantling domestic labour market rules safeguarding workers. On the other hand, the ‘social dimension’ of integration is still underdeveloped (whether the European Pillar of Social Rights will push it forward remains to be seen). Building solidarity among EU unions is influenced by multiple factors, such as the variety of national industrial relations systems and different levels of power of unions at national level; the asymmetric integration process, rooted mainly in CJEU jurisprudence, but also enhanced by the lack of political will to build common standards; a widespread trade union anxiety about the future across the EU triggered by shrinking membership, eroding collective bargaining and new challenges such as technological change (disruptive innovations) or the emerging ‘gig economy’. Notwithstanding all this, the recent history of trade unions in Central and Eastern Europe and legacies of the past also play an important role in shaping the behaviour of unions from the region in the context of cross-border solidarity. This is the focus of the next section.

Central and Eastern European unions: still prisoners of their past?

Narrowing the perspective to trade unions from Central and Eastern Europe, it is worth recalling that they joined the ETUC as early as 1995, long before the formal enlargement of 2004. Due to their small size and limited experience in international trade unionism, they have not played a significant role in shaping the organisation’s policy yet (Henning, 2015). At the ETUC Congress in Vienna in May 2019, there were only 70 delegates from Central and Eastern Europe, accounting for less than 18 per cent of the delegates. ² On the other hand, their voice should not be ignored, as they represent workers from a region once considered to be a potential source of social dumping affecting the ‘old’ Member States and thus a threat to the stability of the European social model (Vaughan-Whitehead, 2003), or even a Trojan horse of American-style industrial relations in Europe (Meardi, 2002). There were also fears that Central and Eastern European unions would become a ‘liberalisation agent’, treating lower social standards as a competitive advantage for their own economies (Bernaciak, 2016). Looking back, it is obvious that these fears were unsubstantiated. On the contrary, Central and Eastern European unions hoped for a ‘transfer’ of the European social model to the new Member States, thereby strengthening national social dialogue instruments (Gradev, 2005). That is why they usually remained loyal allies of the ETUC, even where it was primarily a question of safeguarding the rights of their western European partners.

It is difficult for the Central and Eastern European unions to work out their own strategies at the European level, simply because they are weak, largely due to their inherited organisational structure. These unions have a very difficult heritage. After the Second World War the independent labour movement was crushed by the authoritarian socialist state, then reinstated in line with Leninist principles and charged with two key functions: ideological (as a transmission belt of the communist party to the masses) and production (Gardawski, 2009). Unions also played the role of welfare agencies. This ‘mission’ was to be implemented in the workplace. While there were industry-level associations, their role was merely symbolic.

The post-1989 political transformation led to a restoration of an autonomous trade union movement in Central and Eastern Europe, but the workplace level remained basic for union activities. The reasons are twofold. Keeping unions at the workplace level was convenient for policy-makers, because promoting sectoral collective bargaining by strong branch-level unions would hamper the creation of a market economy in a neoliberal mode. On the other hand, it was also in line with traditions of the communist past, with unions as ‘transmission belts’ at the workplace level and not engaging in industry-level negotiations. These two seemingly contradictory factors were actually interlocked. As a result, trade union movements in the post-communist Central and Eastern Europe were rebuilt in the workplace. That brought some advantages to unions. For example, they benefit from legal instruments that not only allow them to act directly on behalf of workers, but also to secure their existence by obliging employers to cover the wages of full-time union officers, if the union meets certain criteria (number of members). As a consequence, membership dues are in large part retained at workplace level, which leads to the underfinancing of upper-level union structures, effectively making them ‘hostages’ to workplace-level unions, especially in large companies. This surely applies to countries in which there is union pluralism and unions compete at confederal level, such as Poland and Hungary. But even in the Czech Republic, despite the dominance of one cross-sectoral ‘umbrella’ confederation, company-level organisations play a key role. Such a division of competences among various organisational levels inevitably translates into the inertia of the entire union movement (Myant, 2010).

All these factors interact and have led Central and Eastern European unions into a trap. Unions are basically confined to workplace level, where they enjoy legal guarantees, but above that level their role is de facto restricted to tripartite bodies, in which sectoral and national unions participate. Thus the inherited structure to a significant degree hampers the ability of branch-level unions and confederations from Central and Eastern Europe to operate effectively at the European level. As a result, they lack capacity to engage in cross-border solidarity in the way expected and practised by the ETUC. Certainly, these internal dysfunctionalities can only be overcome by the Central and Eastern European unions themselves.

What does ‘more Europe’ really mean? Looking for instruments of cross-border cooperation

The European dimension of industrial relations and the freedoms of the single market enjoyed by Central and Eastern European and ‘old EU’ unions differ. The ETUC approach, as reflected in numerous official documents, can be summed up as follows: social standards and social dialogue mechanisms existing in specific Member States should be protected (or developed), using all instruments available at EU level. It is therefore a vision that hardly promises the introduction of uniform standards in any area of key Central and Eastern European interest in the foreseeable future. Central and Eastern European unions do not seem satisfied with such a rudimentary approach. This can be illustrated by some significant examples.

First, let us look at the European social dialogue mechanism. When it emerged in 1990s, some described it as a likely prelude to a European system of collective bargaining (Biagi, 1999). After being included in the European social dialogue, Central and Eastern European unions assumed (naïvely, as we can see today) that it could become an instrument for effectively improving standards in their home countries (Henning, 2015). The 2001 ³ shift from agreements implemented through legislation towards ‘autonomous’ agreements implemented in line with procedures and practices specific to national social partners and Member States resulted in ambiguity of status and responsibilities for monitoring such new agreements, especially in terms of implementation in the Central and Eastern European countries, given their weak bilateral dialogue structures (Degryse and Tilly, 2013). Surveys on unionists (mainly from the ‘old’ Member States) a decade later revealed that none of the specific results of the European social dialogue were considered truly satisfactory after 2001 (Degryse, 2011). At present, the Central and Eastern European unions seem to be disappointed with the content of autonomous framework agreements, which they regard as too vague and inadequate to meet the actual needs of workers in their countries. These frustrations were reflected in the joint letter written by the leaders of three Polish organisations to the ETUC General Secretary in November 2016, warning against the adoption of the active ageing agreement in a form devoid of binding provisions. ⁴

The issue of transnational company agreements seems to be particularly interesting due to their polarising effects. In 2006, the ETUC declared that European trade union federations and local trade unions in multinational subsidiaries should negotiate and ‘manage’ transnational agreements negotiated with the central management, and appealed to union federations to develop their own procedures and recommendations for the negotiation process (Müller et al., 2010). The ETUC then proposed the notion of the ‘optional legal framework’. This was intended to ensure, among other things, that trade unions and, more specifically speaking, European trade union federations, would become the main actor in transnational company agreement negotiations on the workers’ side (ETUC, 2016). Furthermore, the legal enforceability of such agreements would be enhanced as a result. That approach received strong support from Central and Eastern European unions, which hoped that transnational company agreements would spread and become embedded in the EU legal system as a prospective way of increasing trade union power vis-à-vis multinationals in their home countries (Adamczyk and Surdykowska, 2016). The idea of the optional legal framework triggered strong resistance from the Nordic unions, which were reluctant to establish any European regulations in the area of industrial relations. In response, three national-level unions: NSZZ Solidarność and OPZZ (Poland) and CMKOS (Czech Republic) expressed their support for the optional legal framework in the joint statement addressed to the ETUC in December 2018, indicating that ‘creating an institutional background for the participation of trade unions in [transnational company agreement] negotiations and promoting the optional legal framework as a concept for effective representation of union members should be one of the ETUC’s priorities’. ⁵ It seems, however, that to date the Nordic unions’ lobbying has prevailed, as in the ETUC action programme adopted at the Vienna congress in May 2019 there is only a declaration that the ETUC will seek to conclude some kind of tripartite framework agreement on the status of transnational company agreements, but with not even a word about the optional legal framework.

The issue of wage convergence within the enlarged EU long remained at the margins of mainstream debate in the ETUC. That would only change when low wages began to affect the old Member States, especially in the south of Europe. In March 2017, for the first time in its history the ETUC adopted a resolution on promoting increases in the lowest wages (ETUC, 2017). The ‘Europe Needs a Pay Rise’ campaign followed. The idea of a European minimum wage has become official ETUC policy. Central and Eastern European unions, supportive of the policy, pointed out that it ‘could lead to an upward wage convergence and strengthen the fight against poverty and social dumping’. ⁶ However, it has not yet been translated into any joint trade union wage strategy, which is frustrating for the CEE unions. The growing tensions escalated into the ‘battle of letters’ within the largest European trade union federation, IndustriALL. Nordic unions anxiously reacted to the declaration of the new President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen that she would like to establish a European fair minimum wage framework, and in August 2019 demanded that IndustriALL Europe ‘actively fight against European solutions that can lead to an erosion of well-functioning national collective bargaining systems’. ⁷ The response by the unions of the eastern region in IndustriALL Europe (Visegrád Group plus Slovenia) to that statement was very firm. The signatories to the letter saw behind the Nordic initiative an ‘intention to be a resignation on real wage convergence in the EU’ and in September 2019 called on IndustriALL Europe ‘to actively oppose such local interests […] and to coordinate the activities of member organisations the way that outputs towards European solutions […]’ and are not a reflection of national priorities that cannot lead to genuine EU integration’. ⁸ These approaches are completely opposed to one another and the fact that such a difference of opinions has been discussed in public in such a harsh fashion is very significant, because it suggests that a more serious controversy lies behind it. Obviously, the Nordic trade unions do not see any threat to their wages and industrial relations in potential wage increases in Central and Eastern Europe. Rather they are driven by fears that consenting to any EU-level intervention in the area (even in a soft form, such as a recommendation, not to mention a directive) will set a precedent, and thus expose their national industrial relations to ‘legal engineering’ by EU institutions. However, this makes the dispute fundamental to the Europeanisation of industrial relations. In November 2019, urged by Poland’s Solidarność, 24 ETUC member organisations from Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans signed a letter to the ETUC General Secretary supporting the idea of an EU directive on minimum wages and the promotion of collective bargaining. ⁹ This was a reaction to the blocking of the initiative by the Nordic unions.

The freedom to provide services is perhaps the most inflammatory feature of the single market in the context of East-West relations, due to the wide gaps in social standards. In this case, however, the ETUC has achieved a significant success in building consensus. The joint position of unions from the Visegrád countries of 12 October 2018 ¹⁰ on the amendments to the Posted Workers Directive, a very controversial issue from the point of view of the new Member States, serves as proof. Despite pressure from governments, employers and the media in the new Member States, which almost univocally criticised the changes as undermining the Central and Eastern European countries’ competitiveness, the unions in the region maintained a common front and remained loyal to the line set by the ETUC, reasoning pragmatically that undermining collective bargaining in western Europe would not promote the interests of their members.

The case of posting workers in international road transport is more complicated, as it concerns a group of highly mobile workers, most of whom are citizens of Central and Eastern European countries. The European Transport Federation’s strategy towards the EU Mobility Package, while addressing such uncontroversial issues as working and rest time for drivers, also supports solutions aimed at tightening control over cabotage (domestic transport performed by foreign hauliers) and cross-trade (transport between two countries by a third-country entity) by applying posting of workers rules to such services. However, the European Transport Federation does not seem to have noticed the need for separate regulations for drivers working in transit (including the European sectoral minimum wage), whereas, according to the Central and Eastern European unions, that would be the only viable way of curbing unfair pay competition, assisted by the non-payment of social security contributions for a major part of the wages received by drivers from the new Member States (Surdykowska, 2016).

Industrial relations in the shadow of multinationals

As already mentioned, in all their cross-border activities so far the trade unions of Central and Eastern Europe have been driven by loyalty to the ETUC paradigm of Social Europe for all – built on the foundation of strong national industrial relations systems – because they believed it would help swiftly to transfer the western European culture of social dialogue and industrial democracy to their countries.

Official forecasts on the future of industrial relations in the enlarged EU relied on the assumption that a ‘mirror effect’ was going to happen, as impulses from Brussels directed at Central and Eastern Europe would trigger adaptation processes in the new Member States, leading to a mimicking of practices and standards in the old Member States (Lendvai, 2004).

It is safe to say that these forecasts have not materialised. Moreover, the Central and Eastern European trade union movement remains in crisis. Union density has been gradually falling in all countries of the region. Only in Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria is union density still around 20 per cent (ETUI and ETUC, 2019). Croatia stands out with a density of 32 per cent, but in this case one might remark ironically that the country only joined the EU in 2013. Collective bargaining coverage has also been shrinking in all countries in the region (ETUI and ETUC, 2019). The case of Romania is particularly drastic, because the government-induced changes to labour law led to collective bargaining coverage falling by more than 60 percentage points. In Slovenia, once proclaimed an ‘oasis of neocorporatism’ (Bohle and Greskovits, 2012), collective bargaining coverage is still high, but has fallen from 90 to 65 per cent. Those bare numbers make any claims about positive developments in industrial relations systems implausible. Last but not least, there is a growing dependence on governments – as the principal actors in shaping working conditions through legislative action – often at the expense of collective bargaining and tripartite consultations. In the 15 years since enlargement nothing has improved as far as the scope and quality of collective bargaining in Central and Eastern Europe are concerned. This seems to confirm Meardi’s (2012) claim about the weakness of EU regulations on social standards, which are failing the viability test in the complicated reality of post-communist countries.

Is there anything trade unions could do to build cross-border solidarity that would have real significance for East-West union relations? In our opinion, empowerment of dialogue in multinational enterprises may provide a foothold for this. In the past, trade unions put a lot of hope in European works councils, expecting them to help develop cross-border cooperation. Some 25 years after the adoption of the EU directive, there are more than 1100 European works councils, but in many cases their role has been marginalised by company boards imposing their own dialogue agenda (often merely symbolic) in the context of transnational-scale decisions, including on restructuring. Central and Eastern European trade unions hoped that European works councils could be used as a platform for more serious processes than information and consultation, such as actions aimed at achieving equal labour standards in all subsidiaries of the same multinational. However, in our view, from the outset the western European unions considered European works councils to be primarily an instrument helpful in defending workers’ interests at the local level, limited to information and consultation. That apparent divergence of interests effectively leaves trade unions incapable of using European works councils to develop cross-border solidarity, which has resulted in a fragmentation of their activities in the European dimension. For instance, despite the existence of a viable, highly unionised European works council at Volkswagen, as well as a trade union cooperation platform Intersoli, it would be difficult to find the seeds of joint bargaining strategies there. In 2017–2019, Central and Eastern European employees angry at their low wages, launched spontaneous strikes (Slovakia, Hungary) and pickets (Poland, Czech Republic) at some VW subsidiaries. This industrial action evoked voices of solidarity from the German unions, but no reflection on the need for a common discussion on wages followed. The fact that out of 132 EWC members participating in the annual meeting of the ETUC in September 2019, only six represented Central and Eastern Europe, clearly indicates that using European works councils as a vehicle for East-West union cooperation is questionable.

The ETUC and European industry federations have intensified their efforts to amend Directive 2009/38/EC. However, in order to prevent European works councils from being reduced to a cross-border human resource management measure in the hands of multinational boards, trade union activities aimed at formulating their own demands, including wage-related ones, are necessary. Certainly, it is not possible everywhere, as there are numerous EWCs with little or no union participation. But multinationals are precisely the right place to try moving away from the previous cross-border union practice of ‘exchanging wage information’ and towards the preparation of coordinated wage demands. This would be a sign of genuine cross-border solidarity and a step in the direction laid down almost 50 years ago by Levinson (1972).

All this is very important for Central and Eastern Europe, because of the strong influence of multinationals on labour relations in the region, due to their high share in employment. In 2014, the share of employees of foreign companies’ subsidiaries in the business sector excluding finance in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia exceeded 26 per cent, well above the EU average (Eurostat, 2019). It seems that the Central and Eastern European unions are more rational than their western European partners in their assessments of multinationals’ role as key protagonists in shaping future industrial relations. Besides the bigger economic role of multinationals and FDI in Central and Eastern Europe than in the EU-15, this is also because they entered the region as an ‘undeveloped area’ and because of their role as leading employers in the eyes of CEE governments (multinationals are also ‘carriers’ of new technologies, production methods and work organisation). Thus CEE trade unions regard as reckless western European unions’ reluctance to use the opportunity to ‘tame’ (at least partially) multinationals by introducing an optional legal framework for transnational company agreements that would allow for more effective negotiations with the central management of multinationals. The de facto freezing of the initiative at the ETUC Congress in 2019 serves as an example of such a reluctance.

National standards probably will not be enough

The analysis of trade union relations between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ Member States shows that the problem of cross-border union solidarity remains important but unsolved. The gap that existed before the 2004 EU enlargement has not been bridged. Unions’ interactions in supranational institutional platforms (ETUC, sectoral social dialogue committees or European works councils) provide numerous examples of fundamental differences in defining, voicing and defending the interests of union constituencies in the respective national environments, although the lines of division do not necessarily reflect the East-West frontier. The arrival of the 2008+ crisis wave reignited the debate and showed that old (pre-crisis) problems had not disappeared and would resurface once recession strikes again (for example, Pernicka et al., 2017). The rise of populism in the 2010s has amplified it even further.

Certainly, the strategy of defending national standards at EU level is counterproductive: it is not beneficial for Central and Eastern European unions, and creates a false sense of security for the western European unions. Therefore, the promotion of joint negotiation strategies in multinationals should be supplemented by other actions of a cross-border nature undertaken in a consistent but flexible manner. The structural changes affecting the union movement are incremental and cannot be administered in a top-down way, as they are a result of intertwining interests and conflicts. The experiences of European social dialogue and its negligible impact on EU decision-making prove that the transfer of corporatist practices from national to EU level has encountered serious obstacles, verging on failure (van der Linden, 2016: 209).

We subscribe to the view that national trade unions must give a higher priority to the European dimension of industrial relations, if they are to respond effectively to the ongoing process of Europeanisation in both economic and social dimensions (Zahn, 2017). Seeliger (2019: 17) writes enthusiastically that one should imagine a powerful IG Metall union making its strike funds available to unions from Italy, France and Slovakia. Such solidarity would not only support strike action, but also open up completely new fields of action for the union movement. Although we share the author’s opinion that the only tool for restoring even a minimum balance in labour–capital relations is to recall the purpose of strike action, the belief that strike funds could be created at the sectoral level across the EU is illusory. The never-ending story of the introduction of cross-border recognition of union membership within the ETUC supports our scepticism.

There is a dilemma concerning whether to try to build common (EU-wide) standards or to focus on defending domestic standards. These ‘new’ EU-wide standards would have to differ from those developed by trade unionists and social democrats after the Second World War, due to the changing nature of work, technology and the labour market. These standards often appear to have been downgraded. The question arises whether and to what extent western European unions realistically assess their ability to maintain current national standards. At some point, they may find themselves alone in that struggle, because the loyalty of Central and Eastern European unions has its limits, and they can hardly be expected to defend the western European unions’ agenda indefinitely, especially as they are stuck in their own fight against fundamental changes in the world of work. Central and Eastern European labour markets have been a laboratory for testing solutions that may spread further in the future. Polish unions have been taught a painful lesson by an extremely flexible labour market, in which periodically the share of temporary employment contracts was the highest in the EU. ¹¹ Rates of bogus self-employment and civil law contracts (freelancing) were very high, too. This was coupled with a very low level of unemployment protection. In such an environment, the trade unions face overwhelming problems in organising and expanding their membership base.

The reason for drawing attention to these phenomena is that Polish civil law contracts and bogus self-employment are, as far as their consequences for labour are concerned, very similar to what the whole EU will soon experience in the context of expanding platform work. In general, technological change makes it possible to split traditional jobs and workplaces into ‘micro-tasks’ performed by ‘micro-workers’. While in Poland the flexibilisation of employment was a deliberate choice of successive governments, in Western countries technological change and the individual decisions of companies to outsource work previously performed by traditional workers to gig workers might be the driver. Polish experience shows that trade unions can be helpless in the face of advanced labour markets. In such circumstances, existing national standards will no longer be viable, so there is a need for more cross-border cooperation.

Conclusions

Trade unions from Central and Eastern Europe are still a junior (that is, less powerful) sibling in the ETUC family. This is due mainly to their weak position at national level. Their internal weakness is the result of inadequate resources (human, linguistic, lobbying capacity in the ETUC), which in turn is conditioned by their low and still weakening associational, structural and (to a lesser extent) institutional power (Schmalz et al., 2018). Yet these organisations, for all their flaws and impairments, must cope with challenges posed by the opportunistic behaviour of multinationals, whose impact on industrial relations is much stronger in Central and Eastern Europe than in the ‘old’ Member States. This is still underestimated by researchers. With that in mind, the European trade union movement’s inability to work out a solidarity-based approach on cross-border issues, given the difficult situation of the Central and Eastern European unions, does not look favourable. Certainly, there are some objective limitations. The poor quality of European social dialogue depends to a considerable extent on the behaviour of employer organisations, and the future of the European minimum wage concept is mainly in the hands of the European Commission and Member States. However, strengthening the institutional framework for cooperation and solidarity in multinationals is a task for trade unions, which they should pursue autonomously, without looking for external encouragement. Thus, promoting transnational company agreements is an indispensable element of the EU collective bargaining system, which has been negatively affected by declining sectoral bargaining in many ‘old’ Member States or its near-extinction in many of the new ones. Certainly, a transparent debate on how to influence multinationals is a prerequisite for boosting unions’ confidence and could unlock many of the problems currently besetting Central and Eastern European unions. It seems that a willingness to launch such a debate could serve as a litmus test for the unions’ ability to engage in cross-border cooperation more broadly.

If this does not occur, Central and Eastern European unions may eventually back out of the EU scene and ‘lock themselves up in their own backyard’. The case of the Mobility Package mentioned above shows that such a threat is not purely hypothetical. Because the European trade union forum’s priorities do not address the specific expectations of CEE unions, some would distance themselves from supporting those priorities. Such a withdrawal is also far from unlikely because the organisational resources that Central and Eastern European unions can devote to their activities in Brussels are very limited. Given their associational and structural weaknesses, CEE unions now face a choice – no longer even strategic, but existential – between a ‘logic of membership’ and a ‘logic of influence’ (Schmitter and Streeck, 1981). A conscious move towards the former may allow them to address their ‘representative claim’ (Saward, 2010) more effectively. Paradoxically, western European unions are also struggling with declining union power, exemplified by shrinking density or a chronic crisis of collective bargaining (Leonardi and Pedersini, 2018; Müller et al., 2019), albeit less obviously. Ironically, therefore, not upward but downward convergence may turn out to be what closes the gap between the eastern and western blocks of the European trade union movement.

If trade unions from East and West are able to recognise their overlapping interests, however, it may be possible to build up their symbolic force with a view to gaining a discursive advantage and hence political influence. Building a common interest must be preceded by common realisation of the challenges arising from such ongoing processes as technological change, climate change, demographic change (population ageing) and migration. This in turn may provide fertile ground for genuine cross-border solidarity founded on an understanding of unions’ increasingly converging situations (together with those of their mandates, the working class) across the EU.