Challenges to Unions in Britain and Europe

Abstract

On the face of it these two books deal with very different aspects of the same subject matter. Wrigley's volume concentrates exclusively on the evolution of trade unionism and industrial relations in a single country up to 1979 while the collection by Leisink and colleagues focuses almost entirely on the problems of trade unionism after 1979 and in a range of countries. As it turns out the two books are highly complementary since the detailed historical analyses in Wrigley provide some very important insights into the contemporary problems of European trade unionism. Taken together they can be seen to revolve around three central questions. First, to what extent can unions exercise strategic choice in determining their future and how far is such choice constrained by economic and political factors. Second, to what extent are the contemporary problems of unions the product of increasing individualisation and differentiation among the work forces they seek to represent. And, third, what strategic initiatives have unions actually taken in response to these problems. One useful way into the first question is to examine the factors responsible for the transformation of British trade unionism between the late 1930s and the post war period. In the traditional account union power was the product of full employment, itself part of the postwar settlement between labour and capital which also embraced the welfare state, trade union political influence and free collective bargaining. The stability of the settlement was underpinned by the steady economic growth of the 'Golden age of Capitalism' (to use the increasingly fashionable description of the postwar boom). But these material roots were reinforced by cross-party support from both Labour and Conservative (hence the term 'Butskellism' after the Tory Rab Butler and Labour Chancellor and Leader Hugh Gaitskell). Only in the late 1960s did the settlement start to unravel, as first Labour and then the Conservatives attempted to curb trade union power by legislation. For most of the contributors to Wrigley it is certainly true that full employment was the sine qua non of union power, a theme which echoes contemporary writings of the 1940s and, most of all, the prophetic essay by Michael Kalecki (1943). In 'Political aspects of full employment' he raised a question that was to dominate postwar British debate on the 'union problem'. In the absence of chronic labour shortages and the correspondingly powerful threat of dismissal, how was labour discipline to be maintained? More specifically, how was it possible to reconcile sectional wage bargaining by powerful trade unions with economic 'planning', steady economic growth and low inflation? Patrick Maguire's thoroughly