‘Safe enclaves’? American multinationals and Spanish trade unionism

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By examining two case studies in Spain's automobile industry, this article analyzes the part played by the multinational corporation (MNC) in the historical transformation of Spanish trade unionism at shop-floor level. The literature on organizational change, often aimed at explaining the ability of MNCs to diffuse human resource policies and practices across borders, is used to explore MNCs’ ability to introduce organizational changes into the specific local conditions they are forced to deal with. Of the three possible types of organizational change examined (‘continuity and institutional inertia’, ‘discontinuous and revolutionary change’, and ‘hybridization’), the authors find there is a strong evidential tendency towards hybridization. The MNCs under scrutiny were able to transform some aspects of the work of trade unions at the workplace level (wages, promotion, selection), but found they had to adapt their management style to the Francoist state's labour legislation – namely, concerning professional classification and functional mobility. The authors also contend that it was the role of these companies as MNCs, not their country of origin, which opened the way to the transformation of trade union organization and labour relations at the local level in Spain, since such a transformation accelerated once French and Italian multinationals took over each one of the MNCs under examination.