The Limits of Party Unionism: Far-Right Projects of Trade Union Building in Belgium, France, and Germany

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines three attempts to build ‘party unions’ of the far right in Western Europe: the Vlaams Belang’s creation of its own trade union organization in 2011, which folded after failing to develop a meaningful membership base; the Front National’s creation of its own sectoral trade unions in the mid-1990s, which were disbanded following a series of court rulings; and the distinctive case of Zentrum Automobil as a pre-existing sector-specific workplace group with far-right roots founded in 2009, which leading figures from the radical nationalist wing of the Alternative for Germany subsequently tried to turn into a party-sponsored trade union until an incompatibility resolution of the party executive in 2021. All three cases point to the limits of party unionism in the face of institutional constraints as well as an internal tension between anti-(neo)corporatist populism – directed against the institutional power of established ‘monopoly unions’ – and a commitment to industrial peace as an extension of an organic national community. Drawing on post-foundational discourse theory, the paper proposes a discourse-analytic approach as a particularly fruitful avenue for examining these tensions and limitations as well as the dynamic interplay between the conflictual and regulated nature of industrial relations more generally.