Trade union movements in post-industrial welfare states: Opening up to new social interests?

Abstract

Although trade unions were founded to fight for better protection against social risks of employees in the industrialising period, they seem in today’s post-industrial welfare states less representative of and attuned to groups facing new social risks. During the early post-war decades, trade union movements successfully organised most of the core industrial workforce, mainly blue-collar workers in industry, transport and public services. Unions fought for social rights and a fair family wage for male breadwinners. At the end of the golden age, in the early 1970s, more than half of all union members in Western European unions were still employed in industry and mining, mostly men. In the main union confederations the largest affiliate was still the blue-collar metal workers’ union or a general union of unskilled workers. Despite increased labour force participation and efforts to organise new social groups, only a minority of members were then women, white-collar workers or public-sector employees (Ebbinghaus and Visser 2000). Facing increased economic and social challenges, trade unions seek to open up to new social groups, while maintaining their strongholds among blue-collar industrial workers and in the public sector. As unions have made inroads into new groups, their social composition has become more heterogeneous, and the representation of interests is more difficult in both collective bargaining and lobbying. In addition, traditionally close ties of the main union movements with allied (left-wing) political parties have been de-emphasised by both sides, partly in an effort to respond to the changing social and political landscape (Taylor 1989).