Largest Trade Union Research Articles

Personal strength and coping during the COVID-19 pandemic: A study of cultural workers in the music sector

This study examines how cultural workers in the music sector coped with the COVID-19-induced lockdown, and how coping is associated with growth in personal strength during the pandemic. We conducted an online survey 1 year into the pandemic among members of Creo, Norway’s largest trade union in the music sector. Respondents ( N = 658) were to a large degree engaged in fight coping. Furthermore, seeking and giving social support, adopting new digital technologies, rotating job plans, as well as generating and maintaining professional skills were positively related to increased personal strength. We observed notable differences between occupational groups. Musicians chose skill nurturing, music educators engaged in technology adoption, and backstage workers reported flight coping to a larger degree than the other occupational groups. Surprisingly, self-employed and temporary employed workers reported a lower degree of innovation in terms of initiating and participating in new digital concepts and technology adoption compared to those with permanent employment. Finally, temporary or self-employed workers reported a higher degree of flight and freeze coping than permanently employed workers.

2023 Labour History Review Essay Prize Winner

The relatively new bundle of scholarship gathered under the notion of a ‘global 1989’ has produced an innovative field of research that highlights the necessity of a global approach towards the implosion of state socialism in Central and Eastern Europe. Yet this literature has neglected the broad range of international and transnational organizations which had an indispensable role during, but also after, the Cold War. Therefore this article attempts to approach the ‘global 1989’ from the vantage point of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). The analysis of this large trade union confederation sheds new light on post-Cold War labour internationalism, which has often been overshadowed by the developments leading up to the establishment of the ITUC in 2006. Furthermore, the article uncovers how the end of state socialism and its global reverberations engendered new fissures, debates, and tensions within the organization. While there might have been a ‘rush to the East’ during the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, globalization – which within the trade union landscape was accelerated by the global 1989 – became a far more pressing challenge during the 1990s.

“For Your Freedom and Ours”


 
 
 Across Western Europe the emergence of Poland’s Solidarność, the first independent trade union in a communist state, elicited varied responses. While the assistance pro- vided to Polish workers from continental European has been addressed, the solidar- ity effort in Britain is scarcely understood. Building on Stefan Berger and Norman LaPorte’s previous work, this article investigates the response of the British labour movement across the UK. While the British Left’s response is typically considered lukewarm, this article exposes the discrepancy between the efforts of rank-and-file labour activists and the leadership of key institutions. Drawing upon oral histories with contemporaneous activists, trade union archives, and prominent left-wing publi- cations, it is apparent that this distinction was present in the Trades Union Congress, large trade unions, and the Labour Party. Understanding British solidarity with So- lidarność ultimately elucidates the permeability of the Iron Curtain and contributes to an understanding of the role East-West socio-political interactions played in the demise of the Soviet Union.
 
 

Supply Chain Organizing as a Worker-led Strategy for Trade: A Case Study of Unite the Union

Abstract Global trade is often understood by trade union officials to be an abstract policy-level issue without a direct role for workers or shop floor influence. As the UK establishes an independent trade policy in the wake of Brexit, this article explores the concept of strategic supply chain organizing as the basis for a shop steward-led strategy to counter the industrial impact of trade. Based on interviews with Unite shop stewards and work with the union’s Research Department, this article explores efforts within Unite the Union, the largest private and public sector trade union in the UK and Ireland, to advance such a strategy through the union’s activist shop stewards and democratic structures. While considering the limitations of existing union approaches to trade issues as well as the challenges of developing such a strategy within the context of a large multisector trade union, the article puts forward a methodology of applied industrial research rooted in the principles of workers’ inquiry and supply chain solidarity. Taken together, the article considers the potential for new collaboration between the union’s shop stewards within supply chains to more fully realize their latent collective industrial power.

Expanding Welfare State Borders: Trade Unions and the Introduction of Pro-Outsiders Social Policies in Italy and Argentina

AbstractThis article investigates the drivers of trade union choices in the social policy arena in the age of austerity. Against the background of a political economy literature mostly emphasising trade union support for their stronger constituency – i.e. the ‘insiders’ – the article shows the existence of mechanisms potentially inducing trade unions to broaden their demands. Empirically, the study rests on an in-depth comparative analysis of the political process inducing the two largest trade unions in Argentina and Italy, the CGT and the CGIL, to support ‘pro-outsider’ social policy actively. Besides the comparison of two different geographical areas – though not so different in terms of original welfare state configuration – the main contribution of this article is outlining how the combination of dwindling organizational resources and growing competition from social movements and/or new radical unions leads traditionally insider-oriented unions to reach out to new constituencies and advocate expanded redistributive demands.

Editorial

2 | International Union Rights | 27/4 EDITORIAL Editorial: Caught between authoritarianism, neo-liberalism and nationalism, what is the new landscape for Asia’s organised working class? Asia is home to 4.5 billion people, comprising almost two-thirds of the population of the world. It is home to two of the world’s largest economies (China and Japan). The region is home to some of the world’s largest trade unions, but their capacity to push a workers’ rights agenda is marred by widespread repression and strong authoritarian currents. The Asia Monitor Resource Centre reflects on the ‘major anti-worker and anti-union state interventions’ that are taking place across the region. The picture is not encouraging overall, but AMRC take some heart from the fact that these attacks ‘have triggered massive pushback from the labour movement and civil society’. Sindhu Menon similarly finds inspiration from the gigantic strike called by the Joint Platform of Central Trade Unions, but reflects rather bleakly ‘is anybody listening?’. Asia has a poor ratification rate for ILO Conventions 87 and 98, and has tended towards – in many countries – monopoly trade union systems, with fierce repression common elsewhere in the region. But this is changing, and there have been significant recent shifts, including the ‘imminent’ ratification of both Conventions 87 and 98 expected by South Korea (though it has been ‘imminent’ for some time now…), and the ratification of Convention 98 by Vietnam. Hung Chau Quoc examines how international law, driven by trade agreements, is bringing changes to Vietnam’s industrial relations system, and asks what structures might usefully promote collective bargaining in a manner adapted to local social and cultural factors. No such changes are expected of China, but Tim Pringle and Ben Selby acknowledge a certain appeal that country retains to socialists drawn to China’s enormous success in reducing poverty and its potential as ‘counterbalance’ to US hegemony. These observations notwithstanding, however, their damning account of recent developments leads them to conclude that ‘oppression is oppression’ and that on several fronts ‘the Chinese state is committing serial human rights abuses’. Anita Chan is similarly critical of events in Hong Kong, finding some optimism among newly formed trade unions, though some of these voices have already been ‘stifled’ and ‘it is clear that some unionists are demoralised’. In much of the region there is a sense of unease, and few contributors to this edition write with sustained optimism. The health pandemic hangs like a shadow over all, despite the apparent success that China and a number of other States in the region have shown in controlling the outbreak. Christie Miedema tells us that ‘Bangladesh’s garment industry is built on poverty wages and rife with instances of union busting’ and ‘especially during the Covid-19 pandemic’ instances have risen of non-payment of dismissed workers or those injured on the job. Datuk Mohamed Shafie BP Mammal describes how a boom in education has seen Malaysia’s labour force changed by both inward and outward migration. Sawit Kaewvarn discusses the political upheavals in Thailand and presents a bleak view of the changing economy, particularly under the Covid-19 pandemic, describing ‘growing poverty, insecurity, and growing unemployment’. Kate Lappin of PSI laments that not only was ‘neoliberalism was making the pandemic worse’, but that the crisis which should have led to ‘rethinking orthodox economics’ instead provided cover for further acceleration of the neo-liberal project, with the signing of ‘the most secretive and least democratic trade agreement in the world’. Kate Middlemas of the ACTU shares this analysis, lamenting that many useful and effective responses to the pandemic ‘could breach such trade rules’. It is tempting to imagine that - for all their flaws the region’s long-established socialist States might at least have acted as a ‘counterbalance’ against neoliberalism , but with China, Vietnam and Laos signed up to the RCEP agreement such notions seem fanciful. Asia’s workers have proven time and again a capacity to mobilise on an extraordinary scale, but caught between an aging authoritarianism that is increasingly capitulating to rampant neo-liberalism, and with hostility to labour also under the kind of nationalism we see in India, the region faces a...

The effort of partnership: Capacity development and moral capital in partnership for mutual gains

The article discusses the enactment of a strategic partnership undertaken by a large, multi-site company and several trade unions. The enterprise aimed to institute highly engaged practices of employee and management voice to create a collaborative culture throughout the organization. The study finds that five years since the inception of the project of institutional change, considerable challenges to its embedding and effectiveness remain. It also finds that particular characteristics of the partnership propose resource generation for addressing those challenges and progressing collaborative relations to mutual benefit. Substantive actor effort and organizational learning generate capacity for new relationships. That includes activation of moral capital including toleration, patience, mutual respect, reciprocity and trust.

A confirmatory study of the relations between workplace sexism, sense of belonging, mental health, and job satisfaction among women in male‐dominated industries

AbstractThe present study investigated the mediating role of sense of belonging in the relations between workplace sexism and (a) mental health and (b) job satisfaction. Participants were 190 women from a large Australian trade union that represented mainly male‐dominated jobs. They completed an online survey that contained measures of sexism, sense of belonging in the industry, mental health, and job satisfaction. As predicted, sense of belonging mediated the associations between organizational sexism and both mental health and job satisfaction. In addition, sense of belonging mediated the association between interpersonal sexism and mental health. These results are discussed in relation to strategies for supporting women and mitigating the effects of sexism in male‐dominated workplaces. The Open Science Framework webpage for this project is at: https://osf.io/a3yqc/.

The Making of UNITE the Union: The Dynamics of Amalgamation

In 2007, UNITE the Union became Britain’s largest trade union with 2.1 million members, following the amalgamation of the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU) and AMICUS. Given their similar size and status, UNITE can be defined as a ‘balanced-partner’ amalgamation. The initial plan had included the GMB but it had withdrawn from the talks in 2006. Since 1979, in response to the adverse industrial relations context and loss of members all three potential partners had competed for new members by launching rival bids for mergers. An amalgamation offered a way to replace such competition with institutionalized co-operation, and resources could then be committed to regenerate union membership. The article analyses unions’ strategies and policies in relation to Mintzberg and Waters’s categories of ‘deliberate’ and ‘emergent’ strategies. However, such strategies may not be realized or only partially so, as a result of unintended consequences and unknown or misunderstood factors. Union mergers are beset with such examples because unions embody complex, political processes in which discrete groups – lay members and full-time officers – interact and compete to promote and negotiate distinctive visions as to the role and future of the union. Hence to analyse mergers in and between distinctive trade unions, a longitudinal, processional analysis, which explores the role of key personnel and their power resources, was required.

Self-Organization Against Trade Unions and the State: A Case Study from Argentina

This article explores some current issues related to workers’ association in Latin America. It focuses on a particular conflict that took place between precarious workers and a large trade union in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which resulted in the murder of a young leftist militant, Mariano Ferreyra. Against the abstract and sometimes naive views regarding trade union activities, as well as the general assumption of unions’ importance, this article argues that an in‐depth study of the mechanisms that some trade unions have for workers representation and workers control will reveal how the constraints imposed on collective workers association, effective internal democracy, and workplace actions are more complex than the immediate evidence would show. A close examination of the aforementioned confrontation and murder, even though these are exceptional situations, will provide us with a glimpse of the internal activity of one trade union, which will in turn reveal a great deal about the trade union's core dynamics in Argentina, management objectives, and modus operandi. In so doing, this article will revisit questions about trade union operations that will prove illuminating for worker self‐organization and for the academic debate concerning the power of unions or the powerlessness of states, particularly in the Global South.

Do financial criminals commit perfect crimes?

Purpose Financial criminals commit crimes with such disconcerting ease that economic and social stability is threatened. Armed with intangible knowledge and backed by legal, financial and accounting expertise, criminals use their intellectual weapons to carry out their activities with impunity by operating in extra-territorial spaces such as tax havens. The purpose of this paper is based on interviews with key figures in the French judiciary and also French tax officials. Design/methodology/approach A survey in the form of semi-directive interviews was conducted from March to July 2012 with auditors, judicial magistrates and a representative of a large trade union of the French Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry. Questioning this panel of persons from different but associated horizons enabled the collection of practical, technical and professional information on how they perceive acts of financial crime in the practice of their mission. Findings It was possible to observe that financial crime is motive-driven and develops in specific spaces and contexts, aided by informational weapons. Research limitations/implications By promoting both financial optimisation and tax minimisation, non-cooperative territories provide the perfect breeding ground for innovative minds to distort social norms which uphold equal tax treatment and a common effort. Financial information is the recurring theme throughout, allowing ever more cunning offenders to distort the value of words and the meaning of economic results. Practical implications The ease with which financial crimes are committed remains striking. Understanding the reasons why financial criminals appear to enjoy relative impunity requires questioning the magistrates and actors involved in the combat against financial crime. The interviews conducted with these key players show that financial crime develops and flourishes on the basis of a threefold specificity: a specific motive linked to absolute enrichment without economic foundation, diffuse and imprecise spaces where economic crimes proliferate with total impunity and an intangible weapon in the form of financial information. Social implications The private appropriation of financial information leads to the misappropriation of public goods and its capture by private operators, thereby depriving the community of a source of knowledge and expertise. Originality/value This paper is based on interviews with key figures in the French judiciary and also French tax officials. A survey in the form of semi-directive interviews was conducted from March to July 2012 with auditors, judicial magistrates and a representative of a large trade union of the French Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry.

The Swedish wage-earner funds and economic democracy: is there anything to be learned from them?

In 1983, the Social Democratic government in Sweden proposed that wage-earner funds should be implemented in the country and this proposal was adopted by parliament. The reform was initiated by LO, the large blue-collar trade union, and had been debated for more than a decade. Its purpose was to develop economic democracy, counteract the concentration of capital ownership but also to increase collective savings and supply capital for investments. When a coalition government, led by the conservatives, took office in 1991, the wage-earner funds were abolished. It is unlikely that this type of reform will reappear on the Swedish political agenda in the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, collective funds of some kind might be a way to start dealing with the lack of economic democracy and the unequal distribution of capital. In light of the Swedish experience with wage-earner funds, this article discusses some issues related to such a strategy.

An odd couple: individual wage setting and the largest Swedish trade union

The demise of the solidaristic wage policy, followed by the introduction of individual wage setting, is one of many similar changes in the Swedish welfare regime in recent decades. These changes were often demanded by employers and then eventually accepted and implemented by parts of the labour movement, i.e. Social Democracy and its related trade unions. Ever since its introduction in 1993, however, individual wage setting has created much controversy within Kommunal (the Swedish Municipal Workers' Union), the largest trade union in Sweden. In this light, it is interesting to examine the arguments that convinced a majority of the delegates at the decision-making congresses. Two main arguments in favour of individual wage setting have been put forward by union leaders, namely that the new wage system is appreciated by members and that increased wage dispersion increases productivity, which in turn leads to higher wages. This article reviews these arguments. It is found that member surveys suffer from flaws in methodology and that the productivity argument is ill-founded. The reason for the insistence on individual wage setting must be sought elsewhere.

How negotiators are transformed into mediators. Labor conflict mediation in Andalusia

In this paper we describe and analyze the Extrajudicial System for Labor Conflict Resolution in Andalusia. We begin by emphasizing the major relevance of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in a European context and the need to benefit from different ADR experiences. Next, we comment on the situation in Spain and focus on the Andalusia's system. This system was created by an interprofessional agreement between the most representative employers’ union and the two largest trade unions with the support of the national government. During the first fourteen years more than 4,500 conflicts have been submitted affecting more than 400,000 companies and 3,000,000 employees. Collective mediations are conducted by a team of four mediators, two of them appointed by the principal employers association, and the two other by the two largest trade unions.

Briefing: The politics of Marikana and South Africa's changing labour relations

MORE THAN A YEAR AFTER the South African police killed 34 strikers in Marikana, labour unrest continues across the country’s mining sector. Industrial actions have targeted platinum giants like Amplats, the world’s largest producer, where an 11-day strike over planned retrenchments has just ended and another is looming amid fresh wage talks. Rivalry between the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) – aligned with the African National Congress (ANC) – and the more recent and militant Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) has also plagued the industry. On 17 October, an NUM branch chairperson at Lonmin – the third largest platinum producer in the world – was shot dead. Another Lonmin NUM shaft steward died in a similar situation on 3 November. A few months ago a former NUM leader who had become the AMCU regional representative in Rustenburg was ambushed – one of several from both sides assassinated since the Marikana massacre. In other words, the ‘Framework Agreement for a Sustainable Mining Industry’, promoted by South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe and signed by parties to the industry on 3 July 2013, has so far failed to restore peace to the mining sector in Africa’s largest economy. Beyond the economic uncertainty created by the continued industrial unrest, its political consequences ahead of the next general election should not be underestimated. The NUM is affiliated to the ANC-aligned Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), and was until recently South Africa’s largest trade union, partly thanks to its membership in the platinum sector, where it is now outnumbered by the AMCU. The rapid decline of the dominant trade union and the model of party–labour relations associated with it is unlikely to pose a serious challenge to South

Risk Perception and Its Foundation among Swedish Individuals Occupationally Exposed to Air Pollutants and Chemicals: A Comparison of 1975 and 2011

Although work environment conditions have improved much in the last decades, occupational exposures to chemicals and air pollutants still cause adverse health effects. The risk perception of occupational exposures to hazardous substances and the motivations for it have been investigated through a questionnaire study. These results have also been compared to previous studies performed by the largest trade union confederation in Sweden in 1975. In the current survey, 30% of the respondents believe to be at risk, 48% not, and 22% state to be unsure. The proportion of persons experiencing to be at risk due to exposures to chemicals or air pollution at work is unexpectedly similar to that of 1975. The explanations offered for the risk perception were in many cases vague and of a subjective nature, but again results are similar to those of 1975. References to more solid justifications such as performed exposure measurements or medical health checks are scarce, with the latter case being as scarce today as in 1975. There are only a few indications that a more systematic management of work environment issues has developed at Swedish workplaces; for instance, managers were more commonly stated as a source of information in 2011 than in 1975.

Movements, protests and a massacre in South Africa

The Marikana Massacre of August 2012 exposed the most unstable configuration of forces in post-apartheid South Africa, forged through entrenched social and economic inequalities, ecological degradation, indebtedness and corruption. Dissent against prevailing power relations had arisen over many years, with impoverished communities registering thousands of ‘service delivery protests’, seemingly without either resolution or maturation into durable social movements. However, the critical missing linkages between trade unions and urban communities were finally found in Rustenberg, 100 km west of Johannesburg, in a strike which fused labour, social, gendered, environmental and other interests. In the months following the Marikana, it became apparent that some sought to weave a genuine national revolt of the sort witnessed in 2011 across North Africa. However, this challenge to the elite political economy faced extreme difficulties, with fragments of populist, post-nationalist and working-class politics remaining isolated from the largest trade union, Communist Party and nationalist forces within the working- and middle classes.

‘Seven Shillings is Not Exactly the Millennium’: Economic Liberalism and the Campaign for a Miners' Minimum Wage in the Durham Coalfield to 1914

The Durham Miners’ Association (DMA) was one of the best established, wealthiest and largest trade unions in Britain. Yet economic liberalism, specifically that miners’ wages had to be determined by coal prices, dominated the thinking of the DMA’s leaders as well as many ordinary Durham miners. The minimum wage was an indispensable way for radicals to attack these notions. As the Liberal-dominated Durham leadership remained hostile, the task of winning converts to the minimum wage fell to the union’s radical activists. This article explores the rank and file movements that coalesced around advocacy of the minimum wage from their re-emergence in summer 1911, and considers the debates on the votes for national strike action on the issue in 1912. It charts the campaigns’ changing aims, achievements and weaknesses after the minimum wage was formally won.

Institutionalization in the Context of Institutional Pluralism: Politics as a Generative Process

Institutionalizing a new organizational template in a pluralistic environment where multiple institutional logics coexist entails unique challenges where actors must negotiate conflict and carry out integrative and adaptive work. This paper examines how organizational actors in a large service sector trade union managed to craft integrative processes out of contentious processes in institutionalizing a new organizational template. Recently, renewed attention has focused on politics as a means through which integration is achieved in organizations under multiple institutional pressures. However, we know relatively little about how politics achieves organizational integration in pluralistic contexts. This paper sheds light on how successful institutionalization processes actually unfold in organizations. While extant literature on intra-organizational political processes has depicted politics mainly as a zero-sum game, findings in this study suggest that politics can be a generative process through which organizations adapt to changing conditions.

Impetus and Resistance to Changing Work-Related Mobility Patterns in Catalonia: The Role of the Social Actors and Participation

Transport accounting and accountability, in addition to traditional infrastructure costs (i.e. vehicle and service operation), now include sustainability considerations: costs in terms of the environment, society and time spent in transit. This new perspective has highlighted the elevated expense of current daily mobility models in Western society, which are based on massive use of the car. We can see a willingness in present political agendas to change this mobility model for one which would reduce these high costs. These are primarily based on positive discrimination policies towards non-motorised and collective transport models which are reinforced by territorial management policies that promote proximity to the work place and services, as well as the use of high-capacity public transport means. Mobility model studies have generally tended to approach this topic from the perspective of actions taken by public administrations (i.e. providing more public transport vehicles or alternative criteria for managing parking spaces), overlooking the many and varied contributions by representatives of non-public administration organisations that play an active role in generating daily mobility. Therefore, in this paper we look at the contributions of these organisations to this changing model. The particular focus of our analysis is the largest trade union in Catalonia, Comissions Obreres, and its role in shaping a new scenario for workrelated mobility, seen as an organisation that not only makes claims and negotiates with public administrations and employers’ associations, but also propagates new mobility models among its own members.