Trade Union Decline Research Articles

Post-industrial capitalism and trade union decline in affluent democracies

This study examines trade union decline in light of concurrent changes in the demographic and sectoral composition of labor markets. Drawing on classical sociology and contemporary scholarship on work and employment, the author theorizes that the emergence of post-industrial work settings coupled with more socially diverse workforces make labor organizing more difficult than prior research recognizes. Operating through various mechanisms, these factors are thought to hinder the development of solidarity among workers and direct employment growth toward previously unorganized parts of the economy. Using panel data on 18 countries from 1960 to 2015, these ideas are tested with regression models that capture labor market changes indicative of post-industrial capitalism—measured by changes in deindustrialization, foreign-born population, and female share of employment. The results support the theoretical argument, with counterfactual estimates suggesting that labor market changes occurring between 1960 and 2015 reduced union density by 9 to 13 points for the whole sample.

What is organizational inequality? Why is it increasing as macroeconomic inequality increases?

Inequality has been increasing for decades in both rich and developing countries and the academic literature addressing it struggles to provide explanations, let alone solutions. This article is concerned with a relatively underexplored area, the relationship between macro-level inequality and organizational inequality. The core focus of the article is the recognition that the two phenomena are closely bound up one with the other. This is made possible by adopting Rousseau’s notion of inequality as hierarchy and willingness to accept subordination to authority and disparity of treatment. In doing so, we highlight similarities and dissimilarities between Rousseau and Marx. Inequality remains an issue of hierarchy at both the macro and organizational levels. As it was for Rousseau, so it is today but it is much more layered than in Rousseau’s day: inequality in society is the accepted degree of hierarchy among its members, inequality in the economy and at work is the extent to which, accepted or not, there is an imbalance of power, financial resources, remuneration of work and access to opportunities and services. The increase in inequality is due to a radical change in the socio-economic model of advanced economies. This change involves a shift towards financialization, a pressure on labour through flexibility, the decline of trade unions’ power and the retrenchment of public social spending.

Some obstacles to wage-led growth

I begin by providing a non-technical summary of the Post-Keynesian model of wage-led growth. I then summarise the work of microeconomists and industrial relations researchers on the reasons why real wages have failed to keep pace with labour productivity, leading to a steady decline in the wage share of GDP. These include the decline of trade unions, the erosion of the welfare state and (especially) the increasing ability and willingness of employers to evade and avoid labour market regulation. I conclude that these microeconomic problems need to be solved for a macroeconomic strategy of wage-led growth to be possible.

Condescending Saviors: Union Substitution at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky (TMMK)

“Condescending Saviors” identifies and analyzes multiple factors underlying the ability of Toyota Motor Corporation’s Georgetown, Kentucky plant to stymy unionization of production workers through sophisticated and extensive union substitutionism. Two key factors in this case study of its profoundly pragmatic long-term substitution are the meso-corporatist institutions by which it successfully embedded itself in Kentucky, and, critically, the trajectory of the United Auto Workers from business unionism to narrow enterprise unionism based solely on the interests of the auto companies. A contrast between the Kentucky Building Trades Council’s successful unionization of construction work and the UAW’s organizing failures places the latter in bold relief and argues against the popular reasoning that the UAW was simply the victim of events, the period, or TMMK’s location. It also exposes the insularity that has shielded Toyota’s plants and workers from all objective academic investigation. A final substantive chapter charts the stages of the UAW’s transition to enterprise unionism, decades of erosion of union democracy and concomitant organizing capacity, and thus offers a view of possible alternative developments. The historical and comparative method contextualizes these events within the larger framework of the shifting relationship between capital, labor, and the state in the second half of the twentieth century US. The similarities between the weak class struggle in the US and the defeat of Japanese working-class struggle overshadow any reliance on cultural differences. Thus, “American exceptionalism” and “Japanese uniqueness” are abandoned as frames that deny an important commonality of forces, and the specific working of meso-corporatism in the US. Investigating this puzzle using the arsenal of political science and, necessarily, the methods of the meticulous historian, yielded a new paradigm to better understand trade union decline. Identifying these factors required an in-depth understanding of Japanese and US union history since the nineteenth century; an extensive review of the history of industrial relations practices at Toyota’s earlier joint venture with General Motors in California; and the decades-long process of centralization of control within the UAW and its refusal to enforce the Constitutionally-required prohibition of competition between UAW-represented plants; all of which are further explored in working papers.

Collective wage bargaining under strain in northern European construction: Resisting institutional drift?

Internationalization, trade union decline, enforcement problems and rising self-employment all strain the effectiveness of collective wage bargaining arrangements in northern European construction. We examine Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK, and show that these strains have pushed trade unions to seek assistance from the state to stabilize wage regulation, but with results that vary according to employer strategies and the power balances between the actors. While Denmark and the UK have barely introduced any state support, Norway has followed the Netherlands and Germany in introducing legal mechanisms for extension of collectively agreed minimum wage terms. The country studies suggest that state assistance alleviates some of the strain, but does not reverse the trends, and the comparison indicates that both institutional innovation and reorganization may be required if wage bargaining is not to drift into different functions.

Trade union decline, deindustrialization, and rising income inequality in the United States, 1947 to 2015

The steady rise of income inequality in the United States coincides with trade union decline and structural changes to the economy, but prior studies do not consider whether these phenomena interact in ways that magnify inequality. Drawing on institutional and market accounts of inequality, the author develops the argument that trade union decline, occurring within the context of deindustrialization and the offshoring of routinemanufacturing jobs, creates more profound distributional effects than these factors would create in isolation. This argument is tested (net of other important determinants of income inequality) using time-series regression models and national-level data from 1947 to 2015. Results support the proposed interaction effects, suggesting that a thorough understanding of inequality and social stratification must consider not only institutions and markets, but how they interact. The results also suggest that inequality is driven by financialization, public sector retrenchment, and unemployment, but not necessarily by technological change.

Financialization, Technological Change, and Trade Union Decline

AbstractRecent research finds that financialization and technological change have had a variety of negative effects on labor, including reducing low-skill workers’ wages and increasing income inequality. In this article, I examine the effect on trade unions of one type of financialization, equity market development and one type of technological change, routine-biased technological change. I argue that we should conceptualize trade union strength in two dimensions: (a) the strength of their institutional structures, such as the degree of wage bargaining coordination and the degree to which firms can deviate from collective agreements; (b) the strength of their membership. Using data for 21 OECD countries from 1970 to 2010, I find a negative effect of equity market development on unions’ institutional structures, but not on union membership. Contrarily, I find that routine-biased technological change has a negative effect on union density, but an inconsistent relationship with the strength of unions’ institutional structures.

Free collective bargaining and incomes policy: learning from Barbara Wootton and Hugh Clegg on post‐war British Industrial Relations and wage inequality

AbstractGrowing income inequality has returned as a major political issue in affluent, advanced economies, often associated directly with the decline of trade unions and collective bargaining. In policy terms, this has been reflected in the British campaign for a ‘Living Wage’ and the new German minimum wage. Yet on the broader front, Industrial Relations (IR) struggles to find a credible regulatory strategy to address inequality—one that combines state and civil society initiatives and can be legitimised in political philosophy. This History and Policy article argues that there is much to learn from the IR past, before neo‐liberalism. My focus is the writing of Barbara Wootton and Hugh Clegg on ‘Incomes Policy’, from the 1950s to the early 1980s, when this was a central intellectual and policy issue in British IR. I explore the differing justifications for Incomes Policy, from corporatist macro‐economic management to social equality, comparing and contrasting the democratic socialist political principles of Wootton with Clegg's social democratic pluralism. The conclusion relates this historical debate between state pattern and civil society process to current concerns about how social democratic ideas and IR policy can address the problem of labour market inequality.

Focus: Power from the people: why trade union decline should concern us all

INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 6 Volume 22 Issue 2 2015 The dismantling of trade union power and influence has been a plannedfor outcome of sustained implementation of neo-liberal policy agendas since 1979 The latest collection of essays4 from the Resolution Foundation focuses on this very issue, albeit with attention to the plight of young workers (and their relative absence from trade union membership) a large proportion of whom increasingly find themselves locked out of the UK economy on the ‘low road’ of poorly paid insecure work and lack of career progression. Power The dismantling of trade union power and influence has been a planned-for outcome of sustained implementation of neo-liberal policy agendas from the first Thatcher government of 1979, through the New Labour era, under the Coalition government, and these policies will be continued under the newly elected Tory government. This loss of influence has though had wider implications other than in the arena of pay and reward. As the IMF report suggests, the resulting economic inequality ‘could also hurt society by allowing top earners to manipulate the economic and political system’. This arguable manipulation is seen, for example, in the joint report of the House of Commons Scottish Affairs and Business, Innovation and Skills committees, into the collapse of logistics firm Parcel Link on Christmas Day 20145 . The firm maintained trading during the run-up to Christmas knowing of impending liquidation and that it was unlikely to be able to afford the minimum period of consultation prior to redundancy let alone notice of contract termination . Due to the complicated way in which City Link was purchased by private equity firm Better Capital it is the taxpayer left with the redundancy bill, and thousands of self-employed drivers are unlikely to see outstanding fees paid. Complicit in this manipulation, and using the mantra of ‘the fight against red tape’, was the Coalition government who in 2013 introduced fees to pursue a claim through the Employment Tribunal Service (ETA) for a case like that arising from City Link. To compound the situation of workers like those at City Link, in the year prior to the introduction of fees the Coalition reduced the period during which employers had to consult with unions over mass redundancies. It should be a profound concern that a firm like Better Capital can behave with such arrogant disregard to the welfare of its employed and selfemployed staff and face no judicial or governmental penalty as a result. Dependency The Conservative Party and parts of the UK media would have us believe that Britain suffers from a ‘dependency culture’ particularly in the W ho benefits from trade union decline, and what lessons can we draw from this analysis about the state of the political economy in the United Kingdom (UK)? Power from the people1 by established International Monetary Fund (IMF) economists, Florence Jaumotte and Carolina Osorio Buitron, provides an intelligent, robust analysis of the correlation between the reducing size and influence of trade unions as an institution of labour markets in advanced economies, the increasing wealth of the top 10 percent in these economies, and the shrinking value of wages for low and middleincome earners. Much of this analysis can be garnered elsewhere . For example the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) has charted the steep, persistent decline of the value of wages in marked contrast to increasing productivity and overall profitability of private sector business2 . What is of allied concern though, is what structural factors are at play that catalyse trade union decline, precipitate the increasing precarity of UK workers and have resulted in a profound imbalance in the status of the average UK worker relative to that of corporate power and influence. Pay Some economists argue that strong trade unions disrupt ‘market clearing’ influences which normalise and stabilise wages in free market economies. Jaumotte and Buitron unravel this well-worn trope, dismantling also the free market assumption that trade unions are a causal factor of high unemployment. ‘The empirical support for this hypothesis is not very strong, at least within the range of institutional arrangements observed in advanced economies .For instance, in an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) review...

Focus: Power from the people: why trade union decline should concern us all

Focus: Power from the people: why trade union decline should concern us all

Mapping the frontier of theory in industrial relations: the contested role of worker representation

The widespread decline of trade unions and the emergence of various alternative forms of worker voice and representation have posed a challenge to the field of industrial relations and generated significant rethinking of the future directions for this field of study. In this article, we examine how well industrial relations meta-theories, when combined with efforts to build middle-range theories, provide distinctive explanations and different predictions for the alternatives that have emerged to date to fill the void. We propose new directions for theory and research that expand the range of actors or institutions that shape employment relations and include social identities outside of the employment relationship as the basis for mobilizing collective actions and voice. Finally, we suggest using these theoretical arguments to test among alternatives as a means of revitalizing and reshaping industrial relations as well as carrying forward the problem-solving norms that have characterized the field since its inception.

Effects of the labour market flexibility in the long run: evidence from the italian case (1977-2009)

Effetti della flessibilita del mercato del lavoro nel lungo periodo: riscontro empirico dal caso italiano (1977-2009) Il presente lavoro studia se la deregolamentazione del mercato del lavoro sia correlata con l’aumento dell’occupazione in Italia e la discesa del potere del sindacato. La nostra ipotesi e che tale correlazione non sussista e che i contratti flessibili abbiano assecondato la dicotomia fra industria e terziario, senza esserne causa. Per verificare cio, applichiamo dapprima l’analisi delle componenti principali, poi la regressione. L’ipotesi e quasi sempre confermata. I contratti flessibili non sono correlati con la creazione di occupazione giovanile, mentre il declino del sindacato e correlato con indicatori macroeconomici diversi dai contratti flessibili. Questi interventi hanno assecondato un processo gia in essere, causato da un cambiamento strutturale nel paradigma produttivo.

Too Few Indians and Too Many Chiefs. Is This One Reason for Declining Trade Union Membership in Denmark?

The decline in trade union membership in many countries since the 1970s and the consequent weakening of the trade unions is due to a number of reasons, including occupational changes, welfare state and social regulation, liberalism and individualization, and in Denmark (and Sweden and Finland) changes in unemployment insurance legislation and the institutional settings of the unemployment insurance system. All these factors are well known and have been analyzed in the literature. This article sums up all these facts and reasons for trade union decline in Denmark, but the main analysis focuses on a supplementary reason for membership decline among LO (the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions)-affiliated unions: many trade union members leave their unions to become members of unions that organize managers. When workers become managers, some prefer to join an organization expert in servicing managerial staff, while others leave their trade unions because they define themselves as managers without being formally appointed as such and without having formal managerial responsibilities. Reasons for this behavior will be discussed in the article.

The Involvement of Civil Society Organizations in British Industrial Relations: Extent, Origins and Significance

AbstractThis article examines the involvement of civil society organizations (CSOs) in UK industrial relations. Organizations of this type, including advocacy, campaigning, identity and community organizations have attracted increasing attention from employment relations scholars in recent years. The study reported in this article demonstrates that CSOs have become increasingly active in the sphere of work and employment, partly in response to trade union decline but also owing to political opportunities, afforded by the labour market policy of the New Labour government. It is claimed that CSOs operate at multiple levels of the industrial relations system and interact with the state, employers and trade unions. They generate significant effects within UK industrial relations and can rightly be judged significant ‘new actors’ on the UK employment scene.

The Effects of Creativity and Culture on Trade Union Density

Empirical studies of trade union membership growth have used the standard BainElsheikh [Bain, G. S. and F. Elsheikh, Union Growth and the Business Cycle, Oxford: Blackwell, 1976) model. In this model, rate of change of trade union membership is the dependent variable and rate of change in money wages, rate of change in prices, level of unionization, and unemployment rate are the independent variables. However, trade union density (unionization rate) has been falling in many developed countries. The decline started over four decades ago and has not reached a turning point yet. Traditional models do not seem to adequately explain the decline of trade unions. Hence I examined the influence of creativity and culture on union density within the B-E model for a sample of 22 developed market economies. I used union density as the dependent variable, unemployment rate, rate of growth of gross domestic product (GDP), and creativity and culture as independent variables. Since employers can easily oppose trade unions and unemployed union members drop out of unions in times of high unemployment rate, it should have a negative effect on trade union density. Growth of GDP is a proxy for price increases and money wage increases. In growing economies, prices generally increase and trade unions try negotiating higher wages for not letting real wages erode. This may attract more workers to join the union, thereby creating a positive effect on trade union density. According to Florida [The Rise of the Creative Class, Melbourne: Pluto Press, Australia, 2002], a creative community is characterized by three t’s—technology, talent, and tolerance. Since one of the components of Florida’s creativity index is tolerance, one can assume that tolerant communities will be accepting of and willing to work with various interest groups, including trade unions. Thus, I hypothesize that the higher the level of creativity of a country, the higher the level of union density will be. Hofstede [Culture and Organizations, London: Harper Collins, 1991] has identified four dimensions of national culture—power distance, individualism vs. collectivism, masculinity vs. femininity, and uncertainty avoidance. Higher power Atl Econ J (2012) 40:101–102 DOI 10.1007/s11293-011-9296-9

More Rights, Less Power: Labor Standards and Labor Markets in East European Post-communist States

This paper examines changes in labor markets and labor rights for 13 post-communist states of East Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union. It focuses on the simultaneous pressures to increase the flexibility of labor markets and improve labor standards in the years since the collapse of communism. Comparative measures and patterns of both de jure and de facto standards and flexibility are presented, and the roles of key institutional promoters of change are analyzed. I find that a combination of democratic regime type and European Union accession has pulled East European states toward the strengthening of collective labor rights. The effect is strongest on the states that joined the EU in 2004, weaker for those joining in 2007, while the three post-Soviet, non-accession states remain significantly more labor-repressive. Labor market flexibilization has been a more uniform trend in the post-communist region. In the context of this project’s inter-regional comparisons, contemporary Eastern Europe has the strongest labor rights. At the same time, the decline of trade unions and limits of collective bargaining in most post-communist states undermine the effectiveness of transposed EU legislation and bargaining institutions in empowering labor. As shown by the exceptional case of Slovenia, strong unions are necessary to fully enforce rights.

Human resource strategy and unionization: evidence from Taiwan

Over the past two decades, industrial relations (IR) have seen the continuous decline of trade unions and a growing interest in high performance work practices (HPWPs). Human resource researchers, examining the traditional adversarial IR strategies, are increasingly calling for more co-operative and innovative HPWPs in employment relations. Can traditional union adversarial strategies exist along with HPWPs or does one necessarily exclude the other? To answer this question, this study, using questionnaires collected from locally owned and multinational corporations in Taiwan, investigates the association between unionization rate and HPWPs. Contrary to most findings from the Western context, HPWPs were found to have a positive and statistically significant impact on unionization at the firm level in Taiwan. The positive impact may be result of close and friendly relationship between employers and unions and the practices of ‘employer-sponsored’ unions in Taiwan. Furthermore, traditional Confucian culture and institutional factors have strengthened the influence of HPWPs on unionization.

Mapping worker collectivism

Discussions relating to trade union decline since 1979 have been well rehearsed in the literature. An underlying theme in much of this dialogue is the supposedly corresponding decline of workplace collectivism due to a rise in individualism (Bacon and Storey, 1996; Bassett and Cave, 1993). Others have suggested that there has been a decline in the collective identity of the working class per se due to a rise in consumerism and affluence (Lash and Urry, 1987; Phelps Brown, 1990). However, a major criticism of such assertions is that the notion of collectivism is based upon simplistic dichotomies and stereotyped understandings (Martinez Lucio and Stewart, 1997). A central problem appears to be that the subject of ‘collectivism’ itself is lacking in conceptual and empirical rigour (Kelly, 1998; Metochi, 2002), and to date, any attempts to address this lacuna have been tentatively offered. Of those who have recently attempted to define ‘workplace collectivism’ (for example, Black et al. 1999; Metochi, 2002), Stephenson and Stewart’s (2001) intervention is possibly most valuable, for they argue that the current debates surrounding ‘collectivism’ use indicators overly associated with the idea of conflict and resistance. They claim that much of the debate does not adequately engage with the problem of collectivism in its various forms, and offer three typologies of collectivism related to work. The purpose of this research note is to provide a contribution to these recent studies through presenting empirical evidence of different forms of collectivism from a wider study of the Tyneside Maritime Construction Industry (TMCI) and to encourage debate on the nature of workplace collectivism.

Trade Union Decline and Union Wage Effects in Australia

Union density in Australia fell precipitously in the 1990s. This study investigates how union wage effects may have changed as a result. The findings from 1993 data suggest that union/nonunion wage differentials were very small, especially among workers in high‐density industries. By 2001 the overall union wage effect had increased significantly; however, the union/nonunion wage differential was no longer correlated with union density at the industry level.

Producers Of The World Unite! A Return Of Reformist Unionism?

Some ideas of Reformist "uplift unionism," as exemplified by the nineteenth-century Knights of Labor, have once again become in teresting. Arising in a time of hyper-competition and troubled times for traditional trade unions, the Knights aimed to reform society, primarily through solidarity among producers and the for mation of cooperatives. Their local organizations often included social action groups along with trade unions. Under current con ditions of international hyper-competition and trade union de cline, some of the ideas of the old Knights have new importance. The current concept of unionism as a social movement can be grounded in Reformist notions, as can modern worker-rights orga nizations and the reasoning underlying the workers' capital move ment. Reformism offers a coherent approach to these labor move ment strategies.