White-collar Unions Research Articles

Trade unions and the partisan preferences of their members: Sweden 1986–2021

Abstract Focusing on the effects of union membership on partisan preferences, this article explores how changes in Swedish industrial relations and trade-union politics have affected electoral support for Left parties since the mid-1980s. Our analysis shows that unionization among blue-collar workers has declined sharply since the mid-1990 and that this development has contributed to the decline of electoral support for the Social Democrats and for the Swedish Left as a whole. In addition, we find that the association between union membership and voting for Left parties has declined among white-collar employees without tertiary education as well as blue-collar workers over the same period. We argue that sectoral blue-collar and white-collar unions alike have responded to membership losses and intensified competition between unions by engaging in practices that render the partisan preferences of union members less distinctive than what they used to be (less Left-leaning relative to non-unionized counterparts).

Union Density in Norway and Sweden: Stability versus Decline

The aim is to explain why union density is not only considerably higher in the Ghent country Sweden than in non-Ghent Norway but also why it has declined much more in Sweden, in particular among blue-collar workers. We show how changes to Swedish unemployment insurance in 2007–2013 were followed by a decline in union density and how white-collar unions were more successful than blue-collar unions in developing supplementary income insurance schemes that counteracted membership losses. This type of institutional explanation is nevertheless insufficient. In Norway, too, blue-collar density has decreased while white-collar workers have maintained their density rate. Norwegian data further show that even without unemployment insurance funds, it is possible to achieve a fairly high union density at workplaces with collective agreements. However, without unemployment benefits like we find in Sweden, it is increasingly challenging to establish an institutional foundation for a social custom of unionization.

Negotiating a new Swedish model: Employment transition agreements and the struggle over redundancies

This article is aimed to contribute to our knowledge regarding employer and employee preferences about employment security and unemployment income protection as well as the degree of neoliberal change during the last decades through the lens of collective bargaining. It charts the institutional–historical development of an Employment Transition Agreement (ETA) between the bargaining cartel for white-collar unions, PTK, and the organisation for private employers, SAF/SN. ETAs are a form of institution through which Swedish trade unions and employer organisations give employees added protection in the event of redundancies, mostly in the form of added income protection but also matching services and shorter training programmes. Drawing from archival material and published statements in newspapers, the article engages with what the organisations wanted from such agreements during negotiations and how this shifted during the decades. The results show that the agreements have given employees added unemployment income protection while at the same time giving employees greater flexibility during collective lay-offs. It also shows how the agreement initially was more focused on employment security and proactive investments in skills. But when the balance of power shifted in favour of employers, PTK had to give up any such ambitions.

The First Canadian Bank Strike: Labour Relations and White-Collar Union Organizing during the Second World War

When members of the Office and Professional Workers Organizing Committee (opwoc), employed by the Banque Canadienne Nationale (bcn), set up picket lines at branches in Montreal on 30 April 1942, they began the first strike in the Canadian banking industry. This article analyzes the four-week strike, and the organizing drive that preceded it, as a way of exploring how changes in the relationship between labour, capital, and the state during the Second World War helped or hindered unionization in unorganized industries – areas with limited or non-existent levels of union representation and often predominantly female and racialized workforces. By examining this failed white-collar strike in relation to the substantial increase in labour organizing that occurred in the 1940s and the concomitant changes to the labour relations system, we can consider the effect that these changes had for different types of workers. A closer look at the first Canadian bank strike shows that the changes made to the labour relations system in this period made little difference for the men and women who joined opwoc: the state continued to hamper their organizing efforts, and the banks continued to oppose and work to thwart unionization. Half-hearted support from labour leaders compounded the problem. Ultimately, the bank’s anti-union behaviour, the regional war labour board’s drawn-out and disappointing decision on bcn employees’ application for increased compensation, and labour leaders’ willingness to accept the board’s decision undermined the strike and hindered bank workers’ efforts to unionize in the early 1940s.

White-Collar Unions and Attitudes towards Income Inequality, Redistribution, and State–Market Relations

The role of trade unions for public policy, public policy outcomes, and political behaviour is a well-studied topic. A serious shortcoming in this literature is that unions are usually treated as unitary actors. This is striking since not least the Scandinavian countries saw the membership growth in independent white-collar unions and their federations at the expense of the traditional blue-collar (and thus textbook-style) union federations. The growth of independent white-collar unions implies that the traditional assumptions about unions as advocates of redistribution and state intervention do not necessarily hold because this type of union represents potential ‘losers’ of redistribution and intervention. Moreover, their members do support less redistribution and more market-based allocation of incomes as well as privatization since the solidarity effect fostered by traditional unionism is weakened if the higher income strata is organized in separate federations. Consequently, this study addresses an important gap in the literature on union membership and political preferences by analysing the attitudes towards redistribution and state-market relations in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden across union federation membership in the last three decades. The findings demonstrate that members of independent academic/professional unions support market allocation of incomes and less state intervention, while the opposite is true for members of traditional blue-collar union federations. The effect of income on attitudes towards state and market is also consistently stronger in the independent white-collar federations in the three countries, which supports the muted solidarity effect in this type of union.

Unionization in the American Newsroom, 1930 to 1960

AbstractThis study of the material benefits brought to American news workers from the 1930s through the 1960s builds on previous work by media labor‐studies scholars such as Bonnie Brennen, Daniel Leab, Phillip Glende and Sam Kuczun, among others, who have examined the history of the American Newspaper Guild (ANG) in great detail. Their work has focused on legal and policy developments under the Roosevelt administration and in U.S. labor law. My study, as part of a larger project, looks at some of the ground‐level impacts of unionization. It does so examining Editor & Publisher, The Quill and The Guild Reporter, among other publications, and references to the material benefits in pay, time off, work‐life balance, health insurance, job security and other, practical and positive ancillary effects brought by the uneven unionization of the newsroom. The arrival of white‐collar unions for new workers was not a panacea to their problems. But it did help them in their collective quest in the United States during the interwar and then post‐World War Two‐eras for better working conditions and a firmer sense of their professionalized identity.

White-Collar Workers and Industrial Militancy: The Formation of the ACTSS 6/567 Branch at the Port of Liverpool

This article charts the evolution of clerical worker organization in the quayside offices of the Port of Liverpool. Although considerable academic research has been undertaken into Registered Dock Worker (RDW) trade unionism in the British dock industry, little emphasis has been placed on the dynamics of clerical staff organization despite these workers constituting a significant proportion of the dock labour force. What follows explores the growth of the Association of Clerical, Technical and Supervisory Staffs (ACTSS) 6/567 Branch in its developmental stage between 1964 and 1972 and the organizational difficulties it was initially faced with. The confrontational stance gradually adopted by the Branch and its stewards is placed in the context of the threat of redundancy and erosion of manning levels arising from the extensive rationalization and modernization of the British and local dock industry more broadly. Furthermore, their relationship with management and RDW colleagues is central to a proper analysis of the complexities of labour relations at the Port of Liverpool during this period. The attitudes and activism of clerical workers at the port is compared and contrasted with established theories of white-collar unionism throughout the article.

Trouble on the Right, Trouble on the Left

The early years of the American Newspaper Guild were filled with intense internal conflict as well as determined resistance from publishers. Starting in 1933, Guild members engaged in a vigorous debate about whether the organization should be a professional society or a trade union wielding the threat of a strike. Faced with publisher opposition and frustrated by government labor-management mechanisms, the Guild affiliated with the American Federation of Labor in 1936 and a year later joined the more militant Congress of Industrial Organizations, launching a campaign to organize commercial employees. Many journalists who opposed the Guild were alienated by leftist leadership in national offices during the late 1930s and in prominent local offices until the late 1940s. This article uses archival records and contemporary accounts to examine the growth of the Guild, a pioneering white-collar union that faced numerous obstacles.

To Make Archives Available Online: Transcending Boundaries or Building Walls?

The development of information technology and the rise of the Internet have rendered a large-scale digitization and dissemination of originally analog information objects. On the Web sites Lärarnas Historia (“History of Teachers” www.lararhistoria.se) and Ingenjörshistoria (“History of Engineers” www.ingenjorshistoria.se), records from present-day white-collar and professional national unions and their predecessors, are published together with publications, collections, moving images, and other materials. The purpose of this study is to analyze the remediation of this originally analog material. This article will discuss the purposes of the Web sites, the relation of digitized objects to the original analog information objects and to the original context, and what kind of artifacts these Web sites constitute. The result is not a mere transfer to a new technological platform, but a transformation into something different.

Continuing the White-Collar Unionization Movement: Imagining a Private Attorneys’ Union

Given the still-rebounding legal market and the secrecy that characterized the employment decisions at many of the nation’s top law firms during the height of attorney layoffs, this Article imagines the formation of private attorney labor unions as a possible solution. Part I briefly discusses the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, the primary piece of legislation that governs employees’ right to organize and collectively bargain, focusing primarily on who is covered with particular attention placed on the inclusion of professional employees. Part II introduces an understanding of white-collar professionals as a distinct economic class, highlighting specifically its similarities and differences with traditional blue-collar workers. This Part then uses this understanding of white-collar professionals to describe and justify the white-collar unionization movement, while also noting the formation of unions in other professional industries. Proceeding upon the understanding that private law attorneys, as white-collar professionals, possess a legitimate interest in organizing, Part III identifies and responds to common objections to the formation of attorney labor unions. Finally, Part IV suggests that current conditions are ripe for the creation of private attorney labor unions and addresses the practical considerations associated with forming such unions.

Can Unions Grow in Authoritarian Political and Social Environments? The Korean Case

In the English-language literature, the prevailing view on Korean unions during the period of economic development of the 1970s attributes the unions’ lack of representative capacity as well as their exceptionally slow growth chiefly to constraints imposed by the state-led macro-political environment. However, this article finds that enterprise unions, the primary form in Korea, not only pursued weak to moderate economic unionism, but also recorded a gradual pattern of growth while exhibiting significant diversity like a stable, monopolistic, white-collar enterprise unionism model in the public sector and a precarious blue-collar model within manufacturing industries during that period. That diverse pattern of union growth was repeated and intensified by the explosive growth of enterprise unions following the stable blue-collar model in chaebol large-sized metalworking enterprises, the temporarily thriving blue-collar model in small- and medium-sized metalworking enterprises, and the vigorous but various white-collar model in service industries during the period of political democratization (1987—94). In particular, Korean union growth was not always solely, decisively, and negatively influenced by the state, as presumed in much of the literature. Instead, like their counterparts in several advanced nations, the dissimilar organizational structures and bargaining power of the five enterprise unionism models could be analyzed by several industry- and firm-specific factors, such as growth stages, degree of state regulation, firm size, and economic and social statuses of workers in their respective firms’ internal and external labor markets.

Bargaining in the crisis - a comparison of the 2010 collective bargaining round in the Danish and Swedish manufacturing sectors

The economic crisis weighed heavily on the 2010 collective bargaining rounds in the Danish and Swedish manufacturing sectors — the pattern-setting sectors in both countries. This article analyses and compares the bargaining rounds from agenda-setting to signing, pointing to the significant differences in bargaining structures, processes and output. On the whole, the crisis seems to have had little effect on the Danish bargaining system due to a strong centralization on the employer side through the Confederation of Danish Industries, union moderation and the coordination of bargaining areas by Denmark’s mediation institution. Conversely, the bargaining round in Sweden puts a question-mark over the viability of the whole Swedish bargaining system. Union coordination was shattered when the white-collar unions broke ranks and concluded agreements before the LO unions. But more importantly, Teknikföretagen — the biggest employers’ federation — quit the Industrial Agreement after the negotiations and, once again, Swedish social partners are being forced to readjust the procedural framework for collective bargaining.

Continuing the White Collar Unionization Movement: Imagining a Private Attorney's Union

In 2009, thousands of attorneys working in the nation's top-tiered law firms were laid off in response to the economic recession. As a result, the majority of associates reported being troubled by their firms' lack of transparency regarding financial issues and layoffs. Given the secrecy surrounding employment decisions in many of the nation’s top law firms, this Note explores the ability of private attorneys to unionize, situating the possibility in a historical and economic context, and addresses practical considerations that may arise during formation of a private attorney labor union. This paper won third place in the 2009-2010 Louis Jackson Memorial National Student Writing Competition in Employment and Labor Law.

White Collar Unions: Reclaiming their Relevance

White Collar Unions: Reclaiming their Relevance

Governing through career coaching: negotiations of self-marketing

Career coaching for job seekers has become increasingly prevalent when guiding the management of the self in practices such as writing Curriculum Vitae (CV). This article explores career coaching by a Swedish white-collar union targeted at students. Through a framework of ‘governmentality in action’ (Brownlie, 2004), the article focuses on the interaction between career coaches and students and how this discursive practice is negotiated in talk. The concept of discursive positioning is used to analyse talk in interaction and the way people are positioned in discourse by their own and others’ utterances (Davies and Harré, 1990). The findings point to obstacles and ambiguities in the construction of a ‘sellable’ self. They also show that subjects actively participate in their own self-construction. Further, the category of a marketing self indicates obstacles emanating from gender and national identity in this context.

Organisational Consolidation and Unionateness in the NSW Public Service Association, 1899-1939

The PSA is one of the oldest and most substantial examples of public sector and white-collar unionism, and its female activists played a leading role in the equal pay movement from 1914. Despite this, it has attracted little attention from historians. Sheldon's solitary article on the formation of the PSA characterises it as a 'middle-class' union, on the basis of public servants' social position, industrial conservatism, limited links with the labour movement generally and the PSA's non-political stance. However, the eschewing of strikes and overt political attachments were as much the product of the unusual legal and political position public servants found themselves in. Furthermore, on a material basis, whilst many white-collar public servants did enjoy a better position than ordinary workers, about half clearly earned working-class levels of pay. The circumstances of the 1920s and 1930s also brought the PSA closer to the mainstream of the labour movement, in terms of solidarity of outlook and a radicalisation of its world view. Its experience was a precursor of wider changes in white-collar unionism in the 1960s and 1970s.

Black Presidents, Gay Marriages, and Hawaiian Sovereignty: Reimagining Citizenship in the Age of Obama

This article examines the history of the Design Laboratory, which was founded in 1935 by the Federal Art Project as the first comprehensive school of modernist design in the United States. The Laboratory embodied the vital connections that existed between modernist design and radical political and social activism in the United States during the 1930s, providing a vibrant point of contact between the business culture of America’s industrial design entrepreneurs, the artistic experimentation of the Depression-Era avant-garde, an unprecedented public art bureaucracy, and militant labor unionism and consumer activism. Following cuts in government funding in 1937, the school continued operation as a cooperative sponsored by a radical white-collar union before financial difficulties forced it to close in 1940.

When Modernism Was Still Radical: The Design Laboratory and the Cultural Politics of Depression-Era America

This article examines the history of the Design Laboratory, which was founded in 1935 by the Federal Art Project as the first comprehensive school of modernist design in the United States. The Laboratory embodied the vital connections that existed between modernist design and radical political and social activism in the United States during the 1930s, providing a vibrant point of contact between the business culture of America’s industrial design entrepreneurs, the artistic experimentation of the Depression-Era avant-garde, an unprecedented public art bureaucracy, and militant labor unionism and consumer activism. Following cuts in government funding in 1937, the school continued operation as a cooperative sponsored by a radical white-collar union before financial difficulties forced it to close in 1940.

New working arrangements: changing the nature of the employment relationship?

Recently there has been a revival of interest in the nature of the employment relationship. The employment relationship in a market economy has been traditionally understood as a dynamic equilibrium between the contending forces of conflict and cooperation. However, some contemporary accounts purport to detect a fundamental change in the nature of the employment relationship. These arguments are flawed because they appear to mistake changes in employment arrangements for changes in the core features of the employment relationship. As the contemporary employment relationship remains rooted in market economies, where labour is bought and sold, its core characteristics persist. In testing this claim, we examine whether new working arrangements are associated with changes in attitudes and behaviour. This is based on a survey of white-collar union members in Ireland. We find little support for the assumption that new working arrangements such as increased job autonomy and involvement in decision-making are eradicating the old conflictual attitudes associated with the traditional employment relationship and psychological contract.

The Growth of White-Collar Unionism and Public Policy in Canada

The number of white-collar workers is rapidly increasing. If the trade union movement is to continue to play an effective role in the industrial relations system, it must recruit these workers. But so far, outside of the public sector of the economy, there is relatively little white-collar unionism in Canada. The major reason for this is that Canadian public policy on industrial relations is not very effective in curbing management opposition to white-collar unionism. The paper suggests several ways in which public policy might be made not only more effective in this regard but also deals with the problems arising from the growth of white-collar unionism.