From labour market exclusion to industrial solidarity: Australian trade union responses to Asian workers, 1830–1988

1990 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Trade Union

Understanding the positions taken by moderate union confederations and centre-left parties during labour market reforms in Portugal and Spain: Why the configuration of left parties and trade union confederations matters

2021 ◽  
pp. 095968012110057
Author(s):  
Paulo Marques ◽  
Dora Fonseca
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Stable Equilibrium ◽  
Market Reforms ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Labour Market Reforms ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Radical Left

The insider-outsider politics approach conjectures that moderate unions and centre-left parties safeguard the interests of insiders and neglect outsiders in labour market reforms. This article challenges this hypothesis. By comparing the positions taken by centre-left parties and moderate union confederations during labour market reforms in Portugal and Spain (1975–2019), it shows that while they may indeed protect insiders, they sometimes do the opposite. To explain this, the article argues that more attention must be paid to the configuration of left parties and confederations. In Portugal, where communist and radical left parties were strong, the centre-left was afraid of losing outsiders’ electoral support, and thus it did not follow a pro-insider strategy. This was reinforced by the fact that the centre-left had to face the opposition of a strong class-oriented confederation that was not willing to commit to two-tier reforms. This was not what happened in Spain. The centre-left, supported by a union confederation, undertook a two-tier reform in 1984 because there was a different configuration of left parties and confederations. Notwithstanding, this was not a stable equilibrium because this confederation changed its position over time when it realized the negative consequences of these reforms. Henceforth, their strategy became more pro-outsider.

Was it worth it? The impact of the German minimum wage on union membership of employees

2021 ◽  
pp. 0143831X2110358
Author(s):  
Simon Ress ◽  
Florian Spohr
Keyword(s):  
Propensity Score ◽  
Social Security ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Propensity Score Matching ◽  
Minimum Wage ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
German Trade ◽  
The Impact

This contribution scrutinises how introducing a statutory minimum wage of EUR 8.50 per hour, in January 2015, impacted German employees’ decision with regard to union membership. Based on representative data from the Labour Market and Social Security panel, the study applies a logistic difference-in-differences propensity score matching approach on entries into and withdrawals from unions in the German Trade Union Confederation (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, DGB). The results show no separate effect on withdrawals from or entries into unions after the minimum wage introduction for those employees who benefited financially from it, but a significant increase of entries overall. Thus, unions’ campaign for a minimum wage strengthened their position in total but did not reverse the segmentation of union membership patterns.

The Relationship between Working Life and Individualisation: A Study among Danish Trade Union Members

1997 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morten Madsen
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Current Trend ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Working Life ◽  
Job Characteristics ◽  
Value Orientations ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
Wage Earners

A significant current trend in the industrialised countries is a growing individualization among wages-earners: i.e changes from collective value orientations based on solidarity and equality towards more individualistic value orientations based on self-interest and personal opportunities. This paper analyses relations between these changes in wage-earners' identity, labour market position, job characteristics, and relationship to the company and trade union: both empirically, by using Danish survey data from the research project: `The Employee Perspective on Working Life and Politics', and theoretically, by discussing the contrasting ideas of Hirsch and Roth (1986) and Valkenburg (1995) and Zoll (1995). The analysis shows both expected and surprising relationships between labour market positions, job characteristics and individualization. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates that the term individualization' must be understood as a relative concept, and that an increased individualization does not necessarily lead towards a dissolution of the trade union movement as a representative of wage-earners' interests in modern society.

The posting of workers in the German construction industry: responses and problems of trade union action

2006 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Kahmann
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Construction Industry ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Labour Migration ◽  
Autonomous Action ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
Union Action ◽  
Construction Union ◽  
State Relations

Over the last two decades, in a number of EU Member States labour migration in the construction industry has predominantly taken the form of the posting of workers. This article traces the responses of the German construction union IG BAU to this phenomenon. To this end, it distinguishes between three levels of action: relations with the state, relations with employers and autonomous action. It shows that the union's efforts have concentrated on the first two levels. IG BAU's steps to include migrant workers into its ranks have been taken only cautiously. While the union has achieved a number of successes in terms of regulating the labour market, limits of these policies have become apparent. There are signs that IG BAU has reacted to these limits by developing more inclusive organisational policies, notably by founding the European Migrant Workers Union.

Union renewal: what can we learn from three decades of research?

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregor Murray
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Union Renewal ◽  
Strategic Capabilities ◽  
Democratic Experimentalism

Drawing on three decades of research on union renewal, this article asks what we can learn from these studies. It covers successively the modernisation of union strategy, the re-engineering of union structures and organising techniques, the renewal of collective action repertoires, and the search to bridge the gap between labour market insiders and outsiders. While the research on these four themes yields few easy answers, it does highlight a continuing search for trade union renewal from which real understanding emerges. The overarching argument is that this long process of democratic experimentalism in union purpose and practice needs to be understood in exactly those terms. It also highlights the critical role of strategic capabilities and the need to develop these capabilities in order to experiment with innovations likely to reveal new sources of vigour for worker organisations.

scholarly journals Restoring Democracy to the Workplace? An Analysis of Union Membership Patters Before and After the Employment Contracts Act

1970 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Cregan ◽  
Chris Rudd ◽  
Stewart Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Employment Contracts ◽  
Market Participants ◽  
Before And After ◽  
One Year ◽  
The Impact

This paper investigates the impact of the Employment Contracts Act on trade union membership. Two separate surveys of labour market participants lvere conducted in Dunedin on the eve of the legislation and one year later. The findings demonstrated that for these samples, trade union membership in aggregate was not based on compulsion before the legislation and remained at a similar level a year later. Democracy was not restored to the workplace it was already apparent there. This implies that changes in the industrial relations system had already taken place prior to the legislation and it is suggested that these findings are explicable if the effect of the exigencies of the recession on both parries is taken account of In the ensuing discussion, reasons for the persistence of the same level of union membership after the legislation were considered. It was demonstrated that most members li'anted the union to act as their bargaining agent and felt few pressures regarding their choice of employment contract. In other words, employers did not utilise the provisions of the Act to weaken union membership, at least in the short term.

scholarly journals Relying on weak governments: Austrian trade unions and the politics of smoothed dualization

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Rathgeb
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Labour Market Policy ◽  
Active Labour Market Policy ◽  
Market Policy ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Power Resources

Austrian political actors have improved the protection of outsiders by expanding the coverage of labour rights, social security, and active labour market policy spending in the past two decades. The article attributes these ‘solidaristic’ traits of Austrian labour market policy change to the persistent reliance of weak governments on trade union support in the mobilisation of a durable consensus. When governments are internally divided and prone to reform deadlocks, they face a powerful incentive to share policy-making authority with the social partners. Despite a significant decline in power resources, the Austrian trade union confederation has therefore remained influential enough to compensate outsiders for growing economic uncertainty on a volatile labour market. To substantiate this claim empirically, the article draws on primary and secondary sources as well as interview evidence with policy-making elites.

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