Informed Preferences? The Impact of Unions on Workers' Policy Views

Despite declining memberships, labor unions still represent large shares of electorates worldwide. Yet their political clout remains contested. To what extent, and in what way, do unions shape workers' political preferences? We address these questions by combining unique survey data of American workers and a set of inferential strategies that exploit two sources of variation: the legal choice that workers face in joining or opting out of unions and the over‐time reversal of a union's policy position. Focusing on the issue of trade, we offer evidence that unions influence their members' policy preferences in a significant and theoretically predictable manner. In contrast, we find that self‐selection into membership accounts at most for a quarter of the observed “union effect.” The study illuminates the impact of unions in cohering workers' voice and provides insight on the role of information provision in shaping how citizens form policy preferences.     

Trade union power in Britain: The recent debate

It is frequently claimed in the media that the trade union movement is the dominant political force in Britain. Such conclusions are based upon impressionistic and subjective judgements rather than thorough academic analysis. Fortunately, there has been a resurgence of more serious study of the trade union relationship with, and influence over, government. The aim of this article is to review this literature and it is divided into four major parts: the strategies unions use in influencing government; the growing literature on the economic role of the unions; the effect of unions on government policy making; the power of the trade unions in relation to that of capital.     

Economic change and labour market policy: Corporatist and dualist tendencies in britain and Sweden

This article explicates John Goldthorpe's recent analytical distinction between ‘corporatist’ and ‘dualist’ tendencies in Western political economies. By linking these categories to macro‐economic strategies, the role of trade unions and the circumstances under which state policy is initiated, this dichotomy can be of value in the analysis of these polities. The article examines the major characteristics of British and Swedish labour market policy in the areas of wage policy, trade unions and training and education as they relate to the respective macro‐economic policies adopted by British and Swedish governments. These provide examples of the presence and development of corporatist and dualist tendencies in these two countries.     

Internationalism Under Platform Capitalism: Brexit and the Organisation of UK Fast Food Workers

In October 2018, a coalition of UK trade unions and civil society organisations called a strike across the UK’s fast food sector in support of a living wage, union recognition and the end to zero‐hour contracts in the sector. This paper takes the day of action—labelled the McStrike—as a starting point for an account of the place of the EU and Brexit in the campaign for fast food rights, as well as the contrasting political standpoints adopted by the different trade unions involved in the action. Brexit is used as a prism through which to analyse aspects of Britain’s contemporary food politics, especially those pertaining to freedom of movement, workplace organisation, and the role of EU legislation in protecting workers’ rights. In exploring the international dimensions of union organisation among the UK’s fast food workers, other, more conceptual considerations regarding the changing nature of public and private food consumption and the incorporation of food‐to‐go into the gig economy are also broached.     

Trade unions for EMU: Sectoral preferences and political opportunities

Surveys conducted on the political economy of Europe's Economic and Monetary Union have seldom considered the response of domestic interest groups, notably trade unions. This article contrasts and explains the positions on EMU adopted by major British, French and German trade unions, in the process reassessing the so‐called interest group approach to preference formulation. It is argued that while the impact of sectoral orientation appears significant, it is mitigated by the intervention of ideological and institutional factors. On a substantive level, unions turned out to be broadly supportive of what many had labelled a ‘monetarist’ project. If as is often argued, social and political cohesion is needed for monetary union to endure, this represents an important development.     

Fishing from the same schools: Parliamentary recruitment and consociationalism in the first and second Italian republics

This article addresses several issues surrounding the politics of flexibility in Spain. First, it argues that the strategic role of trade unions develop and condition public policies on labour market reform by couching their strategies in terms of the post‐war labour market strategies and structures of the state, especially as governments attempt to move away from established forms of fordist regulation. Hence, second, a broader political and historical perspective is required that understands the complex political dynamics of state‐labour relationships and their structuring over time. The state's role and its labour market presence becomes itself the object of distinct political interventions and calculations by unions, governments and employers. Any discussion of a ‘post‐fordist’ state, determined to increase the flexibility of the labour market, must look at the complex and difficult ‘transitional’ process.     

Labor Unions and White Racial Politics

Scholars and political observers point to declining labor unions, on the one hand, and rising white identity politics, on the other, as profound changes in American politics. However, there has been little attention given to the potential feedback between these forces. In this article, we investigate the role of union membership in shaping white racial attitudes. We draw upon research in history and American political development to generate a theory of interracial labor politics, in which union membership reduces racial resentment. Cross‐sectional analyses consistently show that white union members have lower racial resentment and greater support for policies that benefit African Americans. More importantly, our panel analysis suggests that gaining union membership between 2010 and 2016 reduced racial resentment among white workers. The findings highlight the important role of labor unions in mass politics and, more broadly, the importance of organizational membership for political attitudes and behavior.     

Unions in politics: public opinion in the United Kingdom and Denmark

Abstract. The paper examines public opinion about the political involvement of trade unions in the UK and Denmark. Both are systems in which trade unions are linked to a political party and both have high rates of union density. However, whereas British unions have contested governments of both parties and opposed regulation of industrial relations, Danish unions have a tradition of cooperation with government and are entangled in a web of institutionalized industrial relations. Results, however, are amazingly similar. Both the public at large and union members accept unions in general and also their political involvement, but oppose contestation of political authority. Irrespective of union behaviour, beliefs in the supremacy of parliament seems to be firmly rooted in public opinion.     

Competition and solidarity: union members and immigration in Europe

This article addresses an understudied question in the comparative political economy of migration. How have trade unions shaped the attitudes of their members toward immigration? Unions are at the core of left-wing politics in most European countries, and support for immigration is usually a left-wing position. However, many of the core constituents of unions are those whose interests are most likely to be adversely affected by an increase in the supply of labour. The article shows that the pattern of European trade union leaders becoming supportive of open immigration policies has solidified over the past decade. It then provides evidence that this rhetoric has shaped the attitudes of union members and that the effect has become stronger over time. Finally, it shows that the effect is robust to the exclusion of countries where self-selection into unions on the basis of ideology is likely to be strongest.     

Industrial Relations and the Limits of the State: Can a Left Labour Government Resurrect Comprehensive Sectoral Collective Bargaining and Restore Trade Union Power?

Since 2017 the British Labour Party has proposed mandatory sectoral collective bargaining (SCB) as a comprehensive strategy to rebuild the trade union voice across the entire economy. The intellectual roots lie in the Institute of Employment Rights’ (IER) Manifesto for Labour Law (2016). First, this article explains the core IER approach, questioning its feasibility given current low levels of union membership and bargaining coverage and whether it would produce the stable and productive economy promised. Second, the article develops four social science objections to this state-driven approach centred on industrial relations history; political sociology; economics; and political philosophy. The conclusion argues that while stronger voluntary trade unions could help, it is neither practicable nor desirable for the state to impose a trade union, single-channel approach to employee voice. Instead, a ‘mixed economy of voice’ is proposed, perhaps including statutory works councils, which speaks directly to all employees—union and non-union—and wins broader political, employer and public support.     

浅析新形势下工会工作的发展方向

从1978年改革开放的号角吹响开始,我国经济的发展就步入了一个新的阶段。如今,经历30多年的发展,我国的市场经济体制正逐步发展和走向完善,伴随着这些发展的还有我国企事业单位的改革。改革必然会产生各种各样的新问题和新矛盾。在这种情况下,作为单位思想灵魂的工会组织就起到了至关重要的作用,它是单位和职工沟通的桥梁,更是维护单位稳定的最大保障,所以,如何在新形势下确立好工会工作的发展方向值得探究。本文针对新形势下工会工作的发展方向提出了立足根本,不断完善工会基本职能;发挥好工会的监督功能,重视活动的民主性;提高工会组织能力的建设及创新是增强工会工作源泉的四点建议。     

The dilemma of youth unemployment: Trade union responses in the federal republic of Germany,the UK and France

The high political salience of youth unemployent in European countries is not matched by a prompt coherent and concerted response by trade unions. In particular, measures to ease the transition from school to working life have evoked very mixed reactions. Aspects of the national trade union movements themselves are important determinants of this situation: political alignment and the legitimacy of their policy‐making role; financial, membership, and organisational resources; the structure and practice of collective bargaining, and finally, relations with other organisations representing youth. The three countries examined ‐ West Germany, Britain and France ‐ show that although the trade unions concerned are aware of the problems, they differ in their capacity to take effective action.     

Ideas,spaces and ‘sovereigntyscapes’: Dramatising Scotland's production of a new institutional fix

Abstract

As part of a general endeavour to ‘modernise’ Britain for the epoch of globalisation, Britain's New Labour government has sought to integrate wide‐ranging constitutional reform with new structures for regional governance. Perhaps the most radical proposal concerns the attempt to align continued UK sovereignty with an elected parliament for Scotland in what has been called a ‘new covenant with the people’. This paper draws on Jane Jenson's neo‐Gramscian discourse‐regulation theory and its stress on social agency and the politics of representation, to explore the political, economic and socio‐spatial tensions and the related ideas, discursive forms and political processes that have given rise to this emergent institutional and representational ‘fix’. The author argues that rather than being perceived of solely as some ‘modernisation move’ on the part of a New Labour project, this reconfiguration of power and representation also needs to be traced to the political and representational style of Thatcherism, in particular, the latter's continuous ‘testing’ of the 1707 Treaty between Scotland and England as a negotiated settlement of economic and political union. The paper concludes with some reflections on the future prospects facing any future Scotland‐UK institutional settlement, including the question of sovereignty.     

Paradoxes of plural unionism: CGT‐CFDT relations in France

This paper examines the dynamics of ‘plural unionism’ in France, specifically the relationship between the two largest trade unions, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) and the Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT). Four major themes are explored: (I) Unity of action (unité d'action) between the two unions is strongly influenced by the wider economic and political contexts; (2) Unity of action between the CGT and CFDT appears more pronounced at the national level than at the plant level; (3) CGT‐CFDT unity of action is associated with greater organisational effectiveness and ‘success’ in terms of winning workplace demands; and (4) Unity of action as an organisational strategy poses a dilemma for the CFDT, namely a trade‐off between effectiveness and radicalism.     

Labor union membership and voting across nations

Despite a large literature on voter turnout around the world, our understanding of the role of labor union membership remains muddled. In this paper, we examine the relationship between union membership and voting. Using individual level International Social Science Program (ISSP) data from thirty-two countries, we find that union members are more likely to vote and that the substantive effect rivals that of other common predictors of voting. This relationship is also largely invariant across an array of demographic factors, indicating that unions tend to be “equal opportunity mobilizers.” We also find that unions have “spillover” effects: controlling for a variety of other factors, even non-union members are more likely to turn out to vote in countries with higher union densities. In sum, we find that labor unions have a consistent political influence across a wide set of countries.     

British Trade Unions and European Union Integration in the 1990s: Politics versus Political Economy

This article evaluates the changing assessments within the British trade union movement of the efficacy of European Union integration from the viewpoint of labour interests. It argues that there has been a marked further 'Europeanisation' of British trade unionism during the 1990s, consolidating an on-going process which previous research shows began in earnest in the mid 1980s. A shift in trade union economic policy assessments has seen the decisive abandonment of the previously dominant 'naive' or national Keynesianism. While there remain important differences in economic perspective between unions, these are not such as would create significant divisions over the question of European integration per se , the net benefits of which are now generally, though perhaps not universally, accepted. The absence of fundamental divisions is evident from a careful assessment of the debates about economic and monetary union at TUC Congress. The Europeanisation of British trade unionism needs to be seen within the context of an emergent regionalism, in Europe and elsewhere. It can best be understood as a rational response by an important corporate actor (albeit one whose national influence has been considerably diminished in recent decades) to globalisation and a significantly changing political economy environment.     

Structural stress or deliberate decision? Government partisanship and the disempowerment of unions in Denmark

The role of government partisanship in the era of retrenchment is debated. It is argued in this article that partisanship matters for only some aspects of policy. Irrespective of ideological bending, governments accommodate structural pressure as well as short‐term electoral interests to keep the economy on track and implement austerity measures in labour market policy that, in effect, reduce union resources and capacity to mobilise. But only governments of the right exploit structural stress to pursue long‐term interest in curbing the institutional privileges of unions. Aligning short‐ and long‐term interests is easier for social democratic governments during economic expansion, whereas governments of the right have an easier time aligning interests in periods of structural pressure. By analysing a sample of Danish labour market reforms, this article shows that today social democratic governments still defend the institutional privileges of unions and discusses the comparative significance of the Danish case.     

How and Why Bureaucrats Control their Governance Structure

This article assumes that bureaucrats, like other actors, follow their interests. However, it is also recognized that bureaucrats in political environments face a multilevel game situation with unstable property rights, where priorities between institutional position and more pecuniary goods, e.g. budget maximization, especially in reform situations have to be made. Thus, bureaucrats realize that in order to obtain the latter, the precondition is a secured institutional position and that this position has to be obtained through a bargaining process involving transaction costs, externally due to negotiations with the political principals, and internally through union organization. Empirically, the phenomenon it examined in the case of the Danish day care system which went through a reform period during the late eighties and early nineties. It suggests that although demand for day care rose significantly during this period, day care workers (and their unions) worked for – and succeeded in – securing their institutional position.     

A political theory of intergovernmental grants

This paper formulates a political theory of intergovernmental grants. A model of vote-maximizing federal politicians is developed. Grants are assumed to buy the support of state voters and the ‘political capital or resources’ of state politicians and interest groups which can be used to further increase the support of state voters for the federal politician. The model is tested for 49 states. Similarity of party affiliation between federal and state politicians and the size of the Democrat majority in the state legislature increases the per capita dollar amount of grants made to a state. Likewise, increases in both the size of the state bureaucracy and union membership lead to greater grants for a state. Over time, the importance of interest groups (bureaucracy and unions) has increased relative to political groups (state politicians).     

From Corporatism to Dualism? Thatcherism and the Climacteric of British Trade Unions in the 1980s

This article examines the impact on British trade unions of the break in relations with the government, the economic recession and labour market developments in the 1980s. The shift towards a programme of 'labour exclusion' is related to specific policies designed to weaken trade unions and liberalize labour markets. A close investigation of data on union organization and activity indicates that, despite evident reversals, a full-scale de-institutionalization of industrial relations is not occurring. However, the links between government policies and longer-term socioeconomic trends pose severe challenges for union revival. The article concludes with some considerations on the future prospects of union-government relations.