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Postwar trade-union organization and industrial relations in twelve countries
Abstract
Ten years ago, when the volume Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (Goldthorpe 1984) was published, conventional academic wisdom regarding the future of trade unions and corporatism in western Europe was optimistic. As numerous contributors to that earlier volume emphasized, systems of industrial relations involving encompassing unions, in which authority was concentrated in either a small number of large industrial unions or in national confederations, had performed remarkably well in the decade after the first oil price shock of 1973. Most contributors to the Goldthorpe volume shared the view articulated by Peter Lange (1984) that unions could be thought of as playing an n-person prisoner's dilemma in which decentralized action among organizations resulted in collectively suboptimal outcomes. Unions would accept greater wage restraint collectively, the argument went, but not willingly concede acting individually. The prisoner's dilemma analogy suggested that the more encompassing the union movement, the greater the concentration among unions, and the more centralized the authority of the peak associations, the more likely it was that the collectively optimal cooperative solution could be obtained. David Cameron (1984), among others, provided support for this view with evidence showing that corporatism was associated with wage restraint and low strike rates, as well as with lower inflation and less unemployment than in noncorporatist OECD countries. The concern with how the organizational features of trade unionism affect economic performance and the optimism about the relative merits of corporatism were premised on an important if often inexplicit assumption: that unions themselves would remain effective agents for the promotion of the economic interests of workers.
... First, the empirical evidence provided by these models is inconclusive. While several studies find that income and employment improve with globalization in LDCs (Ghose, 2000;Brunner, 2003), others determine that globalization actually worsens workers' economic position. The latter studies arrive at their conclusion by additionally considering the possible countervailing effects of structural conditions, that is, high surplus labor, lack of access to new technology, and rising global demands for skilled labor rather than low-skilled labor. ...
... Note that a small body of literature challenges these claims and argues contrarily that labor's bargaining power has been resilient in the face of globalization. Yet the few studies that provide empirical evidence that unions and labor mobilization strategies have not been adversely affected by globalization are based mostly on the experience of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations (Scruggs and Lange, 2002;Golden et al., 1999). Frundt (2002), Webster and Lipsig-Mumme (2002), and Frenkel (1993) are exceptions that do focus on poorer nations and postulate that globalization can present greater opportunities for labor, such as incentives for mobilization and solidarity with other social groups. ...
Survival and growth-oriented entrepreneurs follow qualitatively different logics. In this chapter we retrace the scattered previous theorization of this distinction and present a consolidated set of key characteristics of the two types of enterprises, enriched by our own observations in the field. Our main purpose is to typify the different rationalities of the two groups of entrepreneurs. Secondly, we argue that because most existing interventions are based on the implicit assumption that all entrepreneurs are growth-oriented, they often fail to address the specific needs of survivalists. Finally, we outline an intervention rationale more attuned to the logic of survival entrepreneurs.
... As a rule, union membership is higher on the continent with the major exception of France, where only about 8% of workers are members. While unions are weak by that measure, French law requires employers to negotiate with unions for some 90% of the workforce (Golden et al. 2008). Because so many workers have a stake in union negotiations, the number of workers who participate in general or sectoral strikes far exceeds the number of union members. ...
... When agreements cover large groups, the tendency to flatten wage differences may sometimes go too far. In Scandinavia in particular, where strong union movements significantly compressed wages, market pressures to increase salaries for professionals resulted in splits where professional workers formed their own breakaway union federations (Wallerstein 2008; Golden et al. 2008). ...
During the stagflation of the late 1970s, unions played a role in worsening inflation in some countries but not in others. This can be attributed to differences in laws governing the bargaining process. In continental Europe, each large sector of the economy is generally covered by a single collective bargaining agreement that provides for standardized wages. In the United States and the United Kingdom, there are a multitude of collective bargaining agreements. These are usually specific to a single employer, sometimes to specific worksites and even specific types of workers at that site. The result is a hodgepodge of wage rates. This fractionalized bargaining process fueled inflationary wage demands and labor strife. Among the explanations is the theory of relative deprivation that people are primed to focus on disparities.
... The other is an increase in the number of unions agreeing to wage and benefit cuts and more contingent forms of employment and compensation (Pontusson 1992: 2;Kochan, Katz and McKersie 1994: 109-45;Mitchell 1994;Nulty 1994: 541;Erickson and Kuruvilla 1995;Marcos-Sanchez 2000;Chaison 2006: 112-88;Cook 2007: 44-5). In many countries these trends have been accompanied by a significant decline in union density and strike activity, and/or increasing union fragmentation (Shalev 1992;Feuille 1994;Tsebelis and Lange 1995: 102;Golden, Wallerstein and Lange 1999;Cassoni 2000: 8;Saavedra-Chanduví and Torero 2002: 11-13; Wallerstein and Western 2000;Fairris and Levine 2004;Visser 2006). ...
... While this situation suggests a generalized pattern of labor union decay, the reality is rather complex. In fact, a series of studies indicate that there is substantial cross-national, sectoral, and even firm-level variation in the scope, intensity, and pace of these trends (Ferner and Hyman 1992;Golden and Pontusson 1992;Hyman 1994;Jenson and Mahon 1993a;Voos 1994a;Tsebelis and Lange 1995;Wallerstein and Golden 1995;Golden, Wallerstein and Lange 1999;Dubb 1999;Waddington 1999;Fairbrother and Yates 2003;Frege and Kelly 2004a;Katz, Lee and Lee 2004). They show that while in a number of cases the decline in union strength has been significant and widespread, some countries have experienced only modest declines circumscribed to particular industries or firms, or avoided decline altogether. ...
... In the next section, I identifying hypotheses generated by the model of confederation and from the literature, using them to justify the inclusion of covariates. I briefly discuss the data and modeling framework and then work through each measure of centralization in done (Ebbinghaus and Visser, 2000;Golden, Wallerstein and Lange, 1999;Traxler, Kittel and Blaschke, 2001;Wallerstein, Golden and Lange, 1997), but these studies typically report the trends in newly gathered data rather than analyze the covariance between measures of union centralization and other variables across space and time. ...
... For example, in Sweden national-level wage agreements were negotiated biannually, with supplementary industry or firm-level bargaining taking place in off years. This supplemental bargaining was constrained by the confederal no strike pledge, however(Golden, Wallerstein and Lange, 1999;Swenson, 1989). ...
... Only two decades ago, no observer would have expected trade unions to disappear from the scene. The contribution by Golden, Wallerstein and Lange (1999) in the Volume on Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism (Kitschelt et al. 1999) painted a worried, but still confident, scenario. They nevertheless argued that persistent diversity between countries would refute any general theory as to why unions are in decline. ...
... In this chapter, I looked at trends of union and business organizations and their implications for the future of democratic capitalism. As in earlier assessments, the results concentrated on a steady union decline within much more stable wage bargaining institutions (Golden et al. 1999;Avdagic and Baccaro 2012). Given the rapid economic changes of deindustrialization and globalization, business coordination and wage bargaining centralization showed remarkably high levels of institutional resilience. ...
... First, some remain skeptical that any one model-institutional or otherwise-can account for the tremendous cross-national and historical variation in unionization across affluent democracies. Golden, Wallerstein, and Lange (1999) remarked: "General explanations seem to explain too much" (p. 224). ...
... Previous multilevel analyses of union membership are confined to earlier data before the decline. All of the surveys in were from the 1980s, whereas four of Oskarsson's (2005) surveys were from the 1980s and the rest were from 1993. 2 Although this research has contributed greatly, it is questionable as to whether the institutional model is useful after the recent decline of unionization experienced by many affluent democracies (Golden et al., 1999). Do the same forces that account for increases in unionization also account for decreases? ...
This study assesses three explanations for cross-national differences in unionization: Western’s (1997) institutional model, economic explanations based on the business cycle or globalization, and Hechter’s (2004) solidaristic theory. This study features a multilevel analysis of employed workers with the late 1990s World Values surveys of 18 affluent democracies. The analyses generally support the institutional model. Left parties and ghent systems remain influential, though ghent is less robust. Neo-corporatism and wage coordination are insignificant whereas workplace access is the more salient indicator of centralization. Beyond Western’s model, right cabinet significantly weakens unionization. Refuting economic explanations, inflation, unemployment, and economic growth, as well as international trade and investment, do not influence unionization. Consistent with Hechter’s claims, the welfare state reduces unionization but, contradicting his claims, immigration does not undermine unions. Ultimately, this study supports a revised institutional model that supplements Western’s model with right cabinet and the welfare state.
... Section 3 provides an overview of the role and position of trade unions in the six Central and Eastern European countries . In this section, I focus on four key characteristics: union density, union coverage , union concentration and the authority held by different levels of union organisations (Golden et al. 1999). Section 4 presents the development in wages in the analysed countries. ...
... In this section, I shall focus on the role of trade unions in six Central and Eastern European Countries. Four characteristics are used to describe trade unions' positions: union density, union coverage, union concentration and the authority held by different levels of union organisations (Golden et al. 1999). Moreover, we could argue that for CEE countries the recent history of trade union is important as well. ...
In the dominant perspective on trade unions, stronger trade unions are supposed to lead to higher wages and less extensive welfare reforms. This article focuses on the role of trade unions in the processes of welfare reform in Central and Eastern European countries in the last decade, and aims to assess the extent to which this role is comparable to that of trade unions in Western countries. The article analyses key characteristics of trade unions' roles and positions in Bulgaria, Croatia, Moldova, Romania, Poland and Slovenia. These characteristics are related to the social policy reforms and wage developments in these countries, in order to analyse if the dominant perspective holds true also for Central and Eastern European countries.
... Finally, we explore the impact of bargaining structure. The corporatist literature reviewed above suggests that a coordinated bargaining structure (Soskice 1990), or a centralized bargaining or union structure (Golden, Wallerstein, and Lange 1999), reduces individual wage dissatisfaction, leading workers to internalize the negative externalities of wage militancy. This effect may apply to union members only or to all workers if bargaining has spillover effects for non-union workers as well. ...
Although the determinants of wage militancy and moderation have been studied extensively by comparative political economists, so far the literature has focused on the macro level of analysis. As a result, there has been no attempt to analyze the determinants of individual-level attitudes towards wages. Based on two waves of the International Social Survey Programme, in this paper we fill this gap. We examine to what extent workers internalize the imperatives of competitiveness, and whether wage bargaining institutions facilitate this internalization, as suggested by a large literature on neocorporatism. Surprisingly, we find that the structure of wage bargaining (more or less coordinated or centralized) has no relationship with wage satisfaction or dissatisfaction at the individual level. Instead, wage dissatisfaction decreases strongly when workers are individually exposed to trade and countries rely heavily on export-led growth. Our results point to the need to rethink the determinants of wage moderation. Link: https://www.mpifg.de/pu/mpifg_dp/2021/dp21-3.pdf
... Variables include: percentage of part-time employment; percentage of temporary employment. 4. Golden, Lange and Wallerstein (1998). Variables include: bargaining level. ...
Workers' wages are not set in a spot market. Instead, the wages of most workers-at least those who do not switch jobs-typically change only annually and are mediated by a complex set of institutions and factors such as contracts, unions, standards of fairness, minimum wage policy, transfers of risk, and incomplete information. The goal of the International Wage Flexibility Project (IWFP)-a consortium of over 40 researchers with access to individual workers' earnings data for 16 countries-is to provide new microeconomic evidence on how wages change for continuing workers. Wage changes due to worker mobility are governed by different processes and are beyond the scope of this study. A key question in the theoretical and empirical literature, as reviewed in
... Second, we measure the union density rate as the proportion of wage and salary earners in employment who are union members (Golden, Wallerstein and Lange 2008). In order to build this variable, we use the most comprehensive authoritative source with information on the Institutional Characteristics of Trade Unions, Wage Setting, State Intervention and Social Pacts (Visser, 2019). ...
... The claim that corporatism is breaking down is belied by the evidence in Figure 1. Some argue that this stability is because corporatism is robust in the face of globalization, deindustrialization and other related political-economic phenomena that were once thought to exert significant pressure on these labor market institutions (Garrett, 1998b;Golden, Wallerstein and Lange, 1999;Pontusson, 2005;Hall and Gingerich, 2009). Others argue that corporatism is evolving rather than disappearing. ...
A prominent line of research on electoral systems and income redistribution argues that PR leads to tax and transfer policies that benefit the poor at the expense of the rich. This is because PR produces encompassing center-left coalitions that protect the poor and middle classes. Two facts that are inconsistent with this expectation are that countries with PR electoral systems tend to rely heavily on consumption taxes and tax profits lightly. Both policies are regressive and seem to benefit the rich at the expense of the poor. I argue that PR electoral institutions are not as hostile to the rich as commonly believed and that we need to understand how electoral systems interact with labor market institutions to explain the puzzling pattern of taxation that we observe. Empirical analysis supports the theoretical model and shows that the relationships between electoral institutions and tax policies hold when controlling for potential confounds.
(The main difference between this version (2.0) and the earlier version is that I argue work on income redistribution should consider both relative and absolute concepts and measures of inequality. Political inequality, in particular, is likely linked to absolute income inequality, and this is where taxes have their largest effect.)
... More detailed quantitative time series and qualitative information on other aspects of wage bargaining mechanisms (such as union membership, union coverage, bargaining level, the extent of government involvement in wage setting and the largest unions) is available in Golden, Lange and Wallerstein (1998) and Ebbinghaus and Visser (2000). Kenworthy (2001) provides comparative information on many indexes of corporatism and Checchi and Lucifora (2002) provide a bivariate dummy for the existence of wage indexation for some countries up until the late 1990s. ...
... The claim that corporatism is breaking down is belied by the evidence in Figure 1. Some argue that this stability is because corporatism is robust in the face of globalization, deindustrialization and other related political-economic phenomena that were once thought to exert significant pressure on these labor market institutions (Garrett, 1998b;Golden, Wallerstein and Lange, 1999;Pontusson, 2005;Hall and Gingerich, 2009). Others argue that corporatism is evolving rather than disappearing. ...
... According to Golden et al. (1999) the type of capitalist system had little systematic effect on changes in union density between 1950 and 1989. Union density decline was most pronounced in Austria (CME), the US (LME), France and Italy (ME), and Japan (considered by Hall and Soskice as a particular type of CME, 2001a: 34). ...
Book synopsis: Over the last two decades, a number of factors have converged to produce a major rethink about the field of Industrial Relations. Globalization, the decline of trade unions, the spread of high performance work systems and the emergence of a more feminized, flexible work-force have opened new avenues of inquiry. The SAGE Handbook of Industrial Relations charts these changes and analyzes them. It provides a systematic, comprehensive survey of the field.
... More detailed quantitative time series and qualitative information on other aspects of wage bargaining mechanisms (such as union membership, union coverage, bargaining level, the extent of government involvement in wage setting and the largest unions) is available in Golden, Lange and Wallerstein (1998) and Ebbinghaus and Visser (2000). Kenworthy (2001) provides comparative information on many indexes of corporatism and Checchi and Lucifora (2002) provide a bivariate dummy for the existence of wage indexation for some countries up until the late 1990s. ...
This paper presents information on wage bargaining institutions, collected using a standardised questionnaire. Our data provide information from 1995 and 2006, for four sectors of activity and the aggregate economy, considering 23 European countries, plus the U.S. and Japan. Main findings include a high degree of regulation in wage setting in most countries. Although union membership is low in many countries, union coverage is high and almost all countries also have some form of national minimum wage. Most countries negotiate wages on several levels, the sectoral level still being the most dominant, with an increasingly important role for bargaining at the firm level. The average length of collective bargaining agreements is found to lie between one and three years. Most agreements are strongly driven by developments in prices and eleven countries have some form of indexation mechanism which affects wages. Cluster analysis identifies three country groupings of wage-setting institutions.
... The qualitative data used are Pontusson (1992), as well as Hibbs and Locking (1996), on types of labor movement; Swenson (1992) and Pontusson (2000) on wage-drift; Golden, Lange, and Wallerstein (2009), as well as Kitschelt (1999), on union density rates, union composition, and institutional organization; Golden, Wallerstein, and Lange (1999), as well as Edin and Topel (1997), on centralized bargaining; Wallerstein and Golden on institutional changes through the 1980s (2000); and Erixon on the Rehn-Meidner model (2008). Key insights about the 1990s crisis are derived from The Economics Commission (Ekonomikommissionen 1994, hereafter referred to as the commission). ...
This thesis seeks to contribute to the important debate regarding whether who governs matter, and if the relationship between the government and labor unions affect economic performance. The research question is: "Did changes in the organization of labor in the 1980s lead to changes in the partisan influence on economic outcomes in Sweden in the 1990s?" To answer this a case-study of Sweden centered around the 1980s is conducted, a period in which this highly social democratic country underwent several changes to its economic system; a shift away from its corporatist roots.
Corporatism, the cooperation between government and labor unions, is first examined theoretically through identification of partisan strategies for growth and class alignment. These are situated in a European context between 1975 and 1995, and the Swedish welfare-model is discussed. Further, the case-study shows how Sweden developed from a post-war welfare-system to a notably less corporatist system by the end of this period.
Sweden is historically regarded as an example of a markedly corporatist country, and in Europe it is thus an unexpected case of a decline in corporatism. The thesis shows how changes to the organization of labor in the 1980s had consequences for economic performance, and this performance is discussed in the context of Europe, Scandinavia, and Sweden. The economic performance of the 1990s is related to changes in the 1980s, and the development between the periods analysed using a path-dependent methodological perspective. The development illustrates how the decline in Swedish corporatism had implications for subsequent performance.
In the 1980s this is best explained by the dissolvement of centralized bargaining between labor unions and employer organizations. The institutional linkage between the leftparty and labor, which remained strong from the 1950s to the start of the 1980s, appears weakened as a result of shifts in government power. With this came new policies, and the economic system moved towards market liberalism.
Economic turmoil increased in the 1990s, starting with a banking crisis spanning Scandinavia, and the cause of this is traced to policies of the preceding decade. In a country with a long history of stable economic performance through cooperation between a leftist government and an encompassing labor, these changes and shocks were not expected, but they point to a broader decline in corporatism; a result of economic crises and changes to the political control over the economy.
... Soskice 1999: 106-110). The defining institutional nexus was, according to Thelen, the 'connection between national collective bargaining structures and plant-level strategies' (Thelen 2001: 72; also Golden et al. 1999). Subsequently, a country's labour market was categorised by the traits of its collective bargaining structures and given membership to a group of countries that define one of the two basic models of capitalism: either a coordinated market economy (CME) or a liberal market economy (LME). ...
This article seeks to elaborate a framework for the study of diversity in forms of labour using Trotsky's theory of uneven and combined development (UCD). It argues that labour markets are constituted by systemic processes of capital accumulation and uneven development in the global economy, but that these processes have highly differentiated outcomes in terms of the forms of labour that have historically emerged within and across national boundaries. Exploring some of the neglected elements of different forms of labour, including non-waged labour, the article demonstrates how we might conceptualise the way in which combinations of labour forms exist within any given space of the world economy. Using the examples of both internal and transnational migration, it argues that charting the social and spatial relations of production, and the labouring experiences and forms of worker politics associated with them, is an effective way of understanding the constitution and restructuring of different forms of labour.
... The labor migration issue was handled differently, as foreign labor was imported in large numbers, perhaps because of a combination of the CD emphasis on the traditional male breadwinner family and the weaker union influence on labor recruitment policies. However, union contracts in these countries cover a large proportion of the labor force (Golden, Lange, & Wallerstein, 1999), which prevented the expansion of a low-wage service sector, a source of employment for women in liberal welfare states (Esping-Andersen, 1990). Moreover, in contrast to the Scandinavian unions, which gradually gave up their opposition to part-time work in response to pressures from the women's movement, the continental European unions, including those close to the social democrats, continued to oppose part-time work (Klausen, 1999). ...
The authors propose a synthesis of power resources theory and welfare production regime theory to explain differences in human capital formation across advanced democracies. Emphasizing the mutually reinforcing relation- ships between social insurance, skill formation, and spending on public educa- tion, they distinguish three distinct worlds of human capital formation: one characterized by redistribution and heavy investment in public education and industry-specific and occupation-specific vocational skills; one characterized by high social insurance and vocational training in firm-specific and industry- specific skills but less spending on public education; and one characterized by heavy private investment in general skills but modest spending on public edu- cation and redistribution. They trace the three worlds to historical differences in the organization of capitalism, electoral institutions, and partisan politics, emphasizing the distinct character of political coalition formation underpinning each of the three models. They also discuss the implications for inequality and labor market stratification across time and space.
... Over the last quarter of a century, union power has not only decreased in most post-industrial societies due to membership decline, but also due to an increased heterogeneity of interests, decentralisation of collective bargaining and enfeebled party-union ties (Ebbinghaus and Visser, 2000). British, American, and Japanese unionism is fragmented and workplace oriented, and it also suffers from declining, low union density: only one in three British, one in four Japanese and only one in six American worker are unionised (Golden, Wallerstein, and Lange, 1999). Since the state and employers had first taken on the unions in the industrial relations realm, the British and American unions have been not very effective in lobbying against retrenchment efforts by the Reagan or Thatcher governments. ...
The institutionalisation of early retirement has become a universal feature of postwar industrial economies, though there are significant cross-national variations. This paper studies the impact of different types of welfare regimes, production systems and labour relations on early exit from work. After an analysis of the main trends, the paper discusses the costs and benefits of early retirement for the various actors — labour, capital and the state — at different levels. The paper outlines both the 'pull" and 'push" factors of early exit. It first compares the distinct welfare state regimes and private occupational pensions in their impact on early retirement. Then it looks at the labour-shedding strategies inherent to particular employment regimes, production systems and financial governance structures. Finally, the impact of particular industrial relations systems, and especially the role of unions is discussed. The paper finds intricate 'institutional complementarities" between particular welfare states, production regimes and industrial relations systems, these structure the incentives under which actors make decisions on work and retirement. The paper argues that the 'collusion" between capital, labour and the state in pursuing early retirement is not merely following a labour-shedding strategy to ease mass unemployment, but also caused by the need for economic restructuration, the downsizing pressures from financial marketes, the maintenance of peaceful labour relations, and the consequences of a seniority employment system.
... Queste dimensioni di analisi fecero la loro comparsa all'inizio del dibattito sul neo-corporatismo (cfr. Schmitter, 1974), ma continuarono ad ispirare i tentativi successivi, più sofisticati, di operazionalizzare i vari costrutti istituzionali e organizzativi (vedi Wallerstein et al., 1997;Lange et al, 1998;Traxler et al., 2001). ...
Based on multiple sources and research methods, this article argues that social concertation is not a declining institutional arrangement, but a recurrent and, overall, stable (if not growing) feature of European societies. Case-based evidence suggests that, at least in the 1990s, governments engaging in social concertation tend to be electorally weak or vulnerable governments seeking to ease the passing and implementation of potentially unpopular (neo-liberal) policies. The institutional and organizations conditions for social concertation seem today rather different from those the past corporatist literature focused upon, that is, concentrated and hierarchical interest groups. Indeed democratic decision-making procedures, ensuring procedural legitimacy and providing opportunities for the discursive reshaping of rank-and-file preferences, may have become more important over time. Also, social concertation has shown a tendency to move from a tripartite (government, labor, and capital) to a multipartite format, with the institutional involvement of multiple civil society organizations alongside the traditional "social partners". The assessment of concertation outcomes is limited by the availability of appropriate indicators. As far wage bargaining coordination is concerned, this seems to be associated with more moderate wage growth. The other conclusion usually drawn by the literature, that it may also be associated with lower unemployment, seems instead much less robust.
... However, the equality/efficiency trade-off is far from universally accepted (Pontusson 2005, Kenworthy andPontusson 2005). There is a substantial economic literature, for instance, which highlights the negative consequences of high levels of inequality for economic growth Rodrik 1994, Acemoglu andRobinson 2002), a literature in welfare economics that models some of the (for some counterintuitive) pro-efficiency consequences of welfare states (see for example Barr 2001, Mirrlees 2006) and a similarly prominent political economy tradition which describes how such as centralized corporatist wage bargaining can have both egalitarian and pro-growth effects (Calmfors and Driffill 1988, Garrett 1998, Golden, Wallerstein and Lange 1999, Iverson 2001, Swenson 2002, Pontusson 2005, Mares 2006). Similarly, the Varieties of Capitalism literature (Hall and Soskice 2001) argues that various institutional arrangements for coordination between market actors can create efficiency and redistribute rewards fairly (for critical discussion see Thatcher, Hancké and Rhodes 2007). ...
... Vertical (intra-confederal) coordination is also low because of the high degree of autonomy of single unions within the national confederations, especially in the public sector. The important role played by firm-level committees of labour representatives with few links to national organisations (listes sans étiquette) further contributes to disorganisation (Golden, Wallerstein and Lange 1998; Mouriaux 1998). Combined with parallel weaknesses on the employers' side, this institutional fragmentation dooms to failure any attempt at broad concertation and social dialogue, demonstrating (pace Baccaro 2002a) that the term 'neocorporatism' is inapplicable to France (Hall 1990). ...
France, like other European countries, has faced growing challenges to its welfare state. Pensions in particular have been at the core of the public debate on recasting its social model. This article analyses reform processes in the 1990s and early 2000s to explain how France reforms pensions. While in other Bismarckian welfare states with pay-as-you-go pension systems, reform is usually undertaken via concertation; in France it is formulated by the government alone. Yet even in the French case of state-led policy-making, where the institutional preconditions for corporatism are weak, the political élite needs to adopt a consensual policy making style to overcome trade union veto powers. The Balladur pension reform of 1993 is used to explore this apparent contradiction between a unilateral approach and a consensual style, with an extension of the argument to the 2003 Raffarin reform. A comparison with Italy a case of consensual, concerted pension policy-making sheds light on la voie française to distributive policy reform.French Politics (2004) 2, 123. doi:10.1057/palgrave.fp.8200048
... The empirical literature to date has primarily relied on case studies of a handful of northern European nations, most commonly Denmark, Germany, and Sweden. 2 Rigorous historiography has generated important insights into the role of employers and the dynamics of institutional change (Iversen, 1996; Swenson, 1991; Thelen, 1993 Thelen, , 2004), but these insights have not been examined in a broader spatial-temporal context. Golden, Wallerstein and Lange (2002) and Traxler, Kittel and Blaschke (2001) have invested terrific effort in providing broadly comparable time series data on unions, employers, and government involvement in wage bargaining and economic management for the major OECD economies leading to important work describing the variation in union centralization and bargaining coordination (Ebbinghaus and Visser, 2000; Golden, Wallerstein and Lange, 1999; Traxler, Kittel and Blaschke, 2001; Wallerstein, Golden and Lange, 1997). Kenworthy (2001 Kenworthy ( , 2003 ) offer surveys of the many datasets floating around purporting to offer empirical measures " corporatism " , bargaining centralization, union structure, and associated concepts. ...
Encompassing labor movements and coordinated wage setting are central to the social democratic economic model that has proven successful among the nations of Western Europe. The coordination of wage bargaining across many unions and employers has been used to explain everything from inequality to unemployment. Yet there has been limited theoretical and quantitative empirical work exploring the determinants of bargaining coordination. I argue formally that more unequally distributed resources across unions should inhibit the centralization of strike powers in union federations. Using membership as a proxy for union resources, I find empirical evidence for this hypothesis in a panel of 15 OECD democracies, 1950–2000. I then show that the centralization of strike powers is a strong predictor of coordinated bargaining.
... There has been a surface resilience to national industrial relations institutions, with the result that some large-N studies have tended to emphasize limited, incremental change and the persistence of distinct national institutional sets. 2 Nonetheless, we insist that those institutional landscapes are being transformed in a common neoliberal direction. Institutions, we argue, are highly malleable. ...
Based on quantitative indicators for fifteen advanced countries between 1974 and 2005, and case studies of France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Ireland, this article analyzes the trajectory of institutional change in the industrial relations systems of advanced capitalist societies, with a focus on Western Europe. In contrast to current comparative political economy scholarship, which emphasizes the resilience of national institutions to common challenges and trends, it argues that despite a surface resilience of distinct national sets, all countries have been transformed in a neoliberal direction. Neoliberal transformation manifests itself not just as institutional deregulation but also as institutional conversion, as the functions associated with existing institutional forms change in a convergent direction. A key example is the institution of centralized bargaining, once the linchpin of an alternative, redistributive and egalitarian, model of negotiated capitalism, which has been reshaped in the past twenty years to fit the common imperative of liberalization.
A prominent line of research on electoral systems and income redistribution argues that proportional representation (PR) leads to tax-and-transfer policies that benefit the poor at the expense of the rich. This is because PR produces encompassing center-left coalitions that protect the poor and middle classes. Yet countries with PR electoral systems tend to rely heavily on consumption taxes and tax profits lightly, both of which are inconsistent with this expectation. Both policies are regressive and seem to benefit the rich at the expense of the poor. This article argues that PR electoral institutions, when combined with trichotomous multipartism, are not as hostile to the rich as commonly believed, and that it is important to understand how electoral and party systems interact with labor market institutions in order to explain the puzzling pattern of taxation that is observed. The author develops a theoretical model and evaluates its empirical implications for a world in which production has become multinational.
This chapter examines the relevance of labor unions from various perspectives. First, the chapter explores the origins of labor unions as crucial organizations for defending labor rights for unionized workers and their role beyond the labor sphere. The concept of union density is defined to measure the relative power and influence of labor unions. Second, fluctuations of union density are observed in a group of 30 OECD countries between 1980 and 2018. A longitudinal analysis of unionization trends in these countries is conducted and the levels of both aggregated and disaggregated union density are examined. Third, the factors accounting for union density decline are classified into three categories: cyclical, structural, and political-institutional factors. This analytical structure helps not only to develop a coherent debate about the most relevant factors explaining union density variations but also to generate a comprehensive profile of the workforce most likely to be unionized.
Argentina and Uruguay are the only democracies in Latin America (among few in the world) that have developed sustained, state-oriented national and sectoral wage bargaining between employers and unions after 2005. The article defines “segmented neo-corporatism” as a new form of centralized incomes policy in the region that applies to a substantial portion (i.e., registered workers), though not to all the labor force. Drawing on neo-corporatist theory, I explain, first, why only Argentina and Uruguay could consolidate a centralized, national wage policy in the context of the Latin American Left-Turn. Second, I test empirically the degree of state-oriented wage coordination. The study argues that monetary policy deterrence and higher levels of bargaining centralization largely explain the greater capacity of Uruguayan neo-corporatism to govern wage-setting compared with its Argentine counterpart. Finally, the article puts segmented neo-corporatism in comparative perspective in the developing world and draws some theoretical implications.
This chapter explains in detail the main assumptions and hypotheses behind the argument and sets out the political-economy framework for the following chapters. Three actors (native high-skilled labour, native low-skilled labour and capital) that build coalitions to achieve their preferred policy output—more open or more restrictive high-skilled immigration policies—are identified. From the six possible coalition scenarios, coalitions that include native high-skilled labour will be more restrictive than those composed of capital and/or native low-skilled labour. These coalitions are intermediated by two institutions, labour market organisation and political representation. Several hypotheses on actors’ preferences, labour market organisation and political representation are established which are examined in the case study chapters.
Work/family reconciliation is a crucial question for both personal well-being and on societal level for productivity and re-production throughout the Western world. This thesis examines work/family reconciliation on societal and organisational level in the Finnish context. The study is based on an initial framework, developing it further and analysing the results with help of it.
The methodology of the study is plural, including varying epistemological emphasis and both quantitative and qualitative methods. Policy analysis from two different sectors is followed by a survey answered by 113 HR-managers, and then, based on quantitative analyses, interviews in four chosen case companies.
The central findings of the thesis are that there indeed are written corporate level policies for reconciling work and family in companies operating in Finland, in spite of the strong state level involvement in creating a policy context in work/family reconciliation. Also, the existing policies vary in accessibility and use. The most frequently used work/family policies still are the statutory state level policies for family leave, taking place when a baby is born and during his or her first years. Still, there are new policies arising, such as a nurse for an employee’s child who has fallen ill, that are based on company activity only, which shows in both accessibility and use of the policy.
Reasons for developing corporate level work/family policies vary among the so-called pro-active and re-active companies. In general, family law has a substantial effect for developing corporate level policies. Also headquarter gender equality strategies as well as employee demands are important. In regression analyses, it was found that corporate image and importance in recruitment are the foremost reasons for companies to develop policies, not for example the amount of female employees in the company. The reasons for policy development can be summarized into normative pressures, coercive pressures and mimetic pressures, in line with findings from institutional theory. This research, however, includes awareness of different stakeholder interests and recognizes that institutional theory needs to be complemented with notions of gender and family, which seem to play a part in perceived work/family conflict and need for further work/family policies both in managers’ personal lives and on the organisational level.
A very central finding, demanding more attention, is the by HR managers perceived change in values towards work and commitment towards organisation at the youngest working generation, Generation Y. This combined with the need for key personnel has brought new challenges to companies especially in knowledge business and will presumably lead to further development of flexible practices in organisations. The accessibility to this flexibility seems to, however, be even more dependent on the specific knowledge and skills of the employee. How this generation will change the organisations remains to be seen in further research.
Two different ways of diffusing political power, collective and competitive veto points, have systematically and predictably different effects on the capacity of the state to redistribute incomes. While collective veto points buoy the welfare state, competitive veto points inhibit it. Not all veto points have restricting effects. There is also a positive relationship between the number of governing parties in coalitions and the redistributive capacity of the state. These institutional effects are maintained even when the forces of globalization are added. In contrast to what many globalists argue, globalization does not reduce the capacity of the state to redistribute incomes.
Analysing annual data on union membership, the authors examine the short- and long-term determinants of union growth and decline in post-war Western Europe. Using fixed effect estimates of an error correction model on a panel of 14 countries, structural, cyclical and institutional determinants are incorporated in a 'social customs' framework of union membership. The results show that union decline during the 1980s and 1990s is largely endogenous to labour market changes, the impact of which is mediated by a specific set of labour market institutions. Union density rates declined because unemployment increased, newcomers in the labour force were recruited or sorted into jobs and workplaces less covered by unions, inflation decreased, indexation clauses were dismantled and replacement rates lowered, public employment shrank and strike activity declined.
ABSTRACT During the late 1970s and 1980s Mexico and Spain faced one of the most severe economic,crises since the 1930s. Shrinking foreign exchange reserves, increasing foreign debt, budget deficits, high levels of unemployment, and recurring inflation were common maladies in both countries. The standard prescription taken by most,governments,in Latin America,and,Southern Europe consisted on market-orient ed stabilization and adjustment programs, which in many countries encountered major political opposition and led to the failure of these reform attempts. On the contrary, in Mexico, and Spain, the stabilization and adjustment,programs,initiated in the late 1970s and 1980s met,with much,less political resistance. Governments in these countries were, therefore, better able to control inflation, stabilize their economies, and transform the economic,structures of their countries. This study will argue that the combination,of long standing traditions of authoritarian corporatist bargaining and the subordination of unions to governing parties provided governments,in these countries with the institutional mechanisms,to mediate conflict while giving legitimacy to the process of economic adjustment and reform. The main contribution of this research project to the literature is therefore to highlight the critical importance of an institutional factor that has not been given serious attention by other scholars, namely, the autonomy or lack thereof of labor unions from governing parties. 3
This article investigates how a particular wage-bargaining institution mitigates pressures from growing international competition and new production techniques and affects the degree of wage inequality growth. The extent to which industry-wide wage minima (wage scales) cover both higher and lower skilled workers affects developments in inequality. A series of cross-sectional time-series analyses are conducted using data from a recent unpublished data set from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which covers 14 OECD countries from 1980 to 2002. The results strongly indicate that the presence of industry-wide wage scales is a key factor in the evolution of wage inequality across OECD countries.
German and Japanese opinion leaders demand a decisive move toward the liberal market model, yet their governments have been slow to act. Why can't Germany and Japan reform? To unravel this puzzle, we must understand how the German and Japanese models of capitalism bind the potential winners from liberal reform, such as competitive manufacturing exporters, to the potential losers, such as workers and protected service industries. Competitive exporters are reluctant to embrace reforms that might undermine valued relationships with workers, financial institutions, and other business partners. Moreover they cannot forge a strong reform coalition because they must work through industry associations and political parties that represent both competitive and protected sectors. As a result, Germany and Japan proceed cautiously with reform; they package delicate compromises, often compensating the potential losers; they design reforms to preserve core institutions; and they seek novel ways to build on the strengths of these models.
The distribution of pay differs significantly across countries and over time among advanced industrial societies. In this paper, institutional and political determinants of pay inequality an studied in sixteen countries from 1980 to 1992. The most important factor in explaining pay dispersion is the level of wage-setting, i.e., whether wages are set at the level of the individual, the plant, the industry, or the entire private sector. The impact of centralization is the same whether centralization occurs via collective bargaining or via government involvement in private-sector wage-setting. The concentration of unions and the share of the labor force covered by collective bargaining agreements also matter. After controlling for wage-setting institutions, other variables such as the governing coalition, the size of government, international openness, and the supply of highly educated workers have little impact. Economic, political, and norm-based explanations for the association of centralization with egalitarian outcomes are discussed.
ABSTRACT It is sometimes argued that economic globalization has made it difficult or impossible for governments to do anything about poverty and inequality, because egalitarian taxes and regulations would discourage work, drive up the cost of goods produced, hobble exports, invite low-wage imports, and provoke capital to flee abroad seeking higher profits. This is said to produce a “race to the bottom” of governments abandoning egalitarian programs. Our look at the comparative evidence indicates that this race has not, to any great extent, materialized. Welfare states in the social democracies of Northern Europe and other advanced countries have undergone some marginal retrenchment but remain largely intact. And there remains room to augment the much skimpier U.S. welfare state without serious competitive disadvantage. Our examination of a wide range of U.S. government programs indicates that some are
Arthur Okun famously argued that “effciency is bought at the cost of inequalities in income and wealth”. Okun's trade-off represents the antithesis to Karl Polanyi's view of the relationship that the more embedded markets are in society, the better the social and economic outcomes they produce. This paper refines both these views. We argue that not all forms of market embeddedness are created equal, and that the relationship between equality and efficiency can be both positive and negative. We show this by examining how different ways of embedding economic activity in society through market regulation produce different combinations of efficiency and equality. We identify empirically three broad patterns: market liberal regulatory frameworks that promote competitive markets without decommodifying institutions; embedded liberal regulations that allow markets to work efficiently, but within the framework of decommodification and equality; and embedded illiberalism, where regulations hinder markets in favor of powerful social groups and where decommodification undermines both efficiency and equality. Okun's trade-off emerges as a special case limited to the English-speaking democracies: other OECD countries tend to exhibit either efficiency and equality together, or inefficiency and inequality together. These findings suggest a corrective to both nave market liberal views of the incompatibility of efficiency and equality, but also to the more sophisticated Varieties of Capitalism framework, which pays insufficient attention to the ways in which markets can be embedded in stable but apparently dysfunctional institutional arrangements.
This paper improves our understanding of critical
junctures, a concept employed in historical institutionalism for exploring
change. However, the concept lacks rigour, weakening our ability to define
critical junctures. Of late, academics have utilized other mechanisms to
identify change in historical institutionalism. Thus, it is within this
context that the critical junctures approach is remoulded through the
specification of standards, hence reducing uncertainty as to what
constitutes a critical juncture. The remoulded approach is employed here
in examining change in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions' (ICTU)
influence over public policy in 1987.
Over the course of the past quarter century, paralleling the decline of organized labor, there has been a marked increase in the role of the state in the industrial relations of advanced capitalist societies. This has come both in the form of state activism in the reconstruction of institutions, and through the replacement of collective self-regulation by employer and labor organizations with legal regulation. Unsurprisingly, these developments have failed to encourage a renewal of trade union collective power, leaving workers increasingly insecure, dependent upon markets, and vulnerable to the vagaries of state power.
Abstract This article assesses the double strategic dilemma facing ,the social democratic parties of the recent period. First, it examines the economic policy options available to social democratic parties under globalization and argues that rather than facing a stark choice between neo-liberal reformand policy stagnation, the West European left can find ways,of making market-friendly ‘structural reforms’ compatible with traditional left values of redistribution and state intervention. Second, it seeks to understand why social democratic parties have so much trouble finding this virtuous combination of liberalizing reform and ,social solidarity. It explains the responses ,of different social democratic parties to the tensions between globalization and traditional left policies in terms of how longstanding political cleavages structure their electoral incentives. It is argued that the
A comparative perspective on labor unions reveals that the best of all worlds for the workers is coordinated bargaining at thenational level and significant rank-and-file engagement at the local level. But the achievement of national and coordinated bargaining is an unrealistic goal in the foreseeable future in the United States. What American labor can do, however, is to become once again a social movement. In order for organized labor to play its critical role as a countervailing power within the American political system, there must be intensified organizing, internal democratization, increased electoral and lobbying clout, and social-movement unions willing to mobilize with others and, if necessary, on the streets. a
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