Do European trade unions foster social solidarity? Evidence from multilevel data in 18 countries

• Published date: 01 January 2019
• Author: Nicolo Rosetti
• Date: 01 January 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12242

Do European trade unions foster social

solidarity? Evidence from multilevel data in

18 countries

Nicolo Rosetti,

†

ABSTRACT

Trade unions have been analysed quantitatively primarily in their role as vested

interest organisations, attempting to quantify the excludable benefits they provide

to members rather than examine their wider impact in an institutional context. Power

resource theory acknowledges unions as social agents but assumes the willingness to

oppose neoliberalism is constant, limited only by scarce power resources. Whilst true

in general terms, this fails to explain trends of increasing labour market dualism in

resource-rich industrial relations regimes. This article examines social solidarity as a

union power resource, measuring the impact of trade union membership on social

attitudes of solidarity. Data were collected from the 2016 European Social Survey

for 18 countries, grouped into five distinct industrial relations regimes. The findings

suggest that, at European level, union membership still has a significant effect on

all dimensions of social solidarity, but these relationships vary significantly across

industrial relations regimes.

1 INTRODUCTION

Trade unions are socio-economic actors with a dual purpose: to serve the interests of

their members and to promote a more egalitarian social model in society as a whole.

The latter is the foundation of their representative legitimacy and the basis on which

their role became institutionalised in industrial relations (IR) as we know them

(Flanders, 1970). In recent decades, a generalised decline in union membership

severely limited their ability to fulfil their roles.

It is common for unions and union performance to be analysed as organisations of

vested interest, primarily protecting their members, even at the expense of outsiders.

1

Whilst this analysis explains some trends of union decline, particularly when

situated in the increasingly limiting legal framework in which unions must operate,

it still fails to explain the initial rise and institutionalisation of unions. Power resource

theory (PRT) links the decline in employment protections to the decline in power

❒Nicolo Rosetti, Graduate School of Economics, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan. Correspondence to:

Nicolo Rosetti, Graduate School of Economics, Kyoto University, Yoshidahonmachi, Sakyo Ward,

Kyoto Prefecture, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan; e-mail: n.rosetti.89@gmail.com; nr289@cam.ac.uk

1

Individual outcomes may also have social implications (e.g. reducing the gender pay gap for members has

a social justice effect as well); however, there is a distinction between unions acting exclusively in the interest

of their members and unions serving a social justice role which extends to the entire workforce.

†

Present Address: Girton College, Huntingdon Road, Girton, Cambridge, CB3 0JG, UK

Industrial Relations Journal 50:1, 84–101

ISSN 0019-8692

© 2019 The Authors Industrial Relations Journal published by Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribu-

tion and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

resources which unions need in order to oppose the interests of capital (Korpi, 1983).

Whilst PRT acknowledges the collective social role played by unions, its analysis

takes this role for granted. The focus is on union ability to resist capital, the assump-

tion being that the willingness to resist is absolute. Whilst there is evidence that over-

all, labour is more successful at reducing inequality where it has more power resources

(Pontusson, 2013), PRT fails to account for trends of dualism, where seemingly

resource-rich union movements can become complicit in the polarisation of the la-

bour market, leaving precarious workers increasingly unrepresented (Rueda, 2007).

This article examines social solidarity as a power resource. Whilst most of the IR

literature accepts that unions require their role of social agents in order to survive

(Bourdieu, 2003; Gumbrell-McCormick and Hyman, 2013; Hyman, 2005; Munck,

2004; Urban, 2012), union performance continues to be primarily measured

through individual outcomes and rarely focuses on unions as social agents. Social

solidarity in union ranks affects a union’s ability to fight back against neoliberal

pressures (Pontusson, 2013), and it is affected by individual characteristics such

as earnings (Checchi et al., 2010). Using data from 18 countries in the 2016

European Social Survey (Centre for Comparative Social Surveys, 2016), we test

the relationship between union membership and four dimensions of social solidarity

(inequality, welfare state, diversity and immigration). We assess this impact at

European level by grouping countries into five distinct IR regimes and investigating

how different institutional frameworks impact the nexus between union

membership and social solidarity.

The article begins by discussing the decline of union power resources and union

density. The following section explores unions as agents of social change, reviewing

the literature on union performance and noting its limitations in explaining unionisa-

tion trends. We distinguish between five European IR regimes characterised by shared

institutions. Our empirical analysis will assess the impact of individual union mem-

bership on attitudes towards inequality, the welfare state, diversity and immigration.

In Section 5, we outline our methodology, variables, model specification and limita-

tions. We review our findings in Section 6 and discuss their implications. Finally,

we conclude by summarising our findings and explore how they might relate to and

contribute to our understanding of trade union analysis.

2 DECLINE IN POWER RESOURCES

Union objectives vary significantly across countries; however, the literature highlights

four main forms of union power resources with which they can be achieved, namely,

structural, associational, organisational and institutional (Gumbrell-McCormick and

Hyman, 2013). Structural power resources originate from individual workers’

specialised skillset or position in the production process (Silver, 2003). These have

been considerably eroded outside the public sector. Fixed-term contracts, temporary

agency workers and competitive pressures and structural changes following globalisa-

tion led to a standardisation of skillsets and work processes (Hyman, 1999).

Associational and organisational resources are two sides of the same coin, both

necessary to harness the power resulting from membership. Having a large member

base is important, but membership alone is not sufficient without involvement and

unity among union members. Organisational power is the ability to mobilise members

to action, which in turn requires an internal ‘social capital’(Nissen and Jarley, 2005).

85Evidence from multilevel data in 18 countries

© 2019 The Authors Industrial Relations Journal published by Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd