‘Ideational power’ as a resource in union struggle

• Author: Jonathan Preminger
• Date: 01 May 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12289
• Published date: 01 May 2020

‘Ideational power’as a resource in union

struggle

Jonathan Preminger

ABSTRACT

Contributing to our understanding of ideas as power resources in union struggle, this

article analyses a labour dispute in Israel’s shipping industry. The article follows the

union’s foregrounding of a specific idea of the state contained within the collective un-

derstanding of Israel’s history, by which the union legitimised its position in the dis-

pute and significantly influenced a government decision. The article therefore

suggests that ideas can be an important power resource, particularly when other

power resources are lacking but that this power resource is dependent on the specific

ideational context: effective foregrounded ideas draw on a shared narrative that en-

ables political actors to claim the moral high ground, while accusing their adversaries

of failing to fulfil their moral obligations as understood via the frame of that shared

narrative.

1 INTRODUCTION

There has been increasing acknowledgement or rediscovery of the role of ideas in

shaping the ‘form, dynamics and products of the employment relationship’

(Hauptmeier and Heery, 2014: 2473), as well as recognition of the complexity in the

ways ‘ideas matter’. Scholars have explored the role of ideologies and beliefs in shap-

ing responses and as motivations for action (e.g. Cullinane and Dundon, 2014), and

for framing (Goffman, 1986; Snow and Benford, 1988), to grant legitimacy to actors’

courses of action and to justify their claims (Ainsworth et al., 2014). This article con-

tributes to the ‘ideas matter’literature by asking, under what conditions can ideas be a

power resource for unions in industrial relations disputes?

On a theoretical level, it analyses the relationship between the ideas used as power

resources in political struggle and the narratives from which these ideas are drawn.

Scholars have long debated the power resources available to organised labour. In

conceptualising the status of labour in capitalism, Wright (2000) distinguishes be-

tween structural power (or the power available to labour due to workers’location

within the economy) and associational power (which results from workers associating

among themselves). Dörre (2011) elaborates on ideas of institutional power as the re-

sult of political conflict, where institutions ‘fix and to a certain degree legally codify

basic social compromises’(2011: 21). Much union revitalisation scholarship recog-

nises the diminishing of such power resources, including the decline of collective

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which per-

mits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for

commercial purposes.

❒Jonathan Preminger, Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF10 3EU,

UK. Correspondence should be addressed to Jonathan Preminger, Lecturer, Cardiff Business School,

Cardiff University, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF10 3EU, UK.

Email: premingerj@cardiff.ac.uk

Industrial Relations Journal 51:3, 209–224

ISSN 0019-8692

© 2020 The Authors. Industrial Relations Journal published by Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

labour’s legitimacy as a political actor (e.g. Preminger, 2018: 105–117), and discusses

ways in which unions can rebuild such power resources through various strategies, in-

cluding efforts to ‘frame’union struggle (e.g. Frege and Kelly, 2003). Thus, Budd and

Bhave (2008: 92) assert that ‘understanding the industrial relationship, …labour

union strategies, and work-related public policies requires understanding how values

and assumptions form the ideologies and frames of reference used by scholars, prac-

titioners, and policymakers’. In their view, values inform perspectives of unions and

the employment relationship, which then impacts justifications for action (ideology),

as well as enables the evaluation of that action’s effectiveness. However, unions’use

of ideas as a power resource has only rarely been studied (Ainsworth et al., 2014).

This article, then, also contributes to our understanding of the use of ‘ideational

power’in union revitalisation. Concurring that context is crucial ‘for the production,

change and maintenance of ideas and beliefs’(Hauptmeier and Heery, 2014: 2474),

the article investigates the relationship between foregrounded ideas and background

discourses. It shows how context provides rich material with which actors construct

a persuasive discursive understanding of reality that supports their agenda, thus sug-

gesting that ideas can be a powerful resource for political actors when other power re-

sources are diminished.

On an empirical level, the article analyses a labour dispute in the Israeli shipping

line Zim to explore the relationship between the idea of the Zionist nation-state

rooted in a shared historical narrative, and the union’s use of this idea in its struggle

to protect seafaring jobs. Zim had a prominent position in Israel’s history and, as

argued below, was central to the development of the historical narrative of Israel’s

birth and survival. Details of the labour dispute were gathered from court docu-

ments, the media and secondary sources and from interviews with key industry fig-

ures: Avi Levi, chair of the Officers Union (26 July 2015); Shlomo Avitan, former

chair of the Ratings Union (9 Aug. 2015); current and former directors of the Ma-

rine Education and Training Authority, Giora Dash (13 Apr. 2016) and Shay

Meirson (16 Feb. 2015); Amir Basha and Moran Savurai, labour lawyers at Benny

Cohen Law Offices (18 Feb. 2015); Natanel Haiman, director of energy and infra-

structure at the Manufacturers’Association of Israel (6 April 2016); and Capt. Nim-

rod Keren, formerly of Zim (8 Dec. 2014). For understanding the historical context,

the research drew on documents from the Knesset archives, Israel Corporation doc-

uments and some key personal correspondence provided by interviewees, as well as

secondary sources.

The article first reviews current understandings of ideas and discourse in political

struggle. It then gives historical information about Israel’s national shipping com-

pany and its links with Israel’s state ethos, crucial for understanding this case study.

An account is then presented of restructuring negotiations and the union’s struggle

to compel the Israeli government to retain the state’s‘Golden Share’in Zim, by

foregrounding a specific idea of ‘the state’and its obligations, drawing on Israel’s

national historical narrative. This is followed by a discussion on the significance of

this ‘idea’in the union’s struggle. To conclude, the article suggests that ideas can

be an important power resource, particularly when other power resources are lack-

ing, but one which is greatly dependent on the specific ideational context: for max-

imum effect, foregrounded ideas should draw on a shared historical narrative, which

enables actors to claim the moral high ground, while accusing their adversaries of

failing to fulfil their moral obligations as understood via the frame of that shared

narrative.

210 Jonathan Preminger

© 2020 The Authors. Industrial Relations Journal published by Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd