It takes two to tango: Reconceptualizing union power and union effectiveness in a relational perspective

• Published date: 01 November 2023
• Author: Grégory Jemine
• Date: 01 November 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12403

DOI: 10.1111/irj.12403

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

It takes two to tango: Reconceptualizing union

power and union effectiveness in a relational

perspective

Grégory Jemine

HEC—Management School, Université

de Liège, Liège, Belgium

Correspondence

Dr. Grégory Jemine, HEC—Management

School, Université de Liège, Rue

Louvrex, 14 (N1D)—4000 Liège,

Belgium.

Email: gjemine@uliege.be

Abstract

This paper reports on a public transport company in

which local unions, by repeatedly threatening to strike,

managed to significantly enhance their negotiating posi-

tion and exert considerable power over their management.

While extant literature has mostly paid attention to ‘weak’

unions struggling for renewal and revitalization, the

present study rather explores a situation in which unions

manage to become ‘strong’by making aggressive uses of

power, as well as the implications for union effectiveness.

It is shown that management deficiencies can provide

unions with unprecedented opportunities for exerting

power, yet hamper their ability to reach greater effective-

ness as the absence of an engaged managerial line makes it

difficult to secure decisions favouring workers and the

organization. This paper contributes to theory on union

power and effectiveness by offering an alternative to the

resource‐based view of union power that has been

prevalent in prior research. Union power and effectiveness

in the workplace appear to be deeply rooted in the power

relations that unions sustain with other organizational

actors, demonstrating the relevance of a relational

perspective that goes beyond union‐centred action,

resources and capabilities to include the complex dynam-

ics of their interactions with other organizational actors.

Ind. Relat. 2023;54:445–470. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/irj

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© 2023 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

1|INTRODUCTION

It is easy to envisage how an un‐powerful union is also an ineffective union, it is

less easy to imagine a prima facie powerful union that is also ineffective. (Gall &

Fiorito, 2016, p. 191)

In the last decade, research on union power and union effectiveness has been conducted

with the aim of better understanding the work that unions do and probing the boundaries of

union action (e.g., Gall & Fiorito, 2016). Most of these studies have been exploring the struggles

of weakening unions and their efforts to keep their relevance in the face of hostile changes

threatening their survival (e.g., Estanque et al., 2014; Gavin, 2021; Lévesque & Murray, 2010).

Hence, the focus has been repeatedly set on unions seeking greater power in difficult contexts

of renewal, restructuring, precarization, or revitalization (e.g., Murray, 2017; O'Brady, 2021). By

contrast, empirical studies of powerful local unions, and analyses of how unions manage to

become strong, have remained much more scarce—perhaps because such cases are more

difficult to find (Connolly & Darlington, 2012). This paper reports on an original case of a

public transport company in which local unions managed to acquire significant power in

formal and informal negotiations. The rising power of unions in the case can notably be

attributed to a mismanagement of the social risk by the local direction, which has been shown

to be especially sensitive to the threat to strike and, as a result, has conceded significant ground

to the unions. While extant literature has often investigated the decline or weakening of unions'

power in an unfavourable global context (e.g., Gallas, 2018; Schmidt et al., 2019), this paper

rather reports on an original case of union strengthening by raising the following question: how

do unions manage to gain significant power in their local context, and with what

consequences?

The two main objectives of the paper are the following. First, we seek to understand the

dynamics allowing unions to acquire power in the workplace. Extant literature on union power

has primarily conceptualized power as a set of resources and capabilities used by unions to

preserve workers' interests (e.g., Gavin, 2021; Lévesque & Murray, 2010,2013). By contrast, the

present study rather questions the organizational dynamics that make it possible for unions to

capitalize on management's weaknesses to expand their room for manoeuvre. It shows that a

combination of contextual factors, management deficiencies, and union strategies can lead

unions to gain significant bargaining power in the workplace. Union power does not solely

originate from the use of resources or particular capabilities; it is co‐constructed through the

permanent interactions sustained between unions and the local management team, the latter

feeling constantly jeopardized by the looming threat of the strike that unions exert at all times.

In that view, union power is inherently relational and is largely shaped by the negotiations

taking place between unions and managers.

Despite this context that should theoretically favour union power, the public transport

company under study faces alarming organizational issues suggesting that unions are unable to

make use of the situation to act efficiently and protect workers' interests. Somewhat

surprisingly, highly powerful unions also turn out to be widely regarded within their

organization as highly ineffective. A second objective of the paper, then, is to explain this

contradiction by viewing union effectiveness as being inherently dependent upon relations

between various groups of actors (unions, top management, middle management, workers) that

frame and constraint collective action (Crozier & Friedberg, 1980). While unions and

management have traditionally been opposed to each other (e.g., Schmalz et al., 2018), the

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