The effects of union mergers and internal restructuring: a bottom‐up perspective by Danish shop stewards

• Published date: 01 July 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12227
• Date: 01 July 2018

The effects of union mergers and internal

restructuring: a bottom-up perspective by

Danish shop stewards

Steen E. Navrbjerg and Trine P. Larsen

ABSTRACT

This article explores how recent union mergers and restructuring affect union’s service

provision, interest representation and perceived union influence. We find that Danish

shop stewards are just as satisfied with their union’s service provision and interest

representation but report of greater influence on federal and local branch union

politics in 2010 compared to 1998.

1 INTRODUCTION

Trade unions face various challenges worldwide in terms of changing power relations,

declining union densities, weakening of existing forms of union identities and the

emergence of new actors on the collective bargaining scene (Murray, 2017). Unions

have responded differently to these challenges depending on the national setting

and power resources (Frege and Kelly, 2003). Denmark is no exception, and Danish

trade unions have developed various strategies to tackle the aforementioned chal-

lenges. Their revitalisation strategies involve among others union mergers and inter-

nal restructuring to strengthen their power vis-á-vis the political system and the

employers’associations—and in some instances also to seize power from other unions

(Due and Madsen, 2005). However, a key question remains as to how union mergers

and internal restructuring have been perceived at the shop floor. It is especially impor-

tant as shop stewards are the main representative for unions vis-á-vis rank and file

members. Shop stewards not only represent the voice of unions and their members

at company level but also act as the link between unions and individual workplaces

as well as recruitment agents for the unions. They are the backbone of the Danish

trade union movement.

This article examines how union mergers and internal restructuring affect service

levels as well as interest representation and shop steward’s perceived possibilities to

influence union policies beyond the workplace. In doing so, we analyse the relations

between shop stewards and their unions and examine if and how the relations have

changed between 1998 and 2010. The main focus is Danish shop stewards’experi-

ences of the unions’service levels, their perceived possibilities for influencing union

policies beyond the work place as well as the unions’ability to ensure interest

❒Steen E. Navrbjerg and Trine P. Larsen, Department of Sociology, FAOS—Employment Relations

Research Centre, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Correspondence should be

addressed to: Steen Navrbjerg, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, FAOS—Employment

Relations Research Centre, University of Copenhagen. E-mail: sen@faos.dk

Industrial Relations Journal 49:4, 370–397

ISSN 0019-8692

© 2018 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

representation by representing the specific interests of distinct occupational groups

during distinct stages in the process of union mergers and restructuring. We draw

on cross-sectional surveys with shop stewards under the Danish Confederation of

Trade Unions (LO), conducted in 1998 and 2010, respectively. Our findings reflect

the main debates within the literature and indicate that the union merger and

restructuring process is a double-edged sword; Danish shop stewards appear as satis-

fied with their union’s service provision anno 2010 as in 1998 and thus echo the pos-

itive changes for unions as argued by Frege and Kelly (2003). However, our analysis

also reveals variations across the sampled shop stewards, indicating in line with other

research that union merger and restructuring in some instances entail lower service

levels, less influence on union decisions and weakening of interest representation.

The next section briefly reviews literature on union mergers in relation to union

revitalisation and renewal, before presenting the used methods and data set. We then

outline the main features of the Danish IR-system and recent union mergers under

LO, before examining the effects of union mergers and restructuring by comparing

pre-service and post-service provision, interest representation and shop steward’s pos-

sibilities for influencing union policies beyond workplace level in Denmark.

2 TRADE UNION MERGERS—A REVITALISATION AND RENEWAL

STRATEGY?

Trade union mergers and restructuringhave been subject to extensive research and are

often associated with union revitalisation and renewal. Union mergers tend to be

depicted as a defensive strategy to address and possibly reverse shrinking union densi-

ties, financial difficulties, weakening bargaining power, diminishing political influence

and difficulties in maintaining services to members (Undy, 2008; Frege and Kelly,

2003; Bednarek et al., 2012; Waddington et al., 2005). These studies often explore

and map how and why unions merge, restructure and downsize (Chaison, 2004) and

point to different forms of union mergers (Waddington, 1995; Chaison, 2004), types

of reasoning (Gumbrell-McGormick and Hyman, 2013; Moody, 2009) along with

the pros and cons associated with union mergers and restructuring (Sverke et al.,

2004; Waddington, 2005: 101). In this context, union mergers are typically clustered

around two processes: (i) amalgamation—‘in which two or more unions act as equal

partners and join forces to form a new trade union’(Waddington, 2006); and (ii)

absorption (Waddington, 1995: 9), acquisition (Chaison, 2004), transfer (Undy, 2008)

or take-over (Gumbrell-McGormick and Hyman, 2013)—different terms used to

describe a similar merging process,where a smaller union is absorbed by a larger union

(Waddington, 2006). In thisarticle, we consider all forms of amalgamation, absorption,

acquisition, take-oversor transfers as forms of union mergers, even if they differ in their

forms. Regarding internal restructuring, we define this as an internal reorganisation

process, where unions reduce the number of local branches well-knowing that also

other forms of internal restructuring exist such as financial cut-backs, staff changes

and managerial reforms (Gumbrell-McGormick and Hyman, 2013).

Less researched is the impact of union mergers and restructuring in terms of how

union members and their representatives perceive service levels, interest representa-

tion and possibilities for influencing union politics before and after a union merger

or restructuring (Waddington, 2006; Chaison, 2004: 101). In fact, little is known

about how union mergers and/or restructuring affect the relations between the

unions, their members and shop stewards (Behrens and Pekarek, 2012). However,

371The effects of Union mergers and Internal Restructuring

© 2018 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd