Trade Unions For A Change Of Course In Europe

In the wake of the financial and economic crisis, the trade unions face unprecedented challenges. While the European powers that be are blatantly coordinating the advent of national and European austerity policies, entailing drastic consequences for workers and the weaker members of society, the trade unions are set to mobilize their forces. The authors describe and illustrate various facets of this new situation. What role is played by economic governance? Does co-determination still have a chance? Is belief in market forces already firmly entrenched or can ways still be found of strengthening social rights? Do the European umbrella organisations pay obeisance to the official European bodies or are they mobilizing to bring about a serious change of course, to find the road to an alternative Europe?

Trade unions in most of Europe are on the defensive: in recent decades they have lost membership, sometimes drastically; their collective bargaining power has declined, as has their influence on government; and in many countries, their public respect is much diminished. This book explores the challenges facing trade unions and their responses in ten west European countries: Britain, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Italy. Based on a substantial number of interviews with key union representatives and academic experts in each country, together with the collection of a large amount of union documentation and background material, the book gives an account of how trade unionism has evolved in each country, the main recent challenges that unions have faced, and their responses. The book engages with the debates of the past two decades on union modernization and revitalization, and more generally with theories of institutional change and the literature on varieties of capitalism. Some observers ask whether unions remain relevant socio-economic actors, but challenging times can stimulate new thinking, and hence provide new opportunities. This book aims to show why trade unions are (still) important subjects for scientific analysis: first, as a means of collective 'voice' allowing employees to challenge management control and bringing a measure of balance to the employment relationship; second, as a form of 'countervailing power' to the socio-economic dominance of capital; and third, their potential as a 'sword of justice' to defend the weak, vulnerable and disadvantaged, express a set of values in opposition to the dominant political economy, and offer aspirations for a different—and better—form of society.

This book examines the trade unions' strategic policies in seven European member states and at the European Union level, as well as their responses to the globalization of economic competition.

The Societies of Europe is an 8-title series of historical data handbooks and accompanying CD-ROM sets, on the development of Europe from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. The series is a product of the Mannheim Centre for Social research, a body dedicated to comparative research on Europe and one of the leading social research institutes in the world. It is a collection of datasets giving a clear and systematic study of long term developments in European society. The data is presented statistically and is clearly comparative. The Societies of Europe is the most comprehensive data series available on Western European social issues. Each book is accompanied by a CD-ROM containing data sets not included in the text enabling users to manipulate the data as wanted. Information is available in different programmes (Excel, SPSS and SAS) and in data structures for analysis, viewing and building time series. This comparative data handbook offers an empirical base to a long-term and comparative understanding of changes and variations in European union movements. It provides information on the context and history of union development, the changes in the structure of post-war unionism until today, the long-term trends in union membership and union density, and the shifts in the cross-sectional composition of union membership. This book and CD-ROM are the result of many years of research by the authors in collaboration with an international research team, and provides an original source for comparative and national studies or individual enquiries. The country and comparative tables offer cross-checked and often newly-calculated statistics on national union organizations and their membership series. The CD-ROM includes selected tables from the handbook and provides additional databases with organizational data and membership series of major national and European union organizations.

Trade unions in the European Union face an increasingly hostile environment, conditioned by growing globalization and structural changes in the European economies. This book considers the responses unions have been developing.

This book provides a detailed investigation and comparison of the trade unions of five EU member states: Austria, Britain, France, Germany and Sweden, and their positions on Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Several European-level trade union organisations are also examined. The focus of this project, however, is not limited to EMU as a case study. Rather, EMU is regarded as a vehicle to assess trade unions' options and possibilities to respond to global structural change in general and to participate in the formation of the future economic-political system of the EU in particular.Two principal hypotheses are investigated. Firstly, that a labour movement's position on EMU depends crucially on its length and degree of exposure to the competitive pressures of globalisation, and secondly, that those trade unions which lose influence within the domestic institutional set-up are most in favour of the establishment of an industrial relations system and social regulation at the European level to counter global pressures. By contrast, unions which continue to enjoy a strong position at the national level, are less likely to engage in European co-operation.

From the perspective of trade unions, European integration makes it more necessary than ever before to establish common political positions. At the same time, increasing heterogeneity between the member states makes the crafting of such positions more and more difficult. Can, under these circumstances, a joint political line among European trade unions emerge? To answer this question, the book sheds light on transnational trade union cooperation in the three most important policy fields: the debate around the Freedom of services, the discussion over a European minimum wage, and the efforts of international wage coordination. Drawing on the results of extensive field research based on a qualitative study among trade unions from Hungary, Poland, Sweden, and Germany, as well as representatives from the European level, this book points to a significant gap in European trade union politics between pretensions and reality. The findings provide a solid theoretical framework, suitable not only to explain current dynamics in the field of European trade unionism, but also promising for further research on the topic. With its focus on a contested political field, Trade Unions in the Course of European Integration contributes to practical and theoretical debates within European trade unionism. As an adequate understanding of European trade unionism in general and collective bargaining requires a twofold perspective on European integration and the role of trade unions in European labor relations, two fields of scholarly interest are being addressed. Moreover, with its focus on European trade unionism as an internationalist project of labor politics, the book will also appeal to those interested in the field of Global Labor Studies.