Unions vs. governments

Happy May Day, everyone. Workers around the world are taking to the streets today, particularly in crisis-hit Europe where unions in Greece, Spain, Italy are holding large rallies against government austerity policies. 

While union membership has declined in Europe over the last few decades, they’re still a major political factor in several countries. This may be partially because they have increasingly focused their actions on governments, taking political rather than purely economic stances.

A recent analysis (ungated) by political scientists John Kelly, Kerstin Hamann, and Alison Johnston for the journal Comparative Political Studies looked into this trend:

Industrial or economic strikes have overall declined in Western Europe since about 1980 (van der Velden, Dribbusch, Lyddon, and Vandaele 2007). During the same time period, however, the number of general strikes in the EU-15 and Norway increased, totaling 72 general strikes and an additional 12 threats to stage a general strike.2 General strikes were more frequent between 2000 and 2006 compared to the decade before, which was, in turn, higher than the number of general strikes during the 1980s. General strikes were staged in 10 of the EU-15 countries, with an additional strike in Norway; no strikes took place in Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Sweden, and the UK. Although Greece was responsible for 34 of these strike and strike threats, the upward trend still holds when the Greek case is excluded, with general strike frequency particularly prominent in Southern Europe (Greece, France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal), Belgium, and France. General strikes were also present in countries that have for many years recorded some of the lowest levels of industrial conflict in Western Europe, particularly Austria, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.

The issues that have motivated unions to organize or threaten to call general strikes against governments are varied and comprise national wage policy, including basic (minimum) rates, overtime, and holiday pay (24 strikes); labor market reform, including bargaining structures, legal regulation of dismissals and redundancies and non-wage issues such as work time (23 strikes); welfare issues, including sickness and unemployment benefits (22 strikes); economic policy including privatization efforts (20 strikes); and pensions (16 strikes).3

At the same time as unions have increasingly resorted to general strikes to protest government policies, they have also maintained continued success in influencing policy reforms, indicated by concessions made by governments. This is surprising given two trends in the political economy of many West European countries: a decline in union membership and density, and a reduction in union bargaining power as evidenced in the falling share of wages in national income (Glyn 2006). Together, these simultaneous trends suggest that the ability of unions to influence government policies through general strikes would, over time, become more difficult when, in reality, unions appear to have enjoyed continuing success in affecting government policies through general strikes.

The authors also find, interestingly enough, that strikes have been most successful in winning concessions from centrist or Christian Democrat governments rather than social democrats or conservatives. 

In general, their results suggest that union power has "declined in relation to employers" but that "the same might not be true of union-government relations."