Frege och Kelly 2003
Frege och Kelly börjar sin artikel med att konstatera att mycket litteratur har ägnat sig åt att analysera hur politiska och ekonomiska faktorer kan förklara fackets nedgång, men att de så att säga vill gå ett steg längre i diskussionen och analysera: hur reagerar facket på svårigheterna och vilka strategier väljer man och hur kan dessa val förklaras? De har studerat fem länder: Storbritannien, USA, Tyskland, Italien och Spanien. Två är 'liberala marknadsekonomier' i Varieties of Capitalism-typologin, en är en 'koordinerad marknadsekonomi' och Italien och Spanien är "less reliably classified as 'Mediterranean economies'" (s 7). De fackliga strukturerna varierar mellan unitära och i Hymans bemärkelse marknadsinriktade konfederationer i Storbritannien och USA, konkurrerande och klassorienterade konfederationer i Italien och Spanien, och den 'samhällsorienterade' tyska fackföreningsrörelsen.
"What types of action might comprise union revitalization and how might they assist unions?" Frege och Kelly tar upp sex stycken strategier.
1. organisering
2. omstrukturering
3. koalitionsbyggande med andra sociala rörelser, "such as the anti-globalization or environmental movement"
4. partnerships med arbetsgivare
5. politiskt agerande
6. internationella länkar (s 9)
De sammanfattar sina viktigaste findings. I Storbritannien har det fackliga medlemskapet och politiska inflytandet ökat något efter "many years of decline and political exclusion". Detta har skett på grund av orsakad organiseringsaktivitet; även en ny arbetsrättslig lag år 1997 har underlättat. I USA har fackens organisering och politiska aktivism ökat och inflytandet har därmed ökat. Man har också använt sig av koalitioner med andra sociala rörelser, på både lokal och internationell nivå. I Tyskland har facket fokuserat på traditionella metoder - kollektivavtal och företagsråd - och Frege och Kelly menar att man tappat positioner. I Spanien har politiken stått i fokus, och facket har gjort överenskommelser med både höger- och vänsterregeringar. Försök att utöka kollektivavtalens betydelse har misslyckats pga arbetsgivarnas motstånd. I Italien har facket lyckats förnya sig ideologiskt och organisatoriskt, med ökat samarbete mellan konfederationer och "increasing rank-and-file support" (s 10).
Hur kan man då förklara skillnader i strategiska val? Frege och Kelly säger: "Why, for example, is the organizing approach dominant in the two Anglo-Saxon countries, but not in the other three countries?" (s 10) Förvånande nog, konstaterar de, så har föga forskning fokuserat på denna fråga om strategiska val.
"It is surprising that although Kochan, Katz and McKersie (1986) introduced the concept of 'strategic choice' to the industrial relations literature in the mid-1980s, there is hardly any research on the different strategic choices made by unions."Istället, säger de, har den mesta jämförande forskningen om fackföreningsrörelser varit av två typer. Den ena försöker förklara variationen i kvantitativa indikatorer som facklig anslutningsgrad eller strejkfrekvens. Den andra typologiserar facken, som t ex Maurice och Sellier (1979) som jämförde de franska fackens "karismatiska" och "känslomässiga" stil med de tyska fackens mer "byråkratiska" dito. Martin och Ross (1999) och Ebbighaus och Visser (2000) har relaterat fackföreningarnas typologier till arbetsmarknadsssystemen i stort. Gentemot dessa så säger Frege och Kelly att "despite the obvious analytical importance of 'institutions', we argue that explaining actors' strategies by their institutional context alone is too simplistic and deterministic". De lyfter också fram Hyman (1994) som betonat betydelsen av "facklig identitet", en faktor som riskerar att genom att vara svårdefinierbar bli tautologisk.
"In summary, our reading of the comparative literature on union strategic choices has produced three possible determining factors: institutional differences, identity differences, and differences in employer, political party or state strategies. Rather than treating these as alternative explanations, it seems more sensible to develop an encompassing framework which allows us to explore the interrelations between them. Moreover, we argue that it is not sufficient to explain variation between national union movements in terms of these three factors alone. We will show that unions' choices are also influenced by their internal structures and by framing processes. In other words, we argue that structural variables (though useful in providing a primary explaination of cross-country variation) are insufficient to explore the deeper dynamics of union revitalization." (s 12)De utvecklar en "modell" för fackförbunds strategiska val, som ser ut så här:
Baccaro Hamann Turner 2003
Facken försvagas överallt, och möter samma utmaningar.
"Unions are everywhere re-launching themselves as 'political subjects', as actors engaged not just in collective bargaining and workplace regulation, but also in the broader aggregation of political and social interests (Pizzorno, 1978)." (s 119)
En tydlig formulering av tanken att svagare institutionell position ger mer organiserande fack:
"Unions are institutionally embedded when their organizational fortunes are at least partially uncoupled from their labour market strength, thanks to institutional arrangements such as automatic extension clauses, representation in decision-making bodies, legal frameworks and public funding. Unions whose primary source of strength is in their membership base appear more likely to seek expanded external support by organizing and mobilizing the unorganized. Such organizing drives often differ from the conventional in that the focus is more on the community than on the enterprise. In addition, where traditional institutional channelse are blocked such unions often turn to coalition building with various social movements and citizenship groups at the local as well as national level. Thus American and British unions, with a weak institutional position, have promoted organizing and rank-and-file mobilization on a growing scale. /.../Empiriska findings: två olika strategiska vägar. En som fokuserar på "social partnership"; Italien och Tyskland är exempel på detta. Den andra är "social movement unionism", som USA är ett exempel på.
in Germany, Italy and Spain, unions rely to a large extent on institutional position." (s 120f)
"British unions on the whole /.../ appear less steadfast than the most active American unions in the pursuit of organizing. The return of the Labour Party to power has opened up another, more traditional channel of influence/.../" (s 123)
"The trajectory of the Spanish unions in the 1990s is in some respects similar to the Italian. As in Italy, the political context has been hospitable to labour inclusion/.../" (s 124)
"German unions today appear to be muddling through: no clear strategic orientation is visible." (s 124)
Baccaro Hamann och Turner hävdar att två av Frege och Kellys variabler är särskilt viktiga: (1) social och ekonomisk förändring, och (2) institutioner. "the first explains the generalized prominence of political strategies across very different contexts, while the second accounts for contrasting strategic emphases both in politics and in addition to politics across our five countries." (s 125)
Pernicka 2005
Susanne Pernicka från universitetet i Wien är en av de stora forskarna vad gäller facklig förnyelse. I sin artikel "The evolution of union politics for atypical employees" undersöker hon österikkiska facket GPA och tyska ver.di:s försök att organisera egenanställda (f-skattare) fackligt. Studien är en most-similar-country design (s 207); Österrike och Tyskland har liknande (korporatistiska) arbetsmarknadssystem och GPA och ver.di organiserar båda i den privata tjänstesektorn. Pernicka intervjuade sex stycken fackliga aktivister från de två facken, och arbetar dessutom själv som representant för egenanställda i GPA (!) (s 208). Hon är intresserad av två aspekter av fackets arbete med denna typ av anställda: "logic of membership" och "logic of influence", en typologi som hon hämtat från Schmitter och Streeck (1999).
Faktum är att Pernicka egentligen inte ger någon utförligare eller teoretisk diskussion av varför facken väljer vissa strategier snarare än andra, men hon ger dock en mycket intressant analys av utvecklingen av användningen av falska f-skattare i de två länderna. Hon konstaterar att "some Austrian and German employers utilize self-employment arrangements to avoid payroll taxes and social security contributions" (s 211), och beskriver också politiska svar på detta:
"The increase in the number of dependent self-employed persons outlined earlier has led to growing concerns among governments and trade unions about their legal status and social security coverage. In order to limit the trend towards a transformation of dependent standard employment into dependent self-employment, the German red-green coalition government introduced a general assessment procedure to distinguish between employees and (dependent) selfemployed workers in 1999. Hence, the German parliament passed the Act on the Advancement of Self-Employment (Gesetz zur Förderung der Selbständigkeit), which was primarily targeted at eliminating the status of dependent self-employed workers or at least to clearly differentiate between dependent self-employed and ‘true’ self-employed workers. Therefore, a set of five criteria was established to assess the employment relationship, with a person classified as an employee if any three of the five criteria were fulfilled: the person (1) does not employ other workers at wages above €325 per month; (2) depends strongly upon one employer; (3) is employed with tasks for which his/her employer or a comparable employer usually employs dependent workers; (4) does not act as an entrepreneur; and (5) prior to their job he/she carried out the same work as an employee." (s 215)Bara tre år efter 1999 års reform backade dock regeringen i frågan. Arbetslösheten bet sig kvar på en hög nivå, över 11 procent, och man såg egenföretagande som en lösning på arbetslöshetsproblemet. I Hartzreformerna ingick därför en reform för att göra det lättare och billigare att driva enpersonsföretag, så kallade Ich-AGs (s 216). Detta innebar att "the aforementioned criteria that provided a means of differentiating between true and dependent self-employment have become toothless, which might result in a further rise of dependent self-employment" (s 206f). DGB motsatte sig reformen men det hjälpte inte.
I Österrike genomfördes år 1997 en lag för att se till att egenanställda skulle omfattas av socialförsäkringssystemet. Facket har också velat att egenanställda skulle omfattas av a-kassan, men detta var inget för FPÖ-ÖVP-koalitionen under vilken relationen mellan regeringen och facket försämrades rejält (s 217).
I österrikiska konfederationen har egenanställda varit välkomna som medlemmar, formellt sett, sedan 1991 (s 219). Det första ramavtalet för egenanställda tecknades 1999; detta gällde journalister och sysselsatta i mediabranschen. GPA har sedan 2001 haft en arbetsgrupp för frågan. Verdi bildades som en sammanslagning av fem förbund år 2001 och av de fem var det bara ett (mediafacket) som tidigare hade välkomnat egenanställda som medlemmar. Verdi har tagit över detta engagemang.
"Verdi and its former unions as well as the GPA have focused their activities for dependent self-employed members primarily on the provision of selective goods, such as legal advice and representation before labour courts, further education programmes and a variety of insurance products." (s 221)Att organisera och involvera denna grupp är inte enkelt, säger Pernicka, för det finns verkligen olika intressen mellan egenanställda och "vanliga" anställda": "My own research as well as studies conducted by other authors revealed that the heterogeneity of interests of self-employed workers in relation to their own group and also to their white-collar colleagues is significant. Verdi and the GPA have responded to this problem by restructuring their organizations and amending their constitutions to meet this challenge." (s 224)
Hon relaterar dock inte organiseringen av egenanställda till 'Varieties of Capitalism' eller liknande.
Marino och Roosblad 2008
Marino och Roosblad (2008, s 628): "As underlined by Frege and Kelly (2003), industrial relations scholars often consider strategic union choices as not only influenced but even determined by exogenous factors (Clegg 1976; Poole 1986; Geary 1981)." Här verkar de kritiska till determinismen. Men sen så citerar de belägg för att determinismen faktiskt fungerar:
Visser, addressing the Dutch case, affirms:Marino och Roosblad drar slutsatsen (s 629):
by enhancing the institutional security of unions and their leaders, and by establishing a quasi-monopoly of union representation corporatism intentionally diminishes the need for unions to prove their strength through mobilization and lowers the political and organization incentives for union recruitment. (Visser 1986; Ebbinghaus and Visser 1999: 145)This belief is confirmed by comparative research on union revitalisation strategies in
the US, the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain during 2000-2004. According to the study,
unions that adopt the organising strategy are characterised by poor institutional
embeddedness and weak influence on policy-making (Frege and Kelly 2003). These
unions, furthermore, expend more effort in representing unrepresented workers and,
consequently, immigrants.
Unions have moved toward organizing where their institutional position is weak, but where their institutional position is stronger or the political opportunity structure more open, unions have focused on building social partnership. (Baccaro et al. 2003: 128)That is,
if unions find or build adequate political and institutional supports, they have less incentive to mobilize the membership, organize the unorganized, build coalitions with other groups, or give support to grass-roots initiatives. (Baccaro et al. 2003: 121)Union strategies depend on the available institutional resources, including access to the policy-making sphere.
"As a consequence we can hypothesise that corporatist unions are likely to expend less effort on recruiting minority workers than more antagonistic unions. Stable recognition by the other social partners and strong institutional embeddedness, in fact, would make recruiting minority workers less necessary: corporatist unions do not need rank-and-file mobilisation to affirm their intervention in the policy-making arena. In contrast, unions with a weak institutional position within an industrial relations system characterised byDe använder också tre andra typer av oberoende variabler. Den första är konjunkurläget, den andra är facklig struktur och den tredje är facklig ideologi.
a closed political opportunity structure – antagonistic systems, such as the Mediterranean one – would tend towards more inclusive policies and put more effort into organising, recruiting and integrating immigrant workers in workplaces."
Vandaele och Leschke 2010
Vandaele och Leschke kollar på tre typer av otypiska anställningar: deltidare, visstidare, och f-skattare. De jämför den facklig-strategiska utvecklingen gentemot dessa grupper i tre länder: Tyskland och Nederländerna som har "society-oriented" fackföreningsrörelser i Hymans (2001) typologi, och Storbritannien som har "market-oriented". De funderar på om de otypiskt anställda är skeptiska till facket och att det skulle förklara deras låga anslutningsgrad:
"workers’ attitudes seem not to explain the different rates of unionisation for standard and non-standard workers (cf. Waddington and Whitson 1997: 536). Survey research on Spain, where the labour market segmentation between temporary and permanent employment is exceptionally strong, shows that the attitudes of temporary workers towards trade unions are even slightly more positive than those of workers with permanent contracts (Fernández Macías 2003: 215). What is more, temporary workers and parttimers in Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden are as willing to remain members as are ‘traditional’ workers, which indicates that employment status and contract type have no influence on union turnover intention (Goslinga and Sverke 2003). Actual exit-behaviour of non-standard workers, especially of temporary workers, is probably more frequently triggered by a change of job or company or by a change of status (e.g. to unemployment) than by dissatisfaction or negative experiences with the union. In fact, union members’ experiences of job insecurity – defined as a subjectively perceived likelihood of involuntary job loss – in Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands seem to be associated with a less favourable attitude towards unions and a higher intention to resign membership, although this is not the case in Sweden (De Witte et al. 2008).Slutsatsen blir att "the under-representation of non-standard workers in union membership records probably reflects, in the main, structural constraints or barriers faced by unions in organising these workers" (s 17)
All in all, the positive attitudes of non-standard workers towards trade unions suggest that there is a substantial unsatisfied demand for union membership and thus potential for membership growth." (s 17)
Sedan slutet av 1990-talet har litteraturen fokuserat på fackliga skiften mellan en passiv till en aktiv organiseringsmodell.
"The literature, reflecting an old debate within the trade union movement, distinguishes between two simplified – and sometimes understood as manichistic – models with regard to the depth of organising: the ‘servicing model’ vs. the ‘organising model’ (Dølvik and Waddington 2004: 22-24). Due to conceptual problems, these models have been neither theoretically grounded nor empirically falsified (Frege 2000: 276). Instead, they tend to be based on union practice and to serve as Ideal-types." (s 18)De är alltså kritiska till typologin O-modell vs S-modell, men menar samtidigt att det är intressant att undersöka empiriskt ifall det stämmer som det ofta sägs att O-modellen sprider sig utanför sin ursprungliga, anglosaxiska kontext. De sammanfattar litteraturen så här:
"As a reaction against the ‘servicing model’, the ‘organising model’, the second approach, originated in the USA and Australia (for a critical account, see Daniels 2009: 270-272; Hurd 2006; de Turberville 2004). The (well-known) ‘Justice for Janitors’ campaign in Los Angeles, a campaign targeted at lowwage service sector workers very often working in forms of non-standard employment and conducted by the American Service Employees International Union, has been particularly influential for the awareness of the ‘organising model’ among unions in the USA (Woodruff 2007; Erickson et al. 2004; Waldinger et al. 1998). The ‘organising model’ advocates a shift away from providing services to existing members to the recruitment, participation and empowerment of new members (Bronfenbrenner et al. 1998). The model has adopted several approaches and tactics towards recruitment campaigns and encouragement of union activity among members (see Waddington and Kerr 2009: 28 for examples and references). Over the years the ‘organising model’ has become rather diluted: it ‘has transmuted into a broad hook on which to hang many ideas and practices’ (Gall 2009b: 5). Nevertheless it is increasingly claimed that trade unions on the European continent could perhaps learn some lessons from the Anglo-Saxon unions’ crisis-driven innovations on membership recruitment, especially from its emphasis on grassroots mobilisation (Turner 2007)."Deras empiriska slutstatser om Tyskland och Nederländerna blir:
"At least until the beginning of the twenty-first century the ‘organising model’ was far from central to the Dutch and German unions’ efforts at revitalisation. In the first instance, unions in Germany and the Netherlands tried to curb membership losses and to increase their organisational power and financial viability by way of mergers. Nevertheless, some recent union initiatives geared to precarious workers (and thus a broader group than just non-standard workers) have applied Anglo-Saxon organising techniques, although in both countries the traditional ‘servicing model’ remains prominent. From a structural perspective it is possible to identify, in both countries, at least two main institutional changes that provide incentives for reviving recruitment efforts. First of all, even though the increased union competition is rather ‘symbolic’ in the Dutch case, recent debates have nonetheless called the representativeness of the ‘traditional’ unions into question. Secondly, the weakening of the favourable institutional position of the ‘traditional’ unions has also given momentum for actively organising workers. These two factors accord with the emphasis in the literature on the deteriorating institutional environment as an explanation for the trade unions’ need to step up their recruitment efforts. In other words, while recruitment initiatives are thus predominantly explained by developments within the structural features of the industrial relations system itself, the same literature is – ironically – stressing the possibilities of strategic choice for unions." (s 31)Och:
"Although recruitment initiatives inspired by the ‘organising model’ are encouraged at the local and regional level, it remains to be seen whether German unions are today ‘desperate enough’ (Turner 2003:40) to implement a strategy that incorporates the ‘organising model’ on a national level." (s 31)Och, om vad för kommande forskning som behövs:
"While the ‘organising model’ increasingly forms the subject of study, the specific shortages and advantages of the ‘service model’ remains rather underexposed. Finally, in order to better comprehend the failure and success of the ‘organising model’ and the extent to which it can be transferred in a fruitful way to other countries, more comparative research is likely to be needed, as well as a shift in trade union research from a national towards a more trans-national approach." (s 32)Referenser
Baccaro L, Hamann K and Turner L (2003) The politics of labour movement revitalisation: the need for a revitalized perspective. European Journal of Industrial Relations 9(1): 119-133
Frege CM and Kelly J (2003) Union revitalization strategies in comparative perspective. European Journal of Industrial Relations 9(1): 7-24
Pernicka S (2005) The evolution of union politics for atypical employees: A comparison between German and Austrian trade unions in the private service sector. Economic and Industrial Democracy 26(2): 205-228
Marino S and Roosblad J (2008) Migration and trade unions: A comparison between Dutch and Italian trade union actions and strategies. Transfer 14(4): 625-638
Vandaele K and Leschke J (2010) Following the ‘organising model’ of British unions? Organising non-standard workers in Germany and the Netherlands. ETUI Working Paper 2010:2. Brussels: European Trade Union Institute
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