Agency Workers As Threatening Moles Undermining Unionism Or Welcome Agents of Change in Irish and Norwegian Unions?
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Creative destructor / destructive creator: agency workers as threatening moles undermining unionism or welcome agents of change in Irish and Norwegian unions? Ann Cecilie Bergene, Arbeidsforskningsinstituttet/Work Research Institute, Oslo Draft, please do not cite Introduction According to Müller-Jentsch (ref. Hyman 1992) unions faced three crises during the 1980s, one of interest aggregation, one of employee loyalty and one of representativeness. Although it can be argued that labour, as a political discourse as well as a movement, has been pushed on the defensive after the crisis of Fordism, unions are still important actors in the regulation of the labour markets. Unions may thus be regarded as a formative institutional presence, along with employers, their associations, and governments. The Fordist model of socio-economic development rested on the articulation of productivity and wage increases, which meant that national-level negotiations between unions, employers’ associations and government were a key regulatory mechanism. As such a regulatory mechanism, unions were also pivotal in the generalisation of the so-called standard employment relationship (SER), and also the construction of welfare states. This legacy may act both as token of relevance and strength on the one hand, and, as we shall see in this paper, as an exclusionary practice on the other. Union policies and strategies are not formulated in a vacuum, rather they must be analysed in relation to the socio-political context, and maybe most importantly in relation to the policies and strategies of the employers’ associations and the state. This is particularly important when drawing international comparisons, as this paper will do through analysing union strategies toward temporary agency work in Norway and Ireland. The effect of precarious work in general on trade unionism is often seen as unequivocally destructive, and temporary agency work in particular is held partly responsible for the recent decline in trade union membership (Croucher and Brewster 1998). Among others, the presence of this new group of workers is regarded as undermining traditional forms of bargaining power (Doellgast et al. 2009). Furthermore, particularly young workers in precarious jobs can present major difficulties for unions, because their jobs are often found in highly competitive labour markets with high labour turnover and union opposition (Simms and Dean, 2014). As argued by Kalleberg (2009), the emergence of precarious work warrants new strategies on the part of unions, lest their role be called into question. In particular, union strategies relying on sectoral organisation and premised on the SER, i.e. full-time permanent employment, might well prove insufficient in face of recent trends pointing towards increased labour market flexibility. Standing (2011:1) argues that unions have responded to precarious work with an attempt to resurrect so-called “labourism”, or what Barchiesi (2011) refers to as “working class melancholy”. Both are conservative reflexes and the latter is defined as a struggle for “more stable jobs with long- term employment security and the benefit trappings that went with that”. However, according to Standing (2011), young demonstrators have shown no desire for returning to this model. Kalleberg (2009) similarly urges unions to become more aware of and appreciate new models of organising and mobilising workers, which could be more effective in representing precarious workers. This also forms an important background for this paper, and the choice of cases in this study. While unions in 1 Ireland have actively sought revitalisation and pursued organising strategies, Norwegian unions have not and still rely on the traditional “servicing model”. The paper rests on research conducted as part of a four-year project financed by the Research Council of Norway entitled “The impact of temporary work agencies on the politics of work”. As part of the project we have conducted qualitative interviews with union officials and shops stewards in all three countries, and partaken as observers in public debates on precarious jobs, temporary work agencies and the European directive on temporary work agencies. The following analysis and discussion will seek to elicit answers to the following research questions: • What structural differences across countries influence union strategies and union effectiveness at protecting and representing agency workers? • What are the internal and external facilitators and inhibitors of successful union strategies? • To what extent is the insider-outsider model reflected in union policies? Theoretical framework Gumbrell-McCormick (2011) shares the view that ’atypical’ and precarious employment, including temporary agency work, constitutes a major challenge to unions. Not only are ’atypical’ and precarious workers growing in numbers, and arguably increasingly becoming ’typical’, the understanding is that they are ”painfully difficult to unionize, if indeed unions have even made the attempt” (Hyman 2002:13). This is the point of departure for this paper. According to Gumbrell-McCormick (2011:293), unions have made greater progress in addressing the concerns of atypical and precarious workers than really organising them, arguing that “they will have to make substantial changes to their structures, thinking and way of operating in order to be fully able to respond to the challenge of this growing form of work”. When drawing comparisons, an important perspective in this regard is the institutional framework employed by Bengtsson (2013). This realisation necessitates an acknowledgement of how industrial relations are formed in specific historical and spatial contexts and that union strategies are not formulated in a vacuum. Unions enter into relations and conduct actions that define what they are (Scheuer 1986). External relations to employers and governments are defining through constituting unions as counterparts with certain expectations and obligations as such. A strong focus on building institutional power will entail nourishing such external relations in an effort to gain institutional recognition (Offe og Wiesenthal 1980, Scheuer 1986, Bergene 2010). What Dølvik (1997) terms ”logic of influence” means that unions will strive to have “as many as possible of its bargaining positions […] institutionalized and sanctioned by legal statutes”, while such positions were formerly secured by the members’ willingness to act (Offe & Wiesenthal 1980:107). This means that unions may develop into bureaucratized and professionalized organisations more or less independent of the will and activity of the members, implying what Offe and Wiesental (1980) term “juridification” of industrial relations. Such juridification entails that the unions themselves define the interests of those they represent in a process of legally constituted interest intermediation, whereby a conflict based on organization is gradually giving way to a conflict based on legal entitlements to participation in tripartite bodies. For unions, this means “the dissociation of representation and struggle”, which has profound consequences for internal union democracy, to which we shall return below. However, it is equally important to bear in mind that unions are not sole products of their external environment either, an understanding that would be overtly deterministic. Unions may, in other words, conduct unilateral actions, independently the actions and decisions of external counterparts 2 (Scheuer 1986), such as industrial action. Such unilateral actions will be defining in another sense, through building the image and confidence of the union as an organisation and constituting it as an independent agent. In other words, while there are several external factors that influence the strength and effectiveness of union strategies, among them conditions in the labour market, the political environment, governmental policies, the state of the economy, technological development and the strategies of employers (Clark 2009). Common to all of them is that they are outside the direct purview of unions, and unions rely on their institutional power if they are to effectively change these conditions. There is, according to Clark (2009), one factor that also to a large extent influences the strength and effectiveness of union strategies which stands out; the union-related behaviour and participation of members. In other words, the strength and effectiveness of union strategies also rely on building organisational power, over which unions themselves have substantial influence. Thus, Clark (2009:ix) argues that strategies for building stronger and more viable unions depend on “an increasingly active, involved, informed, and engaged union membership”. In an effort to theorise the strengthening of organisational power, Clark (2009) emphasises two key factors influencing member behaviour: the personal characteristics of members and the union environment. Chief among the personal characteristics for union participation is attitudes towards unions, while the union culture can be more or less bent on encouraging member participation (Clark 2009). Hence, the attitudes towards and understanding of unions among members will influence the extent to which they would want to get actively involved. However, as recognised by Offe and Wiesenthal (1980) building institutional and organisational power might come into conflict, as they rely on two separate logics of collective action. Building organisational power depends