Do European trade unions foster social solidarity? Evidence from multilevel data in 18 countries

Abstract

Trade unions have been analysed quantitatively primarily in their role as vested interest organisations, attempting to quantify the excludable benefits they provide to members rather than examine their wider impact in an institutional context. Power resource theory acknowledges unions as social agents but assumes the willingness to oppose neoliberalism is constant, limited only by scarce power resources. Whilst true in general terms, this fails to explain trends of increasing labour market dualism in resource‐rich industrial relations regimes. This article examines social solidarity as a union power resource, measuring the impact of trade union membership on social attitudes of solidarity. Data were collected from the 2016 European Social Survey for 18 countries, grouped into five distinct industrial relations regimes. The findings suggest that, at European level, union membership still has a significant effect on all dimensions of social solidarity, but these relationships vary significantly across industrial relations regimes.

Solidarity at Work: Concepts, Levels and Challenges

“…Ibsen and Thelen (2017), for example, argue that Sweden and Denmark have taken quite different trajectories of solidarity over the last two decades because of the way in which Swedish trade unions have continued to commit to an idea of wage solidarity across the economy as a whole – including service sector and public sector employment – while Danish trade unions have turned away from the commitment to wage solidarity and instead concentrated on making their members employable in new firms by ‘pursuing expansive rights to education and training’ (2017: 413). Where moral categories of solidarity are strong, boundaries against outsider groups are likely to be high (Rosetti, 2018), exacerbating conflict, unless positive bridging measures are put in place. Danish social democrats have found it difficult to pursue a consistent line, in part because of fear of electoral losses to the growing popularity of anti-immigrant parties.…”

The effect of intra-workplace pay inequality on employee trust in managers: Assessing a multilevel moderated mediation effect model

“…Collective voice, historically presented as trade union representation and collective bargaining (Bingham, 2016;Freeman and Medoff, 1984), enables employees to influence the process of wage determination thereby affecting pay levels and their distribution (Charlwood and Forth, 2009;Heery, 2011). Next to reducing pay inequality (Western and Rosenfield, 2011), trade unions attempt to improve the fairness of pay procedures by supporting employee participation in pay determination, formalising reward procedures, establishing due mechanisms to resolve possible disputes and providing transparency of the pay process through monitoring, audits and reviews (Heery, 2000;Rosetti, 2019). These elements bear close resemblance to Leventhal's (1980) six criteria for procedural justice: consistency across time and person, suppression of biases, accuracy of information, correctability of decisions, representation in decision making and maintenance of ethical and moral standards.…”

Inequality between capital and labour and among wage-earners: the role of collective bargaining and trade unions

“…They do so in recognition of the fact that the well-being of insiders and of outsiders are interrelated and that employers use precarious workers to put pressure on insiders’ wages and conditions, as well as based on normative ideas about social solidarity and social justice (Keune, 2013; Keune and Pedaci, 2020). Indeed, workers join unions for instrumental reasons, but also because of normative concerns related to inequality and union members favour social solidarity and equality more than non-members (Checchi et al, 2010; Rosetti, 2019). These attitudes differ across groups of countries, with equality orientations being strongest in the Nordic and southern European countries, and weakest in the Anglophone countries (Rosetti, 2019).…”

“…Indeed, workers join unions for instrumental reasons, but also because of normative concerns related to inequality and union members favour social solidarity and equality more than non-members (Checchi et al, 2010; Rosetti, 2019). These attitudes differ across groups of countries, with equality orientations being strongest in the Nordic and southern European countries, and weakest in the Anglophone countries (Rosetti, 2019). Hence, not only the capacity to bargain for higher and more equal wages, discussed in previous sections, matters but also the inclination to do so effectively.…”