Post-communist state measures to thwart organized labor: The case of Romania

Abstract

This article supplements the literature on post-communist trade unions with an account of how state measures can affect union strength in post-communist Europe. The authors focus on the case of Romanian trade unions, which is exceptional in post-communist Europe in that it is possible to rule out lack of protest capacity as a cause for weakness of policy influence: Romanian unions have maintained a high protest capacity throughout the transition. However, this protest capacity has translated into influence over national economic policy and labor-relevant legislation only throughout the 1990s, and much less so in the 2000s and beyond. The authors examine the reasons for the trade unions’ diminishing influence over national policies and observe a refinement of government measures to render protest ineffective. Key measures include a reduction of the unionized labor force, especially in protest-prone sectors, the de-coupling of plant-level protests from national mobilizations, the granting of selective concessions dividing organized labor, and, more recently, efforts to employ legal changes and state agencies to apply pressure on union leaders.

Trade unions and austerity in Central and Eastern Europe

“…State authorities went a long way to ensure that key protest organizers faced the consequences of their actions. Trif (2013) and Varga and Freyberg-Inan (2014) report a series of actions taken against the trade union leaders involved in the protest, of which the following seem the most serious.…”

“…Furthermore, in Central and Eastern Europe, the collapse of living standards in the 1990s made the early retirement and unemployment benefit schemes set up by the government very attractive to workers and preferable to taking collective action against the government. Where governments resorted less to such schemes, for example in Romania, studies show that trade unions and workers were more inclined at least to challenge government policies (Bush, 2004; Varga and Freyberg-Inan, 2014). 1…”

“…Most importantly, the division between communist successors and ‘anti-communist’ unions tends to be replicated also in the political sphere, with the former at times supporting the post-communist Socialists, and the latter at times offering support to FIDESZ, the country’s right-wing ruling party. Romania is the only country in this sample that did not introduce policies containing or preventing employee protests as described by Greskovits (1998) or Vanhuysse (2006) throughout the 1990s, and maybe for this reason experienced a highly adversarial government-union relationship (Bush, 2004; Varga and Freyberg-Inan, 2014). The trade union scene is divided between a large successor organization and several other unions which often join forces and, in terms of membership, equal the successor union.…”

International actors and trade unions during postsocialism and after: the case of Romania

“…Furthermore, they highlight the lack of political support that the trade union agendas have had in successive Romanian governments. If the right-wing governments that took power between 1996 and 2000 and 2004 and 2012 were openly hostile to trade unions, centre-left governments ostensibly promoted labour's interests while advocating economic policies that contributed to the weakening of trade unions in the long term (Varga and Freyberg-Inan 2015). Notwithstanding such contributions, state-centred explanations overlook the fact that the Romanian state has always been a regional laggard in terms of its capacity to administer resources and implementing coherent policies.…”

Negotiating agency and structure: Trade union organizing strategies in a hostile environment

“…Without political support and in the absence of a strong national union movement, these protests remained without any impact. Indeed, the strengthening of Dacia’s union in the aftermath of the 2008 strike lies in stark contrast with the pronounced decline of Romania’s national union movement after the onset of the current crisis (Guga, 2014; Varga and Freyberg-Inan, 2014). Even though national union confederations threatened to organize large-scale protests against the legislative changes imposed by the government, concerted union action failed to materialize and the few protests that did take place were without consequence.…”