Re: Strikes in Western Europe

[kls@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Hinrich Kuhls)]

Strikes in Western Europe: A few pieces of background information on class
organization and class action.


The following facts could be of interest to this international forum.  I
think they provide some items of background information on recent strike
movements - and on those which are approaching.

Hinrich Kuhls

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Class organization and class action

[Source: Goeran Therborn: European Modernity and Beyond. The Trajectory of
European Societies 1945-2000. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage
Publications 1995, Chapter 15: Civil Societies and Collective Action, pp.
308-310]

"Besides by the variable of equality-dependence, the rate of association is
also affected by the attractiveness of collective action in relation to
individual action. Others things being equal, the anciently
institutionialized European industrial class soicieties have furthered
collective action over and above the flux of the New Worlds. The
distinctively European pattern of class organizsation is apparent in the
relative success of European parties of labour, which have been in national
government office in all Eruopean countries and which have headed a
government everywhere in Europe except Ireland, in contrast to never having
done so in the USA and Canada and only once and for less than a year in
Japan until most recently (1994) when a second spell of a fragile
premiership opened.

Trade unions may be organizations of 'trades', occupations, or professions,
as well as of class. On the whole, however, the rate of unionization is a
good modern indicator of class organization. [...]

The range of union density in Western Europe - from an overall rate in 1988
of 85% in Sweden to 12% in France - means that all-half-continental figures
make only limited sense. However, among the most developed countries, the
high unionization of Western Europe does stand out. The average among the
four big countries may take on a particular meaning because of the French
outlier. The three others range from 33.8% in Germany to 41.5% in the UK via
Italy's 39.6%.

It might be surmised, however, that the averaged big four situation is a
relatively sensible pointer to the trade union situation in the EC,
particular since comparable data are not available for Greece, Portugal and
Spain, although the latter clearly fall in below Germany, with Spain in the
vicinity of France. The Belgian and the Irish rate of union organization are
the highest in the EC, at 53.0% and 52.4%, respectively. The Dutch unions,
on the other hand, appear to have been the biggest loser (probably after the
Iberain ones, however) since 1975. in 1988 they organized 25% of all Dutch
workers and exmployees in employment, down 13 percentage points. (The French
are estimated to have lost 11 percentage points.)

The Nordic countries set themselves off from all the rest, a fact again
underlined by their post-1975 growth - a trend non-dramatically broken by
the end of the 1980s, however - and by their firm grip of manufacturing
employment, without the help of any closed chop deals.

Sectorally, the importance of the public sector stands out, by which the
high rates in transport and communications are likely to be largely
explained. By contrast, the generally low union density in the trade sector
(which includes also restaurants and hotels) indicates the significant
difference between a service society with overwhelmingly private services
and one with a large public service sector.

The World Values Survey 1990-91 also asked questions about trade union
membership. Instead of trying to adapt them to the trade union studies
problematic of how large a proportion of the recruitment target of trade
unions are organized, i.e. the rate of unionization, we shall here use them
as an indicator of the relative weight of unions in society as a whole [see
table below]. The margins of error at sample studies should be kept in mind,
as well as the urban skewing of the Third World samples.

=============================

The weight of unions in the world's societies, 1990-1991
[percentage of the adult population belonging to a trade union]

-------------------------------------
Western Germanic Europe [a]     26
Western Latin Europe [b]         4
Eastern Europe [c]              48
North America                   10
Latin America [d]                4
Nigeria                         14
Japan and South Korea            7
China                            2
-------------------------------------

Notes:
a: Austria, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Finland, W. Germany, Ireland,
Netherlands, Norway, Sweden.
b: France, Italy, Portugal, Spain.
c: Bulgaria, Estonia, E. Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia.
d: Brazil, Chile, Mexico.

==============================

The Communist pattern of proletarianization-cum-unionization was still
characteristic of Eastern Europe in 1990-1, although the Bulgarian datum of
20% was already indicating the direction of change. Russian or East German
figures were similar to Swedish at, 62, 56, 59% respectively.

Differences of organization similar to those of workers pertain also to the
other side of class action, to that of employers. Strong, nationally
centralized and state-autonomous employers' organizations have developed
only in the Nordic countries. Important but decentralized organizations have
been established in West Germany and Switzerland, whereas the central
employers' associations of Austria, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands, and
the weaker French one, have risen as imbrications of industrial associations
with structrues and concerns of the state. Among American employers in
particular and among Anglo-Saxon employers generally individual action has
been dominant. Japanese employers are nationally organized, but employers'
actions are not normally collective.

The alternative patterns of protest and association tends to divide Western
Europe again between North and South. Apart from structural differentiation,
such as social egalitarianism and rural resources of collective
communication and action in the North, there is probably also an important
aspect of cultural learning involved. Early modern French history taught
later generations of French social activists the efficacy of crowd protest
in bringing about social change. That was a lesson of 1789, 1791, 1830,
1848, and 1871. Even though setbacks often followed, brief, militant crowd
action in the capital, and locally als in provcincial cities, was very powerful.

The dramatic nineteenth- and early twentieth-century history of Italy, Spain
and Portugal, under significant French impact and inspiration, tended
towards similar conclusions. The Central and Northern European experiences -
most clearly the defeats or relative insignificance of 1848, but also the
petering out of British Chartism -, on the other hand, tended in the
opposite direction. Immediate mass action was ineffective at best, and very
costly at worst. Instead, long-term collective action by association held
much more promise. [....]"















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