Volume 67, Issue 4 - Special Issue: Trade Unions and Social Policy in the Process of European Integration

This special issue brings together innovative theoretical perspectives and timely empirical research on trade unions’ impact on the formation and implementation of social policy across Europe and on the European level. The starting point of this editorial and the baseline for the articles included in the issue is the assumption that trade unions remain an important factor in creating and maintaining social policies in the course of European integration. However, the integration process has fundamentally transformed the power constellation between state, capital and labour that once facilitated the post-war establishment of national welfare states in Europe. Since this new constellation impedes trade unions on both the national and transnational level, the emergence of a ‘Social Europe’ remains an unfulfilled promise. In this situation, our editorial focuses on the national impact on European social policy and the European impact on national social policy. This special issue then contributes to the literature in three relevant areas. International comparisons improve our understanding of national policy dynamics and help us in making sense of the institutional heterogeneity within the EU-27. Such comparisons can reach their theoretical potential when applied in explaining institutional dynamics within the multi-level political system of the EU. Last but not least, analyses in the field aim at identifying transnational effects stemming from mutual observation or bilateral initiatives, such as wage coordination or transnational organisations.

After some promise in the 1990s, European unions have grown increasingly disillusioned with regard to the results of EU social policy and EU social dialogue. The paper analyses the extent and reasons of this disillusion by looking at the impact on social dialogue of the Active Inclusion Recommendation launched by the European Commission at the outset of the economic crisis in 2008. The Recommendation led to a tripartite framework agreement at the EU level in 2010 (the only such agreement in a decade), which was then to be implemented at national and regional levels. With a multilevel governance approach, the paper looks at the extent to which social dialogue on Active Inclusion at the EU level, in six EU countries (France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the UK) and six regions (Rhône-Alpes, Lombardy, Lower Silesia, Catalonia, West Sweden and Greater Manchester) within those countries was somehow revitalised. The analysis, looking at both top-down and bottom-up processes and based on documentary analysis and interviews, shows that the initiative displays ambiguities similar to those of typical composite EU principles, such as famously the case of ‘flexicurity’. The multilevel governance of the EU, including the interaction between ‘soft’ employment policies and evolving ‘hard’ Eurogovernance tools, and with poor horizontal and vertical coordination, resulted in multiple distortions of the principle and, over time, to frustration. Unions’ engagement varies by level, country and region, reflecting both traditional national approaches and the local perception of ‘active inclusion’ as an opportunity. Although trade unions were more welcoming of ‘active inclusion’ than they had been for flexicurity, similar related threats and opportunities led to modest achievements and a gradual fading of the idea at the European and national levels, with some more opportunities however at the regional level. The paper concludes that, if trade unions want to engage with the idea of a European Social Model and with Eurogovernance, they could develop stronger networks among regional organisations.

Statutory bargaining extensions of collective agreements are an effective instrument to stabilise multi-employer bargaining. For unions, this means tensions between the logic of influence and membership. On the one hand, the extension constitutes a central institutional power resource. On the other hand, it might impede collective action if workers are covered without contributing. This article analyses unions’ preferences for extensions in Germany, the Netherlands and Finland, three countries that differ in union power and the trajectories of their bargaining institutions. The article has two findings. First, unions value extensions as a power resource because they prevent wage dumping. Second, union-supporting institutions counteract free-riding. Given new legislative efforts at the EU level, statutory extensions could become more important in the future.

The article examines how the Austrian trade union movement has responded to increased cross-border mobility in the context of labour market opening in 2011. Instead of opting for restrictions, an unrealistic policy in any case, the main emphasis now is on the enforcement of labour standards. Unions pursued this issue primarily through the Austrian social partnership, which fostered a comprehensive re-regulatory response. However, under the radar of inclusive bargaining institutions, incidents of non-compliance remain a challenge, especially involving cross-border subcontracting. Thus, a nationally-bounded enforcement strategy reaches its limits in transnational labour markets. This is increasingly acknowledged by unions who are complementing their partnership approach with more emphasis on transnational cooperation and initiatives that are geared towards the inclusion of mobile workers.

The article discusses social policy with regard to the multiscalar competitive architecture of Europeanisation. The basic thesis is that the foundational logic of contemporary Europeanisation must be understood as a logic of economic integration via multiscalar socio-political fragmentation. For such an analysis, a critical political economy of Europeanisation is necessary, more precisely a labour-oriented European political economy of scale. I argue that existing regime-competition debates need to be broadened in two ways: First, social and economic geography, especially the concepts of scale, rescaling and glocalisation should be included. Such an expansion enables grasping that socio-political fragmentation not only encompasses national welfare systems, but cuts through them as well. Second, labour and production processes have to be brought back into the frame of competitive Europeanisation, to bring the extent of the Europeanisation social crisis into view.