Strikes, Trade Unions, and Politics: Advancing Workers’ Rights in Postindustrial Societies
The recent strikes in UK higher education and Finnish postal services demonstrate the continuing importance of trade unions in defending the rights of workers. However, long-term statistics show union membership is on the decline and mainly consists of older workers. If trade unions are to remain influential in the dualised labour markets of postindustrial societies, they need to broaden their membership base into the young and non-standard workers.
Vladimir Lenin (1927), by Isaac Brodsky. Source: Wikimedia.
Introduction to Industrial Action
Industrial action is frequently clouded with the notions of romanticism and heroic effort, from the evocative portrayals of Marxist-Leninist leaders to the notion of ‘democratic class struggle’ coined by sociologist Walter Korpi. While many Hollywood plots could be written about the humble worker rising against faceless capital, Korpi underlines the stark realities of strike action. Assuming that people generally like their jobs, few would voluntarily sacrifice their daily income and stop working to take to the streets in protest. Indeed, strike action is usually a ‘weapon of self-defence’ when the political arena fails to meet the needs of workers.
Trade unions are intimately connected to industrial action as the collective manifestation of labour power. One worker could attempt to change workplace policy alone by withholding their own labour – however, chances are the impact of such a demonstration is negligible. Trade unions attempt to address the structural imbalance between concentrated capital and dispersed labour, increasing the leverage of workers through organised representation.
It is difficult to overemphasise the importance of organised labour in Western democratic systems: the struggle between labour and capital has defined the left-right political divide since the Industrial Revolution. In the late 19th century, trade unionism evolved into labour parties which came to defend the interests of workers through the ballot box. The dramatic decline in working days lost to industrial action over the 20th century serves as a testament to the strength of representative democracy. However, as workers’ rights are increasingly agreed in parliament, trade union membership has declined: while there is large cross-national variation in levels of membership, the downward trend is universal.
Figure 1. Working days lost to industrial action in the UK, 1891 to 2018. (Source: Office for National Statistics)
Figure 2. Trade union density in the UK and Finland, 1995 to 2018. Sources: Labour Force Survey, Finnish Ministry of Employment and the Economy.
Trade Unions - What Good Are They Today?
Recent events in UK higher education and Finnish postal services demonstrate that despite dwindling membership, unionised workers retain the capability to deploy strike action when political consensus fails. [NP1] However, the application of centenarian methods to the problems facing postindustrial labour markets is best viewed through a critical perspective. Trade unions should become more inclusive both for the sake of their own short-term survival, and for defending the rights of the labour force as a whole in the medium to long term. As they currently stand, trade unions risk exacerbating the insider-outsider divisions of postindustrial societies.
The UK
The University and College Union (UCU) strikes over pay, pensions and working conditions follow up on the 14 days of walk-outs in spring 2018, dubbed the largest industrial action in the history of British academia. One of the main sticking points is the untenable position of junior staff, often working under part-time, fixed-term or other precarious contracts which make it difficult to partake in pension programmes or establish career paths. These kinds of precarious jobs are increasingly common in academic institutions as growing numbers of top-level graduates make it a challenge to achieve tenure. Intergenerational inequalities between career professors and post-doctoral staff make the case for inclusive union membership ever more pressing – however, the general statistics on UK union membership show a different story.
Figure 3. Union membership by age, national averages. Sources: Labour Force Survey, Finnish Ministry of Employment and the Economy.
While I could not find statistics on the age distribution of UCU members specifically, the national trends may be informative. Most worryingly, young workers face the double disadvantage of precarious entry-level positions and low unionisation rates. Indeed, the UCU is explicitly targeting early-career staff, suggesting challenges in recruitment. This has negative implications both for young people and women, as they are disproportionately likely to end up as labour market ‘outsiders’ in precarious work, but also for the future of trade unions if they excessively concentrate on protecting labour market ‘insiders’. If the division between unorganised outsiders and organised insiders becomes too stark, inward-looking trade unions may end up pulling the rug from underneath their members if they become displaced by cheaper outside labour. The strength of unions is in their numbers – therefore, the university strikes will not achieve their potential until every staff member is a union member.
Finland
Compared to the largely market-oriented UK, Finland is traditionally seen as a bastion of social democracy and collective bargaining. The age distribution of Finnish union members shows that while their average is not too youthful either, young people’s participation is at a slightly higher level. Furthermore, trade union density is roughly twice as high as in the UK. The broad coverage of trade unions and their willingness to engage in sympathy strikes have inspired industrial action in a magnitude which would be difficult to imagine in post-Thatcher UK: conflict over the pay packages of 700 parcel sorting workers has led weeks of strikes in the postal services, followed up by strikes of bus drivers, aviation and harbour workers effectively grinding the logistics and foreign trade of Helsinki to a halt. Notably, the strikes take place under a social democratic prime minister, conforming to Korpi’s theoretical prediction that strike action looks less into the colours of the incumbent government and more into the way government policy shields the interests of workers. Where politics does not go far enough, unions will act.
However, short-term leverage may not translate to long-term gains. While high unionisation rates enable large-scale industrial action, there will be a point at which inward-looking unions begin to undermine their own cause. It seems likely that the aggressive support strikes of transport unions are a show of force looking forward to the collective bargaining rounds they themselves were facing; indeed, the largest unions in Finland have become accustomed to deploying support strikes as political leverage. Nonetheless, when unionised insiders stir up too much trouble, employers and consumers will start looking for outside alternatives to get business done.
Conclusion
Overall, the cases of Finland and the UK demonstrate the significance of organised labour in employment negotiations. Indeed, the stalwart record of Finnish employment protection cannot be understood in isolation from trade unionism. However, as union membership declines and the labour markets split into precarious outsides and comfortable insides, unions must keep up with the change by turning their attention towards younger members. Joseph Schumpeter coined the term ‘creative destruction’ to describe the need for capitalist organisations to reinvent themselves in order to keep up with the competition. Likewise, trade unions must acknowledge the rules of the game have changed. To reinstate the ‘collective’ into collective action, trade unions must embrace labour market outsiders and defend their rights with the vigour they have so far largely reserved for insiders.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect any editorial policy.