Trade Unions in Europe: reform, organisation and restructuring

Abstract

Throughout much of western Europe the terms of the post-war settlement consolidated the position of trade unions. The state formalised the legal position of trade unions within the nation. Centralised or industrial collective bargaining arrangements encouraged particular forms of trade union activity, based on co-ordinated bargaining. Furthermore, the expansion of mass production regimes allowed trade unions access to a growing and relatively homogeneous membership. Key to these developments was the pursuit of Keynesian economic policies, and the conduct of different forms of exchange in which trade unions became involved with the state, in pursuit of higher levels of welfare benefits and full employment. There are, of course, variations within, and exceptions to, this general account, but the point is that trade unions were central to the institutions of the post-war settlement. The end of the long post-war boom during the mid-1970s set in train three developments which challenged the position of trade unions: an acceleration in the pace of economic internationalisation; the adoption of neo-liberal economic policies; and the reform of production regimes. The book examines how trade unions have responded to these developments in western Europe and Hungary.1

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