Comparative Political Economy of Work, edited by Marco Hauptmeier and Matt Vidal. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2014, 384 pp., ISBN: 978‐1‐137‐32227‐2, £34.99, paperback.

DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12129
Date01 June 2015
Published date01 June 2015
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12117
53:2 June 2015 0007-1080 pp. 376–393
BOOK REVIEWS
Trade Unions in Western Europe: Hard Times, Hard Choices, by Rebecca Gumbrell-
McCormick and Richard Hyman. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013, 272
pp., ISBN: 978 0 19 964441 4, £55.00, hardback.
This is a unique book. In a little more than 200 pages, it compresses our field’s
knowledge on the role and strategies of Europeantrade unions over the past 50 years,
and it manages to simultaneously address multiple audiences in an approachable yet
intellectually stimulating way.A word of caution however: this is not bedtime reading.
The wealth of empirical data presented in it, as well as the dense, yet accessible,
theoretical discussions, make this a book for the devoted student of trade union and
employment studies.
Three underlying questions inform the book’s content: what do unions do?What
(and who) are unions for? And, eventually, what shall unions do if they are to survive
the realities of neoliberal Europe? Drawing upon the trade union movements of 10
European countries, representing four dierent capitalist models (the ‘Nordic’, the
‘Central European’, the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and the ‘Mediterranean’) the authors oer
comprehensiveanswers to the aforementioned questions in the course of eight chapters.
Starting with a detailed portrayal of the 10 countries’ trade union systems, they
identify seven major challenges unions faced in the past quarter century: the ‘decline
in the large-scale manufacturing industries’, the ‘budgetary pressures and the driveto
privatisation’,the ‘growth of diverseforms of ‘atypical’ employment’, the ‘political drift
to the right’ and ‘the rise of individualism’, the ‘processof “globalisation”’ and ‘the loss
of membership density’ (p. 29). Irrespective of place and time, all of their case studies
faced these challenges in various degrees. Although their responses depended on the
specificities of each national context, five commonly used strategies can be identified:
the renewal of the unions’ power resources through recruitment, representation and
mobilization; the restructuring of national unions through mergers and organization
redesign; the use of innovativebargaining and conflict strategies; the reconsiderationof
their political role and their relationshipwith national governments; and their attempts
to develop international collaborationsand actions.
Declining membership pushed unions to reconsider their approach to organizing
and to adopt innovative recruitment and mobilization strategies. Yet successful
implementation of these strategies needs to account forthe changing demographics of
the labourmarket, and for the fact that the ‘groups of workerswith the greatest need for
collective representationand solidarity are often hardest to organise’ (p. 66). However,
the problem is not simply one of organizing since, ‘in uniting one group of workers,
unions might divide them from others’ (p. 79). Being ‘swords of justice’ or servants of
‘vested interests’ is, perhaps, the most important dilemma unions need to resolve.
C
2015 John Wiley& Sons Ltd/London School of Economics. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road,Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Book Review 377
Still, organizing is not the only way to deal with an adverse environment. In recent
years unions have extensively used mergers to respond to ‘membership decline and
the associated loss of income’ (p. 90). As the authors argue, however, ‘if unions are
toreversetheirlossofmembershipandbargainingpower...theymustchange
themselves’ (p. 92). Organizational restructuring, and the growing interest of unions
‘in management techniques developed in the context of business enterprises’ (p. 95) is
a way forwardbut, as the authors purport, this cannot and should not be done at the
expense of democracy.
On the other hand, increasing union membership may be pointless if unions cannot
mobilize these new ‘power resources’ to achieve positive outcomes. The deregulation
of collective bargaining and the erosion of social dialogue practices pose extreme
challenges to trade unions. Some adjust their agendas to the new realities, while
others focus on less traditional bargaining issues or, as IG Metall did in 2004, develop
‘alternative proposals forproduct innovation and new production methods’ (p.115).
Simply focusing on the economic arena, however, is not, and never was, sucient.
‘Unions are not merely economic actors: they are necessarily protagonists in the
political arena’ (p. 132). Whether unions occupy a leading role in the formulation
of policies, or are merely agonizing to survive in an increasingly adverse political
climate, is a contested issue. The ‘golden days’ of the 1960s and 1970s are long gone,
together with the social-democraticproject that used ‘to inspire either parties or unions
and...bindthemtogether’(p.138); but this does not mean thatunions need to retreat.
If anything, they need to reassert their place in the political arena. The formation of
alliances within the wider civil society, as wellas the reframing of their case to win the
‘battle of ideas’ mayprove decisive in defending the workers’ ‘human rights againstthe
dehumanizing imperatives of profit’ (p. 153).
Trying to achieve the above in an increasingly internationalized environment,
however, adds complexity to the problem. For, as the authors point out, unions are
national organizations,representing national constituencies, facing their own internal
organizing and ideological frictions,and having to balance their international role with
the (sometimes) conflicting demands of their members at home. Yet if the unions wish
to assert their place in an EU that increasingly assigns priority to market freedoms
over social rights,transnational understanding and collaboration becomes imperative.
What is thereforeto be done? The authors do not provide any definite answer to this
question. This, together with a lack of a detailed discussion regardingthe eectiveness
of the various strategies discussed throughoutthe book, or the conditions under which
these strategies might be successful, is the book’s main weakness. But in all fairness,
this is not an easy question to answer, especially taking into considerationeach national
case’s divergent nature. Equally important, however, is the question ‘how is anything
to be done’? To this, the authors are adamant: if the unions are to survive, they must
reassert ‘their identity as “sword of justice”: contesting oppression, inequality, and
discrimination’ (p. 203). To achieve this aim, however, the unions need to persuade
other constituencies to join their cause and to address the ‘eciency vs democracy’
dilemma (p. 197), byadopting ‘a transparent process of strategic leadership [to] enable
and encourage rank-and-file participation in debatesand decisions’ (p. 198). If unions
are to survive by ‘continuously reinvent[ing] themselves’ (p. 205), then democracy is
the only way forward.
HOREN VOSKERITSIAN
University of the Westof England
C
2015 John Wiley& Sons Ltd/London School of Economics.

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