Facilitators and Inhibitors of Collective Action: A Case Study of a US‐Owned Manufacturing Plant
| Published date | 01 December 2013 |
| Date | 01 December 2013 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2013.00882.x |
Facilitators and Inhibitors of Collective
Action: A Case Study of a US-Owned
Manufacturing Plant
Michelle O’Sullivan and Thomas Turner
Abstract
This article develops a theoretical model of collective action at work using
the key concepts of mobilization triggers, facilitating factors, and inhibiting
factors. It then illustrates the value of this model for understanding why a
low-pay, low-skill, blue-collar manufacturing facility remained non-union,
drawing primarily on the accounts of a limited sample of redundant workers.
These accounts are used to demonstrate the importance of social contexts where
inhibiting conditions dominate and where management practices succeed in
gaining worker consent and forestalling a collective response from workers.
Patiently endured so long as it seems beyond redress, a grievance comes to appear
intolerable once the possibility of removing it crosses men’s minds.
De Tocqueville (1955)
Collective action is not a very common response to injustice — when confronted
with injustice, at best, a minority of the people affected will engage in protest.
Klandermans (2002)
1. Introduction
Collective action can be defined as ‘the intentional action of individuals
sharing a common group membership to benefit a group’ (Louis 2009: 727).
While it appears to depend on the prior existence of a group, collective action
can also be a spontaneous response to the conflict inherent in the employ-
ment relationship in capitalist societies (Atzeni 2009: 7). Crucial to collective
action is a joint commitment where two or more people express a readiness to
participate in a joint action and direct their forces in a particular way (Gilbert
2006: 146). Acting together is, in effect, a ‘readiness to enter a joint commit-
ment to espouse a certain goal as a body’ (Gilbert 2006: 146). As such,
Michelle O’ Sullivan and Thomas Turner are at the University of Limerick.
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British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8543.2013.00882.x
51:4 December 2013 0007–1080 pp. 689–708
© John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics 2013. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
collective action implies the existence of some form of organization or
structure, whether formal or informal, that co-ordinates participant actions.
Following Lysgaard (1961), we make an analytical distinction between
a ‘workers’ collective’ and that of the formal union organization. Individual
workers are likely to be transformed into an integrated social agent
or workers’ collective when they occupy the same position in a hierarchical
work organization, and develop a shared sense of identity and interpretation
of the situation that can lead to collective action. The existence of such a
community of interests tends to be associated with a strong sense of attach-
ment and allegiance that acts as the basis of group formation and collective
action (Blackwood et al. 2003; Kelly 1993). Factors that likely point to the
presence of a workers’ collective in the workplace are the existence of some
form of leadership, a collective factory consciousness and the ability to
mobilize the resources of the group (Lilja 1987). Yet it cannot be assumed
that collective action means union activity (Furåker 2009). Undoubtedly, for
a ‘workers’ collective’ to become a ‘stable social force’, it inevitably needs the
type of formal organization that a union provides (Furåker 2009: 159).
Traditionally, trade unions have provided a formal structure that channels
and supports workers’ collectives in the workplace. However, since the 1980s,
there has been a considerable decline in union density in many European
countries. This decline reflects in part the prevailing economic and ideologi-
cal currents that have been antithetical to trade unionism and collective
bargaining. The removal or eradication of trade unions is an integral part of
the dominant neoliberal economic and ideological orthodoxy of recent years
(Harvey 2005; Pollin 2003). Critics of neoliberalism often refer to it as the
‘American model’ based on the promotion of low wages and high inequality
(Howell and Diallo 2007). Not surprising, US multinationals tend to be
associated with such an agenda, preferring to exclude unions and deal with
workers as individuals rather than collectives. While US employers have
generally opposed trade unions, the intensity of this opposition has increased
dramatically since the 1980s (Blanchflower and Freeman 1992; Kochan et al.
1986). Ireland has been a particularly attractive location for US multina-
tional corporations (MNCs), and the vast bulk of MNCs operating in this
country are US-owned (Gunnigle et al. 2009). Well-known US MNCs with
explicit union exclusion policies, such as Hewlett Packard, Intel, Microsoft
and Dell, have located in Ireland since the 1980s.
In this article, we develop a model of collective action at work. We then
demonstrate the value of this model by drawing primarily on the accounts
of employees of a US-owned manufacturing facility in Ireland that has
remained non-union despite a number of conditions that are conducive to
collective action. These accounts reveal the importance of three factors in our
model in explaining the absence of a union: inhibiting obstacles such as the
individualized employment relationship, weak organizing attempts by a trade
union and workers’ complicit consent to the rules of the game as constructed
by management. We also document a shift from individual to collective
action subsequent to a redundancies announcement, when a small group of
690 British Journal of Industrial Relations
© John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics 2013.
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