Global Anti‐Unionism, edited by Gregor Gall and Tony Dundon. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2013, 264 pp., ISBN: 978 0 230 30334 8, $100.00, hardback.
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12076 |
| Published date | 01 December 2014 |
| Date | 01 December 2014 |
| Author | Andrew Mathers |
Global Anti-Unionism, edited by Gregor Gall and Tony Dundon. Palgrave
Macmillan, London, 2013, 264 pp., ISBN: 978 0 230 30334 8, $100.00, hardback.
Assisting employers to avoid trade union organization in the USA has become, as a
new book edited by Gregor Gall and Tony Dundon shows, a ‘multi-million dollar
industry . . . with over two-thirds of American employers recruiting consultants when
faced with an organising campaign’ (p. 22). It seems little wonder then that union
density has fallen to under 7 per cent as unions’ attempts to make good the member-
ship losses resulting from deindustrialization have been thwarted by organized oppo-
sition from employers. This book aims to demonstrate that the decline of unions as
organizations and trade unionism as a social movement is the result of counter-
organization and associated strategies and practices, which it labels as anti-unionism
and defines as ‘a conscious, deliberate decision to undermine and erode hypothetical,
potential and actual workplace collective unionisation and union organisation’ (p. 1).
The argument that these strategies and practices are rife not only in the USA but also
around the globe gives the book its title.
The book makes a welcome contribution to the wider debate on trade union decline
and renewal by focusing on employer strategies that are set clearly within the broader
political and economic environment produced by neoliberal globalization. This also
provides a historical framework within which to set the three chapters on ‘historical
approaches’ that form part 1 of the book, and the eight chapters on ‘contemporary
studies’ ranging from the USA, Germany, the UK and Australia through to Colom-
bia, South Korea and Indonesia that form part 2.
In the introduction, although not acknowledged explicitly as such, the editors
provide a Marxist conceptual framework that relates unionism and anti-unionism to
‘deep structural and historical roots . . . in the capitalist employment relationship’ (p.
3). This assists with distinguishing anti-unionism from non-unionism, and due
emphasis is given to understanding anti-unionism as an ideological practice. Three
key ideological elements are identified as ‘managerial self-confidence, social and
political persuasion, and legitimisation of power and authority’ (p. 6), along with
three main types of managerial actions. Preventative actions may arise from mana-
gerial anxieties produced by real or imagined threats of worker actions in the future.
Employer actions can also seek to neutralize worker actions that pose an imminent
threat to management aims and prerogatives, or eliminate more fundamental chal-
lenges to managerial power arising from worker organization with the capacity to
mobilize around its own independently defined interests.
The main insights of the book arise from its focus on neoliberalism as an ideology and
a set of strategic practices. In chapter 8, Moody demonstrates conceptually that
neoliberal ideology rather than rational cost-benefit analysis decisions has driven anti-
union employer practices in the USA, and this is supported empirically in chapter 7 by
Cullinane et al., who show the importance of the institutional context and its underlying
structural determinants for influencing employer anti-union strategies in Ireland. In
chapter 3, McKinlay shows how in the UK the neoliberal-inspired decentralization of
collective bargaining has not only disorganized unions, but employers’ organizations
too. These organizations have lost cohesiveness and no longer act collectively across
workplaces and industry or in the political field, but rather provide services to members.
In chapter 2, Logan shows that providing anti-union services in the USA is a competitive
market involving in-house providers and external consultants.
The generalized shift to decentralized bargaining does not mean the blanket
elimination of all types of collective organization and bargaining, as Cooper and
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820 British Journal of Industrial Relations
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics.
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