“How has the dark knight risen?” Chronicle of union revitalization from India
| Published date | 07 August 2017 |
| Date | 07 August 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-06-2016-0123 |
| Pages | 660-682 |
| Author | Girish Balasubramanian,Santanu Sarkar |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
“How has the dark knight risen?”
Chronicle of union revitalization
from India
Girish Balasubramanian and Santanu Sarkar
Department of Human Resource Management,
XLRI –Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur, India
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to delve into some of the key internal and external factors that led to
the choice of specific strategies for union revitalization using the theoretical framework built upon framing
perspectives, the strategic action field (SAF), and the strategic choice theory.
Design/methodolo gy/approach –The autho rs used a stringent defi nition and correspond ing
operationalization of trade union revitalization. The present research has been carried out on a registered
industrial union within the context of Global South, specifically in India.
Findings –Evidence was found for the trade union adopting a mix of strategies for revitalization, namely,
union organizing, social movement unionism, and union restructuring. A mix of both internal and external
factors identified informed the choice of revitalization strategies.
Research limitations/implications –Specific limitations include the subjectivity of the inference in spite
of taking due precautions, and lack of generalizability of the findings based on a single case study.
Practical implications –A strong identity, coupled with structural vitality and optimum use of resources
enables trade unions to frame the need of a strategy for revival in order to counter the strategic action of
employers resulting in union revitalization.
Originality/value –The theoretical novelty of this research stems from the amalgamation of collective
action frames, SAF, and strategic choice framework to understand the union revitalization in the context of
Global South.
Keywords India, Global South, Strategies for union revitalization, Union revitalization
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The decline of labor unions over the last 30 years has led to an interest in both union decline
(Bryson et al., 2011) and revitalization, as researchers have looked for clues as to why unions
decline and whether decline can be reversed (Serrano, 2014; Bronfenbrenner, 2005).
Considering the latter, contrary to the dominant rhetoric, scholars are not ready to disregard
the significance of unions totally, especially against the backdrop of recurring cases of labor
unrest[1]. Regardless of the pervasive decline of unions, questions of usefulness and
relevance of the collective have yielded a separate strand of studies on labor movement
resurgence, converging on causes, processes, and effects of union revitalization largely
informed by the mobilization theory, social movement theory (SMT), varieties of capitalism,
framing perspective, and the strategic choice perspectives (Frege and Kelly, 2003; Heery
et al., 2003; Levesque and Murray, 2006; Kelly, 1998), among others.
However, the reported incidences of resurgence come predominantly from developed
economies (Frege and Kelly, 2005; Phelan, 2006) that leave an impression that “union
revitalization”is quite an Anglo-Saxon concept (Bryson et al., 2011) with sparse research
done on it in the Global South. This lends us an opportunity to explore the perspectives on
union revitalization from the Global South that would help nuance our understanding of the
myriad hues of emerging worker collectivism.
Global South offers an appealing context for extending the frontiers of union revitalization
(Turner, 2005; Freeman, 2005b). Considering that new age HR practices are generally responsible
for annihilating collectivism in the emerging economies (Schuler et al., 2002), how unions in these
Employee Relations
Vol. 39 No. 5, 2017
pp. 660-682
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-06-2016-0123
Received 20 June 2016
Revised 17 February 2017
15 May 2017
Accepted 17 May 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0142-5455.htm
660
ER
39,5
economies are countering these practices would be incredibly interesting to examine.
Multinationals are shifting their focus to the Global South to take advantage of the labor
arbitrage opportunities (Budhwar and Debrah, 2009). As a result the developing economies with
79 percent labor have received a whopping 53 percent of foreign direct investment in recent
times (China received FDI inflow of US$123 billion, Mexico US$38 billion, Brazil US$64 billion,
and India US$28 billion (UNCTAD, 2013). However, one of the many consequences of
exploitation of cheap labor in the Global South could be the labor resurgence and retaliation.
Both developed and developing economies have respond ed, though differently[2],
to the emerging trends. Thus, we postulate a different response for union revitalization as an
emerging trend and decided to analyze the factors that influence the phenomenon of
revitalization in the Global South. Having said that we acknowledge that the canvas of union
revitalization research is quite large, and in this study we focused only on identifying the
intrinsic and extrinsic factors that led to a choice of specific strategies for union revitalization.
With a registered national industrial trade union[3] being the unit of our analysis, the objective is
to inquire into the process adopted by this union toward choosing dominant strategies to
revitalize itself (Langley et al., 2013). We first explained what we mean by union revitalization,
then reviewed the relevant literature, followed by detailing the methods adopted for our study
and discussing our results at the end.
Union revitalization
The term “union revitalization”retains an embedded complexity due to the multiplicity of
definitions and meanings assigned to the term (Turner, 2003; see Behrens, Hamann and
Hurd, 2004; Lipsig-Mumme, 1999; Frege and Kelly, 2003). It has been studied from the
perspective of the power of unions (Behrens, Hamann and Hurd, 2004), ability of unions to
adapt and survive (Lipsig-Mumme, 1999), the effective use of resources by unions ( Juvarich
and Bronfenbrenner, 2000), new forms of unionization (Howell, 2004; Roeche, 2000),
semi-contingency schema (Fiorito and Gallagher, 2006), and the impact of transnational
activitieson unionization (Anner et al.,2006). In all these conceptualizationsa narrow meaning
is assigned to the term considering organized sector workers as the only entity that gets
unionized. According to Sullivan (2010), the focus on union as a constitutive organizational
form triggers a narrow conceptualization of union revitalization. In order to widen the
conceptualization, every form of workers’organization should be included (Armstrong, 2002;
Sullivan, 2010).Thus, we conceptualized unionrevitalization as an activitycarried out by any
workers collective, including the trade unions to increase its influence.
Relevant literature
A large cacophonous literature exists on union revitalization. Given our concern with
revitalization strategies and the factors that shape the choice of those strategies, our review
of the relevant literature is quite narrowly focused. Our theory-building exercise hinges on
certain broad theoretical perspectives that we borrow from interconnected fields.
Original industrial relations theories on union revitalization are limited (Kaufman, 2010)
and scholars have extensively made use of ideas from other fields to theorize (e.g. Kochan
et al.’s Strategic Choice Theory and Kelly’s Mobilization Theory). Researchers have drawn
on the ideas from the SMT and applied them in studies on union revitalization, given the
commonality in the objective between the two streams of research as both intended to
understand how a collective is created and how it is sustained (Gahan and Pekarek, 2013;
Heery, 2005; Kelly, 1998). In spite of a fairly similar focus on social movement as well as
union revitalization literature, there is, however, a dearth of interpolation of ideas and
concepts to advance the theory. Scholarly scepticism about viewing unions as equivalent to
social movements could be a reason for this disengagement. Nevertheless, our definition of
661
Chronicle
of union
revitalization
from India
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