Industrial Relations and the Meso‐politics of the Public Enterprise: The Transmission of State Objectives in the Spanish National Railways1
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1987.tb00701.x |
| Published date | 01 March 1987 |
| Date | 01 March 1987 |
| Author | Anthony Ferner |
Industrial Relations and the Meso-
politics
of
the Public Enterprise: The
Transmission
of
State Objectives in the
Spanish National Railways’
Anthony
Ferner*
INTRODUCTION
This paper examines developments in collective bargaining and industrial
relations in the Spanish state railways, RENFE (Red Nacional de Ferrocar-
riles Espaiioles). By selecting the same public industry as in earlier research
(Ferner,
1985),
and examining it in a significantly different national political
environment, it is hoped to explore further the general political processes
that influence management and union strategy and hence industrial relations
in the state enterprise.
The Spanish case is of intrinsic interest, not least because the development
of industrial relations in a significant European economy, a new member of
the EEC, has been
so
little studied (there are virtually no case studies of
industrial relations at company level or below during the last decade). The
period
of
the transition to democracy since
1976,
with its condensed and
accelerated institutionalisation of union organisation and collective
bargaining, provides a vivid illustration of certain processes of industrial
relations that can usually only be viewed over a much longer time period.
Moreover, the Spanish transition has thrown up certain peculiar political
processes that have affected the role and behaviour of the public enterprise
sector, and which provide a contrast with developments in Britain during the
same period. RENFE, as the largest corporate employer in Spain, and as the
proving ground for the introduction of many elements of democratic
industrial relations after the years of Francoist authoritarianism, has been a
central, and indeed symbolic, actor in these processes.
The economic crisis that has hit the capitalist economies over the last
decade has frequently had major repercussions for the organisation and
objectives of the public sector.
A
powerful strand in political and economic
thinking suggests that the increase in the public sector deficit is a major
obstacle to the successful restructuring of crisis-torn national economies.
*Senior Research Fellow, Industrial Relations Research Unit, University
of
Warwick.
50
British Journal
of
Industrial Relations
Moreover, the role of the state enterprise sector has been called into
question, not only because of its contribution to public deficits, but also
because of the heavy involvement of state enterprises in sectors of the
economy most affected by the crisis. Political reappraisal of the role of the
public sector has, potentially, considerable consequences for the conduct of
industrial relations policies by state enterprise management, through
pressures by government on the nationalised industries to reduce or
restructure capacity, and to improve efficiency and cut costs, particularly
labour costs.
The railways have frequently been
in
the forefront of these developments.
This reflects the secular economic ‘problem’ of the rqilways: the responsibi-
lities for maintaining a national route network as part of the basic social and
economic infrastructure of
the
country have inevitably entailed heavy state
subsidy
in
the face of growing competition from other forms of transports2
The political salience of the railway problem has increased considerably with
the faltering economic performance of the advanced capitalist countries.
The Formulation
of
Political Projects
The relationship between economic crisis and the restructuring of industrial
relations,within the state enterprise sector is not a direct one. In the first
place, the ‘political sphere’ does not respond in a direct, mechanical way
to
developments
in
the ‘economic sphere’. The formulation of policies and
programmes to combat the ‘crisis’, and specifically to tackle the problems of
the public sector, has a certain autonomy, and depends upon political factors
such as the nature and organisation of political parties and of the bases of
social support
on
which they rest, the emergence of particular ideologies,
electoral timetables, and a variety of other factors related only indirectly to
changes
in
the economic base. Thus, not
only
is the political response to
economic problems a
lagged
response, but its nature may vary widely within
broad limits set by the nature
of
the economic crisis; one has only to compare
the policies of the
post-1979
Conservative government in Britain towards
the public enterprise sector, with the project of the Mitterand government in
France in a similar period.
Below, the idea of the lagged, and variable, political response, will be
used to examine the way in which projects for the reform of industrial
relations came to be formulated in the Spanish railways. The special interest
of
the Spanish case lies in the rather dramatic effect of the transition to
democracy, following the death of Franco, on the process of formulating
political projects
in
the face
of
the grave economic crisis befalling the
country.
Implementation
of
the Political Project
In
the second place, the step from the formulation
of
a political project or
programme for the public sector to the implementation of that programme is
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