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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780745315911 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pluto Press |
| Publication date: | 01/20/2000 |
| Series: | Transnational Institute Series |
| Pages: | 192 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.32(w) x 8.47(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Boris Kagarlitsky is a senior research fellow in the Institute for Comparative Political Studies, the Russian Academy of Sciences. He was a political prisoner under Brezhnev and latterly has been an advisor to the Chair of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia. His most recent books are New Realism, New Barbarism, and The Twilight of Globalisation (both Pluto Press). Renfrey Clarke is an editor and journalist. He has translated numerous Russian works.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Does Trade Unionism Have a Future?
The 1980s were a difficult period for trade unions. Even in countries where workers' organizations had traditionally played a decisive role in political and social life, the labour movement suffered one setback after another. The lengthy strike by British coal miners in 1984 and 1985 ended in defeat. In Italy the trade unions were unable to defend the 'scala mobile' – automatic indexation of wages that had been regarded as their most important gain of the 1970s. The alliance between the three main Italian trade union federations fell apart. In most other European countries, including those of Scandinavia, the influence of the trade unions was severely undermined. More and more often, the trade unions themselves figured in popular consciousness not as the embodiment of the might of organized labour, but as ineffectual, conservative, bureaucratized and in some cases corrupt formations.
By the mid-1990s there had been no substantial improvement.
The Crisis of Unionism
Defeats and retreats of labour in the 1980s and 1990s obliged sociologists, at first liberal ones but then leftists as well, to speak of a crisis of the world trade union movement or of a 'crisis of syndicalism'. Liberal ideologues set out to show that trade unions had outlived their time, along with old industrial technologies and economic relationships. There was simply no place for them in a world of global competition and free entrepreneurship. The leftists did not agree with this assessment, but could not deny that the trade unions had suffered an obvious decline.
The first symptom of this decline was a fall in the number of trade union members. In the United States union members accounted for 35.5 per cent of the workforce in 1945, but by 1994 this figure was only 15.5 per cent. Particularly alarming was the fact that as the union leaders themselves admitted, the unions were 'failing to implant themselves to a significant degree in the growing high-technology sectors'. In France by the mid-1990s the proportion of workers organized in trade unions had fallen to less than 10 per cent. Even in Germany, where the trade union movement avoided serious setbacks during the 1980s, membership declined by more than a million people after the unification of the country. Significantly, this process was apparent not only in the former East Germany, where it might readily have been explained by the transformation of social relationships and by the collapse of the system of obligatory membership. Trade union membership also declined in the western provinces. In the view of union officials, the reason was 'a rapid rise in unemployment and a weakening of the attachment felt by individuals for large organizations – a process which sociologists term "individualization"'. American union officials also complained that their organizations had become 'irrelevant to the overwhelming majority of unorganized workers in our country'.
In reality, the causes of the crisis lie considerably deeper.
At an international conference held in Stockholm in June 1995, and aimed at helping to develop new trade union structures, it was noted that analogous processes were taking place in most developed countries. In the West, the 1980s and 1990s have been above all a time of enormous technological change. Computerization and robotization have brought a dramatic reduction of employment in many fields. At the same time, many trades have become devalued. Paradoxically, it is by no means always the case that the computerization of production imposes increased demands on the worker. On the contrary, the appearance of more modern equipment may mean that the level of qualifications required of workers may even fall. This means not only increased unemployment, but also a reduction in workers' self-esteem, and an increase in their dependence on employers. Employers themselves have less need of particular workers, who can very easily be replaced.
Common wisdom presents unions as an obstacle to technological change. That is not exactly so. Many scholars insist on the effectiveness of workers' input and unions participation in the successful introduction of technological innovation, while limiting job losses. Studies show that, 'there is not necessarily a conflict between upgrading the technological basis of the firm and keeping most of the workers, generally retraining them'. Further, 'firms with high levels of protection were also those with the highest change in innovation'.
If this is so, the question is: why was innovation so often accompanied by job losses and union busting? The answer to this question is simple, though not very popular among the scholars. Although new technologies are not necessarily in conflict with job protection and unionization they provide capital with new effective options in the class struggle against organized labour. In that sense, and only in that sense, technological change really meant a historic defeat of the unions, at least in their current form.
Trade unions have always thought of themselves above all as organizations of the industrial working class. While the number of industrial workers in Western countries is shrinking, an increase is occurring in the number of people employed the area of services (often poorly paid and cruelly exploited). Employment is also increasing in the financial sector, and in the systems of management and marketing. Finally, more and more people are accepting part-time employment, working at home or performing work simultaneously for several employers. All these categories of workers have their particular interests and problems, but the traditional forms of trade union organization, oriented toward large-scale industry, do not suit them.
Trade unions are faced with such problems even in countries where the industrial working class is continuing to grow. In a survey of the trade union movement, the Korea Times notes that on the whole the growth of the economy should stimulate the labour movement. 'However', the newspaper remarks:
diminishing [numbers of] blue-collar workers in dwindling manufacturing sectors and increasing number of temporary, part-time or dispatched [migrant] workers brought about a decline in the number of union members. This resulted in the shrinking of the unionization rate to 15.6 per cent in 1994 from 19.5 per cent in 1990 and 21 per cent in 1980.
Overall, developments in South Korea have favoured the trade unions. Declining employment in some sectors has been accompanied by growth in others, while the country's economic success has ensured a strong position for the labour movement. The democratization of South Korean society has seen not only a broadening of trade union rights since 1987, but also a pronounced growth of wages. The latter have risen considerably faster than the increase in labour productivity. South Korea has entered the category of advanced industrial countries, and has come to share the problems typical of such states. The cost of labour power has become much higher than in less developed countries, even though, in technological terms, the local monopolies remain dependent on the West. Real estate prices have risen dramatically, credit has become excessively expensive and economic growth rates have started to slip. As in other advanced countries, South Korea's rulers have put their faith in globalization, and have begun trying to solve their problems by cutting wages and restricting trade union rights.
The trade union movements of Third World countries have also entered into crisis. In the mid-1990s the Filipino workers' leader Filemon Lagman was speaking of the inability of the trade unions to adapt effectively to the processes of globalization and economic development. 'Even the progressive wing of the workers' movement failed to upgrade the backwardness of trade unionism in this country.' According to Lagman, the Filipino trade union movement lacks a 'motive force', while locally based actions cannot make up for the lack of a strategy.
A third factor in the crisis has been the decline of the 'welfare state'. During periods when ensuring the social welfare of citizens was considered a key task of the state both in the West and in the East, and governments and social systems vied to see who could provide greater benefits to the population, trade unions were perceived as vital national institutions, indispensable partners of the authorities and of the ruling class. With the beginning of the era of neo-liberalism and with the victory of the West in the Cold War, this situation has finally vanished into the past. The social revenge of the bourgeoisie has made dismantling the system of social welfare one of the authorities' main concerns. In this situation, trade unions are being transformed from partners of the state into 'obstacles to the implementation of reforms', or even into enemies.
The New Zealand researchers Raymond Harbridge and Anthony Honeybone note that changes in the policies of the state have themselves been a cause of the decline of trade unions.
All the causes of decline mentioned in the international literature ... are evident in New Zealand, but they are not to be compared with the decisive role played by the state. Beginning in 1988, changes have occurred in the structure of the labour market, but the consequences of this have not been particularly significant. Public opinion and the values of society have indeed become more individualistic, but there are no signs of a growth in anti-trade union sentiment. In our view, the organizational strategy of the trade unions has been weak because it has been rooted in a particular system. The majority of New Zealand trade unions have still to work out a strategy for organization and growth that corresponds to the new conditions.
The membership and influence of the trade unions have fallen with particular rapidity in the private sector. This, just as much as the traditional socialist ideology, has driven the trade unions to resist privatization. But in most cases such struggles have ended in defeat, weakening the movement still further.
The ideological crisis of the left has been another factor weakening the trade unions. Although it was only the communists who suffered defeat in the years from 1989 to 1991, while the social democrats and radicals were able to speak of their theoretical vindication, the collapse of communism in practice struck a mighty blow against all types of left ideology and all forms of the workers' movement, including trade unions. If support for the free market represents 'the only true ideology', then all forms of workers' organization are doomed, since trade unions and similar bodies limit free competition on the labour market. If individual workers are convinced that market competition provides them with the maximum chances of betterment, they will not only be uninterested in taking out union membership, but will also regard trade unions as their enemies.
The globalization of the economy is creating new problems and weakening the traditional links between workers and their representatives. 'The transferring of trade union action into the new European space, and then into the world space, means that it loses a good deal of its strength along the way', writes the French trade unionist Hubert Bouchet.
The globalization of enterprises has distanced the representatives of wage workers from the centres of decision-making, to the point where the latter have become almost 'virtual'. It is now increasingly rare for trade unionists to come face to face with a real director. The person negotiating on behalf of the employers, even if present on the local scene, is most often the representative of a geographically inaccessible power. In this way the vicious game of competition, conducted blindly by an 'invisible hand' that has gone crazy, extends its rule.
The Post-Soviet Trade Unions
The trade unions in Eastern Europe and the former USSR are also experiencing enormous difficulties. Here technological innovation is not in any sense to blame for the crisis of industry, for the dramatic falls in production or for growing unemployment. New technologies are being introduced, but not on anything like the scale seen in the West. The social crisis has been provoked by the breaking of links within the productive process, by the shrinking of the market for local producers, and by the plunder of state property. Together with political and legal instability, these factors have brought about a paralysis of investment.
Trade unions are unable to adapt to the new political system and the new situation. They lack experience of defending hired workers in the conditions of the market. Nor are they able to make use of the market experience of the West, due to a lack of genuine market relations. To paraphrase Lenin, the labour movement in these countries suffers both from capitalism and from its inadequate development.
Moreover, in most of the countries of the former Soviet bloc a fierce rivalry is occurring between the 'old' organizations and 'alternative' trade unions which arose on the wave of the democratic movement of the 1980s.
It is significant, however, that despite all these problems a high level of trade union membership has survived among the workers in most of these countries. Even in Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland, where trade union membership declined more rapidly in 1989 and 1990 than the regional average, a larger percentage of the workforce remained unionized than in Britain or Germany, not to mention France or Spain.
Against expectations, the traditional trade unions in the countries of Eastern Europe have weathered the crisis much better than the 'alternative' ones. This has been obvious not only in Russia or Hungary, where the 'alternative' trade unions have never been a mass force throughout the country as a whole (particular sectors of the economy may be an exception here). In Poland and Bulgaria, where powerful 'alternative' union federations arose and played important roles in the democratization of society, the situation has been analogous. As Czech experts note in a report on the trade unions of the region, 'the leaders of the old trade unions consider themselves to be in the centre of political life, while the leaders of Solidarnosc feel themselves to have been cast onto its periphery'.
However, the struggle between old and new trade unions in most countries is receding gradually into the past. Especially at the local level, joint union actions are becoming more and more commonplace. There is an increasing understanding that, in trying to weaken one another, the trade unions are merely strengthening the hands of the state and of the employers. No less important is the gradually spreading understanding that in the new conditions both old and new trade unions are in need of reforms. It is quite clear that the trade union movement, like society in general in these countries, has not yet taken on its stable, definitive forms. The future holds not only fierce struggles between various forces, but also important structural changes.
Old unions remained corporatist and bureaucratized organizations, often with corrupt leadership. Feeling weak they preferred to put forward modest demands. 'We are not talking here about the welfare state, but about a minimum social justice', declared the leadership of the National Trade Union Alliance (OPZZ) in Poland, 'about exerting some restraint on the excessive enrichment of the few at the expense of the majority.' New unions lack tradition or have the 'wrong' one. They remain anticommunist and spontaneous, unable to develop long-term strategies. Some of them moved from ultra-liberal to far left positions, as happened with the Independent Union of Miners, the strongest 'new' union in Russia. But, even turning to the left, they do not have either a new concept of class struggle or a clear vision of their own role in it.
At the same time, most observers agree that the trade unions in Eastern Europe are surviving, and in some cases even making up lost ground. 'Unfortunately, the sparseness of information on the goals and problems of the trade unions has meant that only a few political and economic leaders appreciate the depth and scope of this movement', note the authors of the report cited earlier.
Despite the decline in popularity of the trade unions, resulting either from the beginning of the reforms or from the economic decline, the workers' movement in the countries of Eastern Europe is beginning to acquire an increasingly distinct shape, which will correspond to the needs of the coming century.
Although in post-communist Eastern Europe the unions in general failed to do their job, some very important labour struggles did take place. Spontaneous protest of the Russian miners during the 'summer of discontent' in 1998 posed a serious threat to the Yeltsin regime and forced it to correct its social policies. In Romania a year later the miners' march to the capital really rocked the country. The scale of police repression that followed showed how frightened the rulers of the country were. Thousands of workers were beaten by the police and hundreds were arrested. Miners' leader Miron Cozma was sentenced to 18 years in prison for organizing mass protests which were characterized by the authorities as 'similar to an act of terrorism'.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Return of Radicalism"
by .
Copyright © 2000 Boris Kagarlitsky.
Excerpted by permission of Pluto Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Preface, vi,
Introduction: Pride and Protest, 1,
1 Does Trade Unionism Have a Future?, 13,
2 Beyond Identities, 40,
3 The Third Left or the Third Socialism, 98,
Conclusion: The Stage We are In, 149,
Notes, 161,
Index, 176,