Roland Erne

University College Dublin, School of Business, Industrial Relations and HRM, Faculty Member

University College Dublin, Geary Institute for Public Policy, PI of the ERC Project „Labour Politics and the EU‘s New Economic Governance Regime“

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I am Professor of European Integration
Phone: +353 1 716 47 46
Address: UCD School of Business
Belfield
Dublin 4
Ireland

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ORGANISED LABOUR -AN ACTOR OF EURO-DEMOCRATISATION, EURO-TECHNOCRACY OR RE-NATIONALISATION? Trade-union strategics concerning the European integration process

EUI PhD thesis, 2004

This thesis addresses two questions: first, has there emerged in Europe a system of industrial re... more This thesis addresses two questions: first, has there emerged in Europe a system of industrial relations which crosses national boundaries? Secondly, does organised labour contribute to the process of democratisation of the European Union? Scholars have argued that the EU cannot be democratised because there is no European society as such, no European network of intermediate social institutions, no European public sphere, no European demos and no Euro-democratic citizens’ movement. This thesis has discovered evidence to the contrary.

It is generally acknowledged that the existing governance structures and mechanism of the EU “are not able to provide democratic legitimation for the EU polity as a whole” (Héritier 1999:208; European Commission 2003a: 38). Indeed, a democratic polis needs, according to Lepsius, in addition to its constitutional bodies, a tight network of intermediate social institutions and organisations such as, for example, the unions, other civil society organisations and the mass media. These offer the possibility of a larger amount of participation in the political system for the citizens and thus an increase in its legitimisation. As a result, the constitution of a European industrial relations system is linked to the constitution o f a European democracy, although political and social actors, such as the unions, almost never conceive of democratisation as a goal in its own right. Social actors usually support democratisation only if they expect that a more democratic polity will provide a better framework for the satisfaction of their interests.

The EU is neither a fixed nor an autocratic polity. It follows that EU-democratisation differs significantly from previous national experiences. Unlike the corresponding national processes, it can hardly be analysed as a transition from authoritarian rule to democracy in an established state (Schmitter 2000). For that reason, nation-state based theories of democratisation can only partially serve as a reference. Moreover, most European integration theories also neglect the concept of Euro-democratisation; this is partly due to their output-oriented understanding of EU legitimacy, partly due to their focus on elitist EU-level actors. In turn, the prospects of a more democratic EU are widely discussed in political theory (Habermas 1992: 632-60; Rieger 1997; Abromeit 1998). However, while we have already argued that a “transnational democracy” (Eme et ah I995)2 would be an essential normative objective, it is much more difficult to explain why and under which conditions social actors would pursue, consciously or unconsciously, a Euro-democratisation strategy. Therefore, I do not wish to add another
more or less sophisticated blueprint o f a future Euro-democracy to the theoretical debate, but aim to analyse one potential actor of Euro-democratisation, namely organised labour.
The democratic political systems allowed organised labour to shift the class conflict from the market place to the political arena, where the workers’ strength lies in their sheer numbers (Esping-Andersen and Korpi 1984). But even if unions may have played an important role in national démocratisation processes (Stedman Jones 1983: 178; Rueschemeyer, Huber Stephens, and Stephens 1992), this does not necessarily promise a similar role for them at the EU-level. Whereas authoritarian regimes force unions to take part in démocratisation movements because they typically repress independent trade-union activities, the institutional setting of the EU also provides alternative options for organised labour. For this reason, this thesis assesses the various, “deliberately chosen” or “emergent” (Strâh 1990: 3), strategies that unions can adopt to influence the transformation of governance in the EU. It would be good now to identify these various options. Numerous studies emphasize that EU level trade unionism is primarily based on a union "diplomacy", exclusive to union executives and experts (Turner 1996; Dolvik 1997; Gobin 1996; Pemot 2001). These activities were partly successful, given the implementation of some achievements, such as the Maastricht social protocol. These successes may be explained by a compatibility of this type of union action with the EU institutions’ technocratic mode of governance (Joerges and Vos 1999). Indeed, the EU institutions may favour “procedural” trade-union participation in EU policymaking,
because they require the unions’ compliance, expertise and legitimacy to act in some
policy fields, such as social and employment policy (Smismans 2001; Keller 2001). For this reason, Euro-technocratisation could also be a promising strategy of organised labour. However, given the persuasive impact of neo-liberal ideology on the EU’s economic policy, the unions could also reject the EU integration process as a “capitalist project” and try to pursue a national democratic welfare state strategy. Despite its internationalist ideology, organised labour’s history is profoundly linked to the nation state. Diverging national arrangements in the field of industrial relations and welfare (Crouch 1993; Esping-Andersen 1990) integrated the working classes and their organisations into their nation states and provided them with an important set of rights and benefits (Visser 1996). Therefore, Pasture and Verberckmoes conclude that the trade union movement “cannot afford to reject the appeal of national identity” (1998: 23). Yet, the national democratic “re-nationalisation” 3 strategy seems to be losing its viability, because national social democratic policies face firm restrictions within the increasingly integrated European and global economy (Sassoon 1997: 558; Gray 2000). In turn, a technocratic re-nationalisation strategy may emerge (Streeck 1999) characterised by social pacts that aim to enhance national competitiveness (Rhodes 1997). Accordingly, a national “competition state” (Cemy 1990), would replace the national welfare state and the unions would pursue a technocratic re-nationalisation strategy. The rising constraints on social democratic policies at the national level could also motivate the unions to Europeanise their activities. In fact, to some extent a growing Europeanisation of rank-and-file union activities can be observed, as demonstrated by the recent increase in European demonstrations (Lefébure 2002). As political mobilisation frequently went from “contestation to democracy” at the national level (Giugni, McAdam, and Tilly 1998), a similar process is plausible at the EU level, too. Democratization requires a feeling of communality among its citizens. It follows that organised labour could contribute to Euro-democratisation, if it encouraged European collective action and the rise of a European public sphere (Habermas 1992: 650). People start recognising that they belong to the same political system as soon as they begin to act together, even if they might contest its policies. European collective action would also contribute to the rise of a European public sphere and to a politicisation of the EU-integration process (Imig and Tarrow 2001). Likewise, Richard Hyman argued that supporting the emergence and consolidation of a European civil society and citizenship should be an important task for unions (Hyman 2001:175).

This thesis aims to identify first, the various strategic options of organised labour facing the tensions between “national competition" and “European coordination" on one hand, and “democratic” and “technocratic” decision-making, on the other. This leads to a typology of four possible EU-polity strategies of any social and political actor, i.e. Euro-democratisation, Euro-technocracy, democratic and technocratic re-nationalisation. Then this schema will be set to work in several comparative studies of the contradictory performance of various unions in central fields of their every-day activities. Hence, this thesis does not study union statements with regard to the ongoing EU reform process, as every union rhetorically supports a more “social and democratic” EU. In the event that a union is, deliberately or intuitively, adopting a Euro-democratisation strategy, it must be evident in its most important activities. Therefore, this thesis will focus on two subject areas that belong to the core of union politics, namely collective bargaining and job protection during company restructurings: The first paired comparison assesses the tension between the “competitive bargaining” policies of national unions, seeking a competitive advantage for their respective economies, and the conflicting attempts by the European Metalworkers’ Federation (EMF) and the European Federation of Building and Woodworkers’ (EFBWW) to foster a European-wide coordination of national bargaining policies. The second paired comparison analyses the tension between the unions’ technocratic and a democratic EU policy-making in two recent transnational company merger cases. Whereas the European workers’ representatives of ABB and Alstom tried to politicise the ABB-Alstom-Power merger case and insisted on a democratisation of the EU Commission’s merger-control policy, the European workers’ representatives of Alcan, Pechiney and Al group adopted in their company merger case a strategy that was totally compatible with the technocratic approach of the Commission’s competition policy. First, however, the thesis starts with an overview of the central ideas in the Euro-democratisation debate and the potential interests of the labour movement in it; as the trade unions - it must be reiterated - almost certainly do not view Euro-democratisation as a goal in its own right. Therefore, I will also assess the power resources of the unions at the EU-level and compare them with the various strategies that organised labour could adopt with regard to the European integration process.

Roland Erne

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