SKOPJE, Macedonia, July 3 (UPI) -- Self Defense started as a Polish farmers' trade union a decade ago. It leveraged its populist and activist message to capture 20 percent of the electorate, at least in recent opinion polls. Last week it failed to bring Poland to a halt in protest against liberals in the central bank and iniquitous bureaucrats in Brussels. In the last elections it won 10 percent of the votes and 53 seats.
When the Belarusian Federation of Trade Unions called a rally against the government's bungled economic policies at the end of March, less than 1,000 people turned up. Restrictions imposed by the often-violent authorities coupled with sabotage by pro-government unions assured the dismal flop.
Public sector trade unions in Macedonia have been more successful in extracting concessions from the government in an election year, though not before they embarked on a nation-wide strike timed to coincide with an ill-fated visit of the International Monetary Fund mission. Despite strident warnings from the itinerant delegates, the minimum wage was raised heftily as were salaries in the public sector. The unions are about to strike again in an effort to extend the settlement to other state functionaries.
Romanian union members took the streets on May 30 threatening to emulate Argentina's mass protests and shouting ominous anti-government and anti-IMF slogans. The government buckled under and agreed to raise the minimum wage by 70 percent within 12 months -- as an opening gambit in the forthcoming round of bargaining. Industrial action in Romania in the past often ended in bloodshed and its governments are mindful of it. An agreement was signed with the prime minister on June 11.
On June 20, Spain's trade unions went on a general strike, contesting the prime minister's advanced plans to reform both hiring and firing laws and unemployment benefits. With both job protection and social safety nets threatened, the unions' success was less than striking. Only socialist dominated regions and cities responded and demonstrations flared up in only a couple of places.
The murder of a -- second -- government advisor on labor legislation in March has stiffened the Italian authorities' resolve to amend, however marginally, provisions pertaining to the reinstatement of "unfairly sacked" employees. Two small trade unions -- CISL and UIL -- have signed an agreement with the government last week, ditching a common front with CGIL, by far the largest syndicate with 5.4 million members. CGIL called for regional strikes through July 11, followed by a general strike in September and October. It will also challenge the amendments to the law in the Constitutional Court.
Labor union Solidarity recently called upon the Polish administration to withdraw its amendments to the labor code and to allow it to negotiate with employers the voluntary expunging of anti-labor clauses. In what they called a "historic manifestation," Solidarity teamed up with erstwhile rival left-wing union to demonstrate in front of the Ministry of Labor. About 400 people showed up.
The one country bucking the trend may be Tony Blair's United Kingdom. It has adopted a minimum wage and forces employers to bargain collectively with unions if most of their employees want them to. The number of such "recognition" agreements, according to The Economist, tripled between 2000 and 2001, to 470. Union membership in the service sector and among women is rising.
Working days lost to strikes in Britain doubled from 1997, to almost 500,000 last year and the year before. Although a far cry from the likes of Ireland, Spain, France and Italy, it is a worrisome trend. Interesting to note that many of the strikes are the result of performance-related wage gaps opening up among workers following botched privatizations, such as of the railways or post office. Bellicose, fogeyish trade unions leverage the discontent bred by mismanagement to their advantage.
Failure to mobilize workers, half-hearted activism, acquiescence with policies implemented by right-wing governments, transformation into political parties, growing populism and anti-Europeanism -- these are the hallmarks of these social movements in search of a cause.
As more and more workers join the ranks of the middle class, own shares, participate in management through stakeholder councils, go entrepreneurial or self-employed, join the mostly non-unionized service sector, compete with non-unionized and thus more competitive workers in their own country or globally, become temporary and contract workers, or lose their jobs -- union membership plummets.
The ignominious implosion of communism and socialism throughout Europe tainted the trade union movement, often linked to both. Membership was halved in Britain in the last two decades. Union membership among the young in heavily unionized Sweden slumped to 47 percent last year -- from 62 percent in 1995.
The failure of trade unions the world over to modernize only exacerbates this inexorable decline. The structure of a traditional trade union often reflected the configuration of the enterprise it had to tackle -- hierarchical, centralized, and top-down. But rigorously stratified corporations went the way of central planning.
Business resembles self-assembling ad-hoc networks, or a guerilla force, rather than the bottom-heavy and elephantine organization of the early 20th century, when most unions were formed. Individual workers adapted to the ever-changing requirements of ever-shifting markets by increasing their mobility and adaptability and by immersing themselves in lifelong education and training.
Consider the two ends of the spectrum: agency, freelance, and fixed-term contract employees or even illegal aliens, and executives. Both are peripatetic. Workplace-orientated trade unionism cannot cater to their needs because they rarely stay put and because their skills are transferable.
The United Kingdom's Economic and Social Research Council Future of Work Program, launched in 1998, studied the role of trade unions in the rapidly changing landscape of labor. In Working Paper No. 7 titled "Beyond the Enterprise? Trade Unions and the Representation of Contingent Workers" published last year by the Cardiff Business School, the authors say: "The empirical pattern revealed by the research is complex ... We also encountered situations where unions had made use of enterprise unionism to represent contingent workers. For example, enterprise collective agreements may be used to regulate the numbers of contingent workers employed together with their terms and conditions ... Departure from the enterprise model was most apparent within unions that organize freelance workers. The latter are mobile workers and unions adapt to their mobility by reliance on non-enterprise forms of representation. Amongst agency and fixed-term contract workers, however, there is more emphasis on integration of the needs of these workers in the dominant, enterprise model of union representation. In part, this reflects the fact that agency and contract workers can develop a long-term employment relationship ..."
Trade unions are adapting by modifying their recruitment methods. Unions solicit members in employment bureaus, temp agencies, and job fairs. They offer "customized packages" of workplace-independent benefits and services dispensed by paid, roving, union officials, or sub-contractors. Many unions have re-organized along geographical -- rather than sector- or enterprise-wide -- lines.
Part 2 of this analysis will run Thursday.
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