Introduction

Any reflection on the contribution of unions and the broader labour movement to the public policy process must be situated within the wider context of the shifting power relations between labour and capital over the past 40 years. Unions’ efforts to represent the working class both in the workplace and the corridors of the state ultimately rest on their capacity to mobilize workers as a political force whose presence can be felt in the streets, at the ballot box, and, of course, within the policy apparatus of the state. Significant reforms and innovations in public policy affecting unions and workers have occurred “during periods of economic and social difficulty, when established thinking has been challenged and policy-makers have been forced to develop new practical measures” (Heyes & Rychly, 2013, p. 3). Recall that the International Labour Organization (ILO)’s founding in 1919 was in response to the social unrest in the years following the end of World War I, including the 1917 Russian Revolution and the perceived threat of socialist contagion. Soon, labour departments and ministries began to appear as integral components of the state's administrative apparatus to manage and dull the sharper edges of class-based conflicts. The point is that the public policies designed to address issues of concern to unions and workers are always and fundamentally concerned with managing the inherent tensions characterizing the relationship between labour, capital and the state.

The chapter dealing with the labour movement and policy analysis appearing in the previous edition of this book was aptly entitled “Policy Analysis by the Labour Movement in a Hostile Environment” (Jackson & Baldwin, 2007). In the intervening ten years, the environment has remained hostile to labour as a global financial/economic crisis emerged and threatened to send the world into another great depression. The tepid recovery from that crisis has not restored a social democratic, Keynesian political and policy paradigm. If anything, the policy environment for labour has grown more adverse. Here we suggest the declining voice of labour within the state is directly related to unions’ limited capacities to mobilize their members and workers in general and is a function of the extent to which the state's policy apparatus is now structured to limit alternative (namely non-neoliberal) policy perspectives from gaining a hearing.