Selected Works of Michael Wallerstein The Political Economy of Inequality, Unions, and Social Democracy
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- 1 GENERAL INTRODUCTION
- Part I Class Conflict, the State, and Economic Limits to Democracy
- Part II The Politics of Labor Organizations
- 6 INTRODUCTION
- 7 UNION ORGANIZATION IN ADVANCED INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACIES
- 8 CENTRALIZED BARGAINING AND WAGE RESTRAINT
- 9 POSTWAR TRADE-UNION ORGANIZATION AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS IN TWELVE COUNTRIES
- 10 UNIONS IN DECLINE? WHAT HAS CHANGED AND WHY
- Part III Inequality and Redistribution
- Part IV Labor and the Nordic Model of Social Democracy
- Other Books in the Series
- References
10 - UNIONS IN DECLINE? WHAT HAS CHANGED AND WHY
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2010
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- 1 GENERAL INTRODUCTION
- Part I Class Conflict, the State, and Economic Limits to Democracy
- Part II The Politics of Labor Organizations
- 6 INTRODUCTION
- 7 UNION ORGANIZATION IN ADVANCED INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACIES
- 8 CENTRALIZED BARGAINING AND WAGE RESTRAINT
- 9 POSTWAR TRADE-UNION ORGANIZATION AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS IN TWELVE COUNTRIES
- 10 UNIONS IN DECLINE? WHAT HAS CHANGED AND WHY
- Part III Inequality and Redistribution
- Part IV Labor and the Nordic Model of Social Democracy
- Other Books in the Series
- References
Summary
Introduction
Unions are in big trouble, as everyone knows. Under attack by conservative politicians, battered by overseas competition, threatened by capital flight, bewildered by changes in the nature of work, and shackled by an outmoded egalitarian ideology, unions increasingly appear like large but aging dinosaurs struggling to adapt as the climate changes. The proportion of workers who belong to unions is in decline. Centralized systems of wage-setting are breaking apart. Incentive pay schemes and profit-sharing arrangements subvert negotiated wage scales. Wage inequality is growing while the median wage stagnates. Past achievements are under attack as European governments blame “labor market rigidities,” i.e. the legal and contractual protections that current workers enjoy, for persistently high unemployment. Even the unions' traditional political allies, the social democratic and labor parties, are keeping their distance, having discovered that being too closely tied to the unions is a political liability.
As is usually the case, what everyone knows to be true is not completely wrong but not completely right either. In this paper, we aim to describe, as precisely as the data allow, what is and is not known about the changing terrain of industrial relations in advanced industrial societies in the postwar period. We survey the empirical research that seeks to explain cross-national and longitudinal variation in union organization and wage-setting procedures. We do not attempt to provide country-by-country descriptions.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Selected Works of Michael WallersteinThe Political Economy of Inequality, Unions, and Social Democracy, pp. 212 - 238Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008
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