‘Smart’ Industrial Relations in the Making? Insights from Analysis of Union Responses to Digitalization in Italy

Abstract

How do unions respond to the emerging threats and opportunities posed by digitalization in the sphere of employment relations? What factors account for the focus and varying effectiveness of their responses? This paper seeks to address these questions in the case of Italy—a theoretically interesting case that combines significant digitalization-related challenges, historically strong industrial relations institutions under increasing pressure, and diverse union confederations. From the available evidence, we find that Italian union strategies and demands so far have been primarily focused on interventions at the macro and meso levels, with a view to extending traditional forms of protection—especially sectoral collective bargaining agreements—to deal with the disruptive effects of digitalization. This focus has been coupled with some limited innovation in union agendas and discursive repertoires focused on the micro level of intervention, as well as a shift in union preferences toward inclusion of platform workers and self-employed workers in their constituencies. Whilst highlighting the importance of agential factors, we nonetheless find that the focus and effectiveness of union interventions are crucially shaped by prior institutional legacies and distributions of power resources, as well as by the ideological orientation and strategic capabilities of individual unions themselves. Overall, Italian unions have to date tended to privilege gradual response strategies based on extension and adaptation of existing and established institutions. It remains to be seen whether such adaptive approaches will be sufficient to effectively govern the digital transformation of work or whether more radical institutional experimentation will become necessary. Either way, in order to build smart industrial relations in Italy, unions will have an active role to play.

Industrial relations and unemployment benefit schemes in the Visegrad countries during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…We therefore hypothesise that social partners' actions are shaped by the interplay between institutional dynamics and strategic behavioural patterns in various political and economic contexts (Thelen, 2001). Particular stress is put on 'political opportunities' defined as the potential for and obstacles to strategic action and intervention (Gasparri and Tassinari, 2020;McGuire, 2013).…”

“…In industrial relations terms, this can be explained by changing approaches (Baccaro and Howell, 2017; Kochan, 2004; Roland, 2004). Industrial relations institutions, in general, are subject to such broad factors as market internalisation (Fetzer, 2009), state regulations (Kochan, 2004), technological change (Gasparri and Tassinari, 2020), ideological shifts, geopolitics, or past path-dependent decisions (Crouch, 1993; Hall and Soskice, 2001). In this context, institutions are characterised by constraints within which social actors operate.…”

Collective regulation and the future of work in the digital economy: Insights from comparative employment relations

“…Gasparri and Tassinari (2020) also emphasize framing processes in their analysis of union responses to digitalization in Italy. The three main union confederations were part of a national steering committee but more directly invested resources ‘in production of knowledge that can be used to influence public debate’ or to steer policy decisions.…”

Digitalisation of work in aerospace manufacturing: expanding union frames and repertoires of action in Belgium, Canada and Denmark

“…Haipeter (2020) shows that, while open to technological changes at the macro level, German manufacturing unions have to develop new strategies at the workplace level in cooperation with works councils to be able to shape digitalisation effects on the intensification of work, the complexities of poorly integrated systems and deficient skills and training programmes. Gasparri and Tassinari (2020) further exemplify how, in adverse circumstances, Italian unions have mobilised their (limited) institutional resources by strategically combining action levels depending on the issues at stake. These accounts reaffirm the structure and agency components of union action and reinforce the need to take the context seriously, as resources available, issues at stake and strategic capabilities are all in play.…”