The Paradox of Post-Communist Trade Unionism: ‘You Can't Want What You Can't Imagine’

Abstract

This article explores employee attitudes towards trade union membership in the post-communist Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. It reports on a comparative empirical social survey of attitudes towards representation. We suggest that in addition to those employees who are union members and those who fall within an identifiable ‘representation gap’, there is a sizeable group of ‘undecided’ employees who could be persuaded to join trade unions, if they could see the relevance of collective representation. We argue that this relatively large group could be specific to the Central and East European countries, and employees who fall within the commonly understood representation gap in other countries can be found within this undecided group in Baltic countries. Trade unions therefore face a considerable challenge in proving their relevance to such employees, a problem that has wider resonances in a European context but may be more difficult to resolve in the Central and East European countries.

What do unions do in times of economic crisis? Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe

“…One implication of these findings is that the crisis may have increased the relevance of union membership in the eyes of individual workers, which eventually could convince more workers to join a union. Kallaste and Woolfson (2009) Finally, we should note that our work is not without limitations. First, the evidence we provide can only be suggestive for the hypotheses we test.…”

“…This paper tries to address both these gaps by examining the relationship between individual trade union status and the probability of being affected by the recent economic crisis in the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Most of the literature studying industrial relations in the post-socialist world records the relative weakness of trade unions in these countries (see, e.g., Crowley, 2004;Kallaste and Woolfson, 2009;Ost, 2009;and Visser, 2009). The main objective of this paper is to assess this widely-acknowledged weakness of trade unions in Central and Eastern Europe.…”

The Characteristic Features of Social Dialogue in the Baltics

“…The conditions for joining employers' organizations (the scale of a business entity, the membership fee and similar) differ from country to country. Kallaste and Woolfson (2009), in generalizing research conducted by other authors, argue that membership in a trade union is more attractive for the employees and that the benefits are higher than the associated costs. The membership means more additional work for the the members and requires specific trainings.…”

“…The decline of memberhip was a common trend for the post-Communist states and advanced capitalist countries (Waddington 2005;Sippola 2009;Krzywdzinski 2010;Peters 2011). The globalization, the structural shifts in the economy, the raising of new forms of employeement and path-dependancy are the main explanatory factors for the decline (Kallaste, Woolfson 2009;Krzywdzinski 2010). The growing assimetry between both parties impairs the entity of social dialogue.…”

“…Low financial and organizational capacity caused by the declining membership adds to the problem of interest definition, aggregation and protection in negotiations with employers' and state organizations. The difference even exists in the way of the organization of the trade unions and their density (Kallaste, Woolfson 2009). Starting from 2008, union density slightly decreased in Latvia and Lithuania.…”