Trade union project-based revitalization strategies in Central and Eastern Europe: The Case of Slovenia and Estonia

Abstract

This article studies trade union revitalization within broader trends of projectification that marks a shift towards project work and its temporary organization. It accordingly compares instances of project-based organizational restructuring in post-crisis Estonia and Slovenia in order to identify their drivers, power resources employed and their outcomes and wider impact. In both countries, project-based organizational restructuring was driven by proactive activists capable of innovatively utilizing available power resources and new opportunity structures that had opened up with EU integration. While Slovenian unions utilized a more diverse set of power resources and revitalization strategies, activists in both countries stimulated trade union project-based organizational restructuring in order to initiate and sustain their main, context specific, revitalization strategies. Findings also show that project-based organizational restructuring can be an interim phase for unions to increase their resources and use them to turn their revitalization strategies into more permanent ones.

Organised by transitions: the self-organisation of next-generation welfare professionals in Slovenia

“…All self-organised groups also used social media as an outreach channel to those affected by decreased entry routes, to build alliances, increase their voice and pressure on the government. While online organising tactics are nothing new, these spaces still require more scrutiny by industrial relations scholars and trade unions, which are still lagging behind in using social media for mobilisation, recruitment or renewal (Hodder and Houghton, 2015;Samaluk, 2017b).…”

“…German unions, for example, established a presence at universities to provide services to a growing student base and help them enter the labour market (Behrend and Hipp, 2017). Some unions' success in addressing youth precarity comes with their focus on statuses rather than age categories (Keune, 2015;Samaluk, 2017b), and union involvement in policymaking has proven crucial for updating the institutions governing educationto-work transitions (Durazzi and Geyer, 2020).…”

“…A second answer points to aspects of young, precarious workers that prevent them from entering unions. Precarious workers might not collectively self-identify as workers, because they occupy complex legal and social statuses (Samaluk, 2017b) or self-organise around other axes of identity such as sexual orientation, race, gender or ethnicity (Piore and Safford, 2006). They might develop organisations that are less bureaucratic than unions, experience culture clashes when they encounter unions, and choose to stay outside to retain their freedom to act (Tapia, 2013).…”

“…Although projects are temporary, they give TUYP autonomy in organising and servicing 'youth plus' beyond the immediate labour market. They have been active for nearly a decade and succeeded in abolishing unpaid internships and, together with the self-organised groups explored in this article, winning EU funding for quasi-internship schemes (Samaluk, 2017b).…”

“…Young people have become an increasingly important priority for trade unions worldwide, and a growing literature examines union strategies to organise them (Keune, 2015;Martinez Lucio et al, 2017;Samaluk, 2017b;Simms et al, 2018;Vandaele, 2019). These studies show that the precarious employment situation of young workers calls for innovation, which unions can promote by providing a supportive, autonomous space .…”