Trade union strategies to enhance strike effectiveness in Italy and Spain

Abstract

This article analyses union strategies to enhance strike effectiveness in Italy and Spain in the Great Recession. These two countries have traditionally scored very highly in strike activity statistics due to an adversarial industrial relations framework. In both countries, unions have relied upon similar repertoires of industrial action. Even though they are often grouped under the same industrial relations cluster, there are some significant differences, particularly when it comes to union characteristics and power resources. An analysis of trade union strategies regarding industrial conflict and their attempts to enhance strike effectiveness shows how, in spite of similar challenges, the unions in Italy and Spain have followed different paths and fared differently in their attempt to enhance the effectiveness of industrial action.

Employment Institutions under Liberalization Pressures: Analysing the Effects of Regulatory Change on Collective Bargaining in Spain

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The Italian Way to Internal Devaluation and Social Actors’ Strategies Against Austerity and the Flexibilization of the Labour Market

“…The strike is a weapon no longer used much by trade unions. However, in recent years there has been a significant increase in collective actions in Italy, especially in the public sector and services sector (Molina Barranco 2016). Again, however, a unified practice and a common trade union strategy are missing.…”

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“…In Spain, to legitimate the production of institutional power, before and after the crisis, CCOO and UGT have made use of their dominant position in trade union elections (Beneyto et al 2016; Jódar et al 2011) and, as well, through the organisation of general strikes before and after the crisis (Molina & Barranco 2016), portraying themselves as ‘class unions’ that protected the interests of all workers and could, thus, intervene in political affairs. However, the real effectiveness of such a strategy has been questioned repeatedly, the main problem being whether deploying substantial organisational and discursive efforts at the institutional level, which have supported the creation of an elite of union representatives at the national and regional scales, has effectively improved workers’ real conditions in the labour market and in the workplace and, overall, whether it has been useful in stopping the decentralisation and fragmentation of collective-bargaining structures (Las Heras 2018a, 2018c; Martínez-Lucio 2016; Pérez de Guzman et al 2016).…”