Union Campaigns against Precarious Work in the Retail Sector of Estonia, Poland, and Slovenia

Abstract

This chapter studies trade union responses to the precarization of work in the retail sector in three post-socialist East European countries: Estonia, Poland, and Slovenia. The aim of the chapter is to analyse the influence of sectoral specifics, different institutional factors, and trade unions’ power resources on union approaches towards precarious work, and to explore the potential for new patterns of solidarity. The main thrust of the argument is that unions’ power is crucial for developing and sustaining the industrial relations institutions, which in turn shape constraints and opportunities for trade unions’ actions. However, the strategic choices exerted by trade union leaders also matter. While higher institutional and associational power still enables Slovene unions to regulate the conditions of precarious workers to a certain extent, the institutional weakness of Estonian and Polish unions make them increasingly reliant on their network embeddedness and narrative resources to mobilize against precarization.

Trade union strategy in fashion retail in Italy and the USA: Converging divergence between institutions and mobilization?

“…The retail sector is particularly suitable for examining these three approaches (Mrozowicki et al, 2018). It is critical in terms of occupational size and economic relevance, especially in post-industrial Western countries; and it is also a setting in which union weakness seems driven by 'hard' facts related to the workforce (often young, with low occupational attachment), the job (low skill) and the workplace (small and fragmented, at the end of supply chains).…”

20 years after. Changing perspectives on industrial relations in Central and Eastern Europe two decades after EU enlargement: from transition to transformation

“…In such cases (2004/2007/2013-2020 under examination, most severely in the Baltic states. The erosion of union membership has continued, despite extensive organising campaigns and other attempts at trade union revitalisation in the region (see Mrozowicki, 2014;Mrozowicki et al, 2018).…”

Labour protests during the pandemic

“…In many countries, retail work remains weakly unionised, and dominated by extremely large employers who often have a track record of opposing union recognition (of which US giants such as Wal-Mart are emblematic: Lichtenstein, 2016;Hocquelet, 2016). Retail work is typically low-paid, with few opportunities for career advancement (McKie et al, 2009;Winton, 2021), and is often precarious, with weak institutional worker voice (Bailey et al, 2015;Mrozowicki et al, 2018). It is also a relatively feminised workforce (Brydges and Hanlon, 2020).…”