SUMMARY
The main objective of the project is to conduct a comparative analysis of trade
unions and industrial relations in post-socialist countries in order to identify
systematically the opportunities and constraints that can be attributed to the legacy
of state socialism. Much analysis of post-socialist trade unions makes reference to
the state-socialist legacy, but there has been no systematic comparative study of
post-socialist trade unions on which to base such reference. The proposed project
brings together specialists on trade union development in Central and Eastern
Europe with research teams covering six of the post-Soviet states to conduct new
research within a comparative framework. The research is broken down into three
phases, covering trade unions and the state, trade unions in the workplace, with
the final year devoted to comparative analysis of the findings.
Research Objectives
1) The principal objective of the research programme is to develop a comparative
analysis of the development of trade unionism in post-socialist society. The study of
trade unionism in post-socialist countries has developed very unevenly. A few
countries, particularly Russia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Slovenia, have been
well researched, while studies of other countries, particularly those of the CIS, are
fewer and more superficial. Many commentators refer to the state-socialist legacy as
an explanatory factor in national studies, but without specifying the precise character
and implications of this legacy, or the extent to which it is a constraint, something
that can only be achieved through comparative study. However, there has been very
little comparative analysis of trade unionism in the post-socialist countries, partly
because of the limited research base, partly because much research has sought to
capture national specificities, and partly because attention in Eastern Europe has
become focused on the question of EU accession. Nevertheless, the degree of
divergence of experiences over the past fifteen years makes it even more important to
identify and to evaluate the opportunities and constraints provided by the common
legacy of the state-socialist past as well as the factors underlying divergent
experiences and, in particular, the balance between the influence of objective
economic and political factors and that of differences in trade union strategies.
2) The second objective is to develop the capacity for critical research on trade unionism
in the NIS countries and to enhance our knowledge and understanding of trade union
development in those countries. The Russian and INTAS teams bring together some
of the leading specialists on trade unionism in the post-socialist countries who can
provide theoretical, substantive and methodological support for scientists in other CIS
countries seeking to develop a critical scientific understanding of the limitations and
possibilities of trade union development in their own countries.
3) The third, practical, objective is to provide a basis on which trade unions across the
post-socialist countries can learn from each other in developing structures and
practices appropriate to their new socio-economic environments. Trade unions have
varied a great deal from one country to another in the ways in which they have
adapted to their new circumstances, but none have been very successful in providing
effective channels for interest representation and conflict resolution. This relative
failure is as important for those countries which will remain outside the EU as it is for
those about to enter. The scientists involved in the research programme have close
relationships with national and international trade union and labour organisations.
The research programme has been elaborated in consultation with the ETUI and the
Central and East European Committee of the International Confederation of Free
Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the results of the research will be disseminated through
those frameworks, as well as through national trade union channels. In relation to the
issue of EU enlargement, this research programme will interact with two parallel
projects involving the Warwick and Bremen teams studying the adaptation of East
European trade unions to EU accession.
Background and Methodology
In the immediate aftermath of the collapse of state socialism the central research question
was whether the traditional trade unions would be able to transform themselves into
organisations that could effectively represent the interests of their members, or whether they
were destined to disappear, to be replaced by the new alternative trade unions that had
emerged from the grassroots. Useful studies of the development of trade unions in particular
countries were undertaken, but most research was conducted within the ‘democratisation’
framework of political science, with little attention paid to the properly industrial relations
role of trade unions. Even within an industrial relations framework, there was very little
comparative research seeking to identify the constraints and opportunities common to all the
post-socialist countries (one of the few projects to adopt a comparative perspective was that
of John Thirkell and his colleagues Thirkell et al., 1995, 1998).
The political scientists’ interest in trade unions declined as it became clear that the unions
were not major political actors. Increasing attention has been paid to the trade unions’
industrial relations role, but most of this research, in which participants in this project have
played a leading role, has focused on the EU Accession Countries and the central issue has
been that of the adaptation of CEE trade unions to the requirements of and opportunities for
representation, participation and consultation within the framework of the institutions of the
EU.
A substantial empirical and theoretical gulf has opened up between trade union research in
Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS countries. There is now a relatively good body of
research on the development of trade unionism in the CEE countries, particularly Poland,
Hungary, Bulgaria and Slovenia, but there is very little published research on trade unions in
the CIS outside Russia and, to a lesser extent, Ukraine. Almost all the limited amount of
research on trade unions in the CIS countries is still conducted by the institutions attached to
the traditional trade unions and remains, as in the past, more celebratory than critical.
Theoretically, most discussion of trade unionism in the CEE countries has used as its
reference point the experience of trade unionism in the developed capitalist countries,
measuring the development of the unions in the CEE countries against their capitalist
counterparts. This has led to the relative neglect of the fundamental question of the character
of those organisations that called themselves trade unions in the state-socialist countries and
of the impact of the socialist legacy on post-socialist trade union development. On the other
hand, commentary on trade unions in most of the CIS countries has emphasised the
continuities with the past, whether in the uncritical celebration of the trade unions’ role by
their apologists or in their dismissal by their critics. This divergence of approach, and the
limited research base in the CIS countries, is one reason why there has still been only a very
limited comparative discussion of trade union development in the post-socialist countries.
Even the most substantial recent cross-national study of post-socialist trade unions, put
together by two US political scientists, disclaimed any comparative ambition (Crowley and
Ost, 2001, p.7), largely limiting itself to country-specific explanations for the ‘weakness’ of
labour (see also the special issue of the European Journal of Industrial Relations, 8, 1, 2002).
The present proposal builds on the experience of the participants in researching trade union
development in CEE and NIS countries as a basis on which to develop a framework for the
comparative analysis of trade unions under post-socialism. The theoretical starting point of
the project is the observation that state-socialist trade unions were quite unlike trade unions in
developed capitalist countries in being an integral part of the Party-state and management
apparatuses, performing primarily state and managerial functions with virtually no role in the
regulation of employment relations. The collapse of the state-socialist system threatened the
very existence of these ‘trade unions’, while offering them two paths of adaptation to the
changed environment. On the one hand, the line of least resistance was to seek to retain or
reconstitute their traditional state and managerial functions within an institutional and
ideological framework of ‘social partnership’, a framework rather different from the ‘social
dialogue’ characteristic of many capitalist countries to the extent that it continues to seal the
dependence of the trade unions on the state and employers at the expense of their trade union
role as representative of their members. On the other hand, a much more challenging task
was to develop their industrial relations role by transforming themselves into representatives
of their members in the workplace, negotiating with employers over the terms and conditions
of labour and in the resolution of disputes. One important research question is that of the
extent to which these two paths of development are complementary to or inconsistent with
one another. On the one hand, the independent bargaining strength of the trade unions in
institutions of social partnership depends on their ability to strengthen their role as
representative of their members. On the other hand, their acceptance into the framework of
social partnership is often conditional on their ability to restrain their members from actively
pressing their interests in order to preserve ‘social peace’.
A second important research question is that of whether the continuities from state-socialist
to post-socialist forms of trade unionism are to be explained by ideological legacies and a
continuity of personnel or by structural features inherited by post-socialist society. A
comparison of the development of traditional and alternative trade unions in each country can
throw light on this question, since they share a common structural environment while having
a very different legacy from the past.
Methodology
The theoretical framework of the research identifies two central, and to some extent
alternative, dimensions of the development of trade unionism in the post-socialist countries.
On the one hand, the extent to which trade unions have been able to retain or reconstitute
their former state functions and to secure government recognition through their incorporation
into institutions of social partnership. On the other hand, the extent to which trade unions
have been able to develop independent workplace organisation, to represent effectively the
interests of their members in negotiation, and occasionally in conflict, with management. The
research programme will focus on each of these dimensions in succession in the various
state-socialist countries, with one year of the project being devoted to each, before we bring
the material as a whole together in the third year to develop the comparative and analytical
perspective. The research will embrace both traditional and alternative trade unions. The
methodology employed will be that developed by the INTAS and Russian participants in
their research over the past decade.
The INTAS participants will not conduct new original research within the framework of this
research programme, but their contributions will be based on their past and ongoing research
and on their reviews of the secondary literature, research reports and discussions with
researchers in the respective countries. Each participant will prepare a report relating to their
own target country(ies), addressed to the themes of the research for each of the three or four
project research seminars (see research programme and tasks lists). The research in the CIS
countries will be conducted by the participating researchers funded by INTAS. Apart from
the Russian team, the CIS participants have less experience of systematic research on trade
unions. This is one reason why we will focus on the first theme, which is more familiar to
them, in the first year. The first year of the research will focus on the institutional relationship
between trade unions and the state and the extent to which the state has developed new state
structures to carry out the functions previously performed by the trade unions. This phase of
the research will be based on documentary and archival sources, observation of relevant trade
union conferences and congresses and interviews with key trade union informants. The
second phase of the research, on workplace trade unionism, will be based on a series of six to
eight case studies of enterprises of different property forms in different branches of
production in each country, including interviews with trade union presidents, shop trade
union representatives and ordinary trade union members and concentrating on the issues of
the negotiation of collective agreements and procedures for the representation of members in
disputes. Where it is possible to secure trade union support/sponsorship, a survey of
enterprise trade union presidents will also be carried out (as was done in Russia in our
previous INTAS project). The Russian team will prepare comparable reports on Russia,
where there is a much more developed research base than in the other CIS countries, but will
also provide close support for the other CIS teams, including participation in their fieldwork.
The third year of the project will be devoted to the development of a comparative analytical
framework. Initial analyses will be presented for discussion at the research seminar at the end
of the second year of the research and will be elaborated over the subsequent six months,
with drafts being regularly circulated for comment, for presentation and discussion at a
further seminar to be held six months later. The outcome of these discussions will be an
analytical framework (or frameworks) that will provide the basis for the preparation of
analytical reports on each country which will be presented to the final dissemination seminar
at the end of the project.
References
Crowley, S. and Ost, D. (Eds.) (2001) Workers After Workers' States: Labor and Politics in
PostCommunist Eastern Europe, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, Boulder, New York,
Oxford.
Thirkell, J., Scase, R. and Vickerstaff, S. (Eds.) (1995) Labour Relations and Political
Change in Eastern Europe, UCL Press, London.
Thirkell, J., Petkov, K. and Vickerstaff, S. (1998) The transformation of labour relations:
restructuring and privatization in Eastern Europe and Russia, Oxford: OxfordUniversity
Press.
Research Programme
The Research Programme will be carried out in three stages. In the first year, the research
programme will focus on the relationship between trade unions and the state following
the collapse of state socialism. In the second year, the research programme will focus on
trade unions in the workplace. In the third year, the research programme will concentrate
on developing an analytical framework for the understanding of the development of trade
unionism under post-socialism on the basis of the comparative studies undertaken over
the previous two years. As noted above, the NIS participants will conduct original
research within the framework of the programme, while the INTAS participants will
draw on their own current research and a review of secondary literature and reports. The
Russian team will provide close support for the other, less experienced, NIS teams in
their conduct of the research.
The focus of the research will be a series of research seminars, lasting three to four days,
at which all of the participants in the programme will present research reports for
discussion. All of the reports will be circulated one month in advance of the seminar and
they will be revised subsequent to the seminar with a view to publication. The first two
seminars will be held at the end of each of the first two years of research. The third
seminar, which will have an analytical focus, will be held 6 months before the end of the
project, while the fourth seminar will be a dissemination seminar at the end of the project.
The research questions will be elaborated and modified in the course of the research, at
the regular research seminars. At present the research agenda for each year is anticipated
to be as follows:
First Year:
The first year of the research will focus on three questions: 1) to what extent have the
traditional trade unions retained their state functions? What new institutions have
developed to perform these functions? Which of these functions have been abandoned by
the state/privatised etc.
2) Institutions of social partnership at national and regional levels: what do they do?
What is the substance of agreements? Are they enforced? How much influence have the
trade unions had in the negotiation and implementation of tripartite agreements?
3) Alternative trade unions: have the alternative trade unions sought admission to (been
admitted to) the institutions of social partnership/assumed state functions? Has there been
a tendency to convergence between alternative and traditional trade unions in their
political/governmental activities? To what extent has the political role of the alternative
trade unions been institutionalised?
Second year:
The second year of the research will focus on the activity of traditional and alternative
trade unions in the workplace. Existing and ongoing research in ECE will be reviewed by
the INTAS participants, while the NIS participants will each conduct a number (6-8) of
case studies in each country, covering contrasting branches of production, different
property forms and both traditional and alternative trade unions. Case study research will
be supplemented by a review of existing research literature and expert interviews. If
possible, the researchers will conduct a survey of heads of primary trade union
organisations, in collaboration with the trade unions.
Third year
The third year of the research will be devoted to the development of a theoretical
framework for the understanding of the constraints and opportunities facing post-socialist
trade unions on the basis of a comparative analysis of the research data. The findings will
be disseminated through both scientific and trade union channels.