IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/treure/v24y2018i2p217-232.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Direct democracy and trade union action

Author

Listed:
  • Roland Erne

    (Jean Monnet Chair of European Integration and Employment Relations, UCD School of Business and Geary Institute for Public Policy, University College Dublin, Ireland)

  • Markus Blaser

    (Historian and Journalist, Florence, Italy)

Abstract

Until recently, the political influence of trade unions primarily relied on ties to labour-friendly political parties. Since the 1990s, however, party-union relations have deteriorated, forcing unions to consider complementary political strategies. This article reviews different direct democratic instruments at local, national and EU levels. We distinguish popular consultations initiated by government from above from citizens’ initiatives initiated from below and discuss corresponding trade union experiences in Germany, Italy, Ireland, Slovenia and Switzerland. We also analyse the successful right2water European Citizens Initiative (ECI) of the European Federation of Public Service Unions and the failed fair transport ECI of the European Transport Workers’ Federation at EU level. Whereas unions have successfully used direct democratic instruments to (i) defend social achievements or (ii) as a lever to extract policy concessions, direct democracy is also challenging. Successful direct democratic campaigns require unions that are able to mobilise their own rank-and-file and to inspire larger sections of society.

Suggested Citation

  • Roland Erne & Markus Blaser, 2018. "Direct democracy and trade union action," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 24(2), pages 217-232, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:treure:v:24:y:2018:i:2:p:217-232
    DOI: 10.1177/1024258918764079
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1024258918764079
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1024258918764079?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roland Erne & Natalie Imboden, 2015. "Equal pay by gender and by nationality: a comparative analysis of Switzerland’s unequal equal pay policy regimes across time," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 39(2), pages 655-674.
    2. Schmitter, P.C. & Grote, J.R., 1997. "The Corporatist Sisyphus: Past, Present and Future," Papers 97/4, European Institute - Political and Social Sciences.
    3. Sabina Stan & Idar Helle & Roland Erne, 2015. "European collective action in times of crisis," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 21(2), pages 131-139, May.
    4. Markos Vogiatzoglou, 2015. "Workers’ transnational networks in times of austerity," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 21(2), pages 215-228, May.
    5. Élodie Béthoux & Roland Erne & Darragh Golden, 2018. "A Primordial Attachment to the Nation? French and Irish Workers and Trade Unions in Past EU Referendum Debates," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 56(3), pages 656-678, September.
    6. Greer, Ian, 2008. "Von sozialen Bewegungen lernen: Ein Impuls für deutsche Gewerkschaften," WSI-Mitteilungen, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, vol. 61(4), pages 205-211.
    7. Amable, Bruno, 2017. "Structural Crisis and Institutional Change in Modern Capitalism: French Capitalism in Transition," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198787815.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Aurora Trif & Imre G Szabó, 2023. "Where to find power resources under a hostile government? The prospects for trade union revitalization after the loss of institutional resources in Hungary and Romania," European Journal of Industrial Relations, , vol. 29(1), pages 25-42, March.
    2. Torsten Müller & Hans-Wolfgang Platzer, 2020. "The European Trade Union Federations within the European polity: ETUFs and international trade union activity," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 26(3), pages 289-305, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Roland Erne, 2018. "Labour politics and the EU’s new economic governance regime (European Unions)," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 24(2), pages 237-247, May.
    2. Höpner, Martin, 2019. "The German undervaluation regime under Bretton Woods: How Germany became the nightmare of the world economy," MPIfG Discussion Paper 19/1, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    3. Élodie Béthoux & Roland Erne & Darragh Golden, 2018. "A Primordial Attachment to the Nation? French and Irish Workers and Trade Unions in Past EU Referendum Debates," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 56(3), pages 656-678, September.
    4. Paul Teague & Jimmy Donaghey, 2015. "The life and death of Irish social partnership: lessons for social pacts," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(3), pages 418-437, April.
    5. Katy Fox-Hodess, 2017. "(Re-)Locating the Local and National in the Global: Multi-Scalar Political Alignment in Transnational European Dockworker Union Campaigns," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 55(3), pages 626-647, September.
    6. Nicola Acocella & Giovanni Bartolomeo & Wilfried Pauwels, 2010. "Is there any scope for corporatism in macroeconomic policies?," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 403-424, November.
    7. Höpner, Martin & Baccaro, Lucio, 2022. "Das deutsche Wachstumsmodell, 1991-2019," MPIfG Discussion Paper 22/9, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    8. Ian Fitzgerald & Ron Beadle & Kevin Rowan, 2022. "Trade unions and the 2016 UK European Union Referendum," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 43(1), pages 388-409, February.
    9. Clément Carbonnier, 2023. "Welfare Economics and Neoliberalism: Interpreting the ideal type of perfect competition general equilibrium," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-04062786, HAL.
    10. Teodor Marian Cojocaru & George H. Ionescu & Daniela Firoiu & Laura Mariana Cismaș & Maria Daniela Oțil & Ovidiu Toma, 2022. "Reducing Inequalities within and among EU Countries—Assessing the Achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Targets (SDG 10)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(13), pages 1-22, June.
    11. Sandrine Michel, 2018. "Social spending as a driver of economic growth: has the theoretical consensus of the 1980s led to successful economic policies?," Post-Print hal-01944296, HAL.
    12. Mike Raco, 2003. "The Social Relations of Business Representation and Devolved Governance in the United Kingdom," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 35(10), pages 1853-1876, October.
    13. Matthew Soener & Olivier Godechot & Mirna Safi, 2023. "Who Benefits from Migrant and Female Labor? Connecting Wages to Demographic Changes in French Workplaces 1," Post-Print hal-04319370, HAL.
    14. Eli Moen, 2017. "Weakening trade union power," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 23(4), pages 425-439, November.
    15. Igor Guardiancich & Oscar Molina, 2022. "From gradual erosion to revitalization: National Social Dialogue Institutions and policy effectiveness," European Journal of Industrial Relations, , vol. 28(1), pages 85-103, March.
    16. Darragh Golden, 2019. "A Fairer Europe for Workers…Or Else? Some observations from the ETUC Congress 2019, Vienna, 21–24 May 2019," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 25(4), pages 489-493, November.
    17. Kühnast, Julia, 2022. "Growth regimes of populist governments: A comparative study on Hungary and Poland," IPE Working Papers 199/2022, Berlin School of Economics and Law, Institute for International Political Economy (IPE).
    18. Baccaro, Lucio & Pontusson, Jonas, 2018. "Comparative political economy and varieties of macroeconomics," MPIfG Discussion Paper 18/10, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    19. Streeck, Wolfgang, 2018. "European social policy: Progressive regression," MPIfG Discussion Paper 18/11, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    20. Robert Boyer, 2019. "Torben Iversen and David Soskice: Democracy and prosperity: reinventing capitalism through a turbulent century," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 128(2), pages 193-200, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:treure:v:24:y:2018:i:2:p:217-232. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.