ABSTRACT
In contrast to widespread perceptions that the main threat to trade unions is external, often identified with ‘globalisation’, this chapter argues that one of the most profound and complex challenges to European trade unions stems from domestic change associated with the employment shift towards marketised services. This challenge is not independent of the broader restructuring of global capitalism, but reflects dynamics that are intrinsic to economic development and modernisation. More than 70 per cent of employment in many OECD countries is found in service industries. As a result of the transfer of jobs from public to private suppliers, the outsourcing of support functions within manufacturing and the introduction of market mechanisms in many public services, the characteristics of work and employment relations associated with private-sector services are spreading throughout the labour market. Private-sector services are marked by a variety of industries with a growing share of small and recently formed firms; new patterns of management-labour relations and work organisation; a diverse workforce, with relatively high rates of labour turnover and participation by women; and difficult structural conditions for collective organisation. In consequence, unionisation rates are often markedly lower than in manufacturing and traditional public services. Struggling with rising work flexibility, erosion of the standard employment relationship, individualisation and social polarisation, traditional trade union movements are thus at their weakest in those parts of the labour market where growth is strongest and many of the most vulnerable groups of workers are found. Different forms of deregulation and privatisation have also weakened collective organisation and brought new pressure to bear on existing collective agreements.
