ABSTRACT

The “apolitical” economic laws of supply and demand do not really work in the labour market. Instead, employment relations are first and foremost shaped by power relations between capital, labour and the state. Unions can, therefore, hardly afford to abandon the political terrain. This chapter first explains why politics plays such a central role in employment relations in capitalist societies, and then outlines the merits and limitations of the various political action repertoires of unions (private interest government, lobbying, protest action, corporatist political exchanges, alliances with sister parties, direct democratic citizens’ initiatives and referendums).

Keywords: Politics; political exchange; challenges for unions

INTRODUCTION

Throughout their history, unions have played a key role in the making of working classes and political mobilizations across the world. Without the support of the associational networks provided by the union movement across towns and workplaces, left-wing labour parties would not have been able to flourish, nor would the left– right divide have become a central feature of democratic politics (Bartolini 2000; Thompson 1963). More than a century ago, the British socialist reformers, Sidney and Beatrice Webb (1897), made a clear distinction between unions and labour parties in their seminal book, Industrial Democracy. Whereas unions represented the economic wing of the labour movement and defended workers’ economic interests through collective bargaining in their trade, the Labour Party was tasked to represent the cause of labour in the political sphere. This conception of union-party relations had been particularly strong in Britain and also shaped unions’ relationships to centre-left parties in many other parts of the industrialized world (Allern & Bale 2017).

Unions, nevertheless, also continue to play an important autonomous role in politics. First, unions give rank-and-file workers a forum where they can learn to articulate and pursue their interests collectively. This makes unions intrinsically political, even where they delegate parliamentary politics to centre-left sister parties or claim to be politically, confessionally and ideologically neutral. Thus, unions can be important “schools of democracy” (Sinyai 2006) even when they target employers rather than governments. Regardless of their particular political orientation, unions provide workers with a space that helps them to act collectively not only at workplace level but also in the political sphere.