Reconstructing Solidarity ― Labour Unions, Precarious Work, and the Politics of Institutional Change in Europe

Work is widely thought to have become more precarious. Many people feel that unions represent the interests of protected workers in good jobs at the expense of workers with insecure employment, low pay, and less generous benefits. Reconstructing Solidarity: Labour Unions, Precarious Work, and the Politics of Institutional Change in Europe argues the opposite: that unions try to represent precarious workers using a variety of creative campaigning and organizational tactics.

Where unions can limit employers' ability to 'exit' labour market institutions and collective agreements and build solidarity across different groups of workers, this results in a virtuous circle, establishing union control over the labour market. Where they fail to do so, it sets in motion a vicious circle of expanding precarity based on institutional evasion by employers. Exploring the struggle of the unions against the expansion of precarious work in Europe, Reconstructing Solidarity explains the importance of how unions build, or fail to build, inclusive worker solidarity. It uses a diverse range of comparative case studies to describe the struggles of workers and unions in industries such as local government, music, metalworking, chemicals, meat-packing, and logistics, to argue against the thesis that unions act primarily to protect labour market insiders at the expense of outsiders.

Virginia Doellgast, Associate Professor of Comparative Employment Relations, The ILR School, Cornell University, USA,Nathan Lillie, Professor of Social and Public Policy, Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland,Valeria Pulignano, Professor of Sociology of Labour and Industrial Relations, Centre for Sociological Research, KU Leuven, Belgium

Virginia Doellgast is Associate Professor of Comparative Employment Relations at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Her research focuses on the impact of collective bargaining and labour market institutions on inequality, job quality, and worker voice. Past projects include comparative studies of organizational and work restructuring in the European and US telecommunications and call centre industries. She is the author of Disintegrating Democracy at Work: Labor Unions and the Future of Good Jobs in the Service Economy (Cornell University Press, 2012).

Nathan Lillie is Professor of Social and Public Policy at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. His research relates to migration and posted work, free movement in the European Union, and trade union strategies. Past projects include an ERC-funded multi-country study on industrial relations around posted work. In his current project, Protecting Mobility through Improving Labour Rights Enforcement in Europe, he is working together with stakeholders on improving labour protection and access to industrial democracy for posted workers.

Valeria Pulignano is Professor in Sociology of Labour and Industrial Relations, and Scientific Coordinator of CESO at KU Leuven. Her research focuses on the changing nature of employment (industrial) relations and labour markets and its implication for workers voices. She examined the transformations of labour markets and employment (industrial) relations and its impact on workers' representation, working conditions, and job quality in Europe. Projects include change in production and work organization in the auto industry; transnational labour coordination and solidarity; employment relationships in MNCs; corporate restructuring and trade unions; flexibility and employment security; and dualisation and inequality in labour markets. She co-edited (with James Arrowsmith) The Transformation of Employment Relationships (Routledge, 2013).