Title Organised labour - an actor of Euro-democratisation, Euro

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Organised labour - an actor of Euro-democratisation, Euro-
Title technocracy or (re-) nationalisation? Trade-union strategies
concerning the European integration process
Author(s) Erne, Roland
Publication
2004-06
date
Publisher European University Institute
Link to online http://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/5175;
version http://hdl.handle.net/1814/5175
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EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE
Department of Political and Social Sciences

ORGANISED LABOUR - AN ACTOR OF EURO-DEMOCRATISATION,
EURO-TECHNOCRACY OR RE-NATIONALISATION?
Trade-union strategies concerning the European integration process

by

Roland ERNE

Thesis submitted for assessment with
A view to obtaining the Degree of Doctor of the
European University Institute

Jury Members:

Prof. Dr. Ulrich K. Preuss (Freie Universität Berlin) (External Co-Supervisor)
Prof. Dr. Franz Traxler (Universität Wien) (External Supervisor)
Prof. Dr. Philippe C. Schmitter (EUI) (Co-Supervisor)
Prof. Dr. Colin Crouch (EUI) (Supervisor)

Florence, June 2004
Für meine Eltern
1
I. Introduction...........................................................................................6
II. Approaching a Euro-democracy..........................................................10
A. IS A DEMOCRATIC EU POLITY POSSIBLE?......................................................................11
B. EXPLORING FUTURE EU-POLITY DEVELOPMENTS..........................................................20
C. TRADE UNIONS: AN ACTOR OF EURO-DEMOCRATISATION?............................................29
III. Do unions have an interest in Euro-democratisation?.........................34
A. POWER RESOURCES OF TRADE-UNIONS..........................................................................34
B. TRADE-UNION POWER RESOURCES WITHIN THE EU POLITY...........................................40
C. WHICH EU POLITY DEVELOPMENT WOULD FAVOUR LABOUR INTERESTS?....................51
IV. Research design...................................................................................58
A. THE LOGIC OF THIS QUALITATIVE, COMPARATIVE MULTI-LEVEL INQUIRY.....................58
B. CASE STUDY SELECTION................................................................................................61
C. SOURCES AND RESEARCH METHODS..............................................................................64
V. Collective bargaining: The tension between national competition and
European coordination.........................................................................65
A. THE (DEFICIENT) EUROPEAN POLITICS OF COLLECTIVE WAGE BARGAINING..................66
B. THE STRATEGIC WAGE BARGAINING DILEMMAS OF ORGANISED LABOUR......................73
VI. National “Competetive Corporatism” .................................................77
A. REAL WAGE AND PRODUCTIVITY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE EU........................................78
B. NO WAGE MODERATION................................................................................................84
C. STRUCTURAL WAGE MODERATION................................................................................90
D. BARGAINED WAGE MODERATION..................................................................................93
E. CONCLUSION...............................................................................................................103
VII. European wage bargaining coordination..........................................108
A. EUROPEAN COORDINATION AND NATIONAL AUTONOMY.............................................110
B. EUROPEAN BENCHMARKS AND NATIONAL COMPETITIVENESS.....................................130
C. BARGAINING COORDINATION, EURO-TECHNOCRACY AND EURO-DEMOCRATISATION.162
2
VIII. Transnational company mergers: the tension between
“Euro-technocracy” and “Euro-democratisation” .............................166
A. THE (STRONG) EUROPEAN POLITICS OF MERGER CONTROL.........................................167
B. THE ROLE OF ORGANISED LABOUR IN THE EU COMPETITION POLICY..........................175
IX. The ABB-Alstom merger case ..........................................................181
A. TOWARDS SUPRANATIONAL MANAGEMENT STRUCTURES?..........................................182
B. TRANSNATIONAL PRE-MERGER TRADE-UNION ACTIVITIES ..........................................190
C. THE ABB ALSTOM MERGER TRADE-UNION ACTIVITIES ..............................................198
D. CONCLUSION...............................................................................................................226
X. The Alcan-Pechiney-Algroup Merger case.......................................229
A. TOWARDS SUPRANATIONAL MANAGEMENT STRUCTURES?..........................................231
B. TRANSNATIONAL PRE-MERGER TRADE-UNION ACTIVITIES ..........................................245
C. THE APA MERGER TRADE-UNION ACTIVITIES.............................................................257
D. CONCLUSION...............................................................................................................300
XI. Comparing the APA and the ABB/Alstom cases..............................303
A. EXPLAINING THE EUROPEANISATION OF ORGANISED LABOUR.....................................304
B. THE CHOICE BETWEEN EURO-TECHNOCRACY AND EURO-DEMOCRACY.......................308
XII. Conclusion.........................................................................................311
XIII Appendix...........................................................................................314
A. INTERVIEWS................................................................................................................314
B. PARTICIPATIVE OBSERVATIONS...................................................................................320
C. BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................321

3
Danksagung

Das Gelingen meiner Dissertation verdanke ich vor allem der Möglichkeit, am Europäischen
Hochschulinstitut Florenz (EUI) promovieren zu dürfen. Mein Dank gilt insbesondere Ulrich
K. Preuss, Ekkehart Krippendorff und Birgitt Grieb, die mich ermutigten, nach Florenz zu
gehen sowie der Schweizerischen Akademie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften und dem
Bundesamt für Bildung und Wissenschaft, die meinen Aufenthalt am EUI finanziell
unterstützten.

Wegen seines transnationalen Charakters und seiner besonderen intellektuellen und
kollegialen Atmosphäre erwies sich das EUI als hervorragender Kommunikations- und
Studienort. Dafür möchte ich mich bei allen seinen DozentInnen, StudentInnen und
Angestellten sehr herzlich bedanken.

Ein besonderer Dank gilt Colin Crouch, der die Arbeit mit sehr viel Interesse, Engagement,
Wohlwollen und konstruktiver Kritik betreute. Er wie auch Phillippe C. Schmitter bestärkten
mich sehr, das Thema „Demokratisierung der EU – Europäisierung der Gewerkschaften“ trotz
seiner Komplexität zu bearbeiten. Zudem begleiteten diese beiden Professoren mein
Unterfangen stets mit guten Ratschlägen und kritischen Rückfragen. Darüber hinaus
profitierte ich von den methodischen Tipps, die ich gleich zu Beginn meiner Arbeit von
Stefano Bartolini erhielt. Für weitere wertvolle inhaltliche Anregungen bedanke ich mich sehr
herzlich bei Adrienne Héritier, Christian Joppke, Martin Rhodes, Thomas Risse, Silvana
Sciarra, Bo Stråth und Peter Wagner; Marina Bourgain, Maud Bracke, Thomas Fetzer,
Hadewych Hazelzet, Martinus Keune, Peristera Kremmyda, Alkuin Kölliker, Larissa
Ogertschnig-Berdiyev, Steffen Mau, Patrizia Nanz, Ulrike Mühlberger, Ingela Naumann,
Frank Siebern-Thomas, Jens Steffek, Stijn Smismans und Eric Tängerstad; sowie bei meinen
externen Gutachtern Ulrich K. Preuss und Franz Traxler. Ein weiteres Dankeschön gilt den
DozentInnen des EUI-Sprachzentrums, insbesondere Nelius Carey, Niki Hargreaves, Nicky
Owtram und Camilla Salvi.

Wertvolle kritische Anregungen erhielt ich durch Diskussionen auf zahlreichen Konferenzen
und Workshops innerhalb und außerhalb des EUI. Dafür bedanke ich mich besonders bei
Giuseppe D’Aloia, Ingrid Artus, Alessandra Bosco, Maurice Braud, Luigi Burroni, Jon Eric
Dølvik, Heiner Dribbusch, Anne Dufresne, Tilman Evers, Mike Fichter, John Geary, Corinne
4
Gobin, Andreas Gross, Peter Grottian, Bob Hancké, Reiner Hoffmann, Richard Hyman,
Heinz Kleger, Sigrit Koch-Baumgarten, Luigi Lama, Pierre Lefébure, Paul Marginson,
Andrew Martin, Guglielmo Meardi, René Mouriaux, Wolf-Dieter Narr, Jackie O’Reilly,
Patrick Pasture, Jean-Marie Pernot, Valérie Peugeot, Philippe Pochet, Udo Rehfeldt, Tania
Régin, Dominique Reynié, Dieter Sadowski, Wolfgang Schroeder, Thorsten Schulten, Sidney
Tarrow, Volker Telljohann, Mike Terry, Jelle Visser und Stéphane Le Queux.

Die Offenheit und das große Entgegenkommen der untersuchten Gewerkschaften und
Betriebsräte beförderten den Forschungsprozess. Allen Interviewten bin ich dafür sehr
dankbar. Außerdem danke ich allen Instituten und Gewerkschaften, die mir Zugang zu ihren
Archiven gewährten. Dem Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (Noisy-Le-Grand),
dem European Trade Union Institute (Brüssel), sowie dem Centro Studi der CISL (Florenz)
danke ich für fachliche und operationelle Unterstützung.

Meinen KollegInnen vom University College Dublin, insbesondere Bill Roche und Tom
Murphy, danke ich ebenfalls für die Unterstützung dieses Promotionsvorhabens. Ein
besonderer Dank gilt Theresa Urbainczyk für ihr sehr sorgfältiges und kritisches
Korrekturlesen, was zu besserer Lesbarkeit und Klarheit dieser Arbeit beitrug. –
Abschließend, aber nicht minder herzlich möchte ich mich bei Sibylle Mohrmann bedanken,
die mir während meiner Studienzeit immer mit Rat und Tat zur Seite stand.

Roland Erne Dublin, im Mai 2004
5
I. INTRODUCTION
This thesis addresses two questions: first, has there emerged in Europe a system of industrial
relations which crosses national boundaries? Secondly, does organised labour contribute to
the process of democratisation of the European Union? Scholars have argued that the EU
cannot be democratised because there is no European society as such, no European network
of intermediate social institutions, no European public sphere, no European demos and no
Euro-democratic citizens’ movement.1 This thesis has discovered evidence to the contrary.

It is generally acknowledged that the existing governance structures and mechanism of the EU
“are not able to provide democratic legitimation for the EU polity as a whole” (Héritier 1999:
208; European Commission 2003a: 38). Indeed, a democratic polis needs, according to
Lepsius, in addition to its constitutional bodies, a tight network of intermediate social
institutions and organisations such as, for example, the unions, other civil society
organisations and the mass media. These offer the possibility of a larger amount of
participation in the political system for the citizens and thus an increase in its legitimisation.
As a result, the constitution of a European industrial relations system is linked to the
constitution of a European democracy, although political and social actors, such as the unions,
almost never conceive of democratisation as a goal in its own right. Social actors usually
support democratisation only if they expect that a more democratic polity will provide a better
framework for the satisfaction of their interests.

The EU is neither a fixed nor an autocratic polity. It follows that EU-democratisation differs
significantly from previous national experiences. Unlike the corresponding national processes,
it can hardly be analysed as a transition from authoritarian rule to democracy in an established
state (Schmitter 2000). For that reason nation-state based theories of democratisation can only
partially serve as a reference. Moreover, most European integration theories also neglect the
concept of Euro-democratisation; this is partly due to their output-oriented understanding of
EU legitimacy, partly due to their focus on elitist EU-level actors. In turn, the prospects of a
more democratic EU are widely discussed in political theory (Habermas 1992: 632-60; Kleger
1997; Abromeit 1998). However, while we have already argued that a “transnational

1 See, for instance, Lepsius 1993a; Lepsius 1993b; Thibaud 1992; Offe 1998; Grimm 1995; Greven 1998.
6
democracy” (Erne et al. 1995)2 would be an essential normative objective, it is much more
difficult to explain why and under which conditions social actors would pursue, consciously
or unconsciously, a Euro-democratisation strategy. Therefore, I do not wish to add another
more or less sophisticated blueprint of a future Euro-democracy to the theoretical debate, but
aim to analyse one potential actor of Euro-democratisation, namely organised labour.

The democratic political systems allowed organised labour to shift the class conflict from the
market place to the political arena, where the workers’ strength lies in their sheer numbers
(Esping-Andersen and Korpi 1984). But even if unions may have played an important role in
national democratisation processes (Stedman Jones 1983: 178; Rueschemeyer, Huber
Stephens, and Stephens 1992), this does not necessarily promise a similar role for them at the
EU-level. Whereas authoritarian regimes force unions to take part in democratisation
movements because they typically repress independent trade-union activities, the institutional
setting of the EU also provides alternative options for organised labour. For this reason, this
thesis assesses the various, “deliberately chosen” or “emergent” (Stråth 1990: 3), strategies
that unions can adopt to influence the transformation of governance in the EU.

It would be good now to identify these various options. Numerous studies emphasize that EU-
level trade unionism is primarily based on a union "diplomacy", exclusive to union executives
and experts (Turner 1996; Dølvik 1997; Gobin 1996; Pernot 2001). These activities were
partly successful, given the implementation of some achievements, such as the Maastricht
social protocol. These successes may be explained by a compatibility of this type of union
action with the EU institutions’ technocratic mode of governance (Joerges and Vos 1999).
Indeed, the EU institutions may favour “procedural” trade-union participation in EU policy-
making, because they require the unions' compliance, expertise and legitimacy to act in some
policy fields, such as social and employment policy (Smismans 2001; Keller 2001). For this
reason, Euro-technocratisation could also be a promising strategy of organised labour.

However, given the persuasive impact of neo-liberal ideology on the EU’s economic policy,
the unions could also reject the EU integration process as a “capitalist project” and try to
pursue a national democratic welfare state strategy. Despite its internationalist ideology,

2 The adjective transnational refers to flows and networks that transcend national boundaries and, therefore,
question the autonomy of national systems (Pearsall 1998; Anderson 2002). In contrast, the term
international describes the interactions between autonomous national systems.
7
organised labour’s history is profoundly linked to the nation state. Diverging national
arrangements in the field of industrial relations and welfare (Crouch 1993; Esping-Andersen
1990) integrated the working classes and their organisations into their nation states and
provided them with an important set of rights and benefits (Visser 1996). Therefore, Pasture
and Verberckmoes conclude that the trade union movement “cannot afford to reject the appeal
of national identity” (1998: 23). Yet, the national democratic “re-nationalisation”3 strategy
seems to be losing its viability, because national social democratic policies face firm
restrictions within the increasingly integrated European and global economy (Sassoon 1997:
558; Gray 2000). In turn, a technocratic re-nationalisation strategy may emerge (Streeck
1999) characterised by social pacts that aim to enhance national competitiveness (Rhodes
1997). Accordingly, a national “competition state” (Cerny 1990), would replace the national
welfare state and the unions would pursue a technocratic re-nationalisation strategy.

The rising constraints on social democratic policies at the national level could also motivate
the unions to Europeanise their activities. In fact, to some extent a growing Europeanisation
of rank-and-file union activities can be observed, as demonstrated by the recent increase in
European demonstrations (Lefébure 2002). As political mobilisation frequently went from
“contestation to democracy” at the national level (Giugni, McAdam, and Tilly 1998), a
similar process is plausible at the EU level, too. Democratisation requires a feeling of
communality among its citizens. It follows that organised labour could contribute to Euro-
democratisation, if it encouraged European collective action and the rise of a European public
sphere (Habermas 1992: 650). People start recognising that they belong to the same political
system as soon as they begin to act together, even if they might contest its policies. European
collective action would also contribute to the rise of a European public sphere and to a
politicisation of the EU-integration process (Imig and Tarrow 2001). Likewise, Richard
Hyman argued that supporting the emergence and consolidation of a European civil society
and citizenship should be an important task for unions (Hyman 2001:175).

3 Note that the verb “to nationalise” has different meanings in English: first, the transfer of a branch of industry
from private to state ownership and, second, “make distinctively national: give a national character to: in the
13th and 14th centuries the church designs were further nationalized” (Pearsall 1998: 1233). In this thesis the
term re-nationalisation is used to refer to its second meaning, as a concept that is opposed to Europeanisation.
8