Abstract
This article provides an in-depth analysis of the dynamics of social dialogue in Spain and highlights that to understand the relations between organised labour and the state a greater degree of historical sensibility in the way risks and calculations are developed in terms of exchanges and expectations is required. It goes beyond traditional institutionalist analysis to further understand how social dialogue at the state level occurs across different and complex trade-offs within political networks, even in weaker state contexts such as that of Spain. The article uses interviews with union leaders from the main Spanish unions involved in different historical moments to understand a range of uneven or opaque activities, the features of which can only be understood by expanding what we mean by the notion of political exchange, as well as the deliberate or conscious calculations and longer-term risks of such exchanges during different points in time.
Introduction
The relationships between unions and both governments and the state more broadly have been widely analysed. 1 The most influential contributions have provided an understanding of the different patterns of union–government relationships existing in different countries (Amable, 2003; Crouch, 1993; Hall and Soskice, 2001; Schmitter, 1974). The concept of ‘corporatism’ and its different types as a way of highlighting the representation and participation (and integration) of social groups in policy making, guided many of the contributions. On the other hand, in the sphere of industrial relations, several scholars have emphasised the decline and/or transformation of corporatist practices from the 1980s with the development of liberalisation trends (Baccaro and Howell, 2017; Thelen, 2014).
However, in this debate, many of these accounts have tended to focus their analysis on the formal or overt characteristics of social dialogue (e.g. coverage of collective bargaining and formal characteristics of industrial relations institutions). Conversely, this article takes an approach that emphasises the shifts and flexibility in trade union and government relations. It focuses on the way the political risks for the unions in engaging with public policy and state practices without consistently strong policy gains and changes during this time were understood and to some extent circumvented. By doing so, it highlights how the context and dynamics of political exchanges change over time, and this implies the need to develop an historical approach highlighting dimensions such as the role of informal relations and political calculations so as to provide an account of the evolving relationships of Spanish unions with the state and especially government.
Taking our cue from Streeck (2009) and Baccaro and Howell (2017), we engage with the critique of the institutional fetishism of many accounts that focus on the formal characteristics of industrial relations institutions yet do not always pay enough attention to the processes and outcomes occurring inside specific institutional processes. These authors highlight the overall and dominant trajectory of liberalisation (though not leading to a unique or common liberal model) affecting different countries. However, there is a need to appreciate the specific and changing contexts in which unions take strategic decisions that could be seen as a risk to the labour movement, and how they were framed in the specific contexts in which they were taken.
Following this discussion, and using interviews with key Spanish union leaders, this article contributes to the literature on the relationships between unions and the state by analysing the dimensions of elite state–government relations and the specific set of interactions across different periods and at different state levels. We also try to distinguish between relations at the level of government public making and executive relations and offset these with a further consideration of the role of state agencies and functions (see Martínez Lucio and MacKenzie, 2018). The Spanish context is interesting when attempting to understand these dynamics, as the transition to liberal democracy in the late-1970s led to the development of a weak but in some senses ongoing and periodic neo-corporatist and social dialogue model. Further, the institutional dynamics of Spain also reflected the problems and contradictions faced by many countries in the context of liberalisation and marketisation. Our analysis reveals that, following a period characterised by democracy-building with the formal objective of modernisation and Europeanisation, the neo-liberal practices adopted very early on (from the mid-1980s onwards) by centre-left and, later, by centre-right governments led to the prioritisation of a kind of ‘least-worse option’ approach by unions as we will explain even if the eventual political cost to the unions on occasions has been high. The 2008 recession and the subsequent mass protests of the 15-M and ‘Indignados’ movement revealed a growing separation between unions and social protest-based organisations (Las Heras and Ribera-Almandoz, 2017). In this regard, these events made it especially interesting to interview union leaders with key roles to understand how they framed and contextualised strategic decisions taken at different historical moments and internalised the political risks.
This paper contributes to the existing debates regarding social dialogue and corporatist dimensions of industrial relations by emphasising the importance of the processes that have taken place in specific institutional settings and it highlights the importance of the changing relationships between unions, the governments and the different state levels. This process of institutionalisation is not based on a single event but is an ongoing process. To this end, the paper focuses on the following key research questions. First, how did trade unions through their strategic calculations aim to maintain some semblance of institutional power within the state in a context where there was an emerging neo-liberal agenda within the state and what role can a historical and biographical study of such relations across time help in understanding this? Second, how are the risks of such engagement understood and how are calculations made by trade unions in terms of the gains they may make and the mitigation of risks of not achieving substantial state policy changes across different time periods? What is the importance of the way state–labour relations are reframed in terms of their form and content? Third, and to a lesser extent, within these processes and changing periods what role do informal relations between elites play even in a context of weak institutionalism in maintaining the formal spaces of negotiation at key moments?
Our contribution to the debate – building upon a rich tradition regarding the study of such relations in Spain – is to highlight the way such relations were strategically redefined and displaced (Foweraker, 1987; Martínez Lucio, 1992) in terms of their form (the levels of exchanges) and their content (the social or economic themes or issues they dealt with over time) across five decades. Social dialogue – per se – is strategically moved across levels of the state and across themes. This paper covers the period until the recent Socialist–Unidos Podemos government coalition in 2020 that saw some further developments in social dialogue, but it selects five broad time frames where these relations become redefined and transformed as actors sought to re-establish relations in the light of specific pressures and perceived risks. Whilst the paper points to the way the trade unions were limited in their influence on substantive and core economic and labour market policy making, it points to how they accustomed themselves to a role at different levels of the state and sought to sustain some influence at specific moments through a set of calculations regarding the costs of their not engaging with deeper discussions on work and employment-related issues amongst others (although as we will explain this partial engagement brought political risks).
The paper is organised as follows. First, a discussion of the literature on the relationships between the unions, government and the state is presented. This is complemented with key insights from the Spanish case. The Spanish case is interesting and of relevance because of the way national, elite systems of social dialogue were constructed in an intensive manner after the Francoist dictatorship which ended in the mid-1970s and how these have been transformed and restructured across time in the face of specific political and economic contingencies. The literature on Spain in terms of various studies highlights an interesting set of challenges and dilemmas facing trade unionists in sustaining systems of social dialogue at a time when the state is simultaneously constructing social systems whilst also engaging with neo-liberal forms of economic organisations simultaneously (Martínez Lucio, 1992). This makes it an interesting case that compresses contradictory changes across time. The next section explains the methodology used. This is followed by the findings, in which five main historical periods are identified, and the main characteristics of social dialogue and broader relationships between unions and the state are developed. The discussion emphasises the crucial elements of the Spanish case that provide key insights to understanding the complex relationships in different historical periods and the complex and changing relationships and dynamics. Finally, the conclusions highlight the implications of the findings for the analysis of industrial relations and the understanding of the impact of liberalisation processes on the strategic decisions of trade unions and practices as it deals with less policy-making influence across time: the paper explains how trade union leaders attempted to redefine their role and sustain it regardless of the fact that they are aware of the limitations and constraints emerging from such processes.
On state–trade union relations and the complexity of exchanges, representation and relations
There is a rich debate on neo-corporatist and social dialogue processes that we will outline and then focus on the Spanish discussions related to it. In the first instance, Schmitter (1974) noted how, historically, the relations between unions and the state could be based either on a high degree of trade union autonomy, thereby leading to a form of societal corporatism wherein governments and labour entered into a form of dialogue as independent actors; or on a state-dominated situation (as was the case in Spain during the Francoist dictatorship, or Fascist Italy) wherein trade unions had very little independence, hence the term ‘state corporatism’. Thus, relations between the state and organised labour could take a variety of forms (Lehmbruch, 1984). Hall and Soskice (2003) contributed to a further process of categorising such relations between key peak level organisations by focusing on the interactive aspects of these relations (those with the likelihood of achieving greater regulation and employment rights being labelled generally as ‘coordinated market economies’). These had a greater degree of collaborative culture and structure in relation to economic decision making. They are seen to contrast with liberal market economies where relations between such actors especially labour, on the one hand, and the state and capital, on the other, are more limited because of the dominance market ideologies in the socio-economic system (Hyman, 2010). In terms of coordinated market economies, in some contexts the link with the state has been embedded in terms of the commitment to broader notions of equality and social progress, whilst in others it has taken the shape of limited and contingent forms of agreements at specific – usually crisis-related – moments (Hall and Soskice, 2003). Similarly, the responses to the 2008 recession have brought out differences between systems characterised by well-coordinated bargaining approaches and countries in which the cooperation between actors was not well-established and was highly precarious (Crouch, 2014).
Furthermore, we have seen increasing reference to what some have labelled a ‘crisis corporatism’ that is based on weak and crisis driven pacts and institutional relations (Urban, 2012). There has been a call within the industrial relations tradition to place such elite relations within a broader regulatory context. This would help understand the variety and complexities (and challenges) of developing and sustaining state–labour relations of a liberal or societal nature. First, much needs to be understood about the broader organisational context and the place of such relations in the tapestry of employment relations more broadly. Questions of social dialogue may develop and be combined across different levels, with some of the ‘stronger’ models being the outcome of a greater coordination institutionally (Keune and Marginson, 2013; Pulignano, 2011). Moreover, we need to be alert not only to questions of political will, or to motivations to negotiate or to pursue a dialogue, but also to the very capacities and collective bargaining cultures across countries, as well as the nature of economic and social relations (Pulignano et al., 2016).
The nature of state–labour relations in terms of social dialogue and at various levels have been as much a response to economic crisis or system change as anything else, which has mediated the nature and temper of such relations since the early-1980s (Avdagic, 2011; Hyman, 2010). What we are witnessing is a change that is as much about system maintenance in terms of worker regulations and rights – or formal exchanges on their transformation and weakening – that generate a more defensive dimension from the trade union movement in the face of an ongoing push to generate neo-liberal policies from within the state. To that extent, the autonomy and capabilities of organised labour in the face of these changes seem increasingly compromised even in systems where they had been more developed (Baccaro and Howell, 2017). Various developments have contributed to what could be seen as a fragmentation of state–labour relations across various levels in terms of levels of negotiation and content, although there have been initiatives at sustaining a supply side approach to the economy and the labour market (Stuart, 2007).
These developments in the ‘exchanges’ are also more complex and politically contingent and, for some, this has typically been the case for an extended time (Pizzorno, 1978). Such institutional relations are much better viewed through the prism of ‘exchanges’, as opposed to some institutional structural lens that views them as a pre-established organisational level varying only in its degree of stability; that is to say, in many cases they are not continuous forms of dialogue on set and stable agendas. Crouch (1993) argues that we therefore need to look at the question of coordination and broader sets of exchanges across different levels if we are to understand the more complex nature of such relations: he points explicitly to the contribution of Marin (1990) in arguing that political exchanges are – contrary to aspects of Pizzorno's view – not ‘one-off’ sets of profound exchanges with some deep and highly institutionalised exchanges. Further, even in more centralised systems it is to be noted how these are sustained by the practice of collective bargaining of an extensive nature at lower levels (Kjellberg, 1990). Hence, for Crouch (1993), the question of articulation is a concept for understanding the state's role and relations with trade unions and others. Any study of such organised relations at the elite level thus needs to be sensitive and open to these complex questions of form and content (the nuanced and sometimes oblique structure and location of relations, but also the topics or issues which they address). Another factor that needs attention is the centrality of personal and informal relations across key individuals within a form of ‘social dialogue’ (Ibsen et al., 2021). In discussing micro-level social dialogue – or ‘social partnership’, the preferred term at the time – within the firm and during the period of United Kingdom's Labour government (1997–2010), Oxenbridge and Brown (2002) argued that these aspects of relations and trust are important features of the development of management and trade union relations (within the firm). This is an aspect that is important for comprehending the nature of social dialogue, especially in what are less institutionalised systems. In this regard, Baccaro (2003) has emphasised the importance of agreements in sustaining corporatist-style dynamics in systems not characterised by a monopoly of labour representation and where inter-union competition exists.
However, how these develop across time and how trade unions absorb, and respond to, the risks of engaging with a system of social dialogue which continues to have greater marketisation and liberalisation as its objective is something the paper tries to address. Such risks need to be appreciated as trade unions may be seen to be unable to deliver substantive gains from certain policy processes and even whilst portraying themselves as having some degree of institutional influence. Moreover, in the face of the criticism from minority or more radical unions, social movements and militant traditions inside main unions (Díaz-Macías et al., 2022; Roca and Díaz-Parra, 2017) majority and social dialogue-oriented trade unions may be seen to be facilitating, even if unintentionally, the failure to deepen employment and social rights cross a myriad of different issues and not systematically confronting the increasing costs to workers of a fragmentation of the labour market. In Spain, debates have reflected these uncertainties and approaches to a considerable extent, representing a model of state and government–labour relations that have been uneven and yet curiously continuous. Various distinct positions have been taken on the nature of social dialogue in Spain at the elite level (for a discussion, see Martínez Lucio, 2016). One stance has argued that the nature of political exchanges has been limited and uneven: it is not continuous and deep as a form of social dialogue on key socio-economic issues. Molina (2007, 2014) points to the uneven involvement of the state in the arena of industrial relations as a result of a range of historical factors. In fact, the levels of contingency and ‘flexibility’ of developments have been such that they have served the purposes of various governments during legitimacy crises, rather than presenting a basis for rethinking social and economic strategy (Roca Jusmet, 1991). The increasing engagement with so-called neo-liberal policies in terms of privatisation or labour market restructuring has reflected a general shift in the focus of the Spanish government policy (Pérez-Díaz, 1979; Smith, 1998). Questions of labour market ‘reforms’, together with greater employer-oriented flexibility in the labour market, have been an ongoing obsession within the Spanish right and social democratic left (Fernández Rodríguez and Martínez Lucio, 2013; Lopez-Andreu and Verd, 2020). Most recently, the reinvigoration of social dialogue after the 2008 recession has led to several national-level agreements on collective bargaining from 2012 onwards, albeit their content tends to be fragmented, generic and strongly defensive (Fernández Rodríguez et al., 2023; Lopez-Andreu, 2019a, 2023). It has also been identified that this prevalence of cooperation is more a defensive situation, resulting from the loss of structural and organisational power of unions and their problems in engaging with more innovative strategies (Kohler, 2018). More concretely, an increasingly limited engagement with strategies based on mobilisations and coalitions with social movements, where once it was key especially for the Workers’ Commissions (CCOO), have been identified as a result of conservative and risk-avoiding strategies after years of focusing on institutional power, despite some experiences of union renewal (Kohler and Calleja Jimenez, 2018).
A second group of authors emphasise the continuity or nuances of social dialogue and the development and construction of a liberal democratic space, ‘modern’ democratic industrial relations systems. Accordingly, they emphasise that there has been a wide range of partial agreements on labour market policy, training, migrant policy and other matters, suggesting that there has been a regular pattern of agreements and negotiations (Gonzalez Begega and Luque Balbona, 2014; Guillén Rodríguez and Gutiérrez Palacios, 2008; Rigby and García Calavia, 2018). These authors also emphasise that, despite the erosion of social dialogue since the 2008 recession and the unilateral implementation of deregulatory labour market reforms, the mechanisms to produce social pacts were not completely eroded, and the authors identify conditions for their reactivation.
To this extent Spain has a rich academic debate on the nuances of the politics of industrial relations due to this variable and ever-changing set of institutional relations, and we see our contribution in bringing out some of the elite and informal calculations that have developed. Hamann's (2012) significant intervention brings out this subtle set of influences and difficulties in type-casting the politics of industrial relations in Spain and highlights the importance of mapping these debates and political contingencies although we wish to point particularly to the issue of how trade union leaders were aware of these inconsistencies and managed or portrayed the risks of engaging in a not fully institutionalised or policy inclusive context. In this respect, the article aims to look at how exchanges or trade-offs were remade across time in terms of different themes and issues, as the failure to construct significant economic policy influence was compensated in different ways at different times.
Hence, it is our contention that we need to observe these processes of exchange, their rationalisation, their origins in key moments (Hogan, 2006) and the way their transformation (and even decline) are comprehended and framed. Observers need to map such changes and accommodation processes across time if we are to appreciate the way trade unions attempt to sustain some influence albeit increasingly idiosyncratic and on the margins of the state agencies. To this extent, it is a question of seeing how the institutional nature of elite voices and roles – especially from a trade union perspective – were maintained in some form or other in such an uneven context, rather than simply observing whether political exchanges are systematic or uneven and in decline. We note a ‘strategic displacement’ (Foweraker, 1987; Martínez Lucio, 1992) within decision making as union-government and union-state relations are pushed or pulled between different spheres or levels of decision making and over different social and economic themes and issues. The contribution of the paper is based on outlining and explaining the way social dialogue – per se – is strategically relocated and moved across levels of state decision making in the face of political contingencies, and focused on different themes, e.g. how a supply side form of social dialogue was steadily developed on the periphery of the state's intervention and not at the centre of its decision making. This was done to ensure some form of social dialogue yet kept unions separate from core economic and social decision making beyond specific aspects and roles: the role of informal relations across elites within government and social actors such as trade unions managed in some cases to facilitate another level of dialogue and its continuity although this weakened across time. This requires greater attention to the specific debates and views of trade union actors – and the calculations they made – in the face of different challenges.
The article therefore looks across the time period from 1976 to 2018. There were different approaches within each government although overall there was a tendency to steadily constrain or limit to some extent the role of trade union influence in core policy matters. The time periods correspond to what the authors consider to be key political changes within the Spanish state and different variations of neo-liberal and social interventions. These turning points do not just exist in relation to the shifts between social democratic governments to conservative right-wing governments but also specific shifts within the manner in which the majority trade union and its leadership oscillated between forms of mobilising and accommodation across time in relation to policy initiatives. These time frames allow us to appreciate what are the key questions for the paper in terms of how the trade union movement accommodated and responded to a policy environment which became increasingly focused on neo-liberal objectives and how during such a process it remade its institutional voice albeit in marginal and variable ways, allowing it to sustain some influence on economic and labour market policy. The relevance of these issues is that it forces us to appreciate that there is some agency no matter how constrained within industrial relations systems that are being altered, and to understand the role of elite and informal relations in this process. Hence the contribution of the paper is to build further on debates within the general and Spanish-related literature by highlighting these opaque factors within national level social dialogue in terms of (i) the unevenness and ‘messiness’ of social dialogue processes across time and levels, (ii) the varieties and nuances within institutionalisation processes during specific conjunctures, and how dialogue and trade union roles are relocated (displaced) across levels and themes in relation to political contingencies, and, to a lesser extent, (iii) the role of informal networks or relations and shared memories and experiences within such networks in mitigating political risks. It also shows how projects of social dialogue are made and remade across time. In effect these are our key questions.
Methods: interviewing national leaders
To analyse the dynamics of corporatism and union–state relations generally in Spain, this paper used 10 interviews with senior leaders of the two main unions, the General Union of Workers (UGT) and CCOO. These unions are the ones with the ‘most representative’ status, which allows them to negotiate at the national level, amongst other privileges. The analysis of the relations between unions and the state in different periods in Spain is especially relevant as the country experienced a transition to democracy in the late-1970s, when unions tried to develop an industrial relations system similar to the European one but in a context characterised by deindustrialisation and neo-liberal advance. This led to an imperfect and uneven system of joint regulation characterised by informality, extensive political engagement, and an increasing institutionalisation from unions to compensate low associational power (Kohler and Calleja Jiménez, 2018). However, unions used mobilisation and general strikes strategically in several periods to connect with social protest and social campaigning (Barranco and Molina, 2021). In this regard, it is a relevant case to understand how unions–state relations evolve along time and how strategic choices are taken.
The interviewees included two former general secretaries of the UGT, two of the CCOO, the then current general secretary of CCOO and high-ranking officials from both unions during different periods of time (those in charge of negotiating with the state and employer organisations). In fact, we interviewed all general secretaries of the two main Spanish unions since the late-1970s except for two (one died in 2010 and the other moved to opposing political positions, and it was not possible to straightforwardly contact them). These ‘elite interviews’ (Stephens, 2007) of individuals who were in the top leadership of the two main Spanish unions were identified as the relevant technique with which to understand the exchanges and choices in different periods, and how they are viewed not only across time periods, but also in their specific moment and context. Their unique position provided a deep understanding about the debates in terms of the strategic calculations, the relationships with different governments and employers’ organisations, the distinct directions that were taken in different periods and an evaluation of them. The interviews offered an innovative approach to the dynamics of social dialogue as the interviewees engaged in a reflective consideration of the critical junctures (Hogan, 2006) that social dialogue faced in Spain. Accordingly, the interviews had a strong historical component and focused on the interviewees’ analysis of the past, how they reflected historically from their current positions of hindsight and how they contextualised the institutional advances and losses of their specific interventions. They also provided a deep understanding of the social relationships and context (the role of the informal) within which agreements or exchanges took place, identifying the perceived costs of decisions through the perspectives and experiences of those involved. Further, the interviews took place after the austerity reforms of 2010 onwards and the ‘15-M’ and ‘Indignados’ movement of 2011, which led to strong historical reflections on the union movement regarding the potentially excessive focus on institutionalisation and their difficulties to represent discontent.
The focus was on trade union leadership because of the need to see how risk was understood and to understand their ways of justifying and reviewing a period of uneven and ambiguous developments over a critical period of time which has been catalogued and analysed by various commentators in and on Spain. One of the key issues in the context of ‘elite’ interviews is to gain trust (Harvey, 2011). The authors of the paper have wide experience in researching employment relations in Spain and have built strong networks and contacts with trade unions that facilitated access to the interviewees. Once access was granted, full information about the researchers, the research and dissemination and use of the interviews’ content was explained and agreed with the interviewees.
The interviews lasted from about an hour and a half to four hours. They were analysed following an inductive approach in which the key debates, discussions and factors influencing each period were identified and raised by the interviewees. An inductive and open coding approach was considered the most adequate to identify the interviewee's narrative and contextualisation of the different historic events along with the content of the interactions between unions, employers’ organisations and the state. Accordingly, for each period, the main topics of discussion and the relationships between social partners were identified. Hence, the interviews were often quite long and biographical, and they were studied focusing on themes such as the substance of negotiations, the actors involved at key points, the changing nature of the content of dialogue, the relations they had with key political figures and employers leaders, the nature of the tensions and issues that existed on macro and more focused labour and economic issues, the evolving relations between the two main unions and the political links and alliances of each union with parts of the political left and how that had changed.
‘Findings’: The remaking of social dialogue across time
The political transition and the dominance of the political: The making of a democratic industrial relations system in the shadows of political change (mid-1970s to early-1980s)
The period from the mid-1970s to early-1980s is noted for various key characteristics in terms of the relationships between trade unions and the emergent or redefined political elites. It was a period in which the trade unions appeared to act as ‘transmission belts’ for the political parties of the left – especially the Spanish Communist Party with respect to the CCOO, and the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) with respect to the UGT – though there are questions as to the extent of such political influence. Further, the influence of the ‘political’ side was partly framed by informal relationships and networks that traversed the then-communist and socialist movements, with the key point of control being unclear.
However, it was also a moment of intense inter-trade union competition, with the UGT gaining access to political elites that the CCOO and other anarchist trade union movements found difficult to access. The early years of political transition were also a moment of national political pacts aimed at stabilising the economic and political system – transitioning ‘peacefully’ from the dictatorship and constructing a ‘modern’ system of industrial relations. For some, this moment represented a form of political and ideological closure of the emergent political democratic system based around the creation of a more economically liberal state (Del Aguila Tejerina and Montoro, 1984). These political dynamics coincided with the point of creation of a system of industrial relations based on competition between trade unions through state-regulated trade union elections for works councils and related systems of workplace representation. However, many in the union movement consider that the sacrifices made by organised labour have not always been systematically recognised. For example, by having a key role in the transition to democracy after Franco's dictatorship. Union leaders’ complained that their roles were not recognised during the celebration of the 40 years of the transition to democracy: We can see this now that there has been the 40th anniversary of the Constitution, and there has not been any mention of the participation of unions in all the process (Former General Secretary of UGT 1).
The development of negotiations amongst select actors of the industrial relations system (primarily the UGT and the employers’ organisations) was prioritised by government at the expense of a broader and more economic and social debate – though the UGT narrative has been that the construction of some semblance of an organised industrial relations system with employers and governments was a priority at that time as in the development of the Workers’ Statute in late-1970s: and their informal relations with political elites especially the PSOE was much stronger than the CCOOs. For the UGT the aim was to underpin a competitive union system legally whereas for CCOO the priority had been maintaining the unitary representation of workers at the workplace level, one of its defining characteristics. In addition, this represented a form of de-politicisation of industrial relations of some form: Our condition was first, [to prioritise] relationships between unions and employers and the government. Never with political parties unless it related to an exceptional circumstance. First, we needed to create a stable space of relations between industrial actors. Why did the Communist Party and CCOO want an agreement involving political parties? Because the Communist Party had a very low share of vote in the parliament and wanted to negotiate with the same weight as other parties. (Former General Secretary of UGT 1) The draft of the Workers’ Statute accepted new temporary contracts and, very concerning for us, diminished the power of Works Councils [the unitary representation of workers in companies] and reinforced the power of separate unions. Our mobilisations forced parliament to eliminate the most aggressive aspects. (Former General Secretary of CCOO 1)
The formalisation of industrial relations and worker representation in the firm was, nevertheless, linked to creating a system of multi-union and competitive union structures. Unified industrial relations forms and worker voice in the workplace were traded, in some respects, for a less-developed and uneven political voice during 1977–1982 under the Union de Centro Democratic centre-right project which was replaced by the PSOE socialist government in 1982.
It was a time when exchanges were, as Roca Jusmet (1991) argued, driven by political expediency and necessity, given that responses to the needs of political stability, economic uncertainty and the creation of formal industrial relations regulations were occurring simultaneously: with informal relations and discussions especially between the UGT and political parties being key. Further, this ‘historical political exchange’ (Prieto, 1993) during the transition years allowed unions a certain capacity to participate and negotiate social and employment policies in exchange for the support of some stable political consensus and a certain degree of demobilisation in terms of strikes and demonstrations common during the initial transition years of the late-1970s. At this time, one saw a strategic displacement of decision making on sensitive employment issues with governments using bipartite or tripartite pacts with trade unions on some issues and moving the onus of decision making into the formal political sphere when agreement was not achievable with trade unions.
What emerges was a growing isolation of the then more radical CCOO, as the UGT positioned itself as the main political point of dialogue for governing parties, albeit without consistently dominant institutional relations and through relations between the key individuals in the PSOE and UGT. Reflections on these moments by key participants suggest that the politics of exchange were complex, uneven and contextualised by a series of political contingencies. Central to these developments were the centrality of informal relationships within parts of the labour movement and within both the socialist and communist movements (based in many cases on shared experiences of opposition to the dictatorship), and their role in underpinning the partial exchanges that occurred: individual links between trade union and political leaders were vital for steering through the changes and generating a set of complex networks. However, these informal relations would begin to change, and their ability to sustain systematic, or even partial, exchanges diminished.
The momentary incursion into tripartite dialogue and the disruptive effects of emergent neo-liberalism and industrial restructuring: The emergence and rapid decline of macro-level economic policy intervention by unions (the 1980s)
The early years of the socialist government elected in 1982 saw a series of agreements on employment and institutional reform. In 1981, a broad tripartite agreement (the National Agreement of Employment) was signed, containing various employment and social measures, but its implementation became an issue given the absence of a commitment to proactive employment measures and the changes occurring at the political level. Under the newly elected socialist government from 1982, the move towards a market-facing logic within its overall strategy of social state development established changes that would steadily undermine its relations with the UGT, with whom it had signed a tripartite agreement – albeit without the CCOO (since the latter insisted on deeper institutional changes and more state intervention).
The UGT's General Secretary was a member of parliament at that time as part of the socialist group but was becoming later systematically isolated within the general decision-making structures of government, especially in the context of a systematic ‘restructuring’ of state-led industries (source interview). Effectively, the declining political links and tensions also impaired the ability of elites, across the trade union movement and the formal political sphere, to use informal relationships to create significant counterpoints to such extensive restructuring and market-facing reforms (Hamann, 2012). Hamann (2012) sees the political involvement of unions as significant even if the process of institutionalisation had been uneven in terms of their state-level influence and voice: this contingent, and variable, dimension to the system of relations between the state and unions has often been noted (Martinez Lucio, 1992, 2016) but there has a ‘periodic presence’ of unions (Hamann, 2012: 225). However, the actual roles of trade union organisations in generating a systematic and socially oriented approach to labour market regulation, welfare development and broader industrial strategy were constrained. As the quote below highlights this process was in part underpinned by informal relations and meetings between union leaders and the supposedly ‘friendly’ socialist executive: I told Felipe [Felipe Gonzalez, president of Spain for the Socialist Party from 1982 to 1996] (…) you will never face an urgency with the UGT in terms of demands (…) we will give time and we understand the situation of the country. But he then went to the media and started to retract his promises (Former general Secretary of UGT 1).
Despite the frustrating outcome of these opaque relationships, the UGT did not change its prioritisation of the informal institutional relationship as a mechanism for strategic advance in a context of union competition with the CCOO. The cost for the UGT of maintaining such a close engagement with government was also becoming a major political liability as the CCOO attempted to return to a more social and mobilisation-based approach during the mid-to-late-1980s, as seen in the 24 hours General Strike of 1985 over pension reform, and mobilisation against the restructuring of publicly owned companies. By 1988, when the UGT joined the CCOO in a general strike against labour market reforms because of the deterioration of its relations with the governing socialist party, what emerged was the basis for a more coordinated set of trade union responses in terms of social and labour market demands vis-à-vis the state and its role. The revival of a culture of political strikes – albeit in a highly constrained and coordinated manner – formed the basis for a greater coordination between the two majority trade unions. Relations in terms of collective bargaining frameworks and their development continued with employers; however, as stated, during this period the attempt to create a more systematic system of exchanges was limited by the economic direction of the PSOE government and emergent political differences with organised labour. (…) so we had the disagreement of what it meant getting closer to Europe in labour relations issues. The government opted for the socio-liberal version, and we were more into a classic social democratic position… that was in ’84, ’85, and from then the situation started to erode. (Former general secretary of UGT 2)
As stated by Alonso (2007), consensus-building was no longer seen to be necessary by many in the PSOE government, and priority was given to government decrees and business restructuring to achieve the government's aims. However, during this period, informal links between government and trade unions became more significant to some extent – and more indirect forms of ‘communication’ developed – especially as initial phases of institutional building within industrial relations had been in some sense completed in terms of joint regulation, thus removing from the political agenda the question of institutionalisation in terms of collective bargaining. Hence, the points of contention shifted towards attempting to influence broader social and economic policy although the institutional macro-level mechanisms for this were still undeveloped.
Political exchanges through bargaining from a distance and the sustaining of actor autonomy: Mobilisation as communication in a fractured system of state–labour relations (late-1980s to early-1990s)
Ironically, the distancing of the UGT from the socialist government and party, and its growing engagement with the CCOO, was a way of not only isolating itself from the negative political outcomes and risks to which a more market-facing form of public policy could give rise to, but it was also a way of generating a new form of autonomy and influence that was to some extent less compromised politically. The realisation amongst trade union leaders that government was not going to engender embedded tripartite voice mechanisms across a range of socio-economic policies meant that the nature of engagement would have to be piecemeal and not structured across systematic all-embracing agreements. In order to ensure that counter-proposals did exist and that the unions were not seen as some type of stooges for the state, the trade union leadership jointly developed alternative economic and social programmes and presented these to the government at meetings in the late-1980s and especially the early-1990s. Even if the core of the counter-policies were not taken up by the socialist government, this allowed them also to ensure that any partial or specific agreements with the government were not seen as a reflection of any unswerving trade union support for the increasingly neo-liberal aspect of these agreements. The emergent break between political and trade union elites on the left, and the problems of competing frameworks regarding economic and social development, did not therefore completely unsettle forms of communication and discussion between trade union leaders and government, which were by then based on more ‘realistic’ political expectations. However, there were concerns amongst some critics that the focus of trade unionism needed to be more centred on workplaces (for a discussion of workplace relations, see Ortiz, 1999) and retrospectively many of our interviewees agreed. Some union leaders had a negative view of the outcomes of a period focused on social dialogue and a potential displacement from the dynamics at the workplace level. In a period characterised by deindustrialisation, the growth of the service sector, the expansion of temporary contracts and a substantial increase in unemployment (especially for young workers), one key interviewee noted: The outcomes have been negative. I think that at the end we should consider that unions have not done all they could have done. (Former General Secretary of UGT 1)
However, others argued that the structural conditions of the Spanish economy were responsible for these dynamics at the workplace level. Whilst the UGT strategy was focused on developing a social-democratic model of union influence, it was argued that Spain lacked the necessary industrial and business structure for strong union influence in the workplace and society: From my point of view our problem is not that we do not have big companies. We have them and their labour relations are very similar to the ones in Europe. The problem is that we do not have medium-sized companies. We have many micro-companies, and there it is difficult to have union presence and influence. (Former General Secretary of UGT 2)
In this context, the focus for the UGT beyond standard workplace union activity was to sustain some trade-offs and exchanges with the state through the use of specific and focused mobilisations (especially 1-day general strikes), further reinforcing a model of bargaining from a distance or at arm's length (a concept used to explain micro-level forms of bargaining in relation to French industrial relations – Batstone, 2015). It also focused political bargaining on particular social and economic themes, which gave rise to a model of exchange that was contingent albeit not always discontinuous: there is a sense in which there was a mutual attitudinal restructuring that substantive social-policy changes from within the state were unlikely to happen, but specific areas could be influenced through focused mobilisations and negotiations. Hence, this period saw a curious combination of focused mobilisations and discreet bargaining relations at the macro level.
Political exchange and supply side dimensions of regulation: The shift to focused state engagement and higher-level collective bargaining (mid-1990s to mid-2000s)
The early-1990s emerged as a moment of engagement that steadily consolidated itself by the late-1990s, on the back of various political contingencies and the impact of mobilisation. There was a shift to concrete and specific agreements, with public policy being focused on the aspects of social and labour market policy that aimed to constrain or moderate some forms of government-led neo-liberal labour market reforms. This meant that, even with the general strike on 14 December 1994 related to labour market flexibility, there emerged a culture of focused and partial exchanges. In some ways, this represents the stabilisation of a model of exchange based on continuous and ongoing partial agreements (see Gonzalez Begega and Luque Balbona, 2014). As noted earlier, the attempt developed jointly by the two main trade unions to deepen the state social and economic strategy by presenting alternative programmes and strategies was frustrating for them due to the lack of an extensive socialist government commitment to a social agenda of an expansive nature. Nevertheless, such alternative programmes allowed the two main unions to maintain a semblance of social legitimacy in the face of an emergent albeit partially institutionalised model of industrial relations that focused on voice within work and beyond the central policy-making dimensions of the state.
Hence, whilst deepening social exchanges around alternative action and social programmes and limiting the steady move towards deregulating aspects of the labour market, this task of delaying or moderating was difficult because of the dependence on partial and focused agreements. Nonetheless, there was a deliberate push from trade unions towards placing the emphasis of peak level dialogue on developing aspects of the welfare state that had been greatly limited prior to the 1980s. This bargaining from a partial distance was facilitated by, and in turn facilitated, managed political mobilisations by the main unions. Barranco and Molina (2021) argue, for example, how for the CCOO this framing of social demands and broader engagement in social issues managed to maintain some semblance of a connection with wider societal demands and identities within the labour movement at a time when relations with governments were less than effective in terms of social outcomes and were occasionally compromising in political terms.
One may argue that this can be viewed as a defensive approach, but it did allow trade unions, especially the CCOO, to balance their (albeit limited) institutional roles at the higher levels of the state with their ‘social’ identity within civil society (although this was steadily declining during the latter years of this period as a more ‘professional’ approach to regulation existed under the CCOO General Secretary José María Fidalgo). This dual approach permitted some social space for trade unions to continue to exist, whilst soliciting some minor (depending on one's point of view) but ongoing political concessions on social reform, and constraining, though not altering, economic liberalisation. However, as the 1990s progressed the combination of projects of reframing and extending collective bargaining through greater sector-level coordination, new trade union roles within worker training programmes financed by the state and acquiring a voice within various state agencies related to areas such as health and safety, employment, migration and equality led to a partial consolidation and institutionalisation of exchanges even if such exchanges were mainly focused on the operational dimensions of the state's structure (Fernández Rodríguez et al., 2016).
The election of the conservative, right-wing Partido Popular (PP) government in 1996 saw a curious or unexpected continuity of such informal and periodic agreements between the social ‘partners’ and government; however, at the same time the pretence of convincing governments to adopt a systematic alternative to the social and economic order diminished even further. In this period of the late-1990s and early-2000s, we therefore see an institutional worker voice being focused on four particular sets of activities: (i) the use of partial agreements and debates on specific issues such as training, immigration and other rights; (ii) specifically expanded consultation roles of trade unions at the level of various state agencies with regard to the labour market and enforcement mechanisms; (iii) the strategic supply side role of trade unions in the overseeing and dissemination of significant training funds through tripartite state institutions and (iv) the focus on sector-level collective bargaining and its expansion into new sets of employment and work-related issues. So, there was a form of institutional compensation for not having a strategic political role by ensuring a set of other roles and influences at different levels. In effect, the project was to ensure workers’ voice and effectiveness at the level of the supply side economy ensuring implementation of some labour market policies, and extending forms of joint regulation whilst avoiding the risk, in theory, of engagement with the increasing economic liberalisation policies. Society understood that social dialogue was getting results and, among other issues, it normalised labour relations in the country. We moved from 200 million lost hours in strike at the end of the 1970s to less than one million in the 2000s. (Former General Secretary of CCOO 2)
The consolidation and institutionalisation of partial and focused exchanges: Managing expectations and generating parallel systems of union influence (the 2000s and the 2010s)
The irony of the right-wing PP government of 1996–2003 is that during this period the consolidation and institutionalisation of labour relations with government and the state was beginning to be based on the emergent flexible social dialogue model discussed earlier. The need for the first democratically elected right-wing government since the 1930s to seek some form of legitimacy was sought by developing relations with the trade union movement based on the institutional model that had begun to emerge since the early-1990s.
In this context, unions considered that there was an opportunity to extend their, arguably fragmented, institutional influence through a range of partial and focused agreements on specific themes, the ongoing expansion of a voice for the trade unions within various state agencies, the role of trade unions in state training policies (implementation) and the support of a more coordinated system of collective bargaining articulated through sector-level bargaining. This began to reorganise and extend, to some extent, the thematic content of industrial relations in Spain, creating parallel discussions and negotiations across specific, isolated themes within state–labour relations and collective bargaining relations: a form of ‘specialised’ or ‘focused’ corporatism that established different sets of differentiated relations.
In this context, joint regulation acted as a stabilising mechanism in an increasingly fragmented labour market. Moreover, the leadership of employer organisations – and key historic figures within them who had been negotiating with unions since the 1970s – played an important part in reminding the government of the importance of trade unions and the ‘progress’ that had been made in institutionalising and stabilising joint employment regulation. It was not uncommon for some employers’ leaders to remind political leaders at meetings of the contribution and sacrifices the trade union movement had made in the 1970s and 1980s especially in terms of the extensive phases of industrial restructuring and redundancies of the latter decade (see also Fernández Rodríguez et al., 2016; for similar views as held by human resource managers). … there was an agreement again with the employers. I meant, we have different ideas of what was to be the structure of collective bargaining, yes of course, and I guess we will always have different ideas, but we have a basic common idea: collective bargaining is ours and only ours and the government cannot touch it. (Former General Secretary of UGT 2)
Within this context the debates on labour market reforms and the regulation of more temporary and ‘flexible’ forms of work – with the steady withering of more permanent contracts and rights – became the focus of specific exchanges and agreements in terms of employer subsidies, incentives and lower costs when terminating permanent contracts (Alonso, 2007). These agreements were presented by the trade unions as being necessary to maintain minimum protection standards and avoid further deregulation (for a discussion of these waves of reforms, see Alonso and Blanco, 1999). This steady stigmatising of the so-called labour market ‘insider’ and the cost of dismissal compared to other national contexts in Europe became a rallying cause of the political right, and key socialist circles, and undermined aspects of trade union legitimacy (Arasanz and Lopez-Andreu, 2005). These developments therefore shaped the political exchanges around specific issues in what appears to be a fragmented corporatism. Its rationale was based on displacing collective worker voice into other parallel forms of engagement with employers and the state, reinforcing the view of a more fragmented and set of agreements between employers and majority trade unions (Molina and Rhodes, 2011). Yet the dialogue between actors across such areas of policy was sustained informally due to some shared experiences between key leaders related to the political transition in the 1970s and the intense nature of industrial restructuring of the 1980s: and the way relations or forms of communication between these individuals had been developed across time.
In great part this was an outcome of the changing expectations of the key trade unions in relation to the overarching neo-liberal orientations of significant parts of public policy. It also formed part of this moving of the project of worker influence into not just state agencies and partial agreements with government, but also the extension of the content of collective bargaining (e.g. equality, health and safety, and others) and its sectoral extension and formalisation and there is research evidence that this shift especially in relation to collective bargaining at the sector level was seen in some cases as beneficial to employers (Fernández Rodríguez et al., 2016; see also Bulfone and Afonso, 2020). This led to critical reflections about the value of some agreements: There have been agreements that were mainly a photo opportunity, before electoral processes… there have been some agreements to improve unemployment benefits that later have not been developed, subsidies for young people that have not been implemented either… But they were useful for the government to demonstrate that they dialogue and reach agreements before general elections. It doesn’t mean that some have not been useful, but there has been a trajectory towards the political use of social dialogue. (Former General Secretary of CCOO 1)
To that extent, the ability of trade unions to influence labour market reforms and the changes in legislation related to collective bargaining were uneven and was further limited due to the governmental responses from the PSOE and then the PP to the 2008 financial being obsessed with seeing the problem in terms of labour market ‘rigidities’. In a certain way, the fragmented model of joint regulation that had developed (given the reliance on higher levels such as sector level bargaining and weaker workplace voice) facilitated the unilateral neo-liberal reform of the labour market imposed by centre-left and centre-right governments. There was, however, a certain continuity with the existing model of joint regulation and there was some degree of influence from trade unions and attempts at dialogue that should not be easily ignored (González Begega et al., 2015). Several peak agreements on collective bargaining – albeit with very low maximum nominal pay increases – were agreed between unions and employers’ organisations from 2012 onwards (Lopez-Andreu, 2019a). However, these pacts were framed around limiting (mainly unsuccessfully) the reforms with their not being any partial reversal of the deregulation imposed by the governments until after 2020, in contrast to what happened in countries such as Portugal or Italy (Bulfone and Tassinari, 2021). Furthermore, it has been argued that Spanish employers were more subtle and did not always push for a de-regulatory approach in a consistent manner regarding collective bargaining reforms (Sánchez-Mosquera, 2022). To some extent, the memories of earlier social dialogue or pacts along with the cost to the labour movement of fronting difficult periods of economic and social transition were common and, in our interviews, we noticed the manner some employer and political leaders acknowledged this to trade unionists at key moments.
Discussion: Understanding the awareness and reframing of political exchanges in relation to social dialogue across time and the role of informal networks
When discussing such relations and the question of institutionalisation, the Spanish case as discussed here is of importance because it illustrates the complex and diverse ways this takes place across time as various authors have noted previously. There is an argument that the nature of institutional interactions across elite level relations within this context have often been as much an outcome of having to compensate for low structural and associational power within organised labour, rather than being a rational or inevitable progression in terms of political roles and views (Kohler, 2018) and this provides insights regarding the ongoing and piecemeal nature of political exchanges within industrial relations (Marin, 1990). Hence, we have outlined how the nature of the relations between governmental or state elites and those of organised labour cannot be viewed as a one-off or zero-sum exchange but, rather, are closer to being a series of deliberate and distinct exchanges that take different forms over a variety of issues. In fact, we outlined earlier how, in later years in terms of the 1990s and the 2000s, such exchanges occurred across different levels of the state and involved a multi-level approach to decision making and roles (albeit to avoid engaging the labour movement at the core of economic and social decision making as far as both socialist and conservative governments were concerned). In part one could argue that there were certain structural factors in terms of the nature of Spanish economic development with Spain being a more of a mixed-mode economy rather than simply liberal market economy or coordinated market economy (Hamann, 2012; Molina and Rhodes, 2007) and this seems to contribute to the ambivalence outlined above.
However, putting these structural factors to one side, within this context, the role of informal relations was critical in sustaining dialogue and inter-organisational relations, even during pivotal or conflictual times, such as when employer organisations had to remind the new governments of the right in the 1990s of the significant roles that organised labour had played during the political transition and times of economic restructuring. Such relations were based on a series of personal interactions or shared experiences between key individuals that had been forged during earlier historic moments. These relations and exchanges are outlined in Table 1 although this is a general representation to aid the reader and does not fully capture the issues and tensions within each period although it serves to show how exchanges and relations change.
General representation of exchanges and relations across time (1970s–2018).
In this regard, the move away from the Francoist dictatorship created shared experiences for the ‘transition to democracy’ generation of trade union, political and employer leaders and common goals related to the tasks of ‘democratisation’ and ‘modernisation’: these moments are critical junctures that generate new layers and sets of actors (Hogan, 2006) although how stable they are and what risks they entail is another matter such as an increasing level of workers or popular mobilisation against top-tier union strategies (Lopez-Andreu, 2019b). In the case of Spain during the periods under discussion, the main risks were the political risks for the trade unions of not being seen to negotiate systematic social changes and shifts in the neo-liberal model, and of being too close to the state at a time when labour market fragmentation and unemployment, for example, was always higher than the European Union average.
In discussing networking and institutional relations in the UK, where social partnership has been less advanced and is located in some companies at the micro or corporate level, Oxenbridge and Brown (2002) outlined the importance of social and personal relations in maintaining forms of dialogue during critical periods and in sustaining institutional links between employers and unions more generally, albeit they referred to the micro and company levels. This question of personal relations and networks is one that needs to be accounted for much more. In our research this relatively, mutual support at key moments between the two confederations, on the one hand, and employer and political elite actors, on the other emerged more often than we had anticipated. The importance of having shared reference points historically amongst political elites, and the importance of social and political memory at key conjunctures, is therefore a contributing factor to the nature of social dialogue or neo-corporatist processes: mapping exchanges across time and in terms of their changes therefore needs more attention (Baccaro, 2003; Marin, 1990). In the case of Spain, these relations started to erode as the ‘transition generation’ in the leadership of key actors, especially employers and the state, began to decline in influence in the face of more assertive neo-liberal constituencies. This generational erosion was one factor many observers rarely discuss as they seek to focus on structural developments or broader political contexts but not the way they are crystallised in specific networks.
In fact, even within the majority trade unions key leaders became further disconnected and socially distanced, as was clear in 2011 with the emergence of the ‘15-M’ popular – and mainly anti-capitalist – movement based on a new generation of activists and precarious workers amongst others (Las Heras and Ribera-Almandoz, 2017) which viewed such political elites as being unable to counter the labour market and collective bargaining reforms of a neo-liberal nature within government policy. These elites were seen to fail in dealing with structural problems of poverty, unemployment and social fragmentation. A whole new set of spaces were opened up which began to question the modus operandi and relatively symbolic aspects of some of the elite level relations between the state and the majority unions (de Guzman et al., 2016; Las Heras and Roca, 2023): in effect pointing to the cost and limitations of the informal relations and restricted institutional spaces unions had in relation to the state. These new social dynamics led to the emergence of the left political party/alliance Podemos and other related movements.
Since 2008, the policy focus of the trade union leaderships of the CCOO and UGT was one of sustaining some semblance of voice and influence in a context that they were fully aware was not ideal. However, the perceived strategic distance and autonomy that the CCOO and UGT leadership felt had been maintained between the main trade unions and the state broadly speaking prior to these social and critical developments of their institutional roles did not seem to resonate beyond their organisations. In effect, the strategic nature of labour relations with governments as discussed earlier were opaque and unclear as a broader political strategy: trade unions began to increasingly internalise and carry much of the risk associated with such a strategy which, whilst spread across piecemeal agreements and complex regulatory processes, was rarely rationalised externally. The rationale for them was based on a perceived fear of the likely (and negative) social and economic outcomes if union leaders and their organisations did not sustain some institutional roles: yet, as stated, this strategy became an increasingly opaque and fragmented project. In the interviews with key leaders – especially those of the late-1980s and early-1990s – there was a strong realisation that the trade union movement had sustained a voice and role in a way that transferred the core parts of the political risks to them but with little recognition of this from society, generally speaking, let alone governments as memories of union political sacrifices and historical roles began to fade.
Conclusion and summary: Beyond appearances and the relevance of the opaque in social dialogue
The relations between specific actors need to be understood over time if we are to appreciate how they evolve and are constantly made, unmade and remade. First, the idea of the formalisation of elite-level industrial relations being a singular event – or driven by specific critical conjunctures – fails to understand the ways in which processes of accommodation develop over time in the context of different political contingencies. Returning to some core questions we presented in the introduction we present the following findings.
First, we attempt to contribute to the discussions about social dialogue and neo-corporatism by understanding state–labour relations as an incomplete and ‘messy’, or ongoing process, that changes over time and is affected not only by a transformed structural balance of power between actors and clear socio-economic systems, but also by the modification and transformation of the spaces and contents of these relationships: voice is rethought at different levels and in relation to a range of themes and issues even if influence on policy is constrained by specific governments. In this sense, unions remained an active actor of sorts in an increasing neo-liberalised environment reframing its relations albeit in a reactive manner and often opaque way. This latter approach differs from some accounts of neo-liberalisation that tend, generally speaking, to characterise unions as passive actors with a limited scope for manoeuvre or unable to counter the impact of neo-liberal shifts (Baccaro and Howell, 2017). However, in this case, unions have been increasingly and consciously focused on institutional spaces that were knowingly reduced and fragmented due to the perceived risks of not doing so and neo-liberal agendas being further extended by governments and employers. To that extent, agency and social dialogue needs to be rethought beyond supposedly overt and deliberate exchanges that can be easily evaluated and research needs to include greater attention to the visualisations of what may otherwise happen without some form of social dialogue no matter how limited. This need to approach exchanges as involving discussions about alternative scenarios and outcomes or perceptions – whether counterfactual or likely developments in the absence of agreements or responses – should be more central to discussions of the nature of social dialogue processes as it may explain some of the decisions taken.
Second, ‘institutionalisation’ may occur across different levels and in relation to different themes and issues, even in weaker state contexts although whether they are mainly reactive or supply side focused is a problem (see Ebbinghaus and Weishaupt, 2022). This generates a range of activities of a decentred manner whose features can only be understood by expanding what we mean by the notion of political exchange, and the deliberate or conscious calculations within such processes, as well as the longer-term risks associated with it. Even if we accept the narrative of decline in state–labour relations (Baccaro and Howell, 2017), we need to realise there can be some, albeit constrained, agency within this context dependent on historical and social factors – or that actors attempt to generate some form of perceived agency. There is an element of reflexivity and awareness of the risks of non-involvement that we cannot discount when studying such exchanges, and this is one of the contributions of the paper. In this case, the trade union leadership compensated its lack of broader economic and strategic influence at the macro level by focusing on meso- and micro-level regulatory politics,
Third, to comprehend these more nuanced and discreet features of social dialogue the underpinning networks and informal relations need to be unpicked and understood through detailed research interviews to explain the curious decisions and high-risk agreements that occur within social dialogue processes (Ibsen et al., 2021; Oxenbridge and Brown, 2002; Martínez Lucio and Stuart, 2005). The questions of memory, informal relations and shared historical experiences related to these informal relations – and the way risks are shared or not – may not always be transparent in terms of social dialogue processes. However, our research suggests that these types of relations and shared memories played an important role in key moments but eventually declined and were remade in various ways.
Hence, how trade union leaders calculated the risks of involvement and non-involvement, and utilised networks and informal relations, play an important role in the way social dialogue mutated and was reframed across time. This is not to suggest that these particular factors are in themselves sole structural or socio-economic causal mechanisms in influencing the shape and content of social dialogue and neo-corporatist relations, but they cannot be discounted in shaping the way they help us explain the role of key social actors within such processes and the framing of such developments and their interpretation by key individuals and players even during a period of neo-corporatist decline. We need to appreciate the way such processes sustain themselves across time regardless of whether they are or not ideal outcomes for the labour movement. Finally, we need to methodologically also ensure that we study such processes across longer time frames and attempt to appreciate the reshaping of exchanges, the calculations related to their risks and the historically and conjecturally specific concerns of actors in order to add an additional layer to the development of regulatory structures. Our contribution, building on earlier work, is that the strategic and flexible nature of such forms of social dialogue (in terms of its relocation across state levels) and the manner in which the focus of negotiation thematically shifts across time cannot solely be explained by deep underlying economic and social factors and changes: instead, they require careful scrutiny of the strategic calculations and informal networks that frame such exchanges even when they appear to be declining in significance and influence, or becoming increasingly a risk to organised labour. In this respect, the question of agency needs to be thought through more carefully in future work on social dialogue which has increasingly become more formalistic and linked to broad theoretical brush strokes and deterministic views often ignoring the subtlety of earlier debates.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
