Established and emerging fields of workers’ struggles in the care sector: the case of Poland

Introduction

Over the last few years, the care sector in Poland has witnessed frequent industrial action undertaken by both trade unions and non-unionised workers. Action is increasing and new initiatives are surfacing in different care fields, i.e., care services provided to the sick, the disabled, the elderly and children in early education (nurseries, kindergartens and primary schools). Although these fields differ in terms of the division of work between formal and informal sectors and public and private sectors, care work in Poland is generally highly feminised and relies on both ‘institutionalised’ waged work and unwaged work provided by families. Poland is also recognised as a country with relatively low unionisation and union mobilisation rates and with a disproportionately strong industrial relations role played by the state (Gardawski and Towalski, 2020). Despite these negative factors, the care sector has become a field of established and emerging workers’ struggles, a phenomenon going against the general trend.

The article attempts to answer the following research question: what are the challenges and obstacles facing industrial action in the care sector? We look at the institutional setting and barriers specific to Poland, including union density, the type of employment and opportunities for unionisation, as well as the issue of ‘who is the employer’ – and how these factors shape working conditions for both waged and unwaged caregivers. We analyse the specific constraints on strike action in the care sector, looking at certain groups: nurses and midwives, primary school teachers, nursery teachers, and those caring for the elderly and the disabled. All these groups have organised militant actions in recent years.

We are interested in the intersection of care work, the institutional setting and industrial action. We study the acts of refusal to work by both waged and unwaged workers in care work. We analyse how the specific features of this configuration influence industrial action in terms of the basic agenda of wages and working conditions, and how they produce new tensions, emotions and experiences among employees. We suggest that this configuration is leading to a new form of industrial dispute where, over and above the tripartite worker-employer-state constellation, the special relationship between caregivers and care recipients (and their families), often based on a ‘prisoner of love’ dilemma, as well as the special position of caregivers in society, play a significant role. We propose a typology of established and emerging fields of workers’ struggles to investigate the phenomenon of a ‘bargaining power penalty’ in the care sector. We also look at whether the COVID-19 pandemic has had an influence on struggles in the sector.

The article is structured as follows: we start by discussing the approach to care work, followed by a review of debates on the institution of strikes and a description of employment relations in selected sectors. We go on to present our methodology and cases, ending with a discussion of our findings.

Theoretical approaches to care work

Care work is defined by International Labour Organisation (ILO) guidelines as consisting of ‘activities and relations involved in meeting the physical, psychological and emotional needs of adults and children, old and young, frail and able-bodied’ (ILO, 2018: 6). The ILO includes a wide range of occupations in this definition, covering both paid and unpaid jobs and ranging from ‘university professors, doctors and dentists at one end of the spectrum, to child-care workers and personal care workers at the other’ (ILO, 2018: 8). This is in line with current sociological research on care work which includes various educational and health-care services in the scope of care work, including child-care providers, teachers, nurses, doctors and therapists (Duffy et al., 2015; England, 2005). Such an approach enables similarities and differences between various kinds of care work to be revealed, while also – the focus of this article – allowing us to highlight how the specific features of care work influence the mobilisation and organisation of workers, yet at the same time limit their bargaining power. These specific features are elaborated in industrial relations and sociology research using several different theoretical approaches.

Looking at working conditions and wages (and also recognition of the value of the work), research into care work reveals wide-ranging precariousness in the sector. Care workers experience a ‘wage penalty’, earning considerably less than the national average wage in their respective countries (Müller, 2019). The low wages in the health and social care sectors are sustained by economic, industrial relations and social factors. Care (and female work in general) is undervalued because employees’ power in wage negotiations has been weakened by the privatisation and commodification of the provision of state services. ‘The prisoner of love’ dilemma (Folbre, 2001) also plays an important role, with care workers in an asymmetrical relationship with care recipients based on trust, empathy and often affection. These factors take precedence over working conditions, making it difficult for trade unions to organise care workers (Müller, 2019).

This is linked to a broader phenomenon: care as a ‘labour of love’, motivated more by vocation than by material aspects. This notion is sustained by the fact that care, as defined by Philips (2009), is relational, given and received throughout life in private relationships. The assumption of its affectionate character impacts how care is recognised.

The link between gender and the affectionate attitude embedded in care cannot be overlooked. Women are socialised by gendered power relations, making them internalise the notion of caring as something that should be done altruistically (Folbre, 2012; Palmer and Eveline, 2012: 257). Even though care work in the form of paid employment is a standardised service with institutional rules (Philips, 2009), ‘social norms lead care workers to privilege altruism over financial gain’ (Atkinson and Lucas, 2013: 308). Kaine (2012: 325) critically points out that those assumptions are backed by the neoclassical economic ‘theory of negative compensating differentials’ (Nelson, 1999) or ‘vocational premium’ (Heyes, 2005), as summed up by Nelson: ‘low-paid care workers are fully compensated but simply choose to take a portion of their pay in warm feelings instead of cash’ (Nelson, 1999: 44). The focus on vocation and the care given instead of on material gain potentially blurs the realities of working in the care sector, which are much more nuanced than the dichotomy between ‘love and money’. Hebson et al. (2015) focus on job satisfaction in caring professions, trying to move beyond conventional assumptions of women’s altruistic motivations and highlighting the social and economic conditions shaping their decisions to enter the care sector. Intimate contact with the body and body fluids of another person, among different kinds of ‘dirty work’, is regarded as unskilled and not much respected in terms of value of work (Dahle, 2005; Simpson et al., 2012; Twigg, 2001).

The undervaluation of care work should be seen in relation to the economy and paid and unpaid labour. The Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) allows us to contextualise and focus our analysis of opportunities for development of industrial relations in care work, emphasising the extent to which the system of production relies on social reproduction. Care work is part of social reproduction: physical or mental health, food preparation and service, cleaning, personal care and care for the next and older generations (Duffy, 2007; Nakano Glenn, 1992). Feminist debates on reproductive labour make it possible to deconstruct the notion of ‘labour of love’ through taking a work perspective. SRT acknowledges the scope of exploitation and domination in the organisation of capitalism and in its production and reproduction processes, and that the reproduction of capitalist society is dependent on perpetuating these forms of organisation, regardless of the rates of exploitation or the amounts of redistribution (Bhattacharya, 2017; Munro, 2019: 452). SRT expands the definition of the working class to include workers whose labour contributes to the reproduction of the workforce but who do not contribute to accumulation of wealth via paid employment. Reproduction is the weakest and most vulnerable point of capital, which fully relies on social reproduction. Indeed, similarities exist between anti-unionist attacks in the productive sphere and attacks on the value and position of reproductive labour in the form of privatisation and withdrawal of state subsidies (Bhattacharya, 2017: 166).

Together with debates on the status of care work in the labour market, the SRT approach allows us to look at industrial action in care occupations from a broader perspective covering both waged and unwaged work.

The scientific analysis of industrial action in the care sector as a significant new feature of contemporary industrial relations usually focuses on organised workers, as seen in research on the militancy of nurses (Briskin, 2013; Kubisa, 2016, Gafni-Lachter et al., 2017), strikes in a private care company (Rogalewski, 2018), and teacher strikes against austerity policies (Uetricht, 2014). We take a different focus, looking at industrial action in non-organised care occupations. This enables us to see a variety of actions and at the same time to identify the structural, institutional and gender-based restrictions preventing care workers from formally organising themselves.

Institutional context

We start by presenting the structural and institutional settings governing trade union establishment, collective disputes and opportunities to exercise the right to strike in Poland. Institutional settings affect the successful establishment and long-term prospects of trade unions (Gardawski et al., 2012), the number of collective agreements (Czarzasty, 2019) and the number and forms of protests (Wenzel, 2016).

It is relatively easy to form a union as only 10 workers are needed at workplace level, but it is hard to keep a union afloat due to Poland’s strong anti-union culture and prevalent union-busting practices. Union density in Poland has dropped steadily since the early 1990s for various reasons, including unions’ inability to combat economic reforms resulting in the privatisation of the public sector, mass unemployment and poverty, as well as the unions’ political engagement (Gardawski et al., 2012). Union membership is low, especially among young people, as witnessed by the steady rise in the average age of union members (Trappmann, 2014).

In 2018, more than 1.5 million people belonged to trade unions, accounting for 4.9 per cent of the adult population, 16.3 per cent of those employed on the basis of a Labour Code contract in companies employing more than nine people (GUS, 2019) and about 9 per cent of all employees regardless of the form of employment. There is a great difference in union density between the private and public sectors, as the former is mostly made up of micro- and small enterprises. As 40 per cent of workers work in companies employing 10 or fewer people and a further 12.2 per cent work in small enterprises with up to 50 workers, most of the Polish workforce has little or no chance of establishing a trade union (PARP, 2018). Union density is highest among teachers (39 per cent), steelworkers (40 per cent), pilots (52 per cent), nurses (58 per cent), railwaymen (80 per cent), postal workers (60 per cent) and miners (almost 100 per cent) (Trappmann, 2014). Despite declining union membership, union density among women is 14.8 per cent, i.e., 5.7 percentage points higher than among men (Vandaele, 2019). In this context, structural factors such as growing private sector employment, increasing numbers of self-employed and growing employment in education, health and social work activities (GUS, 2020) are becoming even more challenging for trade unions in terms of organising new members.

Collective disputes are regulated by the Act on Collective Dispute Resolution of 1991. ¹ The formal collective bargaining procedure that could lead to a legal strike is so lengthy and intimidating that Czarzasty (2019) called it a ‘near-death experience’. Collective disputes can only be initiated by a registered local union or by an external union when the workplace is not organised. In practice, the latter rarely happens, as it is difficult to negotiate on behalf of non-organised workers. Some 53 per cent of Polish workplaces are not unionised (CBOS, 2019), leaving their employees without representation and without a right to collective bargaining and industrial action. The situation of those employed in the mixed or solely private sector is even more difficult, as only 43 per cent and 22 per cent respectively of workplaces in these sectors are unionised, compared to 77 per cent in the public sector (CBOS, 2019). Industrial action can be taken only against the direct employer, with demands having to be within the employer’s remit. The term ‘employer’ is interpreted more in managerial than in organisational terms in Polish law and practice (Czarzasty, 2019), meaning for example that complex corporations in the form of conglomerates or industrial groups are not seen as a single employer, but as a host of employers. The same is true for public sector workplaces. For example, while a local authority may be the ‘owner’ of public schools and hospitals, each school and hospital is a separate employer, despite being financed by the same institution. All demands and collective disputes have to be separately addressed to the principal or manager of each workplace, not to the local authority or central government. In practice, sectoral disputes and strikes or industrial action against the government are impossible. This constitutes a major challenge for care sector workers who work in small workplaces and whose working conditions are very much dependent on the social policies adopted by local and central government. On top of this, many categories of employees are denied the right to strike by virtue of their occupation. This restriction applies not only to the police and armed forces, but also to all central and local government workers, irrespective of their scope of responsibility. Social workers achieved a spectacular success in the Supreme Court in 2019, winning the right to strike for all social and care workers, who until that day had been denied this right due to ambiguous laws and regulations. ² The right to strike of other public sector workers such as nurses is repeatedly questioned (Żołyński, 2013). This is why care workers often use other protest strategies like mass sick leave, rotational strikes, sit-ins and hunger strikes.

In the face of such challenging structural and institutional circumstances, those unions which seek revitalisation need to reorient resources, prioritising organising strategies and the recruitment of new members (Vandaele, 2019). This can be done by unions ‘overcoming the historical legacy of fragmentation and by reinventing themselves as political, civil society and economic actors all at the same time’ (Gardawski et al., 2012).

One way to revitalise and increase membership is to open up unions to the growing service sectors, including the care sector (Trappmann, 2014). In the following sections, we highlight the recent struggles in this sector in Poland, union strategies and the specific obstacles that need to be overcome to unionise workers in this sector, especially those related to the specific features of the profession and gender. Our combined institutional industrial relations and SRT approach provides further insights in terms of workers’ strategies and opportunities for union renewal.

Methodology

This article is based on a multi-method approach and ongoing research. It combines material from different research projects conducted by both authors and using different methodologies, all circulating around the interconnections between care, employment and protests. Some of the research material has already been analysed in publications on the militancy of the nurses and midwives’ trade union (Kubisa, 2014, 2016), an initial comparative analysis of opportunities for collective organising in care work as exemplified by nurses and nursery workers (Kubisa, 2021) and an initial discussion on the significance of industrial action in the protests of carers tending persons with disabilities (Kubisa and Rakowska, 2018). The research material on nurses, midwives and nursery workers has been expanded by further interviews and a collection of secondary data, not analysed before, along with new material on teachers and caregivers for the elderly. The aim of this study is to establish a more general, comparative analysis of several different cases.

We work with data collected over the last decade, comparing it with data collected very recently. This enables us to pose new, more general research questions not previously analysed with the aim of creating an overview of the situation and patterns of industrial action within the Polish care system. This in turn allows us to move beyond snapshots of various struggles to establish a typology built on the solid foundations of research conducted over a longer period of time.

The qualitative research involved semi-structured interviews, non-participant observations, document analyses, media scanning, and secondary data analysis (see Denzin and Lincoln, 2011; Silverman, 2013). We conducted 43 interviews with nurses organised in a national trade union in 2009–2010 and a further five in 2020, 16 interviews with teachers organised in three different trade unions in 2019, three interviews with the leaders of a nursery teacher union in one city and one interview with a caregiver union organiser employed in social welfare homes in 2020. Each type of interview was backed by an analysis of documents, online material and manifestos. The common theme of the interviews was to look at the interconnections between care, opportunities for industrial action, barriers to organising and gender.

Another aspect of the research consisted of desk research and an analysis of the media coverage on the establishment of a trade union for elder care and a strike of caregivers for the disabled. Using a content analysis method (Babbie, 2013; Silverman, 2018), we conducted written and video interviews with the leaders and active participants of the protests and collected the media commentaries and reports on the 2018 Protest of Parents of Disabled Persons from 24 media sources. The material was categorised according to the following criteria: the presence of ‘strike’ terminology, a description of the action taken, attitudes of the leaders and participants, and the sequence of events.

Analytical framework: established and emerging struggles in care sectors

Care work straddles the dividing line between waged work and family obligations. Care work performed in the context of paid employment is also very diverse in terms of working conditions and rights to industrial action. To identify the differences, similarities and mechanisms in workers’ struggles across these heterogeneous occupational groups, we decided to create two categories of care work struggles: established struggles with a long history of industrial disputes and strong union representation; and emerging fields of workers’ organisation, characterised by first steps in organising and first attempts at industrial action. The emerging fields category is further divided into waged workers’ and unwaged workers’ actions. Comparing these sub-sectors reveals similarities and differences between caregivers’ struggles, showing similarities in how the characteristics of care work affect mobilisations of workers.

We look at union profiles and membership levels, the time span of activities, the right to strike, workers’ demands and to whom they are addressed, other forms of collective action, the discourse and remarks. Teachers’, nurses’ and midwives’ protests are categorised as established fields of struggle, as their protests have a longer history and their unions operate at national level, while those of nursery workers, personal and long-term carers and carers of the disabled are viewed as emerging fields of struggle, as their protests and attempts to gain collective recognition only started in recent years, without them yet being able to establish a national representation. In the following section we present cases from both fields of struggle, followed by a discussion of our findings.

Established fields of struggle: the cases of nurses and teachers

Alongside miners, teachers and nurses have been the most vociferous and militant occupational groups over the past 30 years in Poland, known for high-profile industrial action and a variety of protests. Even though systemic reforms now see nurses working in a decentralised health-care system, while teachers remain covered by the Teachers’ Charter (a national agreement), there are similarities between the two groups in terms of the scope of action and the state as the addressee of their demands.

Kindergarten and (primary) school teachers have combined pay claims with pleas for educational autonomy, education system reforms and increased expenditure on education. The first major wave of teacher protests took place between 1991 and 1993 and in 1994 teachers from Solidarność joined the hunger strike of health-care workers in their fight for pay rises in the public sector. In 1999, 2007, 2008 and 2017, the Polish Teachers’ Union (ZNP) staged one-day and two-hour warning strikes in protest against low wages and the closure of rural schools and kindergartens. Both unions organised demonstrations, picketed and occupied public buildings. In 2017, the ZNP started industrial action against the reform of the education system, first with protests, demonstrations and warning strikes and finally with a three-week-long nationwide strike in the spring of 2019, which kept all state-run schools closed. Considered the largest Polish strike since 1989 (Polska Times, 2019), nearly 600,000 teachers from 14,000 schools joined the strike on the first day (Polskie Radio, 2019). The union campaigned against low wages, the decreasing number of teachers and the threats posed by the education system reform to the quality of teaching, inter alia making teachers work part-time in several schools. The three-week strike weighed heavily on the teachers due to the separation from their pupils. The trade unionists presented their strike decisions in terms of the highest sacrifice: an interruption of education for a better cause. They counted on the government to recognise what was at stake and start negotiations quickly, given the shared responsibility for the pupils. Unfortunately, this was not the case, and the government’s reluctance to discuss the strike demands prolonged the industrial action. Negotiations were futile. The issues of teachers’ contribution to education, low wages and deteriorating working conditions were ignored or even derided in the government-dependent media. Teachers faced accusations of being lazy and the discrepancy between their narratives about their workloads and the falling number of teachers and the public media discourse caused frustration among protesters. Initially relatively high, public support declined as the strike continued, especially around the time of the final exams.

Over the last 30 years, nurses have gained recognition due to a variety of industrial actions and protests focused on the direct link between the quality of work and the quality of care. In the 1990s they organised demonstrations against low wages, while at the turn of the century they staged blockades of streets and state borders and occupied the Ministries of Labour and Health in protest against the reform of the health-care sector, the accompanying work intensification and the decrease in the number of nurses not compensated by any pay rise. They organised hunger strikes at hospital level, occupied the Prime Minister’s Office in 2007 along with the “White City” in the form of tents camped around the building and the Parliament in 2011 in protest against forced self-employment in the sector. In 2015, shortly before the general election, they managed to coordinate hospitals throughout Poland to get ready for a general strike. This brought them a pay rise, though not as high as demanded. Trade union activists are quick to say that each pay rise resulting from their actions was delayed, sometimes through court action. The nurses’ strikes often involved a refusal to work, though being on call in the event of any emergency at the hospital. This strategy was conceived as a balancing act between the need to strike and patient needs, although at a cost to nurses and their bargaining power. Often circulating around the necessity to provide care and the decision to go on strike, their narratives are presented as the highest challenge and sacrifice.

Emerging fields of workers’ struggle 1: the cases of nursery workers and caregivers for the elderly

This category covers initiatives taken by care workers in recent years aimed at gaining recognition for the value of care work and combating systemic barriers and a hostile environment, with the use of the trade union movement.

Nursery workers in Poznan had for long tried to improve their wages and working conditions but the municipality refused to recognise their demands. In 2011 the city’s mayor even wrote that wages would remain frozen until 2023. This led workers to organise under the Polish National Trade Union Workers’ Initiative (Inicjatywa Pracownicza or IP), a radical organisation, with a view to remaining independent of the big union confederations (Ślosarski, 2016). This move enabled them to engage in negotiations with the municipality in a social partner capacity and to stage protests. Not allowed to strike for formal reasons, nursery workers employed by the municipality instead wore black protest badges at work and informed parents of their poor working conditions and the low child-to-caregiver ratio, pointing out that the municipality was responsible. They were the first occupational group employed by this municipality to picket the city hall and block traffic. The right to strike is a controversial issue: while nursery workers have a strong desire to protest against their employer’s hostile approach and decisions, they see a refusal to work as being more detrimental to the children they care for than to their employer.

Founded in 2012, the Polish Federation of Social Workers and Social Service Employees Unions (PFZPSiPS) organises eight facilities for the elderly and long-term care centres though it is mainly active among social workers. Over the past eight years, members of the Federation have managed to negotiate wage settlements in two care centres. Two other centres have participated in a nationwide ‘black week’, a symbolic protest of social care employees against poor working conditions and low wages, and taking the form of wearing black clothes to work. This form of protest was popularised during the women’s strikes of 2016, 2017 and 2018 (Kubisa and Rakowska, 2018) and is used by occupational groups whose rights to strike are limited or non-existent.

In 2018, another union, the Labour Confederation, started organising care workers in a company running privately owned care centres for the elderly, protesting against staff shortages and low wages. The employer, a member of an international corporation of care providers, responded by firing three members of the union, including the union leader. During pickets in defence of the dismissed workers, the union emphasised the workers’ devotion to and close relationship with their clients. They received support for their demands from the families of the elderly. The local unit did not survive in this company due to the employer’s hostility. The suits filed by the dismissed workers are pending court litigation. The Labour Confederation has managed to organise female carers in six public care facilities for the elderly owned by local authorities. Founded in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic, this inter-company trade union organisation focuses on personal protection equipment and staff shortages. According to the union, during the day shift a carer has to handle 20 clients on average, most of them fully dependent, and even more during the night shift. In early November 2020, carers picketed one of the care facilities in Toruń, demanding wage rises and additional staffing. Describing their working conditions in great detail, they referred to their work as ‘a duty for the dignity of the life of the residents’.

Emerging fields of workers’ struggles 2: the case of parents and carers of persons with disabilities

Although this group is not formally occupational, its main aim is to be organised as such. The parents and carers of persons with disabilities who provide care at home, as a form of private relationship and poorly subsidised by the state, held protests in 2014 and in 2018 (Kubisa and Rakowska, 2018), both involving sit-ins in the corridors of the Parliament. The protesters demanded a rise in benefits for carers who had resigned from gainful employment to take care of their disabled family members and an increase in the social security allowance to the minimum wage level. Following the 2014 protest, Parliament raised the allowance for carers of disabled minors (though not to the level demanded) but ignored carers of disabled adults. After four years of further lobbying and negotiations, parents of persons with disabilities decided to renew the protest and called a strike. Carried out by an informal group named Parents of Disabled Persons (Rodzice Osób Niepełnosprawnych – RON), the 2018 sit-in lasted 40 days. Their 21 demands related to living standards, a higher level of social benefits (at that time below the poverty line), an increase in care benefits (no inflation-adjustment in the last 12 years), more institutional support for the carers of persons with disabilities and increased benefits for adults with disabilities (RPO, 2019). The parents occupied the building along with their children, every day catering for the care needs of their disabled dependents in public spaces. The protesters themselves bore both the economic and health costs of the strike, while facing intimidation and violence from the Parliamentary Guard (Pacewicz, 2018). Access to lifts and bathrooms was blocked (Wprost, 2018). For some participants, the sit-in conditions had too great an impact on their physical and psychological well-being. Parents and carers unable to bring their dependents to the Parliament supported the action via social media. At the end of the day, the demands were not fully met by the government: certain changes were made in the access to services for the disabled, but there was no significant increase in benefits.

Staged by people who provide ‘labour of love’, this action highlights carers’ dilemma between the provision of care and the fight to improve working conditions. However, it initiated a discussion on care as a form of work and raised awareness for the provision of care to persons with disabilities. The carers involved did not stop work per se, instead transferring their work in all its intimacy from home to the public space. The action was backed by public testimonies related to care and disability shared online. Persons with disabilities became the actors of the protest and the subject of the protest at the same time.

Discussion

The cases analysed clearly show that, apart from structural and institutional differences, the notion and specific features of care work influence opportunities for industrial action and the accompanying strategies. Building on institutional and structural settings, history and the scope of protests, we distinguish emerging and established fields of industrial action. Certain parts of the Polish care sector are highly unionised. Nurses and teachers are known for militancy, often organising strikes and other forms of protests at workplace and national level, actively participating in shaping national policies on working conditions in the sector. Alongside these established fields, fields of conflict in both waged and unwaged care sectors are emerging. Nursery workers, carers of the elderly and the disabled face similar institutional barriers against establishing and sustaining unions and taking industrial action, and are just beginning to build organisational capacity. The struggles of these groups are also to be viewed in the historical and economic context of an established market economy, the far-reaching commodification of services within the sector and less favourable conditions for organised labour activity due to the general decline of Polish unionism. These alliances are much smaller and more targeted. Nevertheless, taking into account historical and structural differences and similarities in the approach to industrial action, we discovered a shared, broader phenomenon interlinking these groups and their protests. Those characterised as emerging are making their first steps on the path towards the patterns and strategies found in established fields of struggle, demonstrating similar forms of militancy and using similar narratives on the role of care and caregivers in society. Therefore, despite the aforementioned differences, these groups reveal greater similarities when analysed from a care work angle.

Care work is feminised in all groups analysed. All are characterised by a high level of militancy in comparison to other occupations. All protests share the same starting point: making care visible and understood as work and establishing the connection between working conditions and the quality of care. Each group faces the same dilemma of how to combine the fight for better working conditions and wages with providing care to dependents. The usual axis of industrial conflict between the employer and workers is mediated by the persons in care: pupils, patients, children, persons with disabilities. This constitutes an additional barrier to industrial action and is crucial for understanding care workers’ bargaining power. How does the nature of care work influence their bargaining power? Looking at the emotional, organisational and moral tensions and challenges faced by all workers in the groups analysed, care work would seem to go hand in hand with reduced bargaining power – a ‘bargaining power penalty’.

This ‘bargaining power penalty’ is closely related to the ‘wage penalty’ characterising the experiences of workers in female-dominated sectors and occupations such as health and social care (Müller, 2019). It underlines the consequences of the low recognition of the social value of care. However, the increasing militancy of care workers cannot be simply analysed in terms of industrial disputes between workers and employers due to carers’ commitments towards care recipients. From the perspective of protesting care workers, the position and impact of care recipients is twofold: the provision of high-quality care is a goal, but the achievement of this goal is constrained by the necessity of care provision. Leaving recipients without care or limiting care is a dilemma faced by all care workers. Unfortunately, it is also well recognised by the addressees of the protests, i.e., employers and the state, who use it to weaken carers’ bargaining power.

The militancy of care workers as exemplified by a variety of cases refutes the interpretation of the ‘prisoner of love’ dilemma (Folbre, 2001), discussed by Müller (2019), that it is more difficult to organise workers in the care sector. Care workers in fact establish unions, use a variety of protest strategies and organise strikes on a significant scale. Nevertheless, care workers still have to pay the bargaining power penalty. The inseparable relationship between the care recipient and the caregiver and the social perception of care characterise industrial relations in the care sector, becoming a struggle within a struggle. On the other hand, once that relationship and the specific features of care work are revealed and named, they can be turned into a source of power. Revealing the importance of care gives carers leverage. By spotlighting their role in reproducing society and maintaining the well-being of others, carers gain recognition and allies: from care recipients (schoolchildren, disabled persons), via their families (parents of children and families of patients and clients) to the general public. Revealing the hardships of work together with the devotion of care providers becomes an additional argument in any industrial action on the part of the struggling workers. The notion of care as a duty has always been used to ward off carers’ attempts to improve their working conditions. By being defined as work, care activities become more valuable. In this process, notions such as ‘duty’ and ‘devotion’ become additional qualities of care that make it more respected and deserving of better remuneration.

The value of care work and the devotion of care workers have been further highlighted by the COVID pandemic. Both waged and unwaged care workers are pointing out the dramatic situation in the care sector: underfunding, lack of personal protection equipment, staff shortages and little coordination between the social security and support systems. The pandemic has also revealed deep class and gender divisions between those working in the care sector and other service sectors, as the majority of essential, frontline workers are care workers, for the most part women in low-paid positions. Though the pandemic is making care workers more vulnerable through their exposure to the virus, overwork and stress, all researched groups are constantly struggling for better job quality and wages and are actively undertaking actions to improve their working conditions through lobbying, negotiations and picketing. What is most important is that the dramatic pandemic conditions are not stifling protests and militancy within the sector.