C.J. Crouch*
From the neo-liberal decade to beyond Maastricht
The future of industrial relations in Europe
Although deregulation, flexibility and decentralization have been the watchwords for change in industrial relations in virtually all western European countries for several years now, this has not necessarily involved a conflict with neo-corporatist systems in those nations where these have been working efficiently. Rather, there has been a new synthesis between pressures for co-ordination and those for decentralization. However, where neo-corporatism, or even collective bargaining, has been seen by significant elites as inefficient, the new ideas have been used to attack existing institutions. As so often, therefore, when diverse systems encounter common challenges, the consequence is more likely to be a revised diversity than a convergence.
The process of European integration following the Single Market agreement and the Maastricht Treaty will probably operate in a similar way; in some countries neo-corporatist characterstics will be reinforced by these moves; in others an
Changes during the 1980s
The estimation of any convergence in recent years has been made methodologically difficult by the fact that government policies have often been trying to pull national industrial relations systems in directions which have not correspon ded to the prevailing logic of the existing struc ture. This has of course occurred at earlier periods (for example Belgium in the late 1930s); but in previous decades such measures were usually being carried out within a context of thin existing institutional structures, where the government’s action was the major factor of substance to be considered. Trade unions, employers’ organizations, mechanisms for collective bargaining, mediation, etc were usually weakly developed and able to be moul ded (Crouch 1993, chs 4-6). By the 1980s, in contrast, most countries had strong existing institutional legacies which might contradict recent policy attempts (ibid, ch 7; Armingeon 1989; M. Baglioni 1990). Thus, for example, the fact that the British government was trying to break up, and the Spanish trying to establish, a
* Prof. dr. C.J. Crouch is verbonden aan h et Trinity College, University o f Oxford.
opportunity may be taken to dismantle them.
settled institutional system should not blind us to the fact that the underlying texture of bar gaining remained richer in the former country. An estimation of countries’ relative positions is further made difficult by the fact that several neo-corporatist cases were beginning to unravel in terms of their effectiveness at binding to gether the various levels of the system. How ever, the structures were usually still in place, doing considerable work, and sometimes indeed still expanding their range of tasks. Braun’s (1988) description of the situation in the Ne therlands, Konzertierung ohne Konsens, could stand as a general motto for the period. Changes in national corporatist systems
By neo-corporatism I mean, as has now become generally understood, a system whereby organi zed interests (usually of capital and labour) play a dual role of representing the interests of their constituencies while also disciplining them from a national level in the interests of some percei ved more general interest (Schmitter 1974; Crouch 1993, ch 2; Crouch and Dore 1990). This happens, not primarily because of the goodness of people’s hearts or an ideology of consensus, but if the logic of the structure of in stitutions in which they find themselves gives
them strong positive and/or negative incentives to behave that way. This might happen because the institutions have developed what Olson (1983) has called ‘encompassingness’, that is they represent such a large proportion of the society in which they are located that they cannot effectively externalize, or push on to other groups, any negative consequences of their actions. Alternatively the organizations may be both able and required to recognise the existen ce of a major source of sanctions on their behaviour (for example, such an institution as an autonomous central bank).
Neo-corporatism is certainly not a form of government intervention in wage determination through such devices as statutory incomes policies. The central point of these systems is rather that the discipline of the interest organi zations is used instead of state power, perhaps even in order to ensure that state power does not have to be exercised. Obviously governments will always be interested in how institutions of this kind are behaving. The issues are too important for government to be uninvolved; it may interfere informally and discreetly, threaten to take action unless the parties behave, try to prop up a faltering neo-corporatism, or even take the initiative in encouraging the formation of corporatist institutions. But in any event government involvement is to be interpreted as a failure or weakness of neo-corporatism, not, as is often the case, as evidence of its presence; it denotes a mistrust by government of the capacity of the bargaining parties to manage affairs more or less by themselves.
Austria has been the only case in which a fully articulated, straightforward neo-corporatism has continued to function relatively effectively up to the early 1990s without major adjustment, and even here there were tensions (Marin 1987; Traxler 1992; Guger 1991). We can however still define groups of countries in which, despite looming disintegration, various kinds of neo- corporatist processes constituted the main way in which business in industrial relations and associated fields of activity was conducted. Norway and, until 1991, Sweden still ranked after Austria in the strength and importance of their neo-corporatist mechanisms as they have for many years (Dplvik and Stokland 1992; Foss 1992; Pekkarinen et al 1991; Rehn and Viklund 1990; Calmfors and Forslund 1990; Kjellberg
1990). They were now joined (again until 1991) by Finland, which in the past had been dogged by considerable conflict and division within the labour movement (Eriksson, Suvanto and Vartia 1990; Helander 1984; Pekkarinen et al 1991; Lilja 1992).
However, as had already become the case in Denmark several years before, these Nordic systems were now increasingly associated with high inflation. The achievement of wage re straint had long depended on centralized orga nizations of workers and employers in export industries being forced to recognize the need for cost-sensitivity; this was the particular form taken in the Scandinavian cases by the institutio nal structure of neo-corporatism and its incenti ves (Crouch 1990; Lash 1985). The system was undermined as the proportion of the work force in the manufacturing export sectors declined and that in the public service (which does not confront international trade) increased. Growing signs of weakness could be seen in an increasingly frequent tendency for government intervention to stabilize the system since the mid-1970s (Calmfors 1990) - in Denmark for a longer period still (Amoroso 1990; Andersen and Risager 1990; Rasmussen 1985). In general, social democratic governments continued to try to rely on a rejuvenation of the old system, but the election of bourgeois governments during the 1980s and early 1990s has usually led to an alternative approach. In line with the neo-liberal orthodoxy of the times, this has taken the form of a desire to ‘deinstitutionalize’ the economy, to break up the role of institutions and organi zations and expose pay determination to more naked market forces. Social democrats and trade unionists have been unwilling to face the implications of decentralization and of the growing prominence of the company in indus trial relations. Neo-liberals, on the other hand, face the dilemma that to pursue their preferred policies they have to destroy institutions with a strong past record of cohesion and achievement, in favour of an untried and somewhat unfore seeable alternative (Pestoff 1991).
The Danish case is interesting here. In the early 1980s there was a shift to the new right and an attack on industrial relations institutions; but after a decade of non-social democratic rule there has been a new move back from the stri dent, anti-corporatist (even anti-collectivist)
From the neo-liberal decade to beyond Maastricht
rhetoric of the early years of neo-liberalism (Due et al, forthcoming). Instead, employers and unions have begun to reconstruct their organizations so that they might be better equipped for managing the changed employ ment structure of the new economy. Similar developments were in train in Norway and Finland.
Only in Sweden, where the opportunity to pursue anti-corporatist strategies has appeared so recently and where tensions between unions and employers have become so intense, are the main employers’ associations still, at the time of writing, determined to destroy the whole edifice of the ‘Swedish model’ (Kjellberg 1992). It remains however unclear how far Swedish busi ness wants to proceed down the road of institu tional destruction, and how united it is on such a project. Ironically, it is large companies than can most readily contemplate conducting per sonnel policy and collective bargaining outside a framework of external organizations; while if Sweden now really is to pursue a neo-liberal economic policy, she will need to encourage her weak small firms sector.
Belgium and the Netherlands have also provided important instances of neo-corporatist industrial relations surviving or even reviving, albeit in altered and more modest form (Pijnenburg 1989; Spineux 1990; Vilrokx and Van Leemput 1992; Braun 1988; Visser 1990, 1992). They differ from the former countries in that a certain amount of direct state intervention has usually been necessary, even before the turbu lent years of the 1970s and 1980s, to maintain their stability. They also differ from Scandinavia (though not from Austria) in that ‘cultural’ (religious or linguistic) divisions, and not just ‘pure’ industrial relations ones, have been at stake in the institutional design. Here, as in Denmark, the neo-liberalism of government in the earlier 1980s did not produce the sustained attack on industrial relations institutions origi nally anticipated.
There was some ambivalence in the initial neo liberal shift, as from the outset it was accom panied by statutory intervention in bargaining. In the Netherlands in particular by increased reliance on technocratic advice from manage ment specialists rather than from social partners through the Sociaal Economisch Raad (Heme- rijck 1993). There was thus no thoroughgoing
attempt to ‘deinstitutionalize’ the system, even though in the Netherlands trade union member ship became very weak.
By the early 1990s, when governments, emplo yers and unions were again seeking national pacts, management had achieved much of the restructuring it wanted, and the previous record of achievement of the systems made elites re luctant to destroy it: they could sometimes be useful and rarely caused trouble.
The growing importance o f the company For many years employers and unions alike in many European countries had a mutual interest in avoiding dealing with each other at company level: unions wanted to avoid workers being forced to compete against each other, and employers wanted to keep unions out of the company. However, by and during the 1980s this situation changed dramatically almost every where. Both as a factor in itself and as one causing difficulties for the more centralized forms of neo-corporatism, the rise of company- level industrial relations has to be considered as a master trend of these years, and one that will continue to shape the systems of the future. Unions had undergone considerable decentrali zation following the shop-floor militancy of the late 1960s, but this did not prepare them for the implications of the management response. Employers began to discover the advantages to them of ‘Japanese’ policies, of management of the work force as a central tool of company strategy (Roth 1992). All this began to push industrial relations towards the company level, but a crucial ingredient was sometimes provided if there was some fear of unemployment or at least of company decline in the face of excessi vely rising costs. This was a prominent feature of the recessionary economies of the early 1980s, though an important catalyst for change was sometimes the election of neo-liberal governments not committed to the maintenance of full employment.
The character and implications for the overall system of the shift to the company have varied considerably. While in the UK, as will be discussed below, employers’ associations collap sed as a result of this change, in Scandinavia it was more a matter of associations deciding that they wanted a decentralization. This becomes clear when one notes years when the
tions pulled back to a central national agree ment and were able to do so successfully (Due et al, forthcoming). For example, the Danish central employers’ body, then called Dansk Arbejdsgiverforeningen (DA), decided that it wanted a decentralization of bargaining to com pany level in certain years; it did not abandon its capacity to co-ordinate employers if it so chose. In several subsequent years it has exerci sed this option and has successfully pulled back to a central national agreement. The new struc tures that the DA (now restructured as Dansk Industri) and the LO have established for ex tending co-ordinated bargaining from the manu facturing to the private and public services sectors is trying to build into its arrangements a high level of flexibility for both individual industrial branches and, where necessary, com panies. Such possibilities present a more severe challenge in Sweden. Whereas the Danish economy mainly comprises small companies who need the assistance and shelter of associations, Sweden is an extreme example of domination by a small number of large firms which can easily develop their own personnel and wage strate gies. Swedish unions are therefore more suspici ous than their Danish colleagues that they might lose influence if they accept a high level of autonomy at company level, in particular if this were to take the form of works councils more amenable to company than to union influence. German, Swiss and also again Austrian indus trial relations have already been prepared by their past history of works councils and similar institutions for the new autonomy of the firm and the ability of trade unions to accommodate to a desire by management to pursue company- level strategy (Armingeon 1988; Jacobi and Miiller-Jentsch 1990; Streeck 1984; Blaas 1991). This, in addition to the macro-economic confor mity of the system, helps explain why systems remained more stable in these countries than elsewhere. In Germany and, to a lesser extent, Austria the co-ordination of the overall system has long involved a strong role for company- and plant-level representation through works councils in which unions have an important if informal role. Swiss industrial relations is very decentralized in a more ad hoc way, but with considerable informal co-ordination as part of the particular way in which Swiss institutions are organized.
Because works councils are formally not part of the union, autonomous and in possession of sta tutory powers, there is always a possibility that their existence will threaten the unions’ role. The unions have over the years responded to this by finding ways of making themselves useful to works councils and of binding works councils into their decision-making structure. These unions are therefore under pressure from natio nal (or branch-level) neo-corporatist networks to pay attention to the macro-level implications of their behaviour, and from works councils to take account of individual firms. This might seem an impossible tension. It is eased by the fact the Austrian and German councils are bound by law to a co-operative relationship with management; they do not therefore present the same challenge to a co-operative trade union as British (or even Scandinavian) shop-floor repre sentatives. There is nevertheless still a challenge of co-ordination. These unions have been wor king at the elaboration of structures for meeting this challenge since the 1950s. They were there fore far better prepared for the new managerial challenge of company-level industrial relations in the 1980s.
Dutch unions have had similar institutions at their disposal since the mid-1970s, though to date they have made little use of them (Visser 1990). Scandinavian unions have remoter but still serviceable analogies. They will probably have to use them if they want to adapt their systems to contemporary and future challenges. German and Swiss neo-corporatism has also differed from other forms in that co-ordination has been achieved at the level of the industrial branch rather than the national economy - though in both cases the metal industry has been so dominant within the economy that it almost always sets the pattern for the economy as a whole (Crouch 1993, ch 7). Institutions in these countries have, like those in Austria, remained exceptionally stable, even though Ger many, like some other countries, went through a neo-liberal ‘false dawn’ in the early 1980s when it seemed that the fall of a social-demo cratic government would lead to great changes. Different again has been the impact of the rise of the company level in the UK, where the political trend to neo-liberalism in the 1980s was far more strongly entrenched and the past le gacy of industrial relations institutions less
From the neo-liberal decade to beyond Maastricht
favourably perceived than in the rest of northern Europe. In the country where once one could describe a uniquely elaborate industrial relations system, the 1980s saw, not only a dismantling of virtually all state and national institutions of neo-corporatism, but also a virtual collapse of branch-level or any other form of co-ordinated cross-company bargaining (Ingram and Cahill 1989; Millward et al 1992; Purcell 1993). The institutions that survived and flourished were those at company level. The great majority of branch-level agreements collapsed, as did em ployers’ associations themselves as firms decided they had little need for them. Collective bargai ning remained the dominant mode of determi ning pay and working conditions for most wor kers in manufacturing and public services, and for many in the tertiary sector; but it was increasingly becoming collective bargaining at company level. Where companies were large enough, the decentralization extended further, as individual factories were made responsible for their own industrial relations and pay deter mination subject to achieving certain overall company targets (Millward et al 1992).
There was less disaggregation within the public sector, though there was a move by government in favour of the fragmentation and localization of collective bargaining arrangements, and the size of the sector was reduced by privatization. In the early 1990s the government has embarked on a policy that, if continued, will put into a franchising or a privatizing mode almost the entire public service. If this is fully achieved it will render the public service as difficult to co ordinate as the private sector has now become (Purcell 1993).
Attempts at creating national consensus So far we have considered societies where in dustrial relations institutions before the 1980s were already well developed with an extensive capacity for some kind of neo-corporatism. If the changes taking place in some of these makes them cases of ‘corporatism on the way down’, or at least in need of major restructuring, others have been examples of ‘corporatism on the way up’. These all however lack anything like the institutional infrastructure still operative in the former group.
The main uniting characteristic of this group of countries has been an intermittent policy by
government, employers’ organizations and unions to erect a national forum for achieving consensus, but on the basis of a disparate and decentralized bargaining system. We might call this an aspiring neo-corporatism, and as such it was very widespread in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1980s it was to be found most often in coun tries where problems in the labour market were part of a wider problem of overall social stabili ty and anxiety about civic unrest: Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and to some extent France. Elites did not want to take risks with provoking conflict with a major institution like trade unions, even if these were going through a weak period.
The most striking instance of this strategy has been Spain, a country which was for several years uncertain over its emergence from the authoritarian corporatism of fascism (Espina 1990, ch IV; Perez-Diaz 1987). A similar but less well developed response can be seen in western Europe’s two other young democracies, Greece and Portugal. Particularly since the Socialist Party (PSOE) took control of the government in the early 1980s, there has in Spain been a strategy of encouraging tripartite social pacts and accords, attempting virtually explicitly to replicate a version of ‘northern European’ neo-corporatism (Perez-Diaz 1987; Estivill and Hoz 1990; Giner and Sevilla 1984). These proved increasingly difficult to sustain. On the one hand the unions, which were weak, proved to be incapable of offering a neo-corpo- ratist deal. On the other government turned increasingly to neo-liberal labour-market poli cies. It seems to have concluded that Spain, as a relatively poorly developed western European country, will have to find its place at the lower end in world markets, where competition is on the basis of the flexibility and low overhead- costs of labour. This does not combine well with neo-corporatist deals. By the early 1990s it sometimes seemed as though government wan ted excuses not to have to continue with social dialogue. But it could not risk, either socially or in narrower party terms, to be seen to seek this. In Italy the worrying divisions among the re gions and repeated bouts of urban terrorism, organized crime and public corruption have been the causes of fears of instability, within a country where democratic institutions are otherwise well established. Italy’s industrial
relations development has also become unusual in other respects. In the north and midlands of the country there was, especially in the late 1980s, a remarkable growth of branch- and re gional-level tripartite administrative agencies as well as bargaining, in particular in association with some regional tiers of government (Regalia 1988; Regini 1987). Little in this was linked to balancing structures at plant level, but it other wise forms an embryonic ‘German’ system - though in part of the country only and therefore not characteristic of a national system.
While French democracy in no way has the fra gility of these other countries, the long French tradition of recurrent bouts of major civic unrest produces some similar anxieties. The upheavals of May 1968 are obviously of particular relevan ce here, though there have been similar, smaller outbreaks in more recent years. France has still maintained a highly non-institutionalized system of industrial relations, given the advanced state of the economy. And French trade unions are probably, both in terms of low membership and internal conflict, now the weakest in the demo cratic world. However, in terms of direction of movement she ranks alongside southern Europe rather than the UK, as government has tried to create rather than to destroy an institutional system (Goetschy and Rozenblad 1992). There has therefore been a continuing program me of legislation designed to encourage bargai ning and consultation at company level. This started in the years immediately after 1968, and has been extended by the Socialist Party govern ments of the past decade (Segrestin 1990). It also fits a well-established French tradition of state intervention. Far less precedented have been moves by both the CNPF and several branch organizations of employers to encourage framework agreements with the unions on a number of issues concerned with economic re structuring, despite the unions’ weakness and the abstention of the declining but largest confederation, the still-communist CGT from virtually all the agreements. All this is to be seen as attempts at establishing a pluralist collective bargaining system out of an earlier situation of repeated conflict and great difficulty in social dialogue (Crouch 1993, ch 7).
French observers have also noticed that, along side these gestures, there has been a large rise in company-level managerial autonomy that ig
nores unions. France here shares in the wider trend towards the importance of the company, but particularly strongly. French management has a long tradition of rejecting any role for unions at company level and insisting on total autonomy. Many managements have used the lois Auroux of 1981 - which were presented as helpful to unions - to justify ignoring them. These laws require firms to consult with their employees over a number of issues, but do not specify any necessary role for representative organizations and can be used to develop in dividual or at least non-union forms of com munication. The divided and poorly resourced French unions have not been at all able to tackle this issue in the same way that their Austrian and German counterparts tackled works councils.
Sometimes, and in particularly well publicized cases, French managerial autonomy has been used to develop new personnel management sty les and the involvement of workers in certain areas of management. In the great majority, however, the old French pattern of the patrons simply ignoring or even suppressing grievances lives on in new guise.
Conclusions
The main overall conclusion concerning the re cent period is that a long-present division has become increasingly important: that between forms of neo-corporatism dependent on power ful, articulated and centralized union movements (Scandinavia, (less clearly) Belgium, and now Finland); and those built on weaker union mo vements whose articulation depended more on the strength of one dominant exposed sector union rather than a centralized confederation, as well as powerful employers’ organizations (Switzerland, now the Netherlands, and Germa ny). Austria shares attributes of each category. The second group of countries and Austria can be said to have an ‘over-determined’ social or der, with both the power balance in the market and the existence of neo-corporatism reinforcing stability.
Where unions lost power during the 1980s, inci pient, unstable corporatisms based mainly on government aspirations of the 1970s that lacked a high articulation base in workers’ and emplo yers’ own organizations were knocked back into straight collective bargaining (more strongly
From the neo-liberal decade to beyond Maastricht
than anywhere else in the UK; to a lesser extent in Ireland and Italy). At times (as at times appeared to be the case in the UK and France) they were weakened to the point where bargai ning too collapsed, giving way to unilateral determination by employers. Norway and Swe den threaten to move into unstable collective bargaining if union and employer articulation continue to decline.
Prospects after Maastricht
What will be the impact of the 1992 project for a single internal market within the European Community and in particular the commitments to greater European integration under the Trea ty of Maastricht on this continuing but changing variety of systems?
The European Commission tends to prefer neo- corporatist patterns of relations, since these give it itself a range of interlocuteurs who help re medy its popular deficit. It therefore encourages groupings of employer organizations and trade unions and likes to deal with and through them. Its alternatives are either to deal only with nation states, which limits its ability to build a Europe that is anything other than a Gaullist Europe des patries, or to talk to companies only. This latter is partial, vulnerable to corruption, and also excludes labour. But there is little that the EC can do to delegate the administration of European legislation or programmes to repre sentative Europe-wide bodies in the full neo- corporatist manner. Implementation remains firmly a matter for nation states; presumably if the EC wished to move away from this pattern its first aim would be the establishment of Europe-wide inspectorates of civil servants. Establishing European social-partner admini stration, or permitting national corporatist groups to administer would raise a considerable number of conflicts.
EC attempts at a kind of Euro-corporatism are therefore likely, for many years, to remain like the similar French national attempts: the aim may be corporatism, but the result is an impro ved pluralism. (This is not surprising, since the architects of much of the relevant policy are French.) The growth of a Euro -pluralism is therefore to be expected; and an increasing flow of business will move through its channels. This will not however be enough to dislodge the po wer and predominance of national systems.
The Protocol on Social Policy
One must in this context consider the likely implications of the commitment in the Protocol on Social Policy of the Maastricht Treaty (Com mission of the European Community 1992) for individual member nations to pursue constantly improving social and work standards, and to pursue social dialogue with representatives of business and labour interests. It is significant and, in view of the above, entirely unsurprising, that the United Kingdom refused to sign the So cial Protocol.
The initial need for the Protocol is to ensure that countries within the Community do not seek competitive advantages against each other within the new single market through low labour standards and working conditions. To do so would threaten the maintenance of high stan dards in those member countries who found themselves outpriced by such tactics and in consequence forced against their will to drive down their own workers’ conditions to face the competition.
There remains the risk that Community coun tries would be placed at a competitive disadvan tage against nations in the Far East and else where that have dictatorial regimes, weak labour movements and large labour surpluses. But there is a constructive solution available, one already being pursued by the most advanced economies in the Community. Firms in countries that want to maintain labour standards will move out of inferior product markets where they encounter the low-cost producers and into the high value-added goods and services that can be produced only by educated, confident workers supported by a strong social infrastruc ture. The long-term importance of the Protocol lies in the ratchet effect of the incentives it provides to move up-market in this way. There is a certain thrust towards convergence within the Community embedded in this. We are however more likely to see movement towards a small number of types of system rather than a single one. We can initially identify two major groups, corresponding roughly to the recurrent, if suppressed, discussion of the two-speed Europe that is now likely to emerge in the search for monetary integration. The rich countries of northern Europe have labour standards to defend and are already competing in the superior mai kets. This includes the
original six members of the European Economie Community, though there is a question mark over the position of France and Italy. The former country still does not develop institutions of employee representation as extensive as those in other highly advanced European societies; while the line between rich, industrial, high- standard north and poor, rural, low-standard south of Europe seems to run through the middle of Italy.
Denmark, provided it eventually finds other aspects of the Maastricht Treaty acceptable, should have no difficulty joining the strong group; some current Danish anxiety about Euro pean integration is a fear of high domestic standards being compromised. If the rest of the Nordic countries, Austria and Switzerland even tually affiliate to the Community they too should take their place among the high-standard group. If France and Italy remain largely on the mar gins of this set, it becomes very much a Germa nic and Scandinavian grouping.
Much of southern Europe does not have high labour standards, but neither does it have high standards of implementation and observance of national or international regulations. Viewing the matter cynically, until they have advanced further implementing detailed policies agreed under the Social Protocol will not greatly trouble them; in the meantime they rarely compete in markets that interfere with their richer northern partners. These countries, probably joined by Ireland and the United Kingdom, will form a de facto second division in social standards, even if formally many of them assent to agreements and protocols. Britain’s special problem is that she has high standards of legal compliance characteristic of an advanced society, but is acquiring the em ployment conditions of a poor one. She is perhaps now seeking a distinctive place in the world as an otherwise advanced nation (and with a particularly sophisticated financial sector) but with poor employment conditions that make a virtue of the flexible insecurity of her work force. Such a strategy needs both a defence against high labour standards being imposed by the EC and an opening of existing standards to attack from wider international competition. This is the central explanation why Britain has been alone in not signing the Protocol. It is interesting that, while a European regulation of
labour standards is seen as an attack on national ‘sovereignty, being required to adapt labour standards in response to market competition is not seen as presenting a challenge to sovereignty at all.
Europe Sociale a quatre vitesses?
The awkwardness of Britain’s location leads us to identify further sub-divisions within the two tiers. Within the top tier we can identify a sub division between (i) an employer-led, relatively decentralized corporatist cluster comprising at least the industrial sectors of Germany, Benelux, the Alpine states and just possibly some regions of Italy; and (ii) a more centralized and labour- dominated corporatism in the Nordic countries. It should however be predicted on the basis of my argument above that the latter formula will have difficulty in surviving and that the end of the road has been reached by Scandinavian mo dels that rely on the shrinking manual working class to bear the burdens of securing organiza tional self-discipline in the interests of national economies.
Any new lease of life for neo-corporatist institu tions here will depend on the construction of more broadly-based labour coalitions, and on the integration of national or sectoral with firm- level institutions. Unions usually dislike this, because it is at this level that employers are most easily able to define the agenda and de termine the balance of power. They can also work to secure the loyalty of workers to the management view, or at least persuade them to accept the argument that unless they co-operate the firm may go out of business. However, the changing character of the work force is making it difficult for broadly based unions to interna lize the need to make their actions consistent with competitiveness. Of course, German unions often complain of the constraints imposed by the councils, of their Betriebsegoismus\ but, as we have seen, at least in the dominant sectors of the economy they have accepted them as part of the structure, work closely with them, and as a result have helped build an economy of considerable strength.
This second group of countries (Denmark, Fin land, Norway and Sweden) will therefore either acquire the stronger company-level attributes of group (i) or become more like a third group. This rather heterogeneous set (iii) is constituted
From the neo-liberal decade to beyond Maastricht
by the loose, decentralized collective bargaining of France, Britain, Ireland, parts of Italy and Spain.
Here moves towards a high-standard system will be fitful and contested by some employers and political interests, or (especially in Ireland) rendered difficult by its sheer cost. I am assu ming here that Britain will eventually pull out of its relatively recent hostility to organized indus trial relations, whereupon it is likely that it will come to rest at a model similar to that being established in France and parts of Spain. There will be a more or less constitutional framework for recognizing workers’ and unions’ rights on broadly Maastricht lines, extending to a relative ly non-commital national consultation. However, the overall shift to the company level will weaken any tendencies to construct or recon struct national institutions. In praktice therefore the level of regulation of the labour market will be considerably reduced.
Finally, there will (iv) be rough, unregulated employer-dominated systems in the rest of sou thern Europe (further parts of Italy and Spain and most of Greece and Portugal, plus a fringe of poorer sectors in virtually all countries, including possibly much of the eastern part of united Germany).
It is sometimes argued that completion of the European single market will undermine national neo-corporatist institutions everywhere because many of the regulatory systems on which arran gements among companies as well as between them and unions depend are swept away by de regulation (Streeck 1993). There may be some truth in this. However, while the 1992 legislation in particular limits the ability of countries to improve their competitive position by imposing barriers to trade, they are thereby even more likely to seek mechanisms that do not offend against EC rules but which help secure impor tant specific national competitive advantages through the provision of distinctive collective goods such as neo-corporatist arrangements help provide. (Only in France is the state sufficiently strong, its relations with firms suffi ciently well developed and its policy instruments sufficiently sophisticated for government and industry to do much of this kind without organi zational intermediaries. But in any case even the French state has been trying to construct such intermediaries.)
Co-operation in research and development among firms via trade associations, where such possess the strength to provide co-ordination, is an example of such a policy area that is unlikely to involve labour’s organizations in a major way. The provision of a highly qualified labour force with polyvalent skills is one where labour’s in volvement is more central, and already an im portant component of Germanic and Scandina vian neo-corporatism.
The countries or part-countries in groups (i) and (ii) above at least have the institutional basis for a reordering of corporatist structures if they want them. In group (in), where this ba sis does not exist, it is unlikely that it will now be possible to build institutions of this kind, for reasons already stated. In these societies there will therefore be a constant risk of inflationary crisis within over-heated labour markets. In group (iv) any framework of institutions will for several years be relatively artificial, labour markets remaining highly unregulated and em ployment conditions increasingly precarious. As rising national wealth makes it possible for standards to rise, these countries may come to approximate to group (in), but it is doubtful whether they would have the base to build neo- corporatist structures of a corporatist kind. While therefore the longer term may see a con vergence from my initial four groups to two, I doubt very much whether we should see a con vergence to a single European model. Those countries with a legacy of neo-corporatism are not likely to surrender the advantages it can bring in national co-ordination; while those lacking such a legacy are unlikely to be able to acquire it in the conditions of late 20th century capitalism.
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Rectificatie
In nummer 4 van Tijdschrift voor Arbeidsvraag stukken 1992 is een fout geslopen in het artikel van G. Jehoel-Gijsbers en E. de Vos.
Tabel 1, p. 294 moet zijn: Rapportcijfer voor:
Administratieve afhandeling van ABP: 7.9 en administratieve afhandeling van ZW: 7.0
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