Unions as ‘managers of precariousness’: The entrenchment of micro-corporatism in the Spanish automotive industry and its drawbacks
View/ Open
Date
2018-07-06Author
Las Heras Cuenca, Jon
Metadata
Show full item record
Employee relations 40(6) : 1054 - 1071 (2018)
Abstract
This paper enriches and updates the literature on micro-corporatism, collective bargaining in transnational corporations, and the erosion of trade union power resources which dates back to the 1990s and early 2000s. Whilst the negative aspects that competitiveness pacts have on workers’ salaries and conditions have been widely reported, this paper provides a rich and updated explanation of how such pacts have negative repercussions on the discursive and organisational power resources that unions have at the workplace level. In that sense, the originality of this paper rests on engaging into a substantiated historical analysis on how trade unions change throughout time as a result, at least partially, of their own strategic choices. Moreover, this paper clearly shows that concessionary positions towards collective bargaining are self-undermining.