[P2P-F] Fwd: [Networkedlabour] Austerity and Unionism: The Portuguese Case

Michel Bauwens michel at p2pfoundation.net
Sat Dec 27 09:07:05 CET 2014 

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From: peter waterman <peterwaterman1936 at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Dec 19, 2014 at 8:50 PM
Subject: [Networkedlabour] Austerity and Unionism: The Portuguese Case
To: networkedlabour at lists.contrast.org


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         Austerity policies and trade unionism: A glance at Portugal
<http://column.global-labour-university.org/2014/12/austerity-policies-and-trade-unionism.html>


<http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--aDFTu_iWFI/VI7BxTIyt6I/AAAAAAAABes/ZVOFP7bd7uQ/s1600/Costa.jpg>
*Hermes
Augusto Costa*

<http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xCcDjhl7xSU/VI7BsZTvymI/AAAAAAAABek/RORU6mhbi94/s1600/Photo%2BEl%C3%ADsio%2BEstanque.JPG>
*Elísio
Estanque*
<http://columnport.global-labour-university.org/2014/12/politicas-de-austeridade-e-sindicalismo.html>
Wage
labour played and continues to play a central role in Western industrial
societies, not just on the economic plane but above all as a vital support
for social cohesion and the rule of law. The main advances of the last 200
years including the building of the welfare state and its important gains
in the field of human rights (e.g. dignified work and social rights) are
examples of the importance of struggles waged by organised wage labour. The
major problem, however, is the imminent civilisational regression in which
we find ourselves, teetering on the brink of a new cycle of mercantilist
barbarism similar to the times of Marx (Estanque and Costa, 2013). In fact,
the Portuguese labour context has in recent years been battered by
austerity policies, formally with the entry of the *Troika* (International
Monetary Fund (IMF)/ European Central Bank (ECB)/ European Commission(EC0)
in May 2011 and even beyond its exit n May 2014.

In this text, we initially identify some *internal challenges* put before
unions and the external threats underlying austerity policies. We also set
out some *tasks* for trade unions.

* Internal challenges*
Over the last few decades, factors in the crisis of trade unionism have
multiplied in Western Europe: (i) *disaggregation of interests* surrounding
the working class, as a result of more differentiated, segmented and
flexible labour markets, of the decentralisation of production or of more
precarious wage relations; (ii) a growing *absence of loyalty and
solidarity* on the part of workers vis-à-vis unions, as a reflection of the
emergence of individualism, which deviates attention to dispersed
interests; (iii)we have also witnessed a *crisis in trade union
representativeness*, resulting to difficulties when it comes to mobilising
workers since union density is low.[1]

Hence it is not surprising that over the last two decades, the trade union
camp has been legitimately confronted with its loss of representativeness.
Some studies centred on Portuguese society have sought to investigate to
what extent people trust unions, what are the signs of union renewal and
their influence in society. In Portugal, this subject is also connected
with the alleged problem of “instrumentalisation”, bearing in mind that
each of the trade union congresses (CGTP-IN and UGT[2]) maintain strong
links with party-political forces (Communist Party and Socialist Party,
respectively). Added to this, there are some factors of an internal nature
that are not outside the realm of the abovementioned tendency of weakening:
1) trust in trade unions depends on the attention they are able to devote
to new segments of workers that face greater difficulties in organising
(precarious workers, the unemployed etc); 2) if unions demonstrated firm
signs of renewal (giving more leadership roles to young people, women and
rank-and-file militants, and strengthening internal and external
communications etc) certainly more workers would trust them; 3) the high
level of bureaucratisation of important trade union sectors, given the
weight of older and relatively unskilled members, among other reasons,
postponed for a long time the adoption of new digital technologies, and
revealed their incapacity to deal with activist networks in cyberspace; 4)
the influence of trade unions depends largely on the concrete success of
struggles. But the effectiveness of trade union struggles is not always
immediate, and often ends up being converted into a quantification exercise
(opposing government/companies and unions) regarding numbers of strikers or
demonstrators, as if this were the only criterion for the validity of trade
union demands.

* External threats: Civilisational regression driven by austerity*
The evolution of some labour market indicators – high rates of
unemployment, proliferation of precarious work, growing numbers of
fixed-term contracts, wage reductions, facilitation of dismissals –
employers’ are often despotic and the political decisions of governments
are some of the external factors that condition and limit the strength of
unionism. All of this occurs in an atmosphere of the reinforcement of the
neoliberal ideology and consequently ideological prejudice meant to
stigmatise the trade union camp as a “conservative” force or a force
“blocking” reforms and the “flexibilisation” of the labour market.
Furthermore, governments and economic groups impose upon public discourse
the idea of “good” unionism (that which negotiates and yields) against
“bad” unionism (that which advocates the “rigidity” of labour laws). For
example, the European Summit of December 8 and 9, 2011, opened up a period
of disenchantment for actors from the world of work because of the “six
pack” legislative package aimed at ensuring fiscal discipline. This was
confirmed at the next summit on January 30, 2012, with the signing of the
“European budgetary pact” by 25 member states of the European Union. In
essence, this entails pay cuts and freezes, reductions in social security
entitlements, shrinking employment, lower labour costs etc. In sum, it is
the culmination of a succession of measures that seek to dismantle the
welfare state and impoverish the general population, as if the economy
could be miraculously re-launched from that basis.

In this setting (in which there is an estimated 1.2 million precarious
workers in Portugal, according to data released on October 20, 2014 by
the *Associação
de Combate à Precariedade – Precários Inflexíveis*), the uncertainties
regarding the future of trade unionism become more complex. In the case of
Portugal, as a result of the Memorandum of Understanding with the *Troika*
(May 2011), of the social pact (January 2012), of the changes in the labour
legislation (Law 23/2012, in force since August 1, 2012), there is a series
of threats that are being imposed on the trade union movement and this has
also been enhanced by the crisis: individualisation of labour relations and
destructive collective hiring; weakening of the power of unions in social
dialogue; reduction in the rights and duties regulated by collective
bargaining, which is attested by the abrupt drop in the issuing of
“extension decrees” from 101 in 2009 to 9 in 2013 (Costa, 2012; Marques,
2014: 3).

Ultimately, as a result of austerity policies and alterations in labour
legislation, one has witnessed a process of income transfer from labour to
capital, exemplified by: a reduction by half of overtime pay, implying an
average cut in workers’ total remuneration of between 2.3% and 2.9% in
2013; a 75% reduction in holiday pay; an 1-hour increase in the working day
for no extra pay i.e. workers have given their employers between 7.9 and
12.8 working days per year without any additional pay; amounting to an
extra €2.1-2.5 billion in terms of gross operating surplus (Leite *et al.*,
2014).

* The tasks of trade unionism*
Therefore, the tasks facing trade unions in Portugal are very demanding. On
the one hand, they have to look “inwards” so as to meet certain challenges
from the past. On the other, they have to look “outwards”, reacting to (and
surviving) austerity policies. The main tasks facing the trade union
movement may be summarised in the following points:

   - Reinforcing vigilance as to how and under what conditions work gets
   done;
   - Organising groups that are underrepresented in unions (young people,
   women, the unemployed, precarious workers, ethnic minorities etc);
   - Creating partnerships and/or forms of regular activity with non-union
   organisations that have an interest in the labour sphere;
   - Reinforcing trade union representativeness in the more vulnerable
   sectors, particularly in commercial activities;
   - Strengthening unions’ internal democracy, whilst not allowing trade
   union activity to be conditioned by the presence of party-political forces
   or to become their tool;
   - Investing in trade union activist and leadership education by means of
   programmes and partnerships with universities and research centres with
   recognised competence in these fields, thus encouraging critical and
   self-critical analyses of trade unionism;
   - Following through with the wave of social protest that has intensified
   in Portugal in recent years;
   - Intervening nationally, transnationally and in network mode;
   - Adding dynamism to electronic trade unionism and ascribing the due
   importance to activism in “cyberspace”.

[1] See Rosanvallon, 1988; Waddington, 2005; Costa, 2008; Estanque, 2011;
Sousa, 2011; Estanque and Costa, 2011; 2013
[2] The general confederation of portuguese workers-intersindical and
General Union of Workers
 ------------------------------
 Download this article as pdf
<http://www.global-labour-university.org/fileadmin/GLU_Column/papers/no_190_Costa_Estanque.pdf>
------------------------------
 *Elísio Estanque and Hermes Augusto Costa are sociologists at the Centre
for Social Studies, School of Economics, University of Coimbra. *
 ------------------------------
*References*
Costa, Hermes Augusto (2008), *Sindicalismo global ou metáfora adiada?
Discursos e práticas transnacionais da CGTP e da CUT*. Porto: Afrontamento,
347 pp.

Costa, Hermes Augusto (2011), “Do enquadramento teórico do sindicalismo às
respostas pragmáticas”, in E. Estanque and H. A. Costa (eds.), *O
sindicalismo português e a nova questão social: crise ou renovação?*
Coimbra: Almedina, 13-48.

Costa, Hermes Augusto (2012), “From Europe as a model to Europe as
austerity: the impact of the crisis on Portuguese trade unions”, *Transfer
– European Review of Labour and Research*, 18 (4), 397-410.

Estanque, Elísio (2012), “Trabalho, classe média e sindicalismo”, in E.
Estanque and Leonardo Mello e Silva (eds.), *Facetas do Trabalho na
Contemporaneidade: Diálogos Luso-Brasileiros*. Curitiba: Editora Appris.

Estanque, Elísio (2012), *A classe média. Ascensão e declínio.* Lisbon:
Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos.

Estanque, Elísio; Costa, Hermes Augusto (eds.) (2011), *O sindicalismo
português e a nova questão social – crise ou renovação?* Coimbra: Almedina,
181 pp.

Estanque, Elísio; Costa, Hermes Augusto (2012), “Labour relations and
social movements”, in Denis Erasga (ed.), *Sociological Landscapes:
Theories, Realities and Trends*. Rijeka/Croatia: INTECH/Open Access
Publishing, 257-282 [available at
http://www.intechopen.com/articles/show/title/labour-relations-and-social-movements
].

Estanque, Elísio; Costa, Hermes Augusto (2013), “O sindicalismo europeu no
centro do vulcão: desafios e ameaças”, *Janus – Anuário de Relações
Exteriores,* 16, 176-177.

Leite, Jorge; Costa, Hermes Augusto; Silva, Manuel Carvalho; Almeida, João
Ramos (2014), “Austeridade, reformas laborais e desvalorização do
trabalho”, in Observatório sobre Crises e Alternativas (ed.), *A economia
política do retrocesso: crise, causas e objetivos.* Coimbra: Almedina/CES,
127-188.

Marques, Fernando (2014), “Os salários e a contratação coletiva face à
crise” (paper presented to *Oficina Direitos Laborais na Encruzilhada: OIT
e Portugal*). Lisbon: CES-Lisbon.

Rosanvallon, Pierre (1988), *La question syndicale.* Paris: Calmann-Lévy.

Sousa, Henrique (2011), *Sindicalização: a vida por detrás das estatísticas
(alguns problemas metodológicos*) (working paper). Lisbon: FCSH,
Universidade Nova.

Waddington, Jeremy (2005), *La syndicalisation en Europe. Étendue du
problème et éventail des réponses proposées par les syndicats.* Brussels:
ETUI-REHS.
------------------------------
  Posted in: Fiscal Austerity
<http://column.global-labour-university.org/search/label/Fiscal%20Austerity>
,Neoliberalism
<http://column.global-labour-university.org/search/label/Neoliberalism>,
Struggle <http://column.global-labour-university.org/search/label/Struggle>,Trade
Unions
<http://column.global-labour-university.org/search/label/Trade%20Unions>

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