Michael Koveleski
PS 138E
Subtract 94+24 from word count
A Comparative Analysis of the Power of Labor Unions in the United States and France
Labor unions exist for several reasons. Workers who choose to become members of trade coalitions fight for the implementation of economic, political, and social policies to either maintain or ameliorate their positions in the workforce. Their goals depend on the nature of their respective unions; unions in the private sector have different objectives to strive toward than unions in the public sector, and these objectives are also strongly correlated with the specific industries they belong to. The practicality and likelihood of their goals being being addressed is strongly correlated with the power they hold. Yet their power and influence is not always easy to quantify and must be contextualized within each case in order to understand the relationship between trade unions, firms, and the state governing the economies in which they function. For the purposes of this comparison, I will evaluate the degree of power unions hold through the tangible results they achieve by their ability to organize and lobby to initiate and direct changes in the market. This includes laws, regulations, and policies passed by their governments as well as employers intending to benefit unions. I will construct my comparison between two countries, the United States and France. I claim that in the United States, labor unions are more coercive and comprehensive than in France where they are weaker and more fragmented. Another key focus is the different objectives they have. I also argue that in America, unions have a stronger emphasis on economic policy and a weaker voice in political gain, while in France unions have a stronger emphasis in political gain and a weaker voice on economic policy. These two nations have fundamental differences in their structures of government, market economies, financial institutions, modernization techniques, and societal and cultural values that have very strongly led labor unions to develop different levels of power and yearn for different goals within the two nations.
The United States adopted the separation of powers model for the governance of its citizens. The checks and balances system divides power between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, which (in theory) prevents the government from doing significant harm to the people it governs. Through the separation of powers, it also provides opportunity for trade unions to more effectively lobby concerns to the government. This is because the individual branches of government, namely the president and Congress, are held accountable and vulnerable to the demands and wills of the citizens who elect them and the local and state officials they must work with. The fact that the United States is a federal system further illustrates this relationship. This decentralization means that the autonomy of the state is dependent on the support of local and state governments. When it comes to trade unions, the relationship between unions and the state has been such an important concern for the U.S. that the government instilled a legal right mandating that all unions must be approved by the government to be officially recognized. This in turn legitimized the certified unions and instituted a comprehensive relationship that encouraged a high level of organization between unions in order to maximize the effects of collective bargaining. The vast majority of unions are subsets of two overarching union federations: either the American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) or the Change to Win Federation. While this does provide organizational benefits, a dichotomy exists between the natures of the industries in the public and private sectors, which reflect the relationships between unions, corporations, and the state in the market economy. Both state and federal laws regulate wages and working conditions of workers in the public sector, so unions are constantly engaging in negotiations between state and local officials. However, unions in the private sector often face-off against the powers of big business. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) passed in 1935 is the U.S. government’s attempt to regulate and protect labor unions in the private industry. If unions cannot band together to form a majority coalition, then they have little to no power to negotiate change. Instead, they can form “minority unions”, which although do not have to be officially recognized by the government and businesses and do not have collective bargaining rights, can still hold significant power. A prominent example is discussed in an article published by The Guardian titled “Can unions rebuild the labor movement in the US south?”
In 2014, after losing a high-profile union election at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, autoworkers there formed a minority union, Local 42. Following their lead, autoworkers at a Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama, decided to form UAW Local 112, despite lacking a majority of workers in the plant who wanted to be members of the union. Even without collective bargaining rights, both unions have won changes in company policies through protests and legal action. More importantly, the unions have shown real power by getting activists who they feel were wrongfully fired their jobs back (Mike Elk).
It is therefore evident that even the most disorganized and marginalized minority unions hold power in America. (Develop further)
The case with France is much different. The French political system is a highly centralized unitary state with a strong executive. Instead of following the American model of separation of powers, France follows the model of a concentration of powers, where the president holds more power than the parliamentary and judicial branches. Because of this, lobbying in parliament has hardly the same effect as lobbying in Congress. According to John Zysman’s analysis of a model by Stephen Krasner, “France [is perceived] as [a] strong [state] because [its] executive bureaucracies are insulated from parliamentary and interest-group pressures” (Course Reader page 121). The executive is more out-of-touch with local governments, since their support is not as crucial to the success of the state due to their centralized system. This highlights a key cultural difference between the U.S. and France, Americans have faith that the separation of powers prevents wrongdoing from the government, whereas in France the concentration of powers capacitates the government to do good. These different attitudes illustrate Zysman’s example about unions. He claims “equivalent levels of union membership may produce quite different government strategies toward labor in countries with different kinds of union organizations” (Course Reader page 120). France has a similarly low percentage of workers belonging to labor unions to the U.S., 8 percent compared to 11. However, their levels of organization are far more disparate. Instead of most labor unions being affiliated to just the two aforementioned major union federations like in America, labor unions belong to five different federations, the CGT, CFDT, FO, CFTC, and CGC. According to political economist Peter Hall in his essay Governing the Economy: The Politics of State Intervention in Britain and France, “French unions have notorious difficulty collecting membership dues and maintaining regular organization relations” and the five main union federations’ “bitter rivalry for members and influence often undercuts their ability to mobilize support or to take a united front on policy matters” (Hall, Governing the Economy page 244). Furthermore, unlike in the U.S., these five rival groups are very divided across different fronts. There are political divides where groups face conflict based off of socialist, communist, or democratic socialist agenda preferences. There are religious divides between mainly traditional Catholic groups, other religions, and secular interests. Finally, and perhaps the most significant deterrent for allowing alliance on a united platform, there are divides between reformist and revolutionary goals. What’s more, “until recently collective bargaining was largely unregulated by law, and the unions had a very limited legal status in the workplace” (Hall page 244) compared to unions in America.
The financial system in the United States is what Zysman calls a “capital market-based system”. It is a liberal market economy (LME) with competitive prices controlled by competing firms in the market. The industrial adjustment process is company-led, meaning that firms work within and between each other based on changes in the market to maximize productive powers and wealth and capital accumulation in and between their industries. Government interference and regulation is limited in the economy. This laissez-faire approach has long been a historical precedent in America with an overall distrust of government and faith placed in open markets, a tradition existing since these sentiments spurred the American Revolution and existed throughout the industrialization and modernization of the United States’ economy. As Alexander Gerschenkron contends, “every instance of industrialization… appears in combination with different, indigenously determined elements” (Gerschenkron, Political Economy Reader page 225). America, endowed with large quantities of natural resources allowed for rapid development and flourishment of several industries which maintained over time. But this focus on growing the economy in a market liberal view without copious government control eventually led to a disconnect between politics and the economy. Once other countries (namely Germany and Japan) began to catch up to the United States’ global productivity output to the level where their competition began to harm native job security, U.S. firms and unions became very concerned. “The American steel industry affords a clear example,” Zysman writes. “Since 1977 the integrated steel producers have… defined unfair foreign competition as the most important policy issue… they have diverted attention from their own internal problems and obscured the competitive strength of other domestic firms. The more efficient integrated companies… are in a stronger market position, but they do not have a strong political voice” (Zysman, Course Reader page 119). Political voice is dependent on which firms dominate the industries in their markets and how they choose to execute and lobby their interests. In the case with unions in the U.S., their interests are correlated with those of the firms in which the workers are employed. As illustrated with this steel example, unions were more focused on tariffs to stifle foreign competition and on the domestic strength of their own firm. This voice from unions has a weak influence on the political front because of the very nature of the institutions in the LME that limit government involvement. Instead, unions must answer to big money and big banks, who often have more power over the actions of firms and the government in the market than unions do. As Simon Johnson and James Kwak write, “the political influence of Wall Street helped create the laissez-faire environment in which the big banks became bigger… Politicians may come and go, but Goldman Sachs remains” (Johnson and Kwak, Course Reader page 125). With the political atmosphere of government being less involved with the economy than the interactions between firms and banks, it only makes sense for unions to channel the strength they have into improving economic policies that benefit them in the workplace rather than into politics.
On the other hand, France has what Zysman calls a “credit-based system”. France has traditionally been a state-led market economy (SLME) with administered prices controlled by the government. These price controls arose from government-sponsored policies intending to promote domestic growth through protectionism during France’s late development period. In the years following World War II, the state nationalized several industries and established price controls in order to stimulate economic growth in the public sector. Through this highly regulated approach, the French state was able to take control of the economy. This began with creating the National Bank of France in 1936 and nationalizing private banks. Since then, the state has had a very strong influence over capital through several state-led institutions that, according to Hall, “collect and dispose of two-thirds of all the deposits in the French banking system” (Hall page 243). Other state institutions such as the (translated from French) Funds for Economic and Social Development and the Institution of Industrial Development together manage around 10 billion francs a year in the export economy alone. In addition, the Bank of France is strongly influenced by the Ministry of Finance, which is “in charge of fiscal and monetary policy [and] is also closely involved in the supervision of industrial policy” (Hall page 243). This dependent relationship between banks and the state has existed since France began late industrial development is key to understanding the relationship between the state, firms, and unions in the market. The modernization of the French economy was a state-led process deemed “The Nine Plans”, which lasted from 1946 to 1988. Over this forty-two-year period, the French executive appointed “a narrow elite to [direct] the purposes of government policy toward industrial development” (Zysman, Course Reader page 115). In this system of centralized governance, this elite civil service not only controls the interests of the state, but also firms and constituents through the path their employed policy measures take. Zysman makes an important point about the significance of this governmental strategy. “Indeed, those who control the state machinery can manipulate it to political advantage… Interest groups are manipulated to structure who can participate in politics and to define the terms on which such participation is possible” (Zysman, Course Reader page 120). The dedicated focus on fiscal gains by elites left societal prosperity of workers behind. Concerning unions, the price controls set by the state discouraged employers from raising workers’ wages. Furthermore, union leaders were routinely excluded during negotiations in several stages of the Nine Plans. The state refused to legally recognize unions for several years and in 1963 the government even legislated anti-strike laws. During this time, the state attempted to modernize the social security system, which sparked protests from labor unions. Yet the isolation from politics left unions with a weak political voice, and the divisiveness between the five major union federations fragmented their stance and prevented them from organizing at a national level to