Iberian Trade Unionism: Democratization Under the Impact of the European Union by José Magone

Author:José Magone [Magone, José]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781351325660
Google: 3CNHDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 38641144
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2001-09-05T00:00:00+00:00

Trade Unionism in the 1990s: The Emergence of a Multilevel, Flexible Strategy

The Constraints of Trade Unionism

Trade Unionism became more active in the early 1990s; nevertheless, it declined after 1993. The main reason was the growing flexibility of the labor market by introducing short-term and temporary contracts, which prevented a stronger commitment of workers to the activities of the Portuguese labor movement. This was reinforced by a growing discredibility of the leadership of the two main trade union confederations. While the CGTP-In was criticized for being too close to the Communist party in most issues and being a mere “transmission belt” when negotiating with the PSD and PS governments, the UGT was clearly regarded as uncritical and too close to the government parties of PS and PSD. Moreover, UGT was confronted with a major financial crisis that was created after the European Commission and the Ministry of Employment and Social Security started investigations through the judiciary police related to alleged fraud of funds destined for vocational training courses that were redirected for activities of the UGT. Although there was a stronger cooperation between the two trade union confederations since the late 1980s, they had difficulties organizing joint actions. On the contrary, in 1997 both UGT and CGTP-In decided to celebrate the 1st of May and the European days organized by ETUC across the European Union independently from each other. Such attitude towards each other was noted and regretted by regional branches of the Spanish main trade union confederations, UGT and CCOO.21 While the Portuguese trade union confederations were committed verbally to work together within a Social Europe framework, in reality the old divisions and ideological struggles still prevented a closer and stronger relationship at the national level. The relationship is far better and more successful at the regional level in cooperation with the Spanish trade union confederations and at the supranational level within the framework of ETUC.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.