10.1177/0888325404267395 ARTICLEExplaining Labor Weakness in Post-Communist EuropeEast European Politics and Societies
Explaining Labor Weakness in
Post-Communist Europe: Historical
Legacies and Comparative Perspective
Stephen Crowley*
With expansion of the European Union (EU), the transformation of industrial
relations in Eastern Europe becomes increasingly important. Studies on
labor relations in post-communist countries have flourished in recent years,
yet these studies have not reached a consensus on what they seek to
explain. Is labor in post-communist societies weak or (in some countries)
strong? And strong or weak compared to what? To the extent labor is weak,
what would explain this weakness? This study demonstrates that labor is
indeed a weak social and political actor in post-communist societies, especially
when compared to labor in Western Europe. The article examines a
number of hypotheses that have been proposed to explain labor’s weakness,
concluding that the institutional and ideological legacies of the communist
period best explain this overall weakness. Because labor in postcommunist
societies more resembles American-style flexibility than the
European “social model,” the ability to extend the European model to new
EU entrants is questioned.
Keywords: labor unions; trade unions; post-communism; corporatism;
strikes; European Union expansion
With the European Union now expanded to include several postcommunist
countries, the transformation of industrial relations in
Eastern Europe becomes increasingly important. To what extent
are Eastern European unions and workplaces becoming more
like those in Western Europe, and to what extent are they remaining
distinct, and what might the consequences be for a broader
Europe? This article will argue that while labor around the world
394
East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 18, No. 3, pages 394–429. ISSN 0888-3254
© 2004 by the American Council of Learned Societies. All rights reserved.
DOI: 10.1177/0888325404267395
* This article has been through a number of iterations, and I will inevitably neglect to mention
the names of some who have helped shape it. Nevertheless, I would like to acknowledge
the comments of Phinneas Baxandall, Marc Blecher, Chris Howell, Wade Jacoby, Mark
Kramer and David Ost. An earlier version of this article appeared as Harvard University’s
Center for European Studies Central and Eastern European Working Paper no. 55. The
research for this article also benefited from my being a research scholar in East European
Studies at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars.
is on the defensive, workers in post-communist societies are facing
unique dilemmas. Moreover, labor’s quiescence in postcommunist
societies has important implications for these
countries as they seek to further integrate themselves into the
global economy. While labor relations in the region have indeed
been transformed, the result resembles American-style flexibility
more than the model of “social Europe” that many in the EU hope
its new entrants will adopt.
Studies on the changing labor relations in post-communist
countries have flourished in recent years, such that a review and
analysis of what has been reported is overdue. Yet interestingly,
these studies have not reached a consensus on what they seek to
explain. Indeed, some of the main questions remain under contention.
First, is labor in post-communist societies weak or (at
least in some countries) strong? And strong or weak compared to
what? To the extent labor is weak, what would explain this weakness?
If labor’s power varies throughout the region, what would
explain this variation? There have been a number of answers
posed to these questions to date, but not a thorough testing of
rival hypotheses. Moreover, the implications of labor weakness
in the region have not been fully explored.
This article will demonstrate, using a variety of measures, that
labor is indeed a weak social and political actor in post-communist
societies, especially when compared to labor in Western Europe.
That this finding of weakness holds throughout the region is
rather surprising when one considers the now considerable economic
and political diversity in the post-communist world. It will
then assess several arguments that have been proposed to
explain labor’s weakness, concluding that the institutional and
ideological legacies of the communist period best explain this
overall weakness. Moreover, while the impact of the ideological
legacy on unions has already noticeably changed over the past
decade, institutionally, unions have become consolidated as
much weaker organizations in the meantime. As a result, unions
are largely quiescent, and labor relations in the region more
closely resemble the liberal model, with potentially serious
implications for the expanding EU.
East European Politics and Societies 395
While just a few years ago one could argue that “this has been
a relatively neglected area of research,”
1
this statement no longer
rings true. As concepts such as globalization command greater
attention worldwide, there has been a flowering of studies focusing
on changing labor relations in post-communist countries.
2
Yet
these studies have not reached a consensus on what they seek to
explain. I will briefly examine some of the points of contention.
First, is labor a weak actor in post-communist societies overall,
or is labor, in at least some of these countries, rather strong?
While the majority of these new studies point to labor weakness,
3
some argue that relative strength—that some countries in Eastern
Europe are stronger than others—is the most compelling finding.
Ekiert and Kubik conclude that at least in the early postcommunist
period, “collective protest in Poland was intense,”
as “waves of strikes swept through entire sectors of the econ-
omy.”
4
Others argue that the “the hallmark of labor mobiliza-
396 Explaining Labor Weakness in Post-Communist Europe
1. John E. M. Thirkell, K. Petkov, and S. Vickerstaff, The Transformation of Labour Relations:
Restructuring and Privatization in Eastern Europe and Russia (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998), preface.
2. Stephen Crowley and David Ost, eds., Workers after Workers’ States: Labor and Politics in
Post-Communist Eastern Europe (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001); Gregorz Ekiert
and Jan Kubik, Rebellious Civil Society: Popular Protest and Democratic Consolidation in
Poland, 1989-1993 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999); Bela Greskovits, The
Political Economy of Protest and Patience: East European and Latin American Transformations
Compared (Budapest, Hungary: Central European University Press, 1998); Elena A.
Iankova, Eastern European Capitalism in the Making (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002); Paul Kubicek, “Organized Labor in Postcommunist States: Will the Western Sun
Set on It, Too?” Comparative Politics 32:1(1999); Guglielmo Meardi, Trade Union Activists,
East and West: Comparisons in Multinational Companies (Aldershot, UK: Gower, 2000);
Mitchell Orenstein and Lisa Hale, “Corporatist Renaissance in Post-Communist Central
Europe?” in Christopher Candland and Rudra Sil, eds., The Politics of Labor in a Global Age:
Continuity and Change in Late-Industralizing and Post-Socialist Economies (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001); David Ost, “Illusory Corporatism: Tripartism in the Service of
Neoliberalism,” Politics and Society 28:4(2000); Anna Pollert, Transformation at Work in the
New Market Economies of Central Eastern Europe (London: Sage, 1999); Thirkell, Petkov,
and Vickerstaff, Transformation of Labour. There are a number of other studies, particularly
those that focus on single countries.
3. Crowley and Ost, Workers after Workers’ States; Greskovits, Political Economy of Protest;
Kubicek, “Organized Labor”; Meardi, Union Activists; Ost, “Illusory Corporatism”; Pollert,
Transformation at Work; Thirkell, Petkov, and Vickerstaff, Transformation of Labour.
4. Ekiert and Kubik, Rebellious Civil Society. See also Anna Seleny, “Old Political Rationalities
and New Democracies: Compromise and Confrontation in Hungary and Poland,” World Politics
51:4(1999): 484-519; Maryjane Osa, “Contention and Democracy: Labor Protest in
Poland, 1989-1993,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 31:1(1998): 29-42.
tion in post-communism is variation not uniformity. Indeed,
there has been enormous variation.”
5
Regarding corporatist institutions, which virtually all postcommunist
societies have tried to establish, there is considerable
disagreement as well. Some have referred to “transformative
corporatism,”
6
which has maintained social peace in the region
despite the wrenching transformation, while others have argued
that post-communist corporatism is “illusory.”
7
There is even disagreement
on some basic empirical claims: whether, for example,
the trade union movements in such countries as Russia and
Hungary are centralized or fragmented.8
While some of these disagreements result from different points
of reference (weak or fragmented compared to what?) the question
of comparative reference has been precisely the shortcoming
of a number of these studies. Much of the focus has been on
explaining relative variation in labor strength between countries
in Eastern Europe. However, while there is variation in labor
mobilization within post-communist countries, the available evidence
suggests that the most significant variation is that between
Eastern and Western Europe. Moreover, difference that needs to
be explained, and the implications of this difference need to be
explored.
Even for those who argue that labor is indeed weak throughout
the region, it is unclear how this weakness is being measured,
or to what this relative weakness is being contrasted, other than
the expectation of significant labor mobilization. A number of
studies focus on single countries, while other studies of labor in
East European Politics and Societies 397
5. Graeme Robertson, “The Madding Crowd: Politics and Protest in New Democracies” (Paper
presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco,
September 2001). See also the impressive dissertation by Jonathan Terra contrasting
Polish unions with their much less influential Czech counterparts. Jonathan Terra, “Influence,
Assets and Democracy: Who Got What after the Fall of Communism in East Central
Europe?” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 2003).
6. Iankova, Capitalism in the Making; Iankova, “The Transformative Corporatism of Eastern
Europe,” East European Politics and Societies 12:2(Spring 1998): 222-64.
7. Ost, “Illusory Corporatism.”
8. For studies that draw opposite conclusions about Russian trade unions, see Robertson,
“Madding Crowd”; and Calvin Chen and Rudra Sil, “The Transformation of Industrial Relations
in Russia and China: Diverging Convergences?” (Paper presented at the Annual Meeting
of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 2001). A discussion of the
Hungarian case will follow.
post-communist societies base their conclusion on the comparison
of between two to four cases, quickly running into the familiar
problem of more variables than cases.
9
Indeed, some of the best studies have limitations along these
lines. Greskovits, while making fruitful comparisons between
Latin America and Eastern Europe, omits countries from the former
Soviet Union and largely relies on the Hungarian case for
empirical conclusions.
10
Ekiert and Kubik, while compiling a considerable
database of protest activity, confine their study to four
countries and the years 1989 to 1993.11
While such limitations are
understandable given the arduous task of data collection, it is
time to test their findings beyond these specific times and places.
This focus on a relatively few cases would help explain why a
rather large number of explanations have been proposed for
labor’s relative weakness. In fact, there have been at least five
broad types of explanations proposed by various scholars to
explain the weakness (or relative strength) of post-communist
labor.
12
The first concerns the corporatist institutions mentioned
above. The second type of explanation might be called union
competition: unions will be more militant when there are a number
of unions competing with each other for members and
resources. A third type of explanation is based on the economic
theory of strikes, which are said to be more difficult in conditions
when unemployment is high. A related and fourth type of explanation
points to the use of individual “exit” into the informal
economy rather than collective “voice.” A final explanation for
labor weakness in post-communism points to the legacy of communism,
especially the institutional legacy of trade unions created
in the communist period and the ideological legacy of a
regime that ruled in the name of the working class that has hin-
398 Explaining Labor Weakness in Post-Communist Europe
9. Ekiert and Jan Kubik, Rebellious Civil Society; Pollert, Transformation at Work; Iankova,
Capitalism in the Making; Robertson, “The Madding Crowd.”
10. Greskovits, Political Economy of Protest.
11. Ekiert and Jan Kubik, Rebellious Civil Society.
12. A sixth type of explanation focuses on the political alliances of unions and has elsewhere
been called political exchange theory: unions become restive when their political partners
are in opposition and less so when their political partners are in power. R. Franzosi, The
Puzzle of Strikes: Class and State Strategies in Postwar Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1995). For reasons of space, it will not be discussed further here.
dered worker action, and even identity, in the post-communist
setting.
These various explanations are potentially complementary,
and no single explanation need be, or likely is, able to explain
the phenomenon of labor weakness on its own. Nevertheless,
this is a large number of potential explanations, arguably the
result of relying on a few cases. This article will attempt to survey
a broader range of post-communist cases, allowing for the elimination
of some of the explanations that have previously been
proposed. While there are inevitable trade-offs in such an
approach—the richness of individual cases is lost, and we risk
blurring distinctions that might be made with a more limited
focus—the potential gain of narrowing down this list of
explanations is well worth taking.
Is labor a weak political social actor in this part of the world?
Just a few years ago, many social scientists were predicting just
the opposite. This argument was certainly made by those studying
the developing world and the political economy of economic
reform.
13
While most of these conclusions were based on evidence
from the third world, especially Latin America, others
focusing on the former second world made similar predictions.
Not least because of Poland’s Solidarity movement and its central
role in ending communism, the assessment of workers as powerful
social actors carried over into the post-communist era, and
this assumption helped shape both radical and gradual strategies
of economic transformation.
14
To these initial expectations of labor unrest, one must add that
the economic hardship following the end of communism has
been much greater than almost anyone expected—in Eastern
Europe rivaling the Great Depression and in much of the former
East European Politics and Societies 399
13. Adam Przeworksi, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Latin
America and Eastern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 182; Stefan
Haggard and Robert Kaufman, The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 269; John Walton and D. Seddon, Free Markets
and Food Riots: The Politics of Global Adjustment (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1994). See a
review of various predictions of “backlash” in Greskovits, Political Economy of Protest.
14. Beverly Crawford, “Post-Communist Political Economy: A Framework for the Analysis of
Reform,” in Beverly Crawford, ed., Markets, States and Democracy: The Political Economy
of Post-Communist Transformations (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995), 27-28.
Soviet exceeding it.
15
Concerning workers in particular, during
this transition depression the real wage bill was cut by approximately
one-third in Eastern Europe and one-half in the former
Soviet Union; “both cuts are larger than those experienced by
labor in major countries during the Great Depression.
16
All of
which leads one to ask: what has labor’s response been?
Labor’s minimal response
How would we know if labor in a given society is weak or
strong? One might define labor strength as the ability of unions to
secure material rewards for its members and exercise a degree of
authority in the workplace and over national policy. The most
commonly used measures of labor strength or weakness include
union density, the scope and effectiveness of collective bargaining,
and strike rates. While high strike rates are not synonymous
with labor strength, as we shall see in the case of Eastern Europe
there are good reasons for believing that labor quiescence is a
product of labor weakness.
The rate of union membership, or density, “is usually taken as
the first and perhaps most fundamental measure of union
strength” since “only in very unusual circumstances is union density
an unimportant indicator of the ability of organized labor to
attract mass support and of its potential to mobilize workers for
industrial action.”
17
While union membership rates have dropped
precipitously in post-communist societies, this decline was
expected.
18
Union membership was quite high in the communist
period, in some cases virtually mandatory. With this in mind, one
400 Explaining Labor Weakness in Post-Communist Europe
15. Branko Milanovic, Income, Inequality, and Poverty during the Transition from Planned to
Market Economy (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1998), 6. While official figures may fail to
capture informal economic activity, other measures put the decline at only slightly lower
levels; Milanovic, Income, Inequality, 26.
16. Milanovic, Income, Inequality, 29-30.
17. Miriam Golden, Michael Wallerstein, and Peter Lange, “Postwar Trade-Union Organization
and Industrial Relations in Twelve Countries,” in H. Kitschelt et al., eds., Continuity and
Change in Contemporary Capitalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 198.
18. Kubicek, “Organized Labor.” In recent years, union density has dropped in many places
throughout the world, yet nowhere more so than in Eastern Europe. In Western Europe, the
number of union members declined between 1985 and 1995 by 15.6 percent; in Eastern
Europe and the former Soviet Union, membership declined by 35.9 percent. (For Bulgaria
and Romania, the years of comparison were 1991 and 1993; for Slovakia and the Czech
might argue that with declining union density, the former communist
countries are simply converging to the West European
norm. Indeed, Thirkell et al. argue that post-communist levels of
unionization are “closer to the standards of the Scandinavian and
north European countries.”
19
According to the International Labor
Organization (ILO) data shown in Figure 1, despite a steep
decline in density in the East, as of 1995, unionization rates were
still higher in post-communist countries than in Western Europe:
average union density for these West European countries was
38.1 percent; for post-communist Europe average density was
49.2 percent.
20
Yet the argument for convergence in union density relies on
questionable data. The ILO figures rely on numbers self-reported
by trade union federations, which have an interest in inflating the
results. Survey results suggest these figures are indeed inflated:
for Western Europe, using survey data, union density drops from
38.1 to 33.7 percent (see Figure 2), a significant if modest
decrease. However, according to survey data, the density rates
for post-communist countries not only drop, they drop precipitously—from
49.2 percent for the self-reported figures to 29.7
percent according to survey results.
21
This is close to a 20 percent
differential between self-reported figures and the survey results.
22
Moreover, as I will discuss below, since trends in union membership
do not bode well for labor, the density rates have almost
certainly declined further since these surveys were completed in
1995 to 1997. And yet despite starting from much higher union
East European Politics and Societies 401
Republic, the years were 1990 and 1995.) ILO World Labor Report, 1997-1998 (Geneva,
Switzerland: International Labour Office, 1997), 2, 238.
19. Thirkell, Petkov, and Vickerstaff, Transformation of Labour, 86.
20. ILO World Labor Report, 1997-1998.
21. Ronald Ingelhart et al., World Value Surveys and European Values Surveys, 1995-1997 [computer
file], ICPRS version (Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research [producer], 2000);
Marc Morje Howard, The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002). Howard reports a lower figure of 19.6 percent for postcommunist
union membership, but I have adjusted the survey data so it reflects only the
nonagricultural labor force.
22. It is worth noting two further points about the East European union density figures. First,
and rather surprisingly, Poland is the least unionized of those post-communist countries
surveyed (and a close second to Estonia according to the ILO data). Second, only the (less
“reformed”) post-Soviet states of Belarus and Russia have density figures that are higher
than the West European average.
402
0
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100
Aust
Belg
Den
Fin
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W.Ger
Ice
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Ita
Neth
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Por
Spa
Swe
Swi
W.E.mean
Bela
Bul
Cze
Est
E.Ger
Hung
Pol
Rom
Russ
Slova E.E.mean
Figure1:Uniondensity,officialdata
membership rates, within a few years, post-communist societies
were already at lower average density rates than their West European
counterparts. Rather than converging to West European
norms, post-communist countries have overshot the mark and
appear headed toward Anglo-American levels of union density.
However, unionization rates can only tell part of the story.
Another logical place to look for signs of labor strength or weakness
is strike activity. Intuitively at least, given the transition
depression and the degree of painful economic change in the
region, one would expect to see significant labor unrest and
strike activity, if not universally then at least in certain countries
or sectors.
A good indicator for making cross-national comparisons of
strike statistics is relative volume, or the number of workers
involved in labor disputes, relative to the total number of workers
employed. Figure 3 shows the rates of strikes thus measured
for Western and Eastern European countries for which there are
comparable data.
23
East European Politics and Societies 403
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
official dens ity 38.1 96.1 51.4 36.3 26.4 34.1 52.5 27 40.7 74.8 52.3 49.2
s urvey dens ity 33.7 60.9 22.2 24.1 17.6 27.6 17.5 12.7 31.4 54.7 27.9 29.7
W.E.
mean
Bela Bul Cze Es t E. Ger Hung Pol Rom Rus s Slova
E.E.
mean
Figure 2: Union density, official and survey data
23. Exact comparisons between countries are difficult since different methods are used for
compiling statistics. Nevertheless, the difference between Western and Eastern Europe are
404
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
Spain
Finland
N
etherlands
U
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France
Italy
Sw
eden
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enm
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reece
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estern
Europeavg.
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zech
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ungary
Poland
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om
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Slovakia
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ussia
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Europeavg.
Figure3:Strikerates,daysnotworkedperthousandworkers,WesternEuropeandEasternEurope
The results are rather surprising. The unweighted average
strike rate for these West European countries is one hundred days
not worked per thousand workers per year. The comparable figure
for East European countries is 25.24
Certainly there is great
variation in the strike rates for West European countries. What is
most surprising is that even the most strike-prone East European
countries come nowhere near the strike rates of the most strikeprone
West European countries.
25
At the very least, this would
suggest that a different form of labor relations exists in Eastern
and Western Europe.
26
In theory, high strike rates might be an indication of union desperation
rather than strength, and conversely, strong unions
might not need to strike if they can obtain concessions without
industrial action.
27
However, to argue that Eastern European
unions are strong despite such low strike rates, one would need
evidence of such concessions. Yet the available evidence suggests
just the opposite: over the past decade, there was a sharp
decline in real wages throughout the region, and while wages
East European Politics and Societies 405
large enough to suggest a real difference in the phenomenon being measured. As Shalev
notes, the limitations of strike statistics are well known, but so is the equally well-rehearsed
reply—they are better than nothing. Michael Shalev, “The Resurgence of Labor Quiescence,”
in M. Regini, ed., The Future of Labour Movements (London: Sage, 1992). In her discussion
of the Russian case, Javeline finds that survey evidence supports the general
parameters of the official strike data. Debra Javeline, Protest and the Politics of Blame: The
Russian Response to Unpaid Wages (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003).
24. The figures for some Western Europe countries are from 1989 to 1998, while the rest are
from 1992 to 2001, though data are missing for some countries in some years. International
Labor Organization, 2002 Yearbook of Labour Statistics (Geneva, Switzerland: International
Labour Office, 2002); J. Davies, “International Comparisons of Labour Disputes,” Labour
Market Trends 108:4(2000).
25. In their study of protest events in four East-Central European countries, Gregorz Ekiert and
Jan Kubik found that “the magnitude of protest is by and large lower than in more established
democracies” (Ekiert and Kubik, Rebellious Civil Society, 573; original emphasis).
Since their study relied on the content analysis of newspaper accounts, it provides another
indirect support for the general shape of the strike data. Moreover, since their study looked
at protest generally, their findings suggest that quiescence is not confined to workers, a
conclusion that might also be extended to civil society generally. On this point, see
Howard, Weakness of Civil Society.
26. Moreover, the finding of labor quiescence among industrial workers is furthered when one
breaks down the strike data by sector. For example, in Russia, which has the second highest
strike rate in the region, a majority of those on strike have been teachers. See ILO, 2002
Yearbook. While there may be good reasons why teachers would strike, given the widespread
phenomenon of wage arrears across Russian industries in the recent past, the lack of
greater strike activity demands explanation. See Javeline, Protest.
27. John Kelly, Rethinking Industrial Relations: Mobilization, Collectivism and Long Waves
(London: Routledge, 1998), 10.
have since risen in many countries, wages are still quite low in
comparative terms, even for those countries joining the EU.
28
More staggering has been the decline in the number of
employees covered by collective bargaining agreements, a trend
that is significant since “substantial declines in union coverage
would indicate an erosion of the ability of trade unions to influence
wage levels.”
29
While collective agreements were virtually
compulsory if fairly meaningless in the communist period, one
hope was that these agreements might be filled with real meaning
in a market economy. Yet the collective bargaining coverage
rates in those Eastern European countries for which data is available
is 44 percent on average (or 33 percent if one excludes the
outlier Slovenia). The comparable figure for available West European
countries is 75 percent (see Figure 4).
30
Even these figures appear misleading when probed more
closely. A recent study by Laszlo Neumann of collective bargaining
in Hungary finds that agreements cover 51 percent of Hungarian
employees in the private sector.
31
Yet 80 percent of the
agreements were at the company level, roughly opposite the
experience of continental Western Europe (where most agreements
are still made at the sectoral if not the central level). Moreover,
in Hungary, “many company agreements are far from being
real negotiated agreements, but are either defined unilaterally by
employers or, following state socialist traditions, simply repeat
the law.”
32
Further still, in 37 percent of Hungarian collective
agreements, there is no stipulation for wages. Since this would
appear to make the Hungarian collective bargaining system more
406 Explaining Labor Weakness in Post-Communist Europe
28. Peter Havlik, “Trade and Cost Competitiveness in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland,
and Slovenia,” World Bank Technical Paper No. 482 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2000).
29. Golden, Wallerstein, and Lange, “Trade-Union Organization,” 202.
30. Mario Lado, “Industrial Relations in the Candidate Countries,” European Industrial Relations
Observatory On-line, http://www.eiro.eurofound.ie/2002/07/feature/
tn0207102f.html/, July 2002. Slovenia is an outlier on this and most other dimensions of
labor relations, and a complete explanation as to why would require a full-length article of
its own. The West European average is from 1995. ILO World Labor Report, 1997-1998, 248.
31. Laszlo Neumann, “Does Decentralized Collective Bargaining Have an Impact on the Labour
Market in Hungary?” European Journal of Industrial Relations 8:1(2002): 11-31.
32. Neumann, “Collective Bargaining,” 12. One survey of managers in Hungary found that
trade unions and labor issues were almost of no concern; trade unions were described as
“irrelevant” and having “no influence” on managers’ decisions. Marc Ellingstad, “The
Maquiladora Syndrome: Central European Prospects,” Europe-Asia Studies 49:1(1997).
like the U.S. model than those of most other advanced capitalist
economies, Neumann follows the practice of American industrial
relations studies and examines the union wage gap, or the wage
premium that, after controlling for sector and occupation, unionized
workers receive over their nonunionized counterparts. In
the United States, the wage gap is typically somewhere between
5 and 25 percent. In Hungary, the gap is a mere 3 to 5 percent,
suggesting that, regarding wages, even when the point of
comparison is the United States, Hungarian unions provide little
benefit at all.
There is little doubt, then, that labor is a weak social actor in postcommunist
Europe. The question that must now be addressed is
why. As has been seen, a number of explanations have been proposed
to account for labor weakness in post-communist societies.
Given space limitations, I can only present a cursory discussion
of these arguments here, since to fully address their merits would
require a full-length article in each case. For some arguments, the
available evidence might appear inconclusive or ambiguous.
Nevertheless, I intend to present enough discussion to justify the
East European Politics and Societies 407
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Czech
Rep.
Hungary Latvia Lithuania Slovakia Slovenia East Eur.
Mean
EE Mean
minus
Slovenia
West
Eur.
Mean
Figure 4: Collective bargaining coverage rates
claim that the impact of communist-era legacies better explain
the phenomenon of labor weakness than other proposed
explanations.
Post-communist corporatism
As I have noted, a low strike rate might not be a sign of the
weakness of organized labor but rather a sign of strength. Several
Western European countries in Figure 3 have relatively low strike
rates, in some cases lower than the average for Eastern Europe.
The traditional explanation for low strike rates in certain Western
European countries is the strength of those countries’ corporatist
institutions.
33
Post-communist societies explicitly sought to build corporatist
institutions, in no small part from their desire to “join Europe.”
Indeed, throughout Eastern Europe, tripartism—the institutionalized
intermediation of the interests of labor, capital, and the
state—“has become a regular feature of the social landscape.”
34
The issue of corporatism is a crucial one, not only because EU
accession countries need to adopt European institutions, but
because the future of “Social Europe” rests to a considerable
extent on the quality of interest representation among its new
entrants.
35
408 Explaining Labor Weakness in Post-Communist Europe
33. Michael Wallace and Craig Jenkins, “The New Class, Postindustrialism, and
Neocorporatism: Three Images of Social Protest in Western Democracies,” in Craig Jenkins
and Bert Klandermans, eds., The Politics of Social Protest (University of Minnesota Press,
1995); Philippe Schmitter, “Interest Intermediation and Regime Governability in Contemporary
Western Europe and North America,” in Suzanne Berger, ed., Organizing Interests
in Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); David Cameron, “Social
Democracy, Corporatism, Labour Quiescence and the Representation of Economic Interest
in Advanced Capitalist Society,” in J. Goldthorpe, ed., Order and Conflict in Contemporary
Capitalism (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1984).
34. Ost, “Illusory Corporatism,” 504.
35. Elena Iankova and Lowell Turner, “Building the New Europe: Eastern and Western Roads to
Social Partnership” (Paper presented for the 12th International Conference of Europeanists,
Chicago, 30 March 30 to 1 April 2000); The question of corporatism has been the most
widely discussed aspect of labor relations in post-communist countries. Given this extensive
literature, we will review it only very briefly here, and will focus on changes over time
in tripartite institutions, to ask whether such changes have resulted in changes in labor
peace or mobilization.
A number of commentators have argued that tripartism has
indeed contributed to labor peace in the region.
36
Iankova argues
that these institutions have largely been successful in their “pursuit
of social peace through compromise on the basis of general
consensus among all actors involved.”37
Hungary in particular has
been cited as a strong case of corporatism: Kornai referred to tripartism
as a second government, while Hethy characterized it as
a rival to Parliament.
38
Such statements notwithstanding, the majority of the studies of
post-communist corporatism have found these institutions to be
rather weak and ineffective. Indeed, the language used is often
quite strong: corporatism in the region has been described as
“paternalist,” “illusory,” and a “sham.”
39
Rather than leading to
social democratic outcomes, the process has been described as a
“fragile tripartism subordinate to neo-liberal dictates” and a
“political shell for a neo-liberal economic strategy.”
40
Ekiert and Kubik, in what is certainly the most impressive
empirical study of protest in post-communism to date, tackle the
question of why Poland appears so much more strike-prone than
Hungary.
41
They argue that protest is a rational response to lack
East European Politics and Societies 409
36. Iankova, Capitalism in the Making; Iankova, “Transformative Corporatism”; Lajos Hethy,
“Tripartism in Eastern Europe,” in R. Hyman and A. Ferner, eds., New Frontiers in European
Industrial Relations (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1994).
37. Iankova, Capitalism in the Making, 9. See also ILO World Labor Report, 1997-1998. A more
equivocal account of corporatism in the region is given by Orenstein and Hale, “Corporatist
Renaissance?”
38. Janos Kornai, “Paying the Bill for Goulash-Communism: Hungarian Development and
Macro Stabilization in a Political-Economy Perspective,” Discussion Paper Series, Harvard
Institute of Economic Research (1996), as cited in Ekiert and Kubik, Rebellious Civil Society;
Hethy, “Tripartism,” 92.
39. The quotations are from, respectively, Melanie Tatur, “Towards Corporatism? The Transformation
of Interest Policy and Interest Regulation in Eastern Europe,” in Eckhard Dittrich,
Gert Schmidt, and Richard Whitley, eds., Industrial Transformation in Europe (London:
Sage, 1995); Ost, “Illusory Corporatism”; Peter Rutland, “Thatcherism Czech Style,” Telos 94
(Winter 1992-1993).
40. Pollert, Transformation at Work, 165; Thirkell, Petkov, and Vickerstaff, Transformation of
Labour, 166. Other studies reaching similar conclusions include Kubicek, “Organized
Labor”; Crowley and Ost, Workers after Workers’ States; Reinhard Heinisch, “The State of
Corporatism in a Central Europe in Transition,” in Irwin Collier et al., eds., Welfare States in
Transition: East and West (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1999); Walter Connor, Tattered
Banners: Labor, Conflict and Corporatism in Postcommunist Russia (Boulder, CO:
Westview, 1996).
41. Ekiert and Kubik, Rebellious Civil Society. See also Seleny, “Political Rationalities.” For a critique
of Ekiert and Kubik’s argument along different lines than those made here, see Mark
of access, such as the lack of corporatist inclusion, and they
hypothesize that one would expect fewer strikes where there is
institutionalized tripartism. They argue quite plausibly for the
period of 1989 to 1993 that the difference between strike-prone
Poland and quiescent Hungary is a social democratic party and
institutionalized access to policy making in the latter case but not
in the former. Moreover, Poland’s strike rates drop dramatically
after the establishment of tripartism in mid-decade and the coming
to power of the the Alliance of the Democratic Left (SLD), a
Left/social democratic party.
42
While this is a significant correlation, the evidence for the second
half of the decade does not sustain the argument. In Hungary,
the socialist government in 1995 abandoned talks aimed at
establishing a social pact when an agreement appeared out of
reach and unilaterally enacted austerity measures and other
neoliberal policies. As one source put it, “The most ambitious
corporatist experiment to date in the region ended in failure.”
43
While there was subsequently a significant railway workers strike
in Hungary, when tripartism was reestablished it was “reduced to
consultation and information rather than negotiation and decision-making,”
a far cry from being a second Parliament, and this
was before a right-wing government openly hostile to labor
came to power in 1998.
44
Furthermore, in Poland, the establishment
of tripartism in 1994 may have contributed to a decline in
strikes, but the subsequent virtual breakdown of negotiations,
and a walkout by the leading National Confederation of Trade
Unions (OPZZ), union federation, did not lead to an increase in
410 Explaining Labor Weakness in Post-Communist Europe
Kramer, “Collective Protests and Democratization in Poland, 1989-1993: Was Civil Society
Really ‘Rebellious’?” Communist and Postcommunist Studies 35 (2002), and the response
by Ekiert and Kubik and the rejoinder by Kramer in the same issue.
42. Poland’s strike rate (days not worked per thousand workers per year) for 1993 to 1994 was
60.5, while it was 5.8 in Hungary (and Polish data are unavailable for 1992, which would
bring the figure higher). But for 1995 to 1999, the Polish rate drops substantially to 5.3,
while the Hungarian rate rises to 21.5. See ILO, 2002 Yearbook. Thus, by this measure,
Seleny’s contention that “labor mobilization, then, has become a conspicuous and enduring
characteristic of political life in Poland” appears unwarranted. Seleny, “Political Rationalities,”
490.
43. Kubicek, “Organized Labor,” 223; see also Andras Toth, “The Failure of Social-Democratic
Unionism in Hungary,” in Crowley and Ost, Workers after Workers’ States; Greskovits, Political
Economy of Protest.
44. Pollert, Transformation at Work, 144; Ost, “Illusory Corporatism”; Toth, “Failure.”
strikes or other significant reaction from labor.
45
If corporatism
appears able to explain labor peace at one time, it is not able to
explain it in another.
Moreover, as I noted in regards to collective bargaining, in
Hungary, at least, most bargaining took place at the company
level, and unions appeared to have little influence on wage levels.
Thus, the ability of Hungarian unions to carry out peak-level
negotiations must be further questioned.
It may well be that corporatism in Eastern Europe has played a
significant role in the post-communist transformation process
and is simply different in kind from corporatism in Western
Europe.
46
However, for present purposes it must be underscored
that corporatism—the main explanation for why low strike rates
might not suggest a weak labor movement—is unable to account
for the low rates of mobilization in Eastern Europe relative to
Western Europe. Put differently, corporatism cannot be invoked
as it has been in Western Europe to explain the considerable variation
in labor activity there simply because in Eastern Europe,
that variation is so much more limited.
Union competition
Ekiert and Kubik raise a second argument to explain the difference
in strike activity between Poland and its East-Central European
neighbors. Citing social movement theory that suggests
movements in competition will adopt more radical tactics in
search of support, they argue, “We expect more strikes if there
are many unions competing for the same ‘audience,’ ” and likewise,
“The higher the number of unions, the higher the probability
of protest.”
47
This explains the Polish case, they argue, because
at least from 1989 to 1993, “Poland had the most pluralistic and
competitive union sector in Eastern Europe.”
48
East European Politics and Societies 411
45. Ost, “Illusory Corporatism.” On a connection between tripartism and a decline of strikes in
Poland, see Orenstein and Hale, “Corporatist Renaissance?” 277-78.
46. Iankova, Capitalism in the Making; idem, “Transformative Corporatism”; Orenstein and
Hale, “Corporatist Renaissance?”
47. Ekiert and Kubik, Rebellious Civil Society, 189; idem, “Contentious Politics in New Democracies:
East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, 1989-1993,” World Politics
50:4(1998).
48. Ekiert and Kubik, Rebellious Civil Society, 106.
While in their view “fragmentation leads to competition” and
then to mobilization, the standard view in labor relations suggests
that fragmentation leads to weakness, since rivalry lessens
solidarity, labor’s central resource.
49
While in theory, fragmentation
might lead both to the weakness of unions overall and to
union restiveness, in the view of Thirkell, Petkov, and
Vickerstaff, in Eastern Europe “fragmentation results in a numerical
decline depriving some union centers of the critical mass of
members needed for mobilization and pressure through branch
and national actions,” almost precisely the opposite hypothesis
of Ekiert and Kubik.
50
Indeed, not only is there a theoretical debate about the
impact of union pluralism but also about the empirical question
of which countries have fragmented unions and which do not.
Ekiert and Kubik argue that Hungary has a “centralized labor
sector,” whereas another study contends Hungary has “the
greatest degree of union pluralism in the region,” with more
than a hundred trade union organizations united into several
confederations, with nine participating in the national tripartite
negotiations.
51
However, the argument about union competition spurring
mobilization would stress rivalry within sectors and firms rather
than at the national level. A slight revision of the Ekiert and Kubik
hypothesis states that “where there are multiple labor unions
seeking a following within the same sector of the labor force, and
these unions represent a real threat to each other, unions will
compete for support.”
52
Greskovits argues that for Hungary,
“while pluralism was characteristic at the national level, . . . in
most cases only one of the unions was present at the industrial
412 Explaining Labor Weakness in Post-Communist Europe
49. Ekiert and Kubik, Rebellious Civil Society, 106. For the view that fragmentation weakens
labor, see Cameron, “Social Democracy.”
50. Thirkell, Petkov, and Vickerstaff, Transformation of Labour, 87. A number of others see
fragmentation weakening labor in post-communist societies. Heinisch, “State of
Corporatism”; Orenstein and Hale, “Corporatist Renaissance?” Kubicek, “Organized Labor”;
Chen and Sil, “Transformation.”
51. Kubicek, “Organized Labor”; see also Carola Frege and Andras Toth, “Institutions Matter:
Union Solidarity in Hungary and East Germany,” British Journal of Industrial Relations
37:1(March, 1999): 120-21; Orenstein and Hale, “Corporatist Renaissance?” Toth, “Failure”;
Pollert, Transformation at Work, 165-66.
52. Robertson, “The Madding Crowd,” 7.
sector level and in the workplace.”
53
This appears to overstate the
case, however, since union rivalry at the workplace level in Hungary
was sufficient to lead to workplace elections in 1993 to
determine worker representation within firms, a step sought in
part by employers who wanted “to avoid chaotic multi-unionism
and the continuous emergence of new unions.”
54
Nonetheless,
multiple unions within the workplace appear much more common
in Poland and Bulgaria, two countries where labor has more
often mobilized.
55
Yet relative labor militancy is also apparent in
Romania, perhaps the most consistently assertive workforce in
the region. Here there is union fragmentation as well, with “many
miniunions, federations, and confederations at all levels of society.”
Yet “though there are degrees of overlap, the main confederations
are still somewhat based in industrial sectors with different
ownership principles and production profiles, differences
that produce different interests and orientations,” making Romania’s
union structure more similar to Hungary’s than to Poland’s
or Bulgaria’s.
56
Thus, the differences in union pluralism between
these countries may be differences in degree rather than in kind.
Also problematic for the union competition argument is the
unstated assumption that unions, at least when faced with rivals,
seek to increase their membership. Yet in many cases, including
Poland, there has been only limited attempts by post-communist
unions to organize new members, whether in nonunionized or in
unionized firms, since recruiting new members is too reminiscent
of the compulsory membership of the past.
57
East European Politics and Societies 413
53. Greskovits, “Political Economy of Protest,” 160-61.
54. Toth, “Failure,” 44. While the leading National Confederation of Hungarian Trade Unions
(MSZOZS), dominated those elections, the puzzle of labor peace in Hungary begins before
the elections in 1993.
55. Ekiert and Kubik, Rebellious Civil Society; Robertson, “The Madding Crowd.”
56. David Kideckel, “Winning the Battles, Losing the War: Contradictions of Romanian Labor in
the Postcommunist Transformation,” in Crowley and Ost, Workers after Workers’ States,
104. Likewise, Thompson and Traxler find that, “rivalling Hungary for complexity,” in
Romania, “independent confederations formed largely from autonomous and sectoral bodies.”
Paul Thompson and Franz Traxler, “The Transformation of Industrial Relations in
Postsocialist Economies,” in Gerd Schienstock, Paul Thompson, and Franz Traxler, eds.,
Industrial Relations between Command and Market: A Comparative Analysis of Eastern
Europe and China (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 1997).
57. Pollert, Transformation at Work; David Ost, “The Weakness of Symbolic Strength: Labor
and Union Identity in Poland, 1989-2000,” in Crowley and Ost, Workers after Workers’ States.
Unemployment and labor protest
As shown in the strike rates, the conditions of economic
depression, falling real wages and high unemployment, did not
provoke the amount of labor unrest one might expect. However,
the economic theory of strikes states that workers are more likely
to act collectively not when unemployment is high but when it is
low, that is, when workers are strong and it is easier to pressure
employers.
58
Hence the low level of strikes, and the weakness of
unions generally, might be explained by persistent unemployment
and weak and uncertain labor markets in the region.
Yet the economic theory of strikes has been challenged on theoretical
and empirical grounds.
59
As Tarrow among others has
pointed out, in contrast to the economic theory of strikes, economic
downturns can be times of considerable labor activity.60
Moreover, if weak labor markets were the explanation for labor
quiescence in post-communist societies, one would expect to
see an inverse relationship between the levels of unemployment
and strike activity. However, when comparing across countries in
the region, the correlation between annual unemployment levels
and strike rates is close to zero. Moreover, while the number of
data points is small, changes in unemployment levels within
countries appear to have little impact on strike activity. It is possible
that the availability of better data (such as quarterly rather
than annual strike figures) might help one to discover a connection
between unemployment and strike rates within countries,
but this still would not solve the puzzle of why some countries
414 Explaining Labor Weakness in Post-Communist Europe
58. In the industrial relations literature, “that unemployment undermines union bargaining
power is axiomatic.” George Ross and Andrew Martin, “European Unions Face the Millennium,”
in Martin and Ross, eds., The Brave New World of European Labor (New York:
Berghahn Books, 1999), 14. On the economic theory of strikes, see J. Kennan, “The Economics
of Strikes,” in Orley Ashtenfelter and Richard Layard, eds., Handbook of Labor Economics,
vol. 2 (Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 1986), 1091-137; David Soskice, “Strike Waves
and Wage Explosions, 1968-1970: An Economic Interpretation,” in Colin Crouch and
Alessandro Pizzorno, eds., The Resurgence of Class Conflict in Western Europe since 1968
(New York: Holmes & Meier, 1978).
59. P. K. Edwards and Richard Hyman, “Strikes and Industrial Conflict: Peace in Europe?” in R.
Hyman and A. Ferner, eds., New Frontiers in European Industrial Relations (Oxford, UK:
Blackwell, 1994); Franzosi, Puzzle of Strikes.
60. During the Great Depression, for example, both the United States and France witnessed considerable
amounts of strikes and labor organizing. Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social
Movements,CollectiveAction,andPolitics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 84.
have higher strike rates than others.
61
Indeed, unemployment levels
have been high in a number of Western European countries as
well, and while strike rates have declined there in recent years, as
has been seen, average strike rates remain considerably higher
there than in Eastern Europe. While the question of unemployment
and strikes deserves a fuller treatment than can be given
here, the available evidence from Eastern Europe suggests there
is no clear relationship between the two.
62
Exit
A number of people have pointed to another component of
the labor market not captured by unemployment statistics—the
existence of individual “exit” options such as work in the informal
economy.
63
Thus, Greskovits argues that “rather than voice, it
has been exit that has dominated the pattern of social responses
to economic stress in the east,” and that “the most frequent
response to economic hardship is not to engage in strikes . . ., but
to shift to the informal economy” which has involved a “massive
exit from the formal economy.”
64
Yet there are grounds for questioning just how extensive the
use of “exit” is. One place to look for the extent of exit is turnover
data, or the inflows and outflows between employment, unemployment,
and nonparticipation in the labor force. If exit levels
East European Politics and Societies 415
61. Franozosi finds that, with lag time and quarterly strike rates, unemployment can explain
some, but by no means all, of variation in strike rates for Italy, but his study is confined to a
single country. Franzosi, Puzzle of Strikes.
62. Commander and McHale find little consistent correlation between levels of unemployment
and wages in transition countries, whether aggregate or regional data is used. Simon Commander
and J. McHale, “Unemployment and the Labor Market in Transition: A Review of
Experience in East Europe and Russia,” in Bartolmiej Kaminiski, ed., Economic Transition
in Russia and the new states of Eurasia (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996), 301. More
broadly, Ekiert and Kubik find little support for relative deprivation hypotheses in their
comparisons of protest in the region. Ekiert and Kubik, Rebellious Civil Society.
63. Albert Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations,
and States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970).
64. Greskovits, “Political Economy of Protest,” 87, 17, 92; Likewise, Iankova argues that “strikes
in Hungary have been insignificant because of the country’s vast informal economy, which
provides to important groups in the work force some compensation for losses.” Iankova,
Capitalism in the Making, 21. See also Joan Nelson, “Social Costs, Social-Sector Reforms,
and Politics in Post-Communist Transformations,” in J. Nelson, C. Tilly, and L. Walker, eds.,
Transforming Post-Communist Political Economies (Washington, DC: National Academy
Press, 1997).
were high in post-communist countries, one would expect to
find high levels of turnover. Yet this does not appear to be the
case. According to a study of labor force surveys in the Czech
Republic, Poland, Slovenia, and Slovakia, “transition economies
display, on average, significantly lower rates of turnover than
their Western counterparts” (see Table 1). Differences in churning
rates—a measure of the amount of job reallocation beyond
that needed to meet net change in employment—“are even more
marked.”
65
Turnover in Russia appears a bit higher than in these
east European cases, but not more so than is typical in OECD
(Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)
countries.
66
However, turnover rates may not fully reflect the extent of exit,
since the informal sector is only partly captured by the labor
force surveys from which turnover data are derived.
67
For that,
one can look at estimates of the size of the informal economy in
various countries (see Table 2).
68
This measure would indeed
seem to explain some of the cases. For example, the level is high
416 Explaining Labor Weakness in Post-Communist Europe
Table 1. Labor Turnover, 1995
Labor Turnover Churning
(Six Months) Index
Czech Republic 27.5 9.6
Poland 29.8 14.5
Slovakia 22.8 6.1
Slovenia 11.4 3.7
East Europe average 22.9 8.5
West Europe average 41.5 19.4
Source: Tito Boeri and Randolph Bruno, “A Short Note on the Characteristics of Labor
Turnover in Central and Eastern Europe,” in Douglas Lippold, ed., Labor Dynamics in
the Russian Federation (Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,
1997).
65. Tito Boeri and Randolph Bruno, “A Short Note on the Characteristics of Labor Turnover in
Central and Eastern Europe,” in Douglas Lippold, ed., Labor Dynamics in the Russian Federation
(Paris: OECD, 1997).
66. Vladimir Gimpelson and Douglas Lippoldt, The Russian Labour Market: Between Transition
and Turmoil (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).
67. Boeri and Bruno, “Characteristics of Labour Turnover.”
68. Simon Johnson, Daniel Kaufman, and Andrei Shleifer, “The Unofficial Economy in Transition,”
Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 2 (1997).
in Hungary and low in Poland, and as has been seen, Hungary
certainly has had a much lower level of labor mobilization than
Poland (for the first half of the 1990s at least). In Russia and
Ukraine, the informal economy is large, consistent with the argument
that despite severe economic conditions in those countries,
protest has been relatively low. However, the size of the informal
economy in Bulgaria is also quite high, and so is the relative
amount of labor protest; conversely, in Slovakia, the size of the
informal economy is much lower than in Hungary, but with few
signs of unrest. Moreover, changes in the size of the informal
economy over time within countries do not appear to correlate
with labor activity. For example, according to these figures, the
underground economy in Poland shrinks over time, but then so
do strike rates—the opposite of the trend one would expect.
Likewise, in Bulgaria, the informal economy peaks (for the years
measured) in 1995 at 36.2 percent of total GDP, but the next year
Bulgaria witnessed “massive labor protests.”
69
Yet the size of the informal economy can be only an imperfect
measure, in part because, almost by definition, it is so difficult to
estimate. Moreover, the size of the informal economy as a whole
East European Politics and Societies 417
69. Iankova and Turner, “Building the New Europe”; Robertson, “The Madding Crowd.”
Table 2. Estimates of the Underground Economy, 1989-1995
(Unofficial GDP as a Percentage of Total GDP)
1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995
Poland 15.7 19.6 23.5 19.7 18.5 15.2 12.6
Czech Republic 6.0 6.7 12.9 16.9 16.9 17.6 11.3
Slovakia 6.0 7.7 15.1 17.6 16.2 14.6 5.8
Hungary 27.0 28.0 32.9 30.6 28.5 27.7 29.0
Romania 22.3 13.7 15.7 18.0 16.4 17.4 19.1
Bulgaria 22.8 25.1 23.9 25.0 29.9 29.1 36.2
Russia 12.0 14.7 23.5 32.8 36.7 40.3 41.6
Ukraine 12.0 16.3 25.6 33.6 38.0 45.7 48.9
Source: Simon Johnson, Daniel Kaufman, and Andrei Shleifer, “The Unofficial Economy in
Transition,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 2 (1997): 193.
is only a rough indicator of the availability of exit on the labor
market. For that one might look, in addition to turnover data, at
informal sector employment as measured by surveys. According
to the ILO, the average level of urban informal sector employment
in selected post-communist countries was on average 10.1
percent of total urban sector employment (see Figure 5). Yet this
level is far below that of levels in third world countries, where the
informal sector is quite high indeed: in Latin America, urban informal
sector employment is 43.2 percent of total urban employment,
in Asia, it is 32.6 percent, and in Africa, it is 52.2 percent.
70
While this last measure is also imperfect, when combined with
the data on turnover and the size of the informal economy, one
must question how much the notion of exit can explain labor
peace in the region. Indeed, as seen in Figure 3, a low level of
labor activity holds across the region despite what are now significantly
different macroeconomic conditions, including varying
418 Explaining Labor Weakness in Post-Communist Europe
70. ILO World Labor Report, 2000. This data would support the argument by Greskovits that
there are fewer urban poor in Eastern Europe, a group that in Latin America has often to led
rioting or other contentious actions. Greskovits, Political Economy of Protest.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Croat. Latv. Lith. Pol. Slovak. Ukr. EE avg. African
avg.
Asian
avg.
Latin
American
avg.
Urban informal s ector
employment as a
percentage of total
urban employment
Figure 5: Informal sector employment
levels of unemployment, labor turnover, and informal economic
activity in individual countries.
In this short discussion, I cannot give each of these arguments
the full elaboration it deserves; nor can I claim to have ruled out
these various explanations on their merits. Regression analysis
might help sort out some of the contending explanations for variation
in labor activity within the region, for example, in testing
the interaction and dynamics between unemployment levels and
the impact of the informal economy. However, for present purposes,
the most compelling reason to question the explanations
reviewed so far—whether economic explanations focusing on
unemployment and the labor market or political explanations
focusing on corporatism and union competition—is not that they
fail to explain anything but rather that they explain the wrong
thing. That is, these explanations have been proposed to help
explain variations within the post-communist cases, and to a certain
extent and in some combination, they may well do so. Yet
recall that Figure 2 showed the much more rapid decline in union
density in Eastern Europe, to levels below that of Western
Europe; and that in Figure 3, while there was a wide variety of
strike rates in Western Europe, the rates in Eastern Europe were
universally low. This strongly suggests that the most compelling
task is not explaining how the post-communist cases differ but
explaining what they have in common.
This is all the more compelling when one recalls that more
than a decade after the end of communism, the political and economic
landscape in the region is quite diverse. In fact, some have
argued that this political and economic diversity is the most
striking feature of the post-communist transformations.
71
Others,
pointing to this diversity, have even questioned whether there any
longer remains something that can be called “post-communism.”
72
The politics of the region are diverse enough to include both
consolidated democracies and virtual dictatorships (such as
Belarus under Aleksandr Lukashenko). Economically, by
East European Politics and Societies 419
71. Valerie Bunce, “The Political Economy of Postsocialism,” Slavic Review 58 (1999): 756-93.
72. Charles King, “Post-Postcommunism: Transition, Comparison, and the End of ‘Eastern
Europe,’ ” World Politics 53 (October 2000); Jacques Rupnik, “The Postcommunist Divide,”
Journal of Democracy 10 (January 1999): 57-62.
1998, Poland’s GDP had grown to 117 percent of its 1989 level;
while in neighboring Ukraine, the comparable figure was 39
percent.
73
Moreover, this considerable diversity within post-communist
cases extends not only to broad political and economic
indicators but also more narrowly to what one might call industrial
relations variables—both centralized and pluralist union
movements, various modes of privatization, the influence of old
versus new unions, among other differences.74
That labor in the
region appears to be a weak social actor across such varied political
and economic conditions suggests there is a factor this region
has in common that can help explain this common weakness.
That factor, I would suggest, is the continued legacy of the communist
period.
Institutional and ideological legacies
Perhaps nowhere is the impact of the communist legacy
greater than it is on labor and trade unions. After all, the old
regime claimed to rule on behalf of the working class. Moreover,
more than a decade after the collapse, the largest trade union in
every post-communist society, including Poland—indeed, in
most cases the largest single component of civil society—is the
formerly communist-led union federation.
The impact of this legacy is twofold: institutional and ideological
(though these are closely intertwined). Institutionally, these
trade unions were first established as entirely different organizations
to operate in an entirely different political economy. The
unions were typically allies of management, encouraging
increased production, and often operated as social welfare agencies,
dispensing benefits to members, who often viewed such
benefits as the single advantage of union membership.
In a market economy, unions need to deliver concessions
like higher wages, job security, better work conditions, and
limitations to managerial authority. These are “the heart of
420 Explaining Labor Weakness in Post-Communist Europe
73. United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, Economic Survey of Europe 2000 No.
2/3. (New York/Geneva: UN, 2000).
74. David Ost and Stephen Crowley, “Conclusion: Making Sense of Labor Weakness in
Postcommunism,” in Crowley and Ost, Workers after Workers’ States.
what unions promise to supporters. If unions deliver, they
earn enthusiasm, willingness to mobilize, financial support,
and loyalty.”
75
Unfortunately, this is precisely what post-communist
unions have thus far failed to do.
Post-communist unions have faced the daunting challenge not
only of reorienting themselves to a capitalist economy but of
doing so, at least initially, during a period of economic depression.
But their challenges come not only from economic decline
or even from the constraints placed by globalization. Rather,
union members were facing these issues for the first time and
were simultaneously reacting to the legacy of communist-era
trade unionism. Once the various communist parties were
removed from power, trade unions became the largest institutions
to survive the communist era, and as such they faced significant
problems with legitimacy.
76
In Pollert’s study of Czech trade
unions, for example, she discovered “a fundamentally contradictory
conception of what workplace trade unionism should now
be about” between leaders and members, “related to a desire to
break with the past.” Since unions in the communist period were
part of the production bureaucracy, members preferred that
unions stay out of such issues and confine themselves to areas
such as health and safety and breaches of the labor code. Questions
about work intensity and pay “were not a matter for the
union, but a private issue for the workers and their mistr (foreman),”
a point with which union chairs agreed.
77
Yet the problem is not simply that union members are unsure
of what unions should now do but also that union leaders and
activists, a number of whom helped bring about the end of communism,
are unsure of what stance to take toward capitalism. In
short, they have been unsure about whether they should be
defending their workers against capitalism or helping to bring it
about. As Pollert has termed the dilemma, post-communist
labor’s “ambiguous embrace of the transformation to capitalism”
makes unions, in the words of a leading Czech unionist, “schizoEast
European Politics and Societies 421
75. Ross and Martin, “European Unions,” 3.
76. Greskovits, Political Economy of Protest.
77. Pollert, Transformation at Work.
phrenic.”
78
In Poland, in a survey of ninety-five manufacturing
enterprises, Ost and Weinstein found that, at a time when the
internal organization of the firm was up for grabs, enterpriselevel
union leaders were consciously acquiescing to management’s
desire for vastly increased authority and to a general
weakening of trade union influence at the workplace.
79
And if
this is the case in Poland, where unions have long had a strong
presence in the workplace, what of unions elsewhere?
80
Taken together, these legacies have left unions—though often
with significant institutional resources and memberships—with
extremely weak links to their members. Recall in Figure 2 the difference
between the membership figures reported by the unions
themselves and those obtained from surveys. While it may be
true that that former figure is more technically correct, in that it
reflects dues-paying members, the nearly 20 percent differential
between officially reported membership and those willing to
claim union membership in a survey suggests a weak link indeed
between these organizations and those they profess to represent.
Moreover, this weak link is also suggested by additional survey
data. Surveys throughout the region have found that unions
are the least trusted civic institutions in each case. For example,
the New Barometer Survey, conducted in nine East European
countries in 1993 and 1994, found that unions received the greatest
distrust among civic institutions, exceeded only by the political
parties and tied for second in distrust with parliaments out of a
total of fifteen political and civic institutions.
81
In a rough comparison
with such attitudes in Western Europe, Mishler and Rose
found that while 37 percent of respondents “trusted” trade
422 Explaining Labor Weakness in Post-Communist Europe
78. Pollert, “Labor and Trade Unions in the Czech Republic, 1989-2000,” in Crowley and Ost,
Workers after Workers’ States, 23.
79. David Ost and Marc Weinstein, “Unions Against Unions? Towards Hierarchical Management
in Post-Communist Poland, East European Politics and Societies 13:1(1999).
80. According to Commander and McHale, while “managers have generally acquired significant
discretion in firm decisions” throughout the post-communist region, a “clear difference
between Poland, on the one hand, and the Czech Republic and Hungary, on the other,
was evident. In the former, workers or workers’ collectives had a clear voice in both the
short- and long-term decisions of firms, something that was almost completely absent in the
other two countries.” Commander and McHale, “Unemployment,” 30.
81. W. Mishler and Richard Rose, “Trust, Distrust and Skepticism: Popular Evaluations of Civil
and Political Institutions in Post-Communist Societies,” Journal of Politics 59:2(1997): 418-51.
unions in Western Europe, only 13 percent of those in Eastern
Europe did. By 1998, the numbers of those placing trust in trade
unions in Eastern Europe rose significantly to 23 percent, yet 53
percent of respondents stated that they did not trust them. Moreover,
unions remained the least trusted of civic institutions.82
This
lack of trust is all the more troubling when one recalls that unions
are the largest single example of civil society in virtually every
country in the region (see Figure 6).
This finding has been confirmed by other surveys as well. A
fourteen-country survey, though confined to the electronics and
electric machinery industries, found that while “employee satisEast
European Politics and Societies 423
82. Richard Rose, and C. Haerpfer, “New Democracies Barometer V: A 12 Nation Survey,” Studies
in Public Policy 306 (Glasgow, UK: Centre for the Study of Public Policy, 1998).
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
west europe NBS, east
europe 1993
NBS, east
europe 1998
Martin, et al,
west
Martin, et al,
east
World Values
Survey, west
Europe
World Values
Survey, east
Europe
percentagetrustingunions
Figure 6: Trust in unions, East and West
Note: NBS = New Barometer Survey (“New Democracies Barometer V: A 12 Nation
Survey”).
Sources: W. Mishler and Richard Rose, “Trust, Distrust and Skepticism: Popular Evaluations
of Civil and Political Institutions in Post-Communist Societies,” Journal of Politics
59:2(1997): 418-51; Richard Rose, and C. Haerpfer, “New Democracies Barometer V: A
12 Nation Survey,” Studies in Public Policy 306 (Glasgow, UK: Centre for the Study of
Public Policy, 1998); Roderick Martin et al., Workers, Firms and Unions: Industrial Relations
in Transition (Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang, 1998); Ronald Ingelhart et al.,
World Value Surveys and European Values Surveys, 1995-1997 [computer file], ICPRS
version (Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research [producer], 2000);
faction with union activities” was 38.7 percent in Western European
countries, it was only 15.3 percent in Eastern European
countries.
83
Furthermore, according to the World Values Survey,
in West European societies, 41.1 percent of respondents had confidence
in trade unions, while only 28.3 percent of post-communist
respondents did so.
84
Overall, this suggests a considerable
gap in the amount of trust placed in trade unions between
Eastern and Western Europe.
Legacies, transformation, and
the future of Europe
It is the legacy of the communist period that best explains this
relative lack of trust in unions, as well as the overall weakness of
labor in post-communist societies. After all, this communist legacy
is about the only thing these increasingly diverse societies
have in common.
85
Why might it matter, beyond academic debate, whether past
legacies better explain labor weakness than the other explanations
I have examined? The most compelling answer is that,
unlike these other factors, legacies are more impervious to
change. For example, economic conditions including unemployment
levels and the size of the informal economy will change
over time (and the fact that they already have changed, with little
apparent impact on labor, strengthens the conclusion about the
importance of historical legacies). Corporatist institutions could
be redesigned or expanded; the level of union competition could
be changed by revising laws on unions. The impact of decades of
communism, however, while not unchanging, is more durable
and less amenable to policy changes, including the adoption of
EU laws and regulations.
424 Explaining Labor Weakness in Post-Communist Europe
83. Roderick Martin et al., Workers, Firms and Unions: Industrial Relations in Transition
(Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang, 1998).
84. Ingelhart et al., World Values Survey. More precisely, as in the other surveys, the figures are
the unweighted average of country means in each case. The surveys were taken in 1995 to
1997. The post-communist average does not include war-torn Bosnia, in which case the
average would rise to 29.7 percent.
85. For an interesting and critical discussion of the notion of legacy, see Gregorz Ekiert and Stephen
Hanson, Capitalism and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe: Assessing the
Legacy of Communist Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
One might argue, however, that the influence of the past will
attenuate over time, as the transition progresses, as capitalist
class relations solidify, and as old habits and institutions are
transformed or die out. Following this, one might hypothesize
that as these countries develop more “normal” capitalist relations,
unions will reorient themselves and prove better able to
defend their members’ interests.
86
Moving further away from the
communist era might erode the pathological effects of communist
legacies on the relative strength of labor, such as workers’
skeptical relationship to trade unions themselves. The pressures
of globalization might also push these societies to adopt labor
institutions more similar to those found elsewhere in the world.
Yet rather than unions becoming stronger, as reforms have
proceeded, unions have gotten weaker or at least certainly
smaller. In countries across the region, the more private the economy,
the less the union representation. Unions are strongest in
large enterprises in the state sector, a part of the economy clearly
in decline. Unions often survive in privatized former state firms,
but their position is much more tenuous. And they are almost
nonexistent in the new private firms that have risen in the past
decade, as well as in smaller firms, and it is these smaller private
firms where most future job creation is expected.
87
Moreover,
these trends do not simply represent convergence from compulsory
unionization to West European norms: according to the survey
data presented in Figure 2, within just a few years after the
end of communism, Eastern European societies were already less
unionized than those in Western Europe. Indeed, in terms of
union density, the scope and the quality of collective bargaining,
and industrial relations generally, the labor regime in postcommunist
societies has not been gradually converging toward
EU practice but has been radically transformed from the rigid
control of the communist era to a dramatically more flexible labor
regime similar to that of the United States.
88
Given current global
East European Politics and Societies 425
86. Much of this and the next paragraph draws from Ost and Crowley, “Conclusion.”
87. Kubicek, “Organized Labor.”
88. Similarly, Meardi finds that “on many issues (privatization, pensions systems, taxation,
working time, the welfare state, wage differentials, and so on) post-communist countries
are following a ‘North American’ road rather than that of the European social market econ-
pressures and trends, it is difficult to see how this decomposition
of union organization will be reversed, especially in countries
where a major comparative advantage remains the relatively low
cost of labor.
While I have focused on a broad overview of the region and
relied on macro-level indicators, some evidence from the microlevel
supports this argument. In a fascinating sociological study,
Guglielmo Meardi has compared union activists in Poland and
Italy (home respectively of Solidarity and the autunno caldo).
89
Meardi concludes that in terms of class consciousness, union
activists in Italy and Poland were more alike before the end of
communism than at present. While unions in both countries have
suffered from global economic shifts, Italian unionists have experienced
change gradually, and aim to preserve as much of their
past successes as possible, whereas Polish unionists are caught
up in a much deeper transformation that they themselves helped
bring about and explicitly reject past orientations and institutions.
This means that far from being resistant to change, as some
have suggested, Polish union activists embrace change, much of
it counter to union members’ material interests, including privatization,
company-level bargaining, increased wage differentials,
redundancy measures, and overall flexibility. The result, Meardi
argues, is rather than being “behind” Italy in its transition to capitalism,
Polish industrial relations appear to be more “advanced”
in the direction of U.S.-style flexibility.
The impact of the communist legacy on labor weakness in
Eastern Europe is a complex one. The impact of communist-era
ideologies (including the official ideology and the counterideologies
it provoked) has shaped workers’ attitudes toward unions
and the understanding of union leaders of their role in capitalism
during a crucial period but will not continue over time unabated.
In fact, some survey evidence suggests that the relative lack of
trust in unions has declined over time. Union members and activ-
426 Explaining Labor Weakness in Post-Communist Europe
omy.” Guglielmo Meardi, “Trojan Horse for the Americanization of Europe? Polish Industrial
Relations towards the EU,” European Journal of Industrial Relations 8:1(March 2002):
77-99 at 79.
89. Meardi, Union Activists.
ists appear to be changing their stance toward capitalism and
their role in it, if only gradually.
However, before that attitudinal shift could have much impact,
over the past decade unions were being consolidated as much
weaker institutions. Organizationally, unions have declined to
such an extent—in terms of membership, collective bargaining
coverage, and the overall ability to mobilize and to deliver tangible
rewards to members—that a change in the ideological stance
of union members and activists will likely not be sufficient to
stem further union decline.
The notion of path dependence might help further elucidate the
differences between unions in Western and Eastern Europe and the
reasons for labor weakness in post-communism. In contrast to
Western Europe, where unions met the global “post-Fordist” economy
from a position of institutional strength, communist-era
legacies meant that labor unions in Eastern Europe were faced
with the introduction of capitalism and global pressures from an
initially weak position. Some have argued about Western European
unions that, despite their subsequent bureaucratization,
“their identities, practices, and power remained profoundly
marked by their origins” as social movement organizations built
through grassroots mobilization.
90
Such social and organizational
capital, while hardly making them invulnerable, has allowed
these unions to weather global economic changes. In contrast,
the prevailing unions in Eastern Europe have had quite different
origins, which have more often served as handicaps than advantages.
As the notion of path dependence suggests, these origins
will continue to shape these organizations well into the future.
At this point, one might question whether Western Europe
really is the best comparison for post-communist societies. Not
only do labor relations appear more akin to that found in countries
like the United States, but the level of economic development
of post-communist societies is more similar to that of developing
countries than advanced capitalist ones. Some have
usefully compared labor politics in Eastern Europe with that in
East European Politics and Societies 427
90. Ross and Martin, “European Unions,” 2.
Latin America.
91
Yet EU expansion makes the comparison with
Western Europe crucial, not only for understanding labor in Eastern
Europe, but quite possibly for understanding the future of
Western Europe as well. The expansion of the EU is predicated
on at least the long-term convergence of economic development
between East and West and on the more immediate harmonization
of industrial relations within the new Europe. Indeed, while
the hope of many EU officials is to export the model of “social
Europe” to the East, it is equally plausible that an additional
impetus for a more flexible labor regime could enter the EU
through the backdoor of Eastern Europe.
92
Conclusion
Contrary to initial expectations, labor has been a weak social
and political actor throughout the region. This weakness has
been seen in relative strike rates, declining union membership,
and the scope and quality of collective bargaining, among other
indicators of labor power. The relative lack of labor mobilization
in particular occurred despite an economic decline that by many
indicators was equal to or worse than the Great Depression.
I examined a number of arguments that have been advanced
to explain variations in labor mobilization and labor weakness in
the region—economic explanations focusing on the labor market
and individual exit and political explanations focusing on
corporatism and union rivalry—and found each of them unable
to fully explain that variation. But more important, when viewed
in comparative perspective, this weakness of labor holds
throughout the post-communist region, and the more compelling
task becomes not explaining variation within Eastern Europe but
explaining this overall weakness in post-communist societies.
Moreover, the need for such an explanation becomes all the
428 Explaining Labor Weakness in Post-Communist Europe
91. Greskovits, Political Economy of Protest; Stephen Levitsky and Lucan Way, “Between a
Shock and a Hard Place: The Dynamics of Labor-Backed Adjustments in Poland and Argentina,”
Comparative Politics 30:2(1998); Heather Tafel and Dexter Boniface, “Old Carrots,
New Sticks: Explaining Labor Strategies toward Economic Reform in Eastern Europe and
Latin America,” Comparative Politics 35:3(2003).
92. Meardi, “Trojan Horse.” See also Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead, EU Enlargement versus Social
Europe?TheUncertainFutureoftheEuropeanSocialModel (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2003).
more compelling when one considers that this labor quiescence
has remained largely constant despite the rather sharp macroeconomic
and political variations that have emerged in Eastern
Europe and the former Soviet Union. This constant despite such
variations in other factors focuses attention on what these
societies have in common.
Those common features are the institutional and ideological
legacies of communism, particularly as they impact trade unions
and the link between unions and their members. In every country
in the region, the dominant trade union remains the one—
though variously reformed in each case—that was created by the
Communist Party and that had a monopoly on worker representation
under the old regime. This past has created significant
problems of legitimacy, alongside the simultaneous task of
restructuring these large organizations to the entirely different
demands of the new political economy. It has also been seen
how the ideological legacy of communism has adversely
impacted trade unions and workers generally, as workers and
union activists are unsure of what stance to take toward the capitalist
transformations and what role unions might play within it.
Not surprisingly, then, surveys throughout the region find repeatedly
that unions are among the least trusted institutions in society.
Yet even as the impact of communist-era ideologies on trade
unions attenuates, and the desire for more assertive unions under
capitalism rises, unions and labor relations in the region have
become institutionally consolidated into a rather liberal and flexible
labor regime. This would appear to present problems for efforts to
export the model of “social Europe” to the East and may present
greater difficulties for labor in Western Europe than is currently
realized. Far from a linear transition to West European norms,
by a number of indicators these unions, despite their apparent
strengths in the communist period, appear to be moving toward
a model of labor flexibility found in the United States and parts
of the developing world. They may yet reconstitute themselves
in the future as effective labor movements, but there is little evidence
to suggest this will happen.
East European Politics and Societies 429