What explains the different strategies adopted by Portuguese metal and textiles trade unions in the face of the liberalization of collective bargaining?

• Autor(a) principal: Pinto, André
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/30326
• topic: Negociação coletiva -- Collective negotiation; Dualization; Mercado de trabalho -- Labour market; Reforms; Trade unions; Dualização; Reformas; Sindicato -- Syndicate

The role of trade unions in pushing back the liberalization of industrial relations has been of great interest to scholars in Political Economy over recent decades. The widely popular dualization theory (Rueda, 2005), according to which trade unions may collude with centre-left parties and sacrifice the regulation of the most fragile segment of the workforce (‘outsiders’) in order to restrain the effects of liberalization on ‘insiders’, has been subject to criticisms from new strands that document solidaristic behaviours from trade unions towards outsiders, in rejection of liberalization altogether. The idea behind this dissertation is to contrast these different strategies of trade unions in pushing back liberalization, as well as the motives behind them. For such, the focus is put on the cases of the Portuguese metal and textiles sector, in a period of liberalization following the introduction of the Portuguese Labour Code (2003). Different trade unions in these sectors adopted different strategies, either conceding to signing worsened collective agreements (relative to those previously in force) or choosing to allow their caducity. Through content analysis of 10 collective agreements and expiry notices, as well as 5 interviews with trade union representatives, the importance of factors such as union ideology and economic context in determining trade union strategies is gauged. The results obtained demonstrate the importance of ideological factors in defining trade union strategies – as suggested in the literature – but also of other factors, such as the sectoral institutional context or individual agency.