Getting together or breaking apart? Trade union strategies, restructuring and contingent workers in Southern Europe

Kornelakis, Andreas; Voskeritsian, Horen

Abstract

© 2016, © The Author(s) 2016. The article considers the strategies of trade unions towards the representation of call centre workers. Using a comparative case study, it examines the divergent union responses to the growth of contingent labour by looking at the telecommunications industries in Italy and Greece. Although the trade unions in Italy pursued inclusive strategies embracing the call centre workers and negotiating the restructuring of the whole sector, the unions in Greece followed a policy of exclusion leaving call centre workers outside representation and negotiating their internal restructuring. The article argues that the different union identities, and the diverse power resources and internal organizational politics help explain the variation in the trade unions’ strategic responses.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 29, 2016
• Publication Date: May 1, 2018
• Deposit Date: Mar 7, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 8, 2016
• Journal: Economic and Industrial Democracy
• Print ISSN: 0143-831X
• Electronic ISSN: 1461-7099
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 39
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 357-375
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0143831X15627500
• Keywords: contingent employment, Greece, Italy, telecommunications industry, trade union strategies
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/920585
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0143831X15627500
• Contract Date: Mar 8, 2016