the bargaining table to accommodate business and government's demands can be seen, to a large extend, as
a defensive strategy motivated by their weakening at the firm level as a result of structural and political
changes. It was also motivated by their failure to translate their capacity to effectively mobilize workers in
a response to manpower policies to liberalize the labor market into legislation or government action from
1989-1993. In other words, with its support for tripartite concertation agreements, labor sought to mitigate
the decline in its bargaining power at the firm and enterprise levels (Royo 2006). The changing balance of
power affected the predisposition of the unions to pursue their strategies through a new set of institutions.
Several factors contributed to this development:
a.
The Increasing Labor Market Segmentation and Individualization of Labor Relations
The weakening of trade union organizations at the firm level in Spain is manifested by low union density,
which currently stands at around 16%, and has hindered unions' capacity to mobilize workers in a response
to manpower policies to liberalize the labor market. This development has been intensified by the Spanish
firms’ attempts to seek greater flexibility and mobility, through the externalization of production to small
non-unionized firms, as reflected in the growth in the number of small firms (98.1%), and their share of
employment, which grew from 38.4 percent to 52.2 percent from 1989-1998. In addition, most of the new
jobs have been created in the service sector (employment in the service sector grew from 7.4 million people
in 1991 to over 10.5 million people in 2003), and construction (from 1.3 million in 1991 to 2 millions in
2003). These are sectors in which unions have had difficulties increasing affiliation. The combination of all
of these factors led to the increasing individualization of labor relations, which threatens unions’
organizational future.
As we have seen, this was further hastened by the spectacular growth of temporary employment. From
1984 through 1997 the number of temporary contracts increased from 7.5 percent to 39 percent of the total.
The increasing level of temporality had clear effects on workers' involvement with the unions and it had
profound consequences on the structure of the labour market, leading to a growing segmentation of workers
between insiders (workers on permanent contracts with more stable, secure, and long-term prospects) and
the unemployed and outsiders (workers on temporary contracts in a more precarious situation) (
Richards and
Polavieja 1997, 32
−
39)
.
Labour segmentation provided a buffer that insulated permanent workers from
layoffs, allowing them to bargain for higher wages, and led to the dualization of the labour force, thus
accentuating the insider-outsider division within the national workforce. In addition, increasing
segmentation was accentuated by industrial restructuring, which led to the closure of large plants and
caused massive layoffs, thus shrinking further the manufacturing sector
traditionally the source of union
strength (i.e., in 1995 only 18% of CCOO’s members were temporary workers at a time when 34% of
Spanish workers were temporary; see Jordana 1996, 21
−
22).
These developments were particularly
worrisome for unions because they constrained their bargaining strength and deprived them of members,
threatening their survival. They had to develop new strategic approaches to counter them.
19
Convention