5 - Deindustrialization and Dwindling Union Density: Labour in Western Europe

Summary

As I argued in Chapter 1, it makes sense, in the context of an incorporated comparison focusing on deindustrialization, to zoom in on Western Europe and examine different national cases that reflect different aspects of the variegation of global capitalism. After all, Western Europe was the first macroregion in the world to industrialize, and it has been witnessing sustained processes of deindustrialization in recent decades, which is at odds with the global trend (see Figure 5.1).

Against this backdrop, I have three chosen country cases that represent political and economic hubs in Western Europe, and that each reflect the characteristic varieties of capitalism in the region: Britain as a ‘liberal market economy’, Germany as a ‘coordinated market economy’ and Spain as a ‘Mediterranean mixed type’. In line with the general development of industrial employment in the region, all three countries have been experiencing sustained processes of deindustrialization. In 2019, industrial workers constituted 18.1, 27.2 and 20.4 per cent of the overall workforce in Britain, Germany and Spain, respectively, and 22.7 per cent across the macroregion. This is a decline of 11.8, 10.2 and 11.4 percentage points if compared to the figures for 1992 – all roughly in line with each other and above the Western European average of 8.7 percentage points. Clearly, industrial workers are a minority in the overall workforce, and their sector does not heavily dominate the economy in any of the three countries or in Western Europe as a whole (see Figure 5.1).

With reference to Castells, one could hypothesize that trade union density should be decreasing significantly in countries where there has been industrial decline. After all, union demise could be interpreted as a sign of worker fragmentation. To a degree, this is borne out by the numbers, as Figure 5.2 demonstrates. Between 1977 and 2019, union density fell by 24.8 percentage points in Britain and 19.4 percentage points in Germany, which, in both cases, is a significant decline. Union density has consistently been higher in Britain than in Germany, even if it declined steeply in the Thatcher era (see Gallas, 2016). Importantly, both countries have been developing more or less in tandem since 1991, which was the year after the German reunification.