Trade unions and the evolution of labour market policy

Joshua Gordon and Dennie Oude Nijhuis

Chapter 13 in Handbook of Labour Market Policy in Advanced Democracies, 2023, pp 177-192 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Trade unions have long played an important role in the formation of labour market policy in rich democracies. As bargaining actors in the labour market, they have a clear interest in shaping the policies which will influence the conditions present in that sphere. Many trade union movements have also adopted the view that they are political representatives for the broader working or middle class - not merely their own members - and have sought more protective or effective labour market policy as part of that class mission. Trade union action in the political domain, and in labour market policy specifically, is thus a well-studied topic, spanning several disciplines. This chapter summarizes the main theoretical perspectives in this literature and documents several contemporary debates, including around union decline and so-called “dualization”. It emphasizes that there is considerable variation among union movements in their political power and policy preferences in relation to labour market policy.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Sociology and Social Policy; Sustainable Development Goals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781800880887.00021 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:20451_13

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().