The balance of power that in its day guaranteed social dialogue has changed with the attacks of employers on work in recent decades.

Trade unions are on the defensive around the world, under the pressure of strong economic and political powers. We are facing many crises. Employers are attacking on all fronts, and the excuse for the pandemic is used more to attack unions, wages and working conditions.

Since the beginning of the neoliberal offensive around 1980, the balance of power has undergone a radical change that has weakened the power of labor and strengthened that of capital. However, much of the trade union movement has maintained the ideology of social consensus, the main method of action of which is social dialogue, and this is to the detriment of the current situation.

However, more and more unions are realizing that we are in a critical situation and that we have to take courageous steps to deal with our enemies. We need to reform our trade unions to make them the most appropriate tools and better prepare ourselves for the next struggles.

No discussion

Trade unions do not accept the neoliberal restructuring of our societies. They are against the privatisation and deregulation of public services. They demand secure employment, better working conditions, health and safety at work and a “just transition” to avoid the climate catastrophe. In general, the unions have a tremendous list of progressive claims.

The problem is that they're often planted there. There is no debate, no plan to design the policy of precariousness and to take steps, if our concrete demands are taken for good. And since economic, social and political developments are going in the opposite direction, it is also important to evaluate our organizations, their weaknesses and strengths.

Developing our strategies is a special challenge. Our general objectives call for profound social and economic transformations, so there is a clash of interests in the struggle we face. Of course, it is a matter of power.

We therefore need more able and prepared trade unions for the fight. We have to build great social partnerships. Mass mobilization of social forces and mutual solidarity will be necessary. However, we have a problem while large sections of the international trade union movement are chained in the trap of social dialogue.

Another scenario

In the prevailing interpretation, social dialogue has become a goal of its own, a way forward towards its employers and governments. Of course, it is an important opportunity to talk personally to employers, but that will not give us any more power. It is nothing more than a space to express the power we already have.

What gives us power is the representation of our affiliates, with their capacity and willingness to act, both in the “dialogue” and at the negotiating table. However, the ideology of the social agreement has been moving further and further away from the power relations that were its origin.

No one takes over the trade unions for attending meetings with their employers. Because this is necessary and important. They are criticized when they understand social dialogue as the main means of increasing power.

Rather than humiliating ourselves by asking “to sit at the table”, we must use our resources and policies to build strong unions, which have muscle in their workplaces. In capitalist society today it is clear that if you are not capable of a potential threat to the interests of lords, you are incapable, despite social dialogue.

Class commitment

It is appropriate to look at the creation of social dialogue. Its origins lie in the Second World War. In the institutionalization of the historical class commitment between labor and capital after the World War, centered on Western Europe. The basis of that commitment (whatever it may seem to us) was power. It was the result of a certain historical evolution in which the interests of capital were threatened by the trade union movement and the worker through mobilization and struggle.

The class commitment was not the result of the requests made to the employers, but the result of the subject taught by the action in the work centers. If the bosses had sought an agreement with the workers, it was not to please, but to prevent further damage, socialism of any kind. The basis of class engagement was the tough 50-year-old class struggle. When power relations were determined for work, the union movement was strengthened through tripartite negotiation and social dialogue.

Today, when power relations have turned to businessmen, class engagement has been made, or is about to be lost. Faced with the weakness of the trade union and worker movement, in a very defensive attitude, the employers do not need compromises or a genuine social dialogue.

One sign of the crisis we are experiencing is that the unions have been reduced to the European average over the last 40 years, an unprecedented attack in modern times. To believe that in this situation the social dialogue will save us is to be foolish at best.

Effective strategies

It's not hard to understand what masters want them. They want to abolish the welfare state, privatise and corporalize the ever-increasing parts of our economy and of our society and defeat the trade union movement.

To deal with that, we need stronger unions, ready to respond to the challenge. We must analyse the current political situation, develop programmes and policies, propose visions that stimulate hope and optimism, and generate strategies to implement them.

But power relations are fundamental: the possibility of sitting at the table will be created as soon as entrepreneurs realise that it is in their interests to be there, not on the streets or on the pickets.

*This article was published in Social Europe, has been translated into Basque by the Manu Robles Foundation and we have brought it to ARGIA thanks to the CC license.