Explaining Public-Sector Union Mobilization: A Multilevel, Mixed-Methods Approach

SEBASTIÁN ETCHEMENDY; GERMAN LODOLA

Chicago

Workshop; Southwest Mixed Methods Research Workshop; 2021

SWMMR

Modern public sector unions are a lightning in the landscape of quiet and shrinking labor movements in both advanced and emergent economies. While private sector unions are in retreat in most of the world, public sector labor is a consistent force in many modern polities. It is widely argued that structural trends that undermine non-state labor amid globalization such as enhanced international economic competition, widespread flexibilization of employment conditions, and retrenchment in traditional manufacturing strongholds have affected much less, or largely sidelined, public unions (Garrett and Way 2000: 271-2, DiSalvo 2015: 17-19, Schneider 2020: 4). Though strikes have diminished in all the advanced world, public sector mobilization has substantially risen in Europe since the early 2000s, outpacing private conflict in many countries (Van Daele 2016). In the US, the number state workers that belong to unions has surpassed those in the private sector. Public sector disputes are in practice the only major type of labor conflict in the contemporary American economy, including recent memorable “wars” between public unions and Republican governors in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states (DiSalvo 2015: 6, 39, Freeman and Han 2012: 390-91). During the last decade, public sector unions and teachers (the largest state workers’ group in almost every country) have staged notorious strike waves in places as diverse as the US (Hertel-Fernández et.al. 2020), Israel (Shenkar 2011), Nordic countries (Mailand 2019), China (Chang 2018), and Argentina (Chiappe 2011). In brief, 21st century labor battles are, essentially, public sector union clashes.Given the relevance of public sector conflict in contemporary political economies, it is surprising that Political Science lacks a relatively unified theoretical and methodological approach to study its mobilization patterns and dynamics. In effect, the study of public sector unions politics has undergone different paths in the last fifty years, largely separated by regional (US vs. Europe) and disciplinary (American Politics/Economics vs. Comparative Politics/Political Sociology) divides. The US-based American Politics and Economics studies emerged in the early 1960s after some state unions won collective bargaining rights (Freeman 1986, Olson 1986). This research agenda was more recently revitalized in the context of the Republican assault on public unions after 2010 (Anzia and Moe 2015, 2016, DiSalvo 2015). The dominant view conceives public unions as a specific type of “state insider”, rent-seeking, interest group. It focuses on whether unions had managed to win organizing and bargaining rights at the federal level and, specially, in individual states. The legal existence, type and timing of union collective rights are key to explain substantial variation in public sector labor and political mobilization (Flavin and Hartney 2015, Anzia and Moe 2016, Paglayán 2019). In the mainstream American Politics perspective, public unions are a particular labor animal, mostly detached (and analyzed separately) from the larger, private-sector based labor movement. Public unions mostly used their legal rights to stage renewed labor (strikes and other forms of collective action) and political (i.e. electoral support for the Democratic party) mobilization. The (mostly European-based) Comparative Politics/Political Sociology sub-fields have of course a large tradition in the study of labor collective action, which boomed in the 1970s and 1980s. Though the type of public sector union development also varies within Europe, this literature largely sees state unions as part of larger labor movements that more often than not are national political actors. Labor mobilization tends to be stronger in expansive economic cycles of low unemployment, when militant workers cannot be easily replaced (Hibbs 1976), and when labor acquires organizational strength essentially through unionization (Shorter and Tilly, 1974). Classic neo-corporatist and “political exchange” theories would predict that when labor-based governments converge with monopoly or dominant national unions that cannot be outflanked, and include them in policymaking, conflict declines (Korpi and Shalev 1980, Pizzorno 1978). Unlike in the American Politics scholarship, the European perspective generally takes for granted homogenous territoriality and relegates legal variables (i.e. the particular regulations governing public sector union organizing) in the account of state unions protests. The key issue is whether public unions are subordinated to, or embedded in, larger labor relations frameworks which differentiate Coordinated from Liberal political economies (Swenson 1991, Garett and Way 2000, Park and Young 2015).We argue that these disciplinary and regional divides hamper a theoretical understanding of public sector unions politics. As the American Politics view exposes, unlike in the case of private labor, the legal status of public unions is crucial because they tend to be more constrained by state regulation, especially in the US and in Latin America. Moreover, subnational variation is key in federal states that by definition multiply the number of public sector unions in different government levels. Yet, in some contexts public unions might not simply constitute a “special interest” in search for short-run economic rents, as this approach suggests. They may also operate like political actors, exchanging wage moderation and mobilization restraint for organizational and political payoffs, as it is the often the case with labor in the European, neo-corporatist literature. In this article we propose that a stylized theory of public sector union mobilization should blend aspects of both traditions. First, coherent with the US-based American Politics model, we argue that the legal status of public unions matters to understand patterns of labor militancy. However, in contrast to the American Politics mainstream view of public unions as virtually ungovernable rent-seekers, we contend that in a free strike and union organizing environment, mobilization declines when legal collective bargaining is allowed. Second, in the line of traditional theories with a European bent, we claim that public sector protest weakens when government leaders share a party identity with monopoly labor unions and, thus, some kind of political exchange of moderation for organizational (i.e. administration of social or skills programs, or regulatory privileges in bargaining) or economic payoffs (i.e. social or pension policy benefits) unfolds. Third and finally, against established private sector-based economic theories of strike mobilization, we put forward a “reverse” economic cycle hypothesis for public unions. State workers generally enjoy legal protection and cannot be fired. Thus, we argue that they tend to protest more in the downward part of the cycle, when unemployment and fiscal adjustment hit more, rather than when the economy grows and budget constraints are lower. In short, our theory of labor militancy predicts that central legal, political and economic factors drive public-sector union mobilization. In Latina America public sector unions have been much less studied than in the US and Europe (important exceptions are Murillo 2001, Chambers-Ju 2020, Schneider 2021). Argentine teachers, however, provide an ideal laboratory to test our theoretical argument. Argentina is a robust federation in which public sector labor mobilization and the legal status of state unions vary dramatically across the 24 provinces. It also harbors the strongest labor movement in Latin America, which is politically close to one of the mainstream parties, the Peronist movement. These aspects make Argentina an appropriate setting to test the effect of both legal and political exchange factors on public sector unions militancy. Unlike under hybrid o authoritarian regimes, in which conventional labor theories of mobilization might be ineffectual (Robertson 2007), Argentina is a democracy. Public unions are autonomous actors, and elected politicians fear labor strife. Teachers are the largest public sector union in most countries, and play a central role in the politics of education, (Moe and Wiborg 2016: 5). They are also, by far, the most combative labor organization in Argentina (see below). The hegemonic national teachers’ confederation, CTERA (Confederation of Education Workers of the Argentine Republic), which is formed by its base unions in all provinces, boasts around 400.000 members in a country of 40 million. This study will apply our theory of public sector union mobilization to the Argentine case between 2006 and 2019, i.e. under the populist-left, Peronist governments of Néstor Kirchner (2003-7) and Cristina Kirchner (2008-15), and the center-right administration of Mauricio Macri (2015-19). Although we focus on strikes as the paradigmatic weapon of labor mobilization, our qualitative case studies include the analysis of other forms of collective action by public sector workers, such as demonstrations and road blockades. Our research design recurs to a multilevel, mixed-methods approach to examine if, and to what extent, legal, political, and economic variables account for public-sector teachers’ militancy at both the national and subnational (provincial) arenas. Mixed-methods that integrate quantitative and qualitative strategies are at the center of recent methodological debates on the improvement of causal leverage in the Social Sciences (Collier, Brady, and Seawright 2010, Lieberman 2005, Rohlfing 2008, Humphreys and Jacobs 2015, Seawright 2016). We use, first, the comparative method, in its diachronic, most similar-cases design variant, to assess national teachers’ mobilization under the Kirchners and Macri administrations. Second, drawing upon strike information provided by the Minister of Labor and Social Security, and unique data on 331 yearly teachers’ wage bargaining rounds in the 24 Argentine provinces, we estimate a series of negative binomial statistical models to uncover subnational variation in union militancy. Finally, based on Lieberman’s (2005) “model testing”, and Seawright and Gerring’s (2008) “divergent case” selection strategies in mixed-methods designs, we lay out two subnational qualitative studies of teachers’ public-sector conflict to illustrate the causal mechanism at work for our key explanatory variables. We show that Peronist governments’ alliance with the dominant and largest public union CTERA, and the legalization of collective bargaining rights for a federal minimum wage, substantially lowered national (i.e. confederate level) public- sector conflict in the 2006-2015 period. Our statistical results also substantiate that provincial collective bargaining laws, political exchanges between the governor and monopoly union leaders, and the reverse economy cycle (i.e. fiscal adjustment) largely explain variation in subnational teachers’ strike activity. We elucidate the causal paths behind these relations in two qualitative case studies: the province of Neuquén illustrates how the absence of a legal bargaining framework for education workers, high union leadership competition, and no political exchange between the provincial government and teacher unions produced high labor conflict. Mendoza, by contrast, is a paradigmatic example on how legally institutionalized bargaining rights, union leadership monopoly, and a party-labor alliance, brought about very low strike mobilization.The first part of the article reviews the American and Comparative Politics separate perspectives in the study on public unions. It then presents our theory of public sector union mobilization in democratic countries, which combines (modified) aspects of both traditions. The second part deploys our multilevel, mix-methods analysis: the comparative assessment of the politics of teacher’s mobilization under the Kirchners and Macri governments, the statistical analysis of strike activity, and the provincial case studies. We end with a discussion of the findings and implications of this threefold methodological strategy for the study of public-sector unions in contemporary politics.