Trade Union Democracy In Western Europe by Walter Galenson

Hassell Street Press (September 9, 2021), 112 pp.

Walter Galenson was, in his own time, a prolific observer of and writer about the subject of labor
relations. He became famous for his theory that the AFL-CIO declined in influence and organizing power
during the 1950s because it had purged its ranks of perceived communists and fellow travelers, i.e.
some of its best organizers. At the time, this thesis was seen as highly controversial but is now widely
accepted by scholars and historians of the subject. Galenson also wrote much about international
aspects of labor relations, specifically how trade unions functioned in other nations and under different
political and social climates. In 1962, he wrote an academic study called Trade Union Democracy in
Western Europe for the University of California Press. Last year, Hassell Street Press released a new
binding of the book, coinciding with the sixtieth anniversary of its publishing date. The book was unusual
in that it covered both the state of various labor movements in Europe but also the experience of
internal union democracy by rank and file members of the major unions in Italy, France, Belgium,
Holland, Austria, Scandinavia, and Great Britain. For this reason, it is a work of interest for those of us in
involved with the struggle for greater union democracy.

Galenson begins his survey with the romance nations of Italy and France. At the time of this study, both
the labor movements could count a large minority of the workforce of their respective nations as
members but not dues paying members, limiting the amount of influence unions have on the shop floor
of individual bargaining units, as opposed to industry wide wage/benefits negotiations. As well, workers
within one shop could be represented by a host of different unions based on their preference. Typically,
these were unions affiliated with a particular political party; for example, the French/Italian Communist
Party, Socialist Party, etc. In Italy, rank and file union matters were handled by a factory wide “grievance
committee” which was regularly elected by the members of the bargaining unit and included
proportional representation. Committee members were thus from different unions; the more votes a
union got, the more seats it held on the committee. Elections were recurrent and “the frequency of
balloting for grievance committees means that electioneering never stops”. Unlike Italian unions, their
French counterparts had somewhat more of a local organization and held elections annually for their
“shop stewards committee “and “enterprise committee”, both of which had proportional
representation. This “rival unionism” model had interesting implications for union democracy. On the
one hand, unions were constantly vying for votes from the rank and file making a “…conscious effort to
improve communications with individual workers”. On the other, because the unions were affiliated
with national political parties and focused on industry wide bargaining, local organizations were
frequently left moribund. In Italy, for instance, “the statutes for most unions provide for democratic
control but in fact very little rank and file activity is in evidence”.

In contrast, British trade unions had a far more formally participatory structure, with “branches”
(roughly equivalent to locals in an American context) functioning to address membership concerns.
“Branch meetings are conducted in an honest and democratic fashion, by all accounts. Union statutes
generally provide for regular meetings, and stipulate that they must begin and end at certain times, to
prevent rump sessions inconvenient to members”. Elections are are a slightly different matter, with
some branch secretaries serving life terms if voted into office by the membership. Galenson reports that
many of the secretaries who did face election on a regular basis who usually reconfirmed with little
fanfare. Though this more localized structure was the base of British Labor relations, industry wide

bargaining was already trending in the early 1960s when Galenson was doing his study. As well, many
labor organizations would purposely (if obliquely) marginalize local shop stewards, who had a reputation
for radicalism and even association with the Communist Party of Great Britain. As a result, many British
trade unionists began to disengage from Labor; “Although branch meetings are called to discuss wage
proposals, the members feel-quite rightly-that there is little they can do to influence the
negotiations…No wonder the British worker prefers to stay home with his television set rather than go
to a drafty union hall where nothing of interest is happening”.

The longtime reader of the Union Democracy Review and the work of its founder, Herman Benson will
have a well-rounded view of the history of the union democracy movement here in the United States
but it’s worth bearing in mind organized Labor (and by extension, the union democracy movement) is a
global phenomenon. The struggles of reformers and rank-and-file unionists the world over are owed our
attention and a good start would be studying their history as provided by Walter Galenson’s thorough
book on the subject.