an exploration of the ideolody of Hyman
manifestations of the egalitarian project such as progressive tax policies and narrowing income differentials.
2. The dwindling working class base, due to the creation of a new “lower middle class” and
3. The advent of neoliberalism.
When globalisation became a major force in the nineties and Multi-Nationals decided to relocate away from high Keynesian tax regimes and large currency fluctuations to states with low corporation tax, egalitarianism rapidly declined. In Europe, after the Maastricht Treaty, it collapsed.
Hyman defines mechanical solidarity as the “classic form of interest definition and representation”. The aggregation of interests involves establishing priorities among competing grievances and aspirations. Trade unions helped shape workers definitions of their collective and individual interests, and became responsible for the redistribution of gains and losses. Questions started to arise regarding whose interests counted for most and the decentralisation of employee interests by employment regulation. A crisis of employee loyalty to trade unions began and is still in full flow. Hyman proposed that “Organic Solidarity” provides the solution to this decline.
Organic Solidarity
Having analysed the decline of mechanical solidarity, Hyman realised that if some form of solidarity is to survive, unions need to completely reinvent themselves. At the moment unions are focusing on the ‘mass worker’, that is the ‘core’ working class, and setting an agenda to cater for their needs. They neglect the most advantaged and the most disadvantaged. This policy worked quite well while the majority of the labour force were mass workers. However because of the increasing influence of globalisation and post-Fordism a huge restructuring of work has occurred, which has changed the organisational structure and the make up of the labour force. There has been a growth in the most and least advantaged workers and the number of mass workers has declined significantly. This leaves unions facing a dilemma. They can either continue to represent a declining core and decline with that core or they can try and incorporate the needs of the periphery. Hyman believes that the latter option is the better. Like Heckscher (1988) and Durkheim (1933), Hyman believes that unions need to become increasingly organic in their membership. They need to attract a much more flexible, differentiated and interdependent membership. However, in order to attract such a diverse membership they need to develop policies, which will accommodate their divergent and often conflicting needs. Developing policies that appeal to all members of a union has never been easy, hence the proliferation of trade unions, but under organic solidarity this task becomes even more difficult. Hyman proposes that unions can cater for such differing interests by focusing on three key issues: flexibility, security, and opportunity.
Flexibility: In the area of flexibility, Hyman feels that unions should focus on the issue of time sovereignty, that is, ensuring workers have the correct balance between time spent at work, time spent at leisure activities and time spent domestically. Unions must also realise that concepts such as teamwork, quality circles and performance related pay, introduced under the guise of ‘empowerment’, have all increased workers responsibility but reduced [next page]