• Corpus ID: 150655061

General Strikes in Western Europe 1980-2008

@inproceedings{Kelly2009GeneralSI,
  title={General Strikes in Western Europe 1980-2008},
  author={J. Kelly and Kerstin Hamann},
  year={2009}
}

• J. Kelly, Kerstin Hamann
• Published 2009
• Economics, Political Science

Abstract Since the early 1980s the balance of economic power has shifted away from labour and towards increasingly mobile and powerful corporations. The associated decline in trade union membership and strike activity in has sometimes been interpreted as an erosion of both industrial and political democracy. This paper shows that whilst the capacity and willingness of unions to strike against corporations has declined since c1980, the frequency of general strikes to protest against government policy has risen. Many general strikes have been directed against conservative governments – e.g. in Greece and Italy but Christian and Social Democratic governments have also been the targets for such action e.g. in Belgium and Spain respectively. The paper explores the origins of these general strikes in the weaknesses of governments under conditions of heightened electoral volatility; the attempts by governments to marginalize or exclude unions from policymaking; and the presence within the unions of left activists with ‘repertoires of contention’ that include the use of strike action in the political arena. It also explores the outcomes of general strikes, both for unions and governing parties.