Background

The workforce representatives -generally organized into a union- have the responsibility to embody the collective voice of workers, defending their interests and proposals in the productive environment. The representation of workers manifests their social power through collective action, and its main tool against its counterpart, i.e. the business organization, is conflict -mainly strikes-. With conflict, workers and especially their representatives show the power they have in defending their interests. Several studies focus on analyzing the relationship between forms of labor representation and conflict, empirically highlighting the existence of a relationship that is different from the one expected theoretically. In this regard, evidence indicates that the concentration of labor representation in a single labor organization or union, hypothetically related to greater unity in the labor representation in the workplace and therefore greater power to convene workers to collective action, is not associated with a higher level of industrial conflict. All studies indicate that this inverse relationship between bargaining power and conflict is related to the effect of multi-unionism and the incentives it creates for union competition.

Methodology

This applied study, after reviewing the theoretical framework and the most relevant empirical literature, focuses on the Spanish case, shedding light on the effect that competition between labor organizations -for increasing their institutional power- has on the development of conflict during the collective bargaining. Seeking to contrast the three hypotheses established in this study, defining the relationship between heterogeneity level in labor representation in collective negotiation and work conflict, and once the corresponding variables are defined, we develop an econometric probit model, considered more appropriate for this analysis. The database of collective bargaining agreements from the Spanish Ministry of Labor and Social Security provides the necessary empirical data for the contrast model.

Results

Our empirical evidences confirm the positive and significant impact of rivalry between unions on the development of conflict in collective bargaining, conflict being a marketing strategy used for strengthening the leadership of each union and maintaining their reputation (as a successful organization) with their clients -employees-. This shows that there is a negative and significant effect of the concentration labor representation index, according to which there is a lower probability of conflict during the negotiation as heterogeneity decreases in that representation. This result is complemented with the models that use the two variables, which define the type of leadership existing in labor representation. Thus, when leadership is stable, the probability of labor conflict decreases significantly, and substantial evidence of the opposite is obtained as well when the leadership is unstable.

Conclusions

All the above indicates that in a situation where a labor organization dominates the representation of workers in collective bargaining, the likelihood of conflict decreases and, on the opposite sense, when the dispersion in the representation of workers increases, the probability of conflict also rises.