Legitimacy versus incentives: Explaining the difference between early and late union responses to nonstandard employment in the Netherlands

Abstract

With the spread of alternative work arrangements across European labor markets, union responses to nonstandard employment have increasingly received scholarly attention. Based on a process-tracing analysis of the Netherlands between 1971 and 1996, I propose an alternative framework for understanding the divergence between early and late union responses to nonstandard employment. Rather than a choice between cooperation with management or outsiders, this case study shows that trade unions initially faced a dilemma between a legitimacy-based and an incentive-based strategy when nonstandard employment took off. Whereas the first strategy is inherently exclusive, the latter allows for more inclusive union responses. Contrary to the incentive-based strategy, the attractiveness of the legitimacy-based strategy decreases with higher levels of nonstandard employment, explaining why inclusive union responses typically become more dominant over time.