Competition and Monopoly in Interest Representation: A Comparative Analysis of Trade Union Structure in the Railway Industries of Great Britain and West Germany

Abstract

This article analyses some of the causes of the emergence and the stability of monopolies of representation of industrial unions in competition with sectional interest associations of specific occupational groups. As its empirical point of reference, the article takes the trade union systems in the railway industries of Great Britain and West Germany. In both countries, there are three railway unions whose areas of jurisdiction largely correspond to each other cross-nationally: one industrial union, one union of loco motive engine drivers, and one union for administrative staff. However, while in West Germany the proportion of the industrial union (GdED) in the total number of unionized railway workers increases at the expense of the sectional competitors, in Great Britain it has for a long time been declining. This divergent development of two otherwise similar trade union systems — a development which in Great Britain has led to the establishment of three sectional monopolies of representation, while in West Germany it is leading to the formation of one inclusive monopoly — is explained by three factors:

— the presence in West Germany, and the absence in Great Britain, of a formally union-independent, statutory system of interest representation at the workplace with distinct, legally guaranteed rights of codetermination (Works Constitution);

— the fact that in West Germany the workers represented by the two sectional unions are Beamte and thus do not have the right to take industrial action; and

— the occupational structure which in West Germany permits higher interoccupational mobility, thus rendering the establishment of sectional interest associations more difficult.