The Resilience of a Company-Level System of Industrial Relations: Union Responses to Teamwork in Renault's Spanish Subsidiary

Abstract

FASA-Renault unions displayed a distinctive reaction to teamwork compared with unions in other Spanish automobile companies. This reaction reveals the existence of a company-level institutional framework that acted as a constraint on the forces of convergence. A confluence of factors provided FASA unions with a degree of confidence not enjoyed by unions in other motor companies: the development of a decentralized system of collective bargaining; the timing of the first attempts to introduce teamwork in Spain, when no other motor company was introducing it; the subsequent enshrinement of relevant provisions in the company agreement; and the establishment of general guarantees relating to work organization. The argument qualifies the importance attached to the national institutional framework by recent theoretical positions in favour of divergence. It also adds possible explanations of divergence to the arguments supporting intermediate positions between convergence and divergence.