“PART OF THE ELITE”? ANTI-AUSTERITY POPULISM AND TRADE UNIONISM IN ITALY AND SPAIN

I. INTRODUCTION. RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND CASE SELECTION[Up]

The relationship between labour organizations and (left-of-centre) political parties has been extensively explored, either specifically ( ‍Hyman, R. (2001). Understanding European Trade Unionism. Between Market, Class and Society. London: Sage Publications. Hyman, 2001;  ‍Upchurch, M., Taylor G. and Mathers A. (2009). The Crisis of Social Democratic Trade Unionism in Western Europe: The Search for Alternatives. London: Ashgate.Upchurch et al., 2009;  ‍Bernaciak, M., Gumbrell-McCormick, R. and Hyman, T. (2014). European Trade Unionism: from Crisis to Renewal? Brussels: European Trade Union Institute.Bernaciak et al., 2014;  ‍Allern, E.H. and Bale, T. (eds.) (2017). Left-of-Centre Parties and Trade Unions in the Twenty-First Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Allern and Bale, 2017) or as part of the broader literature on the relationship between political parties and interest groups ( ‍Thomas, C: (ed.) (2001). Political Parties and Interest Groups. Shaping Democratic Governance. London: Lynne Rienner. Thomas, 2001;  ‍Lawson, K. and Poguntke, T. (eds.) (2004). How Political Parties Respond. Interest aggregation revisited. London: Routledge. Lawson and Poguntke, 2004;  ‍Tsakatika, M. and Lisi, M. (2013). “Zippin” up My Boots, Goin’ Back to My Roots: Radical Left Parties in Southern Europe. South European Society and Politics, 18 (1), 1-19. Tsakatika and Lisi, 2013). As Allern and Bale ( ‍Allern, E.H. and Bale, T. (eds.) (2017). Left-of-Centre Parties and Trade Unions in the Twenty-First Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.2017: 1) put it, “examples of close party–interest group relationships abound, but perhaps the best known—because it was supposedly the most intimate—is the relationship between left-of-center parties and trade unions”. Such “intimate” relationship took different forms, and the tightness of such relationship also varied, across regions and across times. Most of this literature focused, on the party side, on Social-Democratic and Communist parties that dominated (and often still dominate) the political Left in Western Europe.

The Great Recession triggered major changes in both Spanish and Italian party systems, though. New, albeit different, challengers arouse, championing anti-austerity and anti-establishment discourses and pretending to represent the “People” against political and economic, national and supranational elites: the Spanish Podemos and the Italian Five Star Movement (M5S). In contrast to what occurred in most of EU countries, such Southern European challengers, albeit generally categorised as “populist”, cannot be associated to the populist radical right, which remained, at least during the peak of economic crisis and anti-austerity protests, electorally much weaker than its “left-wing” (Podemos) or “polyvalent” (M5S) counterparts ( ‍Alonso, S: and Rovira, C. (2015). Spain: No Country for the Populist Radical Right? South European Society and Politics 20 (1), 21-45. Alonso and Rovira, 2015;  ‍Roberts, K. (2017). Party politics in hard times: Comparative perspectives on the European and Latin American economic crises. European Journal of Political Research, 56 (2), 218-233.Roberts, 2017;  ‍Sola, J. and Rendueles, C. (2017). Podemos, the upheaval of Spanish politics and the challenge of populism. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 26 (1), 99-116. Available at: https://10.1080/14782804.2017.1304899Sola and Rendueles, 2017;  ‍Pirro, A. (2018): The polyvalent populism of the 5 Star Movement. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 26 (4), 443-458. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14782804.2018.1519484Pirro, 2018). Both Podemos and the M5S, albeit not as successful as Syriza in Greece to provoke the “pasokization” of the “mainstream” centre-left, were nonetheless able to erode the electorate of the PSOE and the PD (Democratic Party) and to end with long-lasting party system bipolar dynamics. While the relationship between “historic” centre-left and the main union organizations has been extensively scrutinized, the relationship between the latter and such “new challengers” of the traditional left is, to say the least, an under-researched topic.

This article aims to start filling this gap, by exploring the (uneasy) relationships between these newly born Southern European “anti-austerity” populist parties (the Spanish Podemos and the Italian Five Star Movement [M5S]) and the main union organizations. The article does so by assessing different possible—and not necessarily mutually exclusive—motivations behind the harsh critiques that such parties addressed to “mainstream” unions. In particular, the article assesses if these parties did politicise the insider-outsider divide ( ‍Rueda, D. (2007). Social Democracy Inside Out. Partisanship and Labour Market Policy in Advanced Industrialized Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rueda, 2007;  ‍Hausermann, S. and Schwander, A. (2010). Varieties of dualization? Labour market segmentation and insider outsider divides across regimes. Paper prepared for the Conference The Dualisation of European Societies? Available at: http://www.mwpweb.eu/1/22/resources/publication_418_1.pdfHausermann and Schwander, 2010) typical of Mediterranean welfare regimes ( ‍Ferrera, M. (1996). The “Southern Model” of Welfare in Social Europe. Journal of European Social Policy, 17 (6), 17-37. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/095892879600600102Ferrera, 1996), through a discourse attacking the unions’ over-protection of labour market insiders, in detriment of the interests of the outsiders. Alternatively, anti-austerity populist parties could have emphasized unions’ supposed loss of autonomy and combativeness provoked by their long-lasting linkages to historical left-of-centre parties that backed “market-friendly” labour reforms, in detriment of the interests of both labour market insiders and outsiders. Other possible critiques, related to unions’ loss of autonomy but also with anti-establishment discourses that typically characterize anti-austerity populist parties, could refer to unions” excessive financial dependence on public resources, and the formation of a sort of “union oligopoly” affecting the quality of democracy of the labour representational system.

Each of these sets of arguments lies on different ideological and normative tenets and implies different political and policy positions that such “inclusionary” populist parties could hold in labour market and welfare issues. If such new populist parties intended to politicize the insider-outsider divide in highly dualized societies and to look at labour market outsiders (defined as unemployed and precarious workers) as their potential classes gardées, then we should expect them to push for a “recalibration” ( ‍Picot, G. and Tassinari, A. (2014). Liberalization, Dualization or Recalibration? Labour market reforms under austerity, Italy and Spain 2010-2012. Working Paper Series in Politics. Oxford: Nuffield College. Available at: https://bit.ly/2plpjDdPicot and Tassinari, 2014) of the Southern welfare regime towards less segmented directions, also by targeting the supposed insiders’ over-protection. If critiques linked to the “demobilising” function of the unions prevailed, these parties would merely advance leftist attacks against forms of “competitive corporatism” ( ‍Rhodes, M. (2000). The Political Economy of Social Pacts: Competitive Corporatism and European Welfare Reform. In P. Pierson (ed.). The New Politics of the Welfare State (pp. 165-194). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rhodes, 2000) detrimental to the interests of the working-class. In this case, the unions could be forced by such populist parties to assume more radical stances to avoid further loss of legitimacy. Finally, if “anti-caste” arguments prevailed, such populist challengers could deny any legitimacy to the political role of the unions, thus presenting themselves as the “true” political representative of the working-class and/or pushing for alternative forms of labour organizations bypassing the existing union system.

This is the reason for investigating the political and meta-political discourses (we could also define them as “party cultures”) of newly born Southern European “inclusionary” populist parties. The article consequently relies on 41 in-depth interviews with Podemos’ and Five Star Movement’s representatives at the regional and national levels, and with high officials of different peak union confederations. The representatives of the parties come from different regions (seven Comunidades Autónomas and eleven Regioni) and mostly belong to either Legislative Commissions (at the national and regional levels) on labour and welfare issues or hold important charges within the party. The party manifestos elaborated by the parties under investigation in view of Italian 2013 and 2018 and Spanish 2015 national elections were also consulted. The research also relies on survey data (from the Italian Elections Studies—ITANES—and from the Centro de Investigación Sociológica—CIS—) to assess how both “insider” and “outsider” voters and unionised workers responded to the first appearance of such anti-austerity populist parties in the electoral arenas.

Podemos and the M5S offer a good possibility for a comparative research over these topics. They have been widely categorised as “inclusionary” populist parties ( ‍Della Porta, D., Mosca, L., Kouki, H. and Fernández, J. (2017). Movement Parties Against Austerity. Cambridge: Polity Press.Della Porta et al. 2017;  ‍Sola, J. and Rendueles, C. (2017). Podemos, the upheaval of Spanish politics and the challenge of populism. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 26 (1), 99-116. Available at: https://10.1080/14782804.2017.1304899Sola and Rendueles, 2017;  ‍Caiani, M. and Graziano, P. (2019). Varieties of Populism in Europe in Times of Crises, Special Issue, West European Politics, 42 (6), 1141-1336.Caiani and Graziano, 2019), which emerged in the aftermath of the Great Recession, and were able to attract vast segments of the leftist electorates (although M5S’ constituency—as well as its programmatic platform—is much more mixed, in terms of ideology, than Podemos’ ( ‍Sola, J. and Rendueles, C. (2017). Podemos, the upheaval of Spanish politics and the challenge of populism. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 26 (1), 99-116. Available at: https://10.1080/14782804.2017.1304899Sola and Rendueles, 2017;  ‍Tronconi, Filippo (ed.) (2015). Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement. Burlington: Ashgate. Tronconi, 2015). Both have immediately achieved significant electoral results (the M5S achieved 26 % of the votes in the 2013 legislative elections and 32 % in the 2018 legislative elections, while Podemos in the 2015 and 2016 elections rounded 20 %). Both parties were leading the opposition to the national governments when the fieldwork was carried on (from September 2016 to November 2017).

The exact definition of the concept of populism is highly disputed (for a review, see  ‍Padoan, E. (2017). The Populist Re-Politicization. Some Lessons from South America and Southern Europe, PArtecipazione e COnflitto, 10 (2), 517-543. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1285/i20356609v10i2p517Padoan, 2017). However, the parties present all the central features of the most accepted definitions of “populism” ( ‍Della Porta, D., Mosca, L., Kouki, H. and Fernández, J. (2017). Movement Parties Against Austerity. Cambridge: Polity Press.Della Porta et al., 2017;  ‍Boscán, G., Llamazares, I. and Wiesehomeier, N. (2018). Populist Attitudes, Policy Preferences, and Party Systems in Spain, France, and Italy, Revista Internacional de Sociología 76(4), 5. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3989/ris.2018.76.4.18.001Boscán et al., 2018). They rely on an antagonistic and polarizing political discourse, attacking the political caste and the economic elites that brought “The people” to the social disaster. Both parties refuse (or initially refused, in the case of Podemos) to position themselves in the left-right axis, which they consider functional to the reproduction of the old system and of its political referents, accused of being involved in consociational and corrupted practices.

Apart from the electoral success of newly-born inclusionary populist parties, Italy and Spain also share several commonalities in terms of their union system, thus making them well-suit for comparative researches over these topics. In both cases, organized labour is historically fragmented, even at the peak level. The major peak unions were once characterised by tight links with specific parties (the Unión General del Trabajo [UGT] and the Unione Italiano del Lavoro [UIL] with the Socialists, Comisiones Obreras [CC. OO] and the Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro [CGIL] with the Communists, the Confederazione Italiana Sociale del Lavoro [CISL] with the Christian-Democrats). However, ideological barriers became blurred, and inter-organizational contrasts are often due to organizational resilience. Said this, the CGIL is still clearly more leftist than CISL and UIL, while the UGT is still quite close to the PSOE. Union density in Italy (33 %) is much higher than in Spain (17 %); however, more than half of the Italian union members are pensioners, while the true source of legitimacy of the Spanish unions does not come from individual affiliations, but from workplace elections (whose turnout is roughly 70 %) of the comités de empresa. CGIL (the Italian biggest union), CISL and UIL roughly account for 80 % of the total union membership, and the UGT and CC. OO. share a similar % (each of them around 35 %) of delegados en los comités de empresa. Therefore, in both countries, the main unions achieved a dominant position, in detriment of sectorial or radical grassroots unions, such as the Italian Unione Sindacale di Base (USB) or the Spanish Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT).

The article is organised as follows. The second section discusses the main distinctive features of Mediterranean welfare regimes and labour markets, as well as the forms historically assumed by party-union relationships in Southern Europe. The third section advances some hypotheses over the arguments that Podemos and the M5S are expected to brand to criticize “mainstream” labour organizations, as well as over their ability to be electorally successful amongst unionized workers and labour market outsiders. Such hypotheses, which will be tested in the fourth, fifth and sixth sections, are developed on the basis of the quite different ideological roots of Podemos and the M5S. Section 4 and 5 relies on qualitative data from in-depth interviews with party and union officials; at the end of each section, to provide an additional test for the eventual politicization of the insider-outsider divide by Podemos and the M5S, we briefly focus on some concrete policy proposals that both parties forcefully advanced to strengthen social protection for labour market outsiders. Section 6 looks at post-electoral survey data to explore the sociological composition of the electorates of Podemos and the M5S at the time of their first participation to national elections, to assess the extent to which they were able to attract unionized workers and labour market outsiders. Some concluding remarks close the article.

II. PARTY-UNION RELATIONSHIPS AND THE EMERGENCE OF INCLUSIONARY POPULISMS IN SOUTHERN EUROPE[Up]

The concept of “party-union relationship” is a complex and multidimensional one, because such relationship can assume different forms. Variations of the kind and tightness of party-union relationships across time and countries have been also analyzed ( ‍Thomas, C: (ed.) (2001). Political Parties and Interest Groups. Shaping Democratic Governance. London: Lynne Rienner. Thomas, 2001;  ‍Allern, E.H. and Bale, T. (eds.) (2017). Left-of-Centre Parties and Trade Unions in the Twenty-First Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Allern and Bale, 2017). As for the kind of relationship, different authors have stressed, among others: membership and leadership overlapping ( ‍Duverger, M. (1972). Party Politics and Pressure Groups: A Comparative Introduction. New York: Crowell.Duverger, 1972;  ‍Thomas, C: (ed.) (2001). Political Parties and Interest Groups. Shaping Democratic Governance. London: Lynne Rienner. Thomas, 2001;  ‍Tsakatika, M. and Lisi, M. (2013). “Zippin” up My Boots, Goin’ Back to My Roots: Radical Left Parties in Southern Europe. South European Society and Politics, 18 (1), 1-19. Tsakatika and Lisi, 2013); ideological affinity ( ‍Gillespie, R. (1990). The Break-up of the “Socialist Family”: Party-Union Relations in Spain, 1982-89. West European Politics, 13 (1), 47-62. Gillespie, 1990;  ‍Thomas, C: (ed.) (2001). Political Parties and Interest Groups. Shaping Democratic Governance. London: Lynne Rienner. Thomas, 2001); mutual strategic relationship—competition, cooperation, cooptation… ( ‍Verge, T. (2012). Party Strategies towards Civil Society in New Democracies: The Spanish Case. Party Politics, 18 (1), 45-60.Verge, 2012;  ‍Otjes, S. and Rasmussen A. (2015). The Collaboration between Interest Groups and Political Parties in Multi-party Democracies: Party System Dynamics and the Effect of Power and Ideology. Party Politics, 23 (2), 96-109. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068814568046Otjes and Rasmussen, 2015)—; power balance between parties and unions (“party” or “union” control of the other actor:  ‍Kitschelt, H. (1996). The Transformation of European Social Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kitschelt, 1996; Morlino, 1998). As for the tightness of such relationships, scholars generally agree on both the decline and the survival of important (left-of-center) party-union linkages during the last three decades, as well as on the relevance of historical legacies to have a comprehensive understanding of the present situation.

For instance, in Nordic countries, or in the archetypical case of the British Labour Party, the consolidation of “externally legitimated” ( ‍Panebianco, A. (1988). Modelli di partito. Organizzazione e potere nei partiti politici. Bologna: Il Mulino. Panebianco, 1988) social-democratic parties (i.e., parties that were born as “electoral arms” of the unions) made such links particularly tight. In other countries such as the US, “mainstream” left-of-center parties and unions, as well as other interest groups, remained much more autonomous and pluralistic relationships became the norm. In Mediterranean Europe, it is difficult to identify a single pattern. In Italy, France and Portugal, ideological fragmentation at both partisan and union levels provoked, for a long time, the prevalence of forms of partisan control over (fragmented) peak unions, although in Italy and France, but not in Portugal, we observed, since the early nineties, a more balanced and pluralistic relationship (Morlino, 1998;  ‍Parsons, N. (2017). Left-wing Parties and Trade Unions in France. In E.H. Allern and T. Bale (eds.). Left-of-Centre Parties and Trade Unions in the Twenty-First Century (pp. 112-129). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Parsons, 2017;  ‍Mattina, L. and Carrieri M. (2017). Left-of-Centre Parties and Trade Unions in Italy. In E.H. Allern and T. Bale (eds.). Left-of-Centre Parties and Trade Unions in the Twenty-First Century (pp. 170-186). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mattina and Carreri, 2017). In Spain, where the “mass-party” phase was entirely skipped for historical reasons ( ‍Van Biezen, I. (2003). Political Parties in New Democracies Party Organization in Southern and East-Central Europe. London: Palgrave. Van Biezen, 2003), and where ideological fragmentation within the Left was equally evident ( ‍Watson, S. (2015). The Left Divided: The Development and Transformation of Advanced Welfare States. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Watson, 2015), party-unions relationships remained tight, although both kinds of players increasingly defended their autonomy ( ‍Gillespie, R. (1990). The Break-up of the “Socialist Family”: Party-Union Relations in Spain, 1982-89. West European Politics, 13 (1), 47-62. Gillespie, 1990;  ‍Hamann, K. (2001). Spain: Changing Party-Group Relations in a New Democracy. In C. Thomas (ed.). Political Parties and Interest Groups. Shaping Democratic Governance (pp. 175-192). London: Lynne Rienner. Hamann, 2001). Greece is the only Mediterranean country where ideological divisions and strong partisan control coexisted with the presence of a single peak union confederation ( ‍Kretsos, L. and Vogiatzoglou, M. (2015). Lost in the Ocean of Deregulation? The Greek Labour Movement in a Time of Crisis. Relations industrielles/Industrial Relations, 70 (2), 218-239.Kretsos and Vogiatzoglou, 2015).

More generally, even in countries characterized by strong party-union linkages, well-known structural changes (such as the end of the Fordist era, the decline of union density, and the dominance of free market economy and ideology) put in peril the basis for the “double bargain” between parties and unions: the “economic bargain” that “concerns issues of employment and wage restraints”, and a “political bargain” that “links voting behavior and protective legislation” ( ‍Howell, C. (1992). Regulating Labor: The State and Industrial Relations Reform in Postwar France. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Howell, 1992). Nevertheless, the links between the main left-of-center parties and the unions were far from disappearing in advanced economies ( ‍Allern, E.H. and Bale, T. (eds.) (2017). Left-of-Centre Parties and Trade Unions in the Twenty-First Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Allern and Bale, 2017), and Italy and Spain were not exceptions ( ‍Constantelos, J. (2001). Italy: The Erosion and Demise of Party Dominance. In C. Thomas (ed.). Political Parties and Interest Groups. Shaping Democratic Governance (pp. 119-138). London: Lynne Rienner. Constantelos, 2001;  ‍Hamann, K. (2001). Spain: Changing Party-Group Relations in a New Democracy. In C. Thomas (ed.). Political Parties and Interest Groups. Shaping Democratic Governance (pp. 175-192). London: Lynne Rienner. Hamann, 2001;  ‍Mattina, L. and Carrieri M. (2017). Left-of-Centre Parties and Trade Unions in Italy. In E.H. Allern and T. Bale (eds.). Left-of-Centre Parties and Trade Unions in the Twenty-First Century (pp. 170-186). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mattina and Carreri, 2017). In Italy and Spain, despite their demise of Keynesian Social Democracy, left-of-center “mainstream” parties (namely, the PSOE and the PD) remained inescapable allies for the unions to assure to the latter their participation in policy-making process through “social dialogue” or “concertation” ( ‍Molina, O. and Rhodes M. (2008). The Reform of Social Protection Systems in Mixed Market Economies. Pôle Sud, 28 (1), 9-33. Molina and Rhodes, 2008). The unions kept defending such policy-making practices as a source of “institutional power” ( ‍Pérez, S., Roca, B. and Díaz-Parra, I. (2016). Political exchange, crisis of representation and trade union strategies in a time of austerity: trade unions and 15M in Spain, European Review of Labour and Research, 22 (4), 461-474.Pérez et al., 2016;  ‍Mattina, L. and Carrieri M. (2017). Left-of-Centre Parties and Trade Unions in Italy. In E.H. Allern and T. Bale (eds.). Left-of-Centre Parties and Trade Unions in the Twenty-First Century (pp. 170-186). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mattina and Carreri, 2017;  ‍Rigby, M., García Calavia, M. (2018). Institutional resources as a source of trade union power in Southern Europe. European Journal of Industrial Relations, 24 (2), 129-143. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0959680117708369Rigby and García Calavia, 2018), although such negotiations were often conducive (and even more so since the beginning of the Great Recession:  ‍Gago, A. (2014). Trade Unions’ Strategies and Austerity Politics in Southern Europe: The Role of Labour in Spain, Italy and Portugal vis-à-vis Austerity Measures. In Paper, ECPR General Conference, University of Glasgow.Gago, 2014;  ‍Pérez, S., Roca, B. and Díaz-Parra, I. (2016). Political exchange, crisis of representation and trade union strategies in a time of austerity: trade unions and 15M in Spain, European Review of Labour and Research, 22 (4), 461-474.Pérez et al., 2016) to “least-worst” outcomes, due to harder political (i.e., the reduced room of manoeuvre due to supranational constraints) and economic conditions ( ‍Bernaciak, M., Gumbrell-McCormick, R. and Hyman, T. (2014). European Trade Unionism: from Crisis to Renewal? Brussels: European Trade Union Institute.Bernaciak et al., 2014). On the other side, despite the decline in union density due to changes in the productive system and to the increase of job precariousness, left-of-center “mainstream” parties did not break with the unions, which still fulfilled the functions of mobilizing “core-voters” ( ‍Allern, E.H. and Bale, T. (eds.) (2017). Left-of-Centre Parties and Trade Unions in the Twenty-First Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Allern and Bale, 2017) and of legitimating reforms pointing at labor market flexibility, in exchange of enduring protections of labor market insiders ( ‍Rueda, D. (2007). Social Democracy Inside Out. Partisanship and Labour Market Policy in Advanced Industrialized Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rueda, 2007;  ‍Bernaciak, M., Gumbrell-McCormick, R. and Hyman, T. (2014). European Trade Unionism: from Crisis to Renewal? Brussels: European Trade Union Institute.Bernaciak et al., 2014;  ‍Baccaro, L. (2009). Similar structures, different outcomes: corporatism’s resilience and transformation (1974-2005). Review of Keynesian Economics, 2 (2), 207-233. Baccaro, 2009).

Such considerations led Rueda ( ‍Rueda, D. (2007). Social Democracy Inside Out. Partisanship and Labour Market Policy in Advanced Industrialized Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007) to argue that the core-constituency of Social Democratic parties in Southern Europe and the major beneficiaries of Mediterranean welfare regimes are not the working class in its entirety. Instead, it is represented by the insiders, who took advantage of strong permanent employment protection, contributory pension schemes and unemployment insurance systems, in partial detriment of the outsiders, composed by unemployed and fixed-term workers, often young people and women, who find high barriers to enter the “labour-market fortress” and to accede to (weak) social assistance schemes. According to this argument, the unions, as well as left-of-centre governments, shared strong responsibilities for welfare regime dualization, because both kinds of players devoted much more efforts in defending the protection of the insiders than the interests of the outsiders, highly underrepresented amongst their membership and electorate. In fact, social assistance schemes and anti-poverty programs are notoriously underdeveloped in Southern Europe ( ‍Ferrera, M. (ed.) (2005). Welfare State reform in Southern Europe. London: Routledge.Ferrera, 2005), and both Podemos and (particularly) the M5S made of the introduction and/or the extension of non-contributory programs for poverty relief one of their “flagships” in welfare issues. According to Lynch ( ‍Lynch, J. (2006). Age in the Welfare State: The Origins of Social Spending on Pensioners, Workers, and Children. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.2006), the “workerist ideology” of the Italian unions, and the fear of clientelistic misuses, have made the unions quite suspicious towards social assistance schemes. In Spain, although the introduction of safety-net social policies at the regional level convinced some authors to write about a “Nordic path” taken by the Spanish welfare regime ( ‍Moreno, L. (2008). The Nordic Path of Spain’s Mediterranean Welfare. CES Working Papers, 163. Moreno, 2008), other authors ( ‍Bentolila, S., Dolado, J. and Jimeno, J. (2011). Reforming an Insider-Outsider Labor Market: The Spanish Experience. Working Paper, 6186. Bonn: IZA.Bentolila et al., 2011) criticise this view, arguing that the Spanish labour market is still highly dual, with the highest temporary employment rate in Europe.

The Great Recession potentially offered the opportunity ( ‍Rueda, D. (2012). Dualization and Crisis. Swiss Political Science Review, 18 (4), 523-530. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/spsr.12012Rueda, 2012) for a politicization of the insider-outsider divide, as the size of the latter category dramatically increased throughout the Southern European region. In 2013, according to OECD data, in all these countries, as well as in Ireland, unemployment rate was well above 10 % (12 % in Italy, 16 % in Portugal, over 25 % in Spain and Greece). Youth unemployment rate was higher than 35 % in every Southern European country (higher than 55 % in Spain and Greece), while lower than 27 % in the rest of OECD Western European countries. Against the tendency of the rest of Western economies, temporary employment rate decreased or remained stable in Southern Europe, mainly due to non-renewals of fixed-term contracts ( ‍Pérez, S. (2014). Eurozone Crisis and Social Models: What we can Learn from Italy and Spain. CES Papers-Open Forum# 20, 2013-2014. Available at: https://bit.ly/31kE6LFPérez, 2014), which is an easier way to dismiss in times of crisis, particularly in Southern Europe, where, on average, permanent employment protection was (and still is) higher than in the rest of advanced economies.

Such “over-protection”, however, furnished the ideological motivation ( ‍Picot, G. and Tassinari, A. (2014). Liberalization, Dualization or Recalibration? Labour market reforms under austerity, Italy and Spain 2010-2012. Working Paper Series in Politics. Oxford: Nuffield College. Available at: https://bit.ly/2plpjDdPicot and Tassinari 2014) for implementing labour market reforms diminishing also permanent employment protection in the region, particularly since the beginning of the Great Recession (see Table 1). Vast popular mobilizations against austerity measures (coped with labour market reforms) emerged throughout Southern Europe during the peak of economic crisis. The main union organizations played an important role in the protests ( ‍Ancelovici, M. (2015). Crisis and Contention in Europe: A Political Process Account of Anti-Austerity Protests. In H.-J. Trenz, V. Guiraudon et C. Ruzza (eds.). The European Crisis: Contributions from Political Sociology (pp. 189-209). London: Palgrave. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137493675_10Ancelovici, 2015); nevertheless, they were neither the only anti-austerity actor, nor the major one ( ‍Sánchez Mosquera, M. (2017). Trade unionism and social pacts in Spain in comparative perspective. European Journal of Industrial Relations, 24 (1), 23-38. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0959680117711476Sánchez Mosquera, 2017). Sometimes they even became the target of the popular protests: their legitimacy as credible contentious actors declined, while new movements emerged, displaying much more mobilising capacity and sometimes attracting widespread and cross class support through typically “populist” frames ( ‍Della Porta, D. (ed.) (2015). Late Neoliberalism and its Discontents in the Economic Crisis. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-35080-6Della Porta, 2015;  ‍Pérez, S., Roca, B. and Díaz-Parra, I. (2016). Political exchange, crisis of representation and trade union strategies in a time of austerity: trade unions and 15M in Spain, European Review of Labour and Research, 22 (4), 461-474.Pérez et al., 2016).

At the electoral level, we witnessed the emergence of new “inclusionary” ( ‍Mudde C. and Rovira, C. (2013). Exclusionary vs. Inclusionary Populism: Comparing Contemporary Europe and Latin America. Government and Opposition, 47 (2), 147-174. Mudde and Rovira, 2013) populist political parties such as Podemos in Spain and the Five Star Movement (M5S) in Italy. In Greece, Syriza dramatically increased its electoral support since 2012, and governed the country from January 2015 to the very recent 2019 elections. In Portugal, the two main far-left parties achieved important electoral results and are currently supporting the Socialist government. Apart from the Portuguese exception, the traditional social-democratic parties are (or have been) in trouble. The Greek PASOK has almost disappeared, and the Spanish PSOE and (in particular) the Italian PD are far from being close to their maximum levels of electoral consensus. In contrast to well-established social-democratic parties, new challengers such as Podemos and the M5S did not enjoy any previous links to the unions: analysing the relationships between such parties and the labour movement is precisely the topic of this article, starting from some hypotheses that will be advanced in the next section.

III. HYPOTHESES[Up]

To understand how such populist challengers intend their relationship with the labour organizations, this research starts from some hypotheses that pay attention to the ideological roots of these parties. Both Podemos and the M5S made use, since their inception, of a discourse of “democratic regeneration”, attacking the caste (understood both in political and economic terms) for having deprived “the People” of their sovereignty and for serving particularistic interests ( ‍Padoan, E. (2017). The Populist Re-Politicization. Some Lessons from South America and Southern Europe, PArtecipazione e COnflitto, 10 (2), 517-543. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1285/i20356609v10i2p517Padoan, 2017). However, such concepts are “empty signifiers” ( ‍Laclau, E. (2005). La razón populista. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Laclau, 2005) that must be at a certain time be filled with more precise contents. For instance, labour market insiders can be either included, if not within the “castes”, within “over-protected” sectors enjoying rent-seeking positions in detriment of the outsiders, or, alternatively, as part of “the People” penalised by labour market reforms under austerity. In both cases, “mainstream” unions can become the target of harsh critiques, albeit for quite different reasons.

The first section of this article anticipated three broad kinds of critiques that can be expected from “inclusionary” populist parties against “mainstream” unions. First, unions can be targeted for exclusively representing labour market insiders in detriment of the interests of the outsiders: in times of scarce resources, the divide between insiders and outsiders would be read as a zero-sum game which insofar penalised the latter. Such prognosis would lead to push for a recalibration of segmented welfare regimes to reduce dualization, by attacking insiders” “privileges”, promoting “exit and entry flexibility” in the labour market and strengthening non-contributory assistance schemes and anti-poverty programs. Second, unions can be attacked for their lack of combativeness against leftist governments advancing market-friendly measures reducing permanent employment protection and favouring job precariousness, in exchange of unions’ access to the polity domain through enduring party-union linkages and of some “moderation” in market-friendly reforms. Third, and partially related to the first and (particularly) the second sets of potential critiques, populist parties can point at the “cartelization” ( ‍Katz, R. and Mair, P. (1995). Changing models of party organization and party democracy: the emergence of cartel party. Party Politics, 1 (1), 5-28. Katz and Mair, 1995) of “mainstream” unions, which became increasingly bureaucratised actors, both dependent from the access to public resources and enjoying a dominant position preventing new actors from challenging their dominancy. The latter set of critiques would be more related to democratic ossification than to the kinds of interests promoted (or disregarded) by the unions.

We hypothesize that Podemos’ cadres and militants do not adopt the “recalibration” argument; instead, we expect that they criticize the unions for their “conciliatory” stances towards left-of-centre governments, both before and during the Great Recession—the so-called “boxing and dancing” strategy ( ‍Pérez, S., Roca, B. and Díaz-Parra, I. (2016). Political exchange, crisis of representation and trade union strategies in a time of austerity: trade unions and 15M in Spain, European Review of Labour and Research, 22 (4), 461-474.Pérez et al., 2016;  ‍Sánchez Mosquera, M. (2017). Trade unionism and social pacts in Spain in comparative perspective. European Journal of Industrial Relations, 24 (1), 23-38. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0959680117711476Sánchez Mosquera, 2017)—. Podemos can be easily categorised as a “left-wing populist party” ( ‍Sola, J. and Rendueles, C. (2017). Podemos, the upheaval of Spanish politics and the challenge of populism. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 26 (1), 99-116. Available at: https://10.1080/14782804.2017.1304899Sola and Rendueles, 2017;  ‍Della Porta, D., Mosca, L., Kouki, H. and Fernández, J. (2017). Movement Parties Against Austerity. Cambridge: Polity Press.Della Porta et al., 2017), within the broad family of the European Radical Left (see  ‍March, L. (2017). Left and right populism compared: the British case. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 19 (2), 282-303.March, 2017). Party ideology is clearly inspired by Laclau’s progressive populist theory ( ‍Laclau, E. (2005). La razón populista. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Laclau, 2005;  ‍Errejón, I. and Mouffe, C. (2015). Construir Pueblo. Madrid: Icaria Editorial. Errejón and Mouffe, 2015). Podemos’ rise cannot be understood without considering the protest-cycle begun with the Indignados (or 15-M) movement and sustained by several social movements, such as the Mareas (“Tides”), against the cuts in social spending, and the PAHs (“Platform of the Victims of Bank Evictions”)^‍‍[1]. Podemos did not pretend to be “the party of the Indignados or of the social movements”: however, its explicit goal was to “assault the institutions” and to relaunch the main claims emerged by the Spanish anti-austerity protest-cycle. The own Podemos’ militants and cadres often come from (left oriented) social movement activism, even predating the 15-M (the interviewees collected largely confirm this claim). We thus expect, from Podemos, “typically leftist” critiques towards the unions, targeted for their “betrayal” of the popular sectors for the sake of maintaining good relationship with their party referents. In sum, we expect that, while pointing at the lack of socio-political representation suffered by precarious and unemployed workers, Podemos’ interviewees do not agree with the normative tenets of the literature on labour market dualization and with the necessity of implementing “flex-security” models. The first and the third sets of anti-union critiques thus should prevail.

In contrast to Podemos, M5S’ rise was parallel to the “scattered” ( ‍Zamponi, L. and Fernández, J. (2016). Dissenting youth: how student and youth struggles helped shape anti-austerity mobilisations in Southern Europe. Social Movement Studies, 16 (1), 64-81. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2016.1239194Zamponi and Fernández, 2016) anti-austerity movement in Italy, in which the unions (particularly the CGIL and the radical unions) played an important role, at least until 2011, when Berlusconi’s government resigned and unions’ contentiousness decreased both in number and intensity ( ‍Andretta, M. (2017). Neoliberalism and Its Discontents in Italy: Protests Without Movement? In D. Della Porta (ed.). Late Neoliberalism and its Discontents in the Economic Crisis (pp. 201-242). London: Palgrave. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-35080-6_7Andretta, 2017). M5S’ origins must be traced in the political blog of Beppe Grillo, a well-known comedian who inspired the creation, in 2005, of autonomous local groups through the Meet Up on-line platform. The Meet Ups initially were internet-based local forums of discussion among the followers of Grillo’s blog, mainly concerning environmental and anti-corruption issues. The Meet Ups gradually switched to the electoral arena, at the municipal level. Then, in 2009, Grillo—together with the web-marketing entrepreneur Gianroberto Casaleggio—created a national party, the Five Star Movement (M5S), drawing its name from the five “guiding lights” of the Movement: public water, environment, Internet connectivity, development and transport.

The M5S has a very loose organization. At the local level, we find the Meet Ups, whose members do not have any formal role within the party: party representatives in public institutions are the only entitled to speak in behalf of the M5S, which lacks any formal middle-level structure. The process of candidate selection is nearly entirely organized through on-line voting: in M5S’ ideology, the “Web” should act as a perfect interest aggregation system, through supposedly horizontal deliberative processes among on-line activists. Such organizational arrangements and practices have de facto led to plebiscitarian results ( ‍Anselmi, M. and De Nardis, F. (2018). Italian Politics between Multipopulism and Depoliticization. Revista Internacional de Sociología, 76 (4). Available at: https://doi.org/10.3989/ris.2018.76.4.18.006Anselmi and De Nardis, 2018). Although the M5S for a long time self-declares leaderless and led by “the own members” through on-line voting, Beppe Grillo—who is the legal owner of the party’s name and brand—recently reaffirmed his role of guarantor of the Movement, while the current political leader of the party is Luigi Di Maio, elected by the members in September 2017.

Such “genetic model”, as well as the salvific role that “the Web” plays in party ideology, convinced some scholars to label the M5S as a “web-populist” party ( ‍Anselmi, M. and De Nardis, F. (2018). Italian Politics between Multipopulism and Depoliticization. Revista Internacional de Sociología, 76 (4). Available at: https://doi.org/10.3989/ris.2018.76.4.18.006Anselmi and De Nardis, 2018). As such, the M5S traditionally advanced strong critiques against representative democracy, instead calling for the implementation of direct democratic tools to avoid any forms of intermediation between the “will of the People” and state institutions. M5S’ discourse lends itself to appeal to “unheard People”, to constituencies lacking organizations to represent their interests within the polity domain. Consequently, it seems reasonable to expect that M5S’ interviewees are more likely to politicize the “divide” between labour market insiders and outsiders by claiming to represent the latter, even pointing at the “over-protection” of the former (our “second sets” of potential critiques that we recalled above).

In sum, from Podemos and the M5S we expect different stances, which we could label “leftist” and “outsiderist”, respectively, over welfare and labour market issues. We also expect from both parties, because of their anti-establishment and typically populist discourse, harsh attacks against the unions for their enduring links with their “mainstream” competitors and for their “cartelization”, which supposedly prevents other social actors from breaking unions’ oligopoly. As for the party electorates that such populist newcomers were able to attract in their first national elections, we consequently expect an over-representation of the outsiders amongst M5S’ voters, while we hypothesize that Podemos remained much more skewed towards ideologized leftist voters, who are also more likely to be unionised.

IV. PODEMOS AND THE UNIONS[Up]

V. THE M5S AND THE UNIONS[Up]

VI. THE COMPOSITION OF PODEMOS’ AND M5S’ ELECTORATES ACCORDING TO THE INSIDER-OUTSIDER DIVIDE[Up]

VII. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUDING REMARKS[Up]

As expected, the normative and policy implications of the insider-outsider divide literature do not inspire the political action of Podemos in welfare and labour issues. Its leaders and militants never mention the comparatively higher levels of permanent employment protection as an obstacle for job creation, instead backing (as in its 2015 manifesto) several forms of public intervention to boost the economy in strategic sectors to create “new jobs of higher quality”. In this sense, there is a clear convergence with the opinions collected from union officials (from both Italy and Spain), who dismiss the literature over the insider-outsider divide as an ideological justification for “relaxing” permanent employment protection.

Podemos’ critiques against “mainstream” unions precisely point at their supposed bureaucratization, “institutionalization”, and lack of combativeness (particularly vis à vis left-of-centre governments) against the tendency of making the labour market more flexible. There are some complaints about bisindicalismo, i.e. the dominancy of UGT and CC. OO in the union system in detriment of other, more combative unions: nevertheless, Podemos’ representatives tend to recognize the status quo and to adapt their concrete political action to it, instead of fighting it. In a few years, Podemos gradually changed its discourse to establish a relationship of cooperation, instead of competition, with the main Spanish labour organizations, and particularly with CC. OO. However, no formal party-union links have been established: Podemos, as a party, relies on organizational linkages ( ‍Tsakatika, M. and Lisi, M. (2013). “Zippin” up My Boots, Goin’ Back to My Roots: Radical Left Parties in Southern Europe. South European Society and Politics, 18 (1), 1-19. Tsakatika and Lisi, 2013) with other kinds of social actors (mainly social movements), quite in line with the party “genetic model” ( ‍Panebianco, A. (1988). Modelli di partito. Organizzazione e potere nei partiti politici. Bologna: Il Mulino. Panebianco, 1988). At the same time, section 6.1 shows that a certain overlapping between unions’ membership and Podemos’ electorate exists, while our qualitative data suggests that even ideological affinity is strengthening, thanks to the perception, by Podemos’ cadres, of a certain “radicalization” (or, at least, greater autonomy vis à vis the Socialists) of the big Spanish unions. It will be interesting to observe how the relationships between Podemos and “mainstream” unionism will evolve in the near future, depending on if Podemos will be part (or not) of a coalitional government with the PSOE. It seems reasonable to predict that cooperation will prevail if Podemos will govern with the Socialists, also to look for social support for progressive reforms. Cooperation could become more difficult under an all-Socialist cabinet: it would depend both on the kind of unions-government relationship and on the possible Podemos’ radicalization (in the sense of a revival of a strong anti-casta rhetoric) due to political isolation.

Despite some complaints about “lazy” or “dishonest” workers “protected” by the unions, M5S’ interviewees identify in the union officials, and not in the “insiders”, those enjoying unfair “privileges”. In this sense, our expectations have been partially disconfirmed: the M5S does not assume the normative and policy implications of the insider-outsider divide literature for elaborating its programmatic proposals. In fact, Podemos and the M5S have recently dedicated many efforts to raise (in the case of Podemos) or to introduce the provision of a minimum wage (in the case of M5S), as well as to introduce stricter requirements for hiring through fixed-term contracts. Both parties thus explicitly contest the positive relationship between the diffusion of open-ended contracts and labour market “flexibility”: a relationship that lies at the core of most literature over the insider-outsider divide.

However, would this imply that the M5S adopts, like Podemos, a leftist stance in labour market and welfare issues? Not really. The M5S, like Podemos, criticizes “mainstream” unions for mobilising intermittently, following the “political inputs” from specific parties (the PD in particular). However, M5S’ public figures advance additional complaints, questioning the “privileges” enjoyed by union delegates, often equated with “politicians”. Analogously to their proposals for the political sphere, the M5S pushes for the direct, unmediated participation of the workers in the representational bodies at the workplace levels, and even in the management of the firms: two measures that would make the delegati sindacali truly accountable to the workers. This makes the M5S in competition (instead of cooperation) with unionism: the M5S poses serious, deeper challenges to the system of working-class representation, which is constantly delegitimised as a form of (intrinsically dangerous) intermediation.

In M5S’ discourse, every organization or association playing a political role is potentially criticised for “invading” a space that is not proper of them: accusations of responding to some “partisan” interests are always there. Instead, M5S’ representatives conceive their role as “listeners” of different demands which must be articulated in a (supposedly) “post-ideological” way through “the Web”. M5S’ pretension, so typical of “techno-populist parties” ( ‍De Blasio E. and Sorice, M. (2018). Populisms among technology, e-democracy and the depoliticisation process, Revista Internacional de Sociología, 76 (4). Available at: https://doi.org/10.3989/ris.2018.76.4.18.005De Blasio and Sorice, 2018), to be the only legitimated structure of political aggregation and intermediation obviously generates tensions with organized interests, including the unions. Podemos’ militants and leaders come from a leftist milieu, with well-established fundamental values, while M5S’ activists are relatively “free” from previous ideological loyalties. However, there is something deeper, at the “meta-political” level, which is helpful to understand the different stances of Podemos and the M5S towards unionism.

Podemos recognizes and emphasizes the crucial role that collective mobilization and organization can play for sustaining progressive changes. The M5S, instead, pushes for citizens’ activation, which requires much less “investment” and is understood as an individual enterprise. In the “Web”, “one counts as one”: “organization” is invariably evaluated negatively. It is not understood as a useful instrument that unorganised constituencies could adopt to defend their interests; instead, it is equated with “representation” and, thus, with lesser accountability towards the bases. Furthermore, “organization” produces, according to quite a liberal reasoning, potential “distortions”: “When we dialogue with unions, or other interest groups, we are always attentive to extract the general interests from very particularistic demands” (IT8).

The M5S has been up to now much more successful than Podemos in attracting popular sectors, disproportionately composed by outsiders. Throughout the years, the M5S seems to have been also able to appeal to many discontent insiders ( ‍Corbetta, P. (Ed.) (2017). M5S. Come cambia il partito di Grillo. Bologna: Il Mulino.Corbetta, 2017), which arguably suggested the party to do not insist with Grillo’s “anti-insider” claims. However, the M5S, from the government, has not stopped its violent attacks against the unions, and particularly against the CGIL, which is the most important, in terms of membership, (left-wing) Italian social organization, as well as highly sceptical over the introduction of a minimum wage because of its supposed “race to the bottom” effects in collective bargaining. In sum, the M5S, from the government, is pursuing (instead of just theorising) an overt competition against the CGIL by presenting itself as the “true representative” of the working-class and by attacking unions for their enduring partisan links, which still assure the electoral mobilization of PD’s “core voters”.

Italian and Spanish unionism has been often criticised for having missed many opportunities to achieve higher autonomy from its party referents, by excessively relying on “institutional power” instead of increasing their representativeness amongst both labour market insiders and outsiders ( ‍Rigby, M., García Calavia, M. (2018). Institutional resources as a source of trade union power in Southern Europe. European Journal of Industrial Relations, 24 (2), 129-143. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0959680117708369Rigby and García Calavia, 2018). While Podemos pushes for unions” autonomy—and found a certain approval amongst unionised workers—, the M5S opted for exploiting and trying to deepen their crisis of legitimacy: surely a drastic—and problematic—corrective to “competitive corporatism”.