Worldwide Attitudes
ISSN 1323-9589
Volume 1996-03-04
Date: 4 March 1996
© Copyright 1996 by Krzysztof Zagorski. All rights
reserved.
Krzysztof Zagorski
Institutional systems for dealing with industrial relations are being liberalized in many mature capitalist countries in Europe and elsewhere (including Australia). They are still crystallising in post-communist Central European and East European countries -- societies which still face a clear choice between neo-corporatist models and liberal models. The two extreme types of industrial relations systems are the neo-corporatist model (now on the wane in mature capitalist nations) and the liberal model:
These issues are the subject of lively political dispute in many countries. To assess the public's views on them, I developed a series of questions on various aspects of industrial relations which were incorporated in the 1994/95 round of the International Survey of Economic Attitudes (ISEA), conducted in Poland, Finland and Australia.
The Polish ISEA was conducted by face-to-face interviews in 1994 on a nation-wide random sample of 2,127 adult men and women. The Finnish and Australian surveys were conducted in 1994 by mail on representative national samples of 1,737 and 1,378 persons respectively. A comparison of all three samples with census data indicates that they are quite representative of the population sampled.
Wording of the questions is given below. The original answers scored from 1 (the most positive) to 5 or 4 (the most negative). All were then recoded in equal intervals from 0 (the most negative) to 100 (the most positive) in order to standardise the additive scales and to produce variables exactly comparable between themselves and between countries. The multivariate analysis uses composite scales defined by factor analysis, using the principal component method with varimax rotation. The scales were computed as arithmetic mean of individual items with large loadings (over .40) on each factor (see table 2).
Most people favour at least some role for all the traditional neo-corporatist players: government, employers, and trade unions. It is to be expected that the Poles -- who used to live in a system of extreme state interventionist and whose fight for democracy was channelled through the Solidarity, which was formally (though not actually) a trade union -- would be much more inclined than Finns and Australians to accept neo-corporatist ideas. The data support this hypothesis (table 1).
A majority in all three nations accept neo-corporatist types of industrial relations to some degree. But neo-corporatism is more strongly endorsed in Poland than elsewhere, with the great majority agreeing that:
All important economic decisions should be made jointly by the federal government, nationwide trade union and nationwide employers' groups. Poland 78% agree Finland 65% agree Australia 55% agree
More concretely, on wage negotiations there is also majority endorsement of a prominent role for peak organizations. (The words in brackets differ among nations, giving the local names of the three national-level protagonists):
Wages and salaries should be set nationally in negotiations between the [federal government in Canberra], national trade union confederations like the [ACTU], and nationwide employer groups like the [Business Council of Australia]. Poland 65% agree Finland 63% agree Australia 50% agree
Compulsory unionism is more controversial. A large majority in Poland support it, an almost equally large majority in Australia oppose it, and Fins are in between:
There should be trade unions in all government enterprises and private businesses. Poland 73% agree Finland 50% agree Australia 30% agree
People also endorse a liberal concept of industrial relations, giving substantial scope to the market. Surprisingly, Poland exhibits also the highest acceptance of liberal industrial relations among the three nations in this survey as well as the highest support for neo-corporatist arrangements:
Wages should be negotiated in each individual company rather than for the industry as a whole. Poland 74% agree Finland 55% agree Australia 50% agree
And there is equally substantial support for even more decentralized wage negotiations:
Employers should have the right to negotiate earnings with each individual worker. Poland 77% agree Finland 56% agree Australia 52% agree
And there is no agreement about whether the government should be involved at all. Many in Poland -- just short of a majority -- think government should stay out; Finns and Australians are about evenly split, with many people having mixed feelings, especially in Australia:
Government should not get involved in disputes between trade unions and employers. Poland 46% agree Finland 41% agree Australia 29% agree
In Australia, support for the corporatist model of industrial relations is much lower, well below Polish and Finnish levels. However, Australians also give the weakest support to liberal arrangements. Many more of them choose a "middle of the road", neutral stance than is true in the other two nations. It seems that proponents of both systems have a lot of persuading to do, and that public opinion on this issue in Australia is, to a substantial degree, up for grabs.
Thus, in none of the three countries do people see corporatist (centralised) and liberal (decentralised) industrial relations as mutually exclusive. Instead all three societies agree that bargaining for wages should occur at all three levels: the nation as a whole, the enterprise level, and the individual level.
The suggestion that, in the public mind liberal and corporatist industrial relations are different things rather than opposite ends of one thing is substantiated in a factor analysis. The factor analysis does not show a single dimension with corporatism at one extreme and liberalism at the other. Instead, it shows two weakly correlated attitudinal dimensions -- one reflecting support for (or opposition to) liberal models of industrial relations and the other reflecting support for (or opposition to) corporatist models.
To reflect this dualism, I constructed two summary scales, one measuring public acceptance of the corporatist model of industrial relations (as measured by the first three questions in table 1) and the other measuring public acceptance of the liberal model (as measured by the last three questions in table 1). Each scale is the simple average of its three items, scored from a low of 0 (strong disagreement with all three questions) to a high of 100 (strong agreement with all three items).
International differences in these scales:
In Poland and other post-communist countries, socio-economic status, occupation, and class explain very little about differences in political and economic attitudes -- a fact documented by many researchers. This is especially (though not only) true when education, a prime determinant of these attitudes, is controlled. There is also an abundance of empirical evidence suggesting that in developed Western societies the influence of class and socio-economic status on political attitudes and behaviour is declining.
Consistent with this general tendency, socio-demographic characteristics exert almost no influence on the attitudes to different models of industrial relations in Poland (table 2). They explain these attitudes a only a little better in Finland and Australia.
Education is the most important determinant of these attitudes in Poland, consistent with earlier findings on other political attitudes. It is quite an important determinant in Finland and Australia as well. However, there is no internationally universal pattern: (1) In Poland, education enhances liberal attitudes to industrial relations and reduces support for neo-corporatist attitudes. (2) In Finland, it has no influence on liberal attitudes and (as in Poland) reduces support for neo-corporatist attitudes. (3) In Australia, education reduces support for liberal attitudes (the opposite of the Polish pattern) but has no influence on neo-corporatism. Thus education generally enhances liberalism in Poland and Finland but enhances neo-corporatism in Australia. This conforms with the results of other analyses showing that Australian educated strata have leftist ideological inclinations, while educated Poles and Finns are more inclined to accept liberal economic reforms.
Except for education, no other socio-economic variable -- occupation, business ownership, public sector employment, or personal income -- has a strong influence on attitudes in Poland. The only statistically significant effects are income (those with high incomes are less corporatist), public sector employment (more corporatist), and business ownership (more liberal).
Attitudes to industrial relations are much more strongly linked to socio-economic differences in Finland. Finnish administrative and professional employees as well as business owners are strongly against neo-corporatist industrial relations, while skilled workers and public sector employees support them. Business owners tend to favour the liberal model, while Finnish union members oppose it.
In Australia, socio-occupational status variables shape attitudes in a way similar to Finland. Administrators, professionals and farmers are strongly against neo-corporatism while public sector employees tend to support corporatism and reject liberalism. Prosperous Australians tend to support the liberal model.
Both in Finland and Australia, trade union members strongly support neo-corporatist institutions and are against liberal industrial relations. But in Poland, there is no relation between union membership and the attitudes toward industrial relations, reflecting the unique situation of the Polish trade union movement, which is deeply divided and still in a process of formation.
Attitudes to various aspects of industrial relations in Poland, Finland and Australia form two weakly correlated dimensions: neo-corporatism and liberalism. The choices the public make between them are not always fully consistent. It seems that both the strength of the attitudes and their internal consistency depend on socio-economic situation in a given country. In Poland, where economic transformation is very fast and radical, the attitudes are both more extreme and also less mutually exclusive than in Australia. Finland is somewhere in between.
Corporatist attitudes are only moderately differentiated along socio-economic lines while support for the liberal model of industrial relations almost unrelated to socio-economic position. The exceptions are business ownership (which enhances liberal attitudes) and employment in the public sector (which leads to support for neo-corporatism). Education is an important determinant of these attitudes but its impact differs from country to country: Educated people in Poland and Finland tend to reject neo-corporatism and accept liberal industrial relations; by contrast, the highly educated in Australia have no distinctive views about corporatism but tend to reject the liberal model.
Table 1. Opinion about industrial relations in
Australia, Finland, and Poland: Frequencies.
a. "Wages should be set nationally in negotiations
between government, trade union federations, and
employer associations."
b. "All important decisions should be made jointly
by the government, trade union federations, and
employer associations."
c. "There should be trade unions in all govern-
mental enterprises."
d. "Wages should be negotiated in individual com-
panies rather than for the industry as a whole."
e. "Employers should have the right to negotiate
earnings with each individual worker."
f. "Government should not get involved in dis-
putes between trade unions and employers."
-------------------------------------------------
Percent Factor Loading:
Yes Mixed No 1:"Neo-corp" 2 "Librl"
-------------------------------------------------
a.
Australia 50 26 23 .84 -.15
Finland 63 13 24 .81 -.25
Poland 65 12 23 .76 -.18
b.
Australia 55 21 24 .84 .03
Finland 65 10 25 .86 -.09
Poland 78 12 9 .84 -.01
c.
Australia 30 27 43 .61 -.09
Finland 50 16 34 .67 .06
Poland 73 16 12 .74 .06
d.
Australia 50 21 30 -.27 .70
Finland 55 14 32 -.30 .62
Poland 75 13 12 .05 .81
e.
Australia 52 20 28 -.31 .69
Finland 56 9 36 -.17 .64
Poland 77 24 10 -.01 .80
f.
Australia 29 40 31 -.20 .67
Finland 41 19 40 .03 .77
Poland 46 24 30 -.13 .60
Means on scales
Australia -- -- -- 54.2 54.7
Finland -- -- -- 61.6 55.1
Poland -- -- -- 70.1 67.3
-------------------------------------------------
Table 2. Multiple regressions analysis of neo-
corporatist and liberal industrial relations
attitudes, Australia, Finland, and Poland,1994-5.
Metric regression coefficients.
-------------------------------------------------
Causal Neo-Corporatist Liberal
Variable Attitudes Attitudes
A F P A F P
-------------------------------------------------
Female 3.98 ns ns ns ns ns
Age, years ns ns ns ns ns
Education -.38 -1.19 -.92 -.62 ns .75
At work -3.67 -5.70 -3.17 ns ns ns
Occupation:
Admin&Prof-6.84 -5.85 -3.87 ns ns ns
Para&Tech -2.93 ns ns ns ns ns
Cler&Sales 00 00 00 00 00 00
Skilled Wkr ns 4.97 ns ns ns ns
Semi&Unskl ns ns ns ns ns ns
Farm -13.46 ns ns ns ns ns
Income:Nat ns ns -.61 .68 ns ns
OwnBusiness ns -14.93 ns ns 10.68 6.65
GovtWorker 4.53 5.84 2.50 -3.21 -3.41 ns
UnionMember 9.70 10.32 ns -8.53 -6.97 ns
Constant 56.19 66.92 78.67 64.87 58.88 60.9
R-Squared .10 .14 .08 .06 .04 .03
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AUTHOR: ZAGORSKI
Krzysztof Zagorski is a senior researcher at the Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne. He is associated with the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN). He has published widely in Australia, Europe and the United States. He is co-principal investigator on the International Social Science Survey -Australia. On the International Survey of Economic Attitudes he also plays important roles as a founding researcher, as a member of the expert group, as co-principal investigator, and as director of the ISEA-Poland.
SURVEY INFORMATION IsssA, 1995
The International Social Science Survey- Australia of 1995 contains data from a national, representative sample of Australians. The ISSS-A is Australia's leading academic survey. It is conducted by a group of researchers at the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, and at the University of Melbourne. The director is Dr. Jonathan Kelley, and Dr. Clive Bean is the associate director. Dr. M.D.R. Evans and Dr. Krzysztof Zagorski are the co-principal investigators. The survey's core sponsor is the Research School of Social Sciences. Special modules of this survey include the International Survey of Economic Attitudes; the International Social Survey Programme's "National Identity-- Round 1" module; the "Australian Adult Education Survey, 1995" ; the "Citizen Attitudes and Australian Institutions" module (sponsored by the Reshaping Australian Institutions Project at ANU's Research School of Social Sciences); the National Social Science Survey (Sponsored by ANU's Research School of Social Sciences.The sample is a random sample of Australian citizens drawn by the Electoral Office from their computerized, comprehensive lists of voters (voting is compulsory in Australia). Respondents were sent an 84-page questionnaire by post. The envelope was addressed to them by name and included an introductory letter requesting their cooperation. It was followed ten days to two weeks later by a "thank-you/reminder" letter. At this stage the non-functional addresses and addresses of people who refused to participate were pruned out and no further contact was attempted to those, but the remaining potential respondents will ultimately be pursued by up to five subsequent mailings. This research reports on a preliminary sample of 2232.
© Copyright 1996 by Krzysztof Zagorski.
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