Unionists against unions: Toward hierarchical management in post-communist Poland

East European Politics and Societies

Volumn 13, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 1-31

  Ost, David ^a   Weinstein, Marc ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0033416331     PISSN: 08883254     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0888325499013001001     Document Type: Article

References (38)

1. These are formerly state-owned enterprises whose assets have been formally transferred to the state treasury in order to be sold to private owners. The difference between "state-owned firms" and "commercialized firms" is that in the former, the highest legal authority is an employee council elected by the workforce, whereas in the latter the employee council disappears and chief authority is handed to a supervisory board, four of whose six members are appointed by the state
2. The sampling frame for the survey matched one state-owned firm with two privatized firms - one purchased by Polish investors and one purchased by foreign investors - by product market and firm size. Sampling for the survey proceeded in two stages. First, using data from the Polish Agency for International Investment, we identified industrial enterprises that had been acquired by foreign firms whose equity stake was equal to or exceeded $1.0 million. In February 1994, this population consisted of 40 firms. After identifying 22 foreign-owned firms that were willing to participate in the study, we proceeded to compile a list of comparably sized state-owned and domestic-owned privatized firms from the same four-digit industries represented in the sample of foreign-owned firms. From this list of firms, the Centrum Badania Opinii Społecznej (CBOS) contacted enterprise directors to gain their permission for participation in the study. Response rates for state-owned, non-state-sector domestic firms, and foreign-owned firms was 84, 91, and 55 percent, respectively. Prior to the administration of the survey, the authors, individually and jointly, conducted field research in more than 20 Polish enterprises, providing the basis for much of the subsequent analysis.
3. Juliusz Gardawski and Tomasz Żukowski, Robotnicy 1993: Wybory Ekonomiczne i Polityczne (Warsaw: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 1994). See also Gardawski's Robotnicy 1991: Świadomość Ekonomiczna w czasie Przełomu (Warsaw: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 1992).
4. Juliusz Gardawski and Tomasz Żukowski, Robotnicy 1993: Wybory Ekonomiczne i Polityczne (Warsaw: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 1994). See also Gardawski's Robotnicy 1991: Świadomość Ekonomiczna w czasie Przełomu (Warsaw: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 1992).
5. Gardawski, Żukowski, Robotnicy 1993, 24.
6. Gardawski, Żukowski, Robotnicy 1993, Table 2, 25.
7. Gardawski, Żukowski, Robotnicy 1993, Table 1, 18.
8. Gardawski, Żukowski, Robotnicy 1993, Table 3, 26.
9. Ibid.
10. Gardawski, Żukowski, Robotnicy 1993, quoted on p. 27.
11. Responses of union activists to this question did not vary systematically as a function of the ownership status of firms or of the demographic attributes of the respondents.
12. Anthony Levitas, "Rethinking Reform: Lessons from Polish Privatization," in World Policy Journal 9:4 (Fall/Winter 1992): 790.
13. On these, as on most questions, there was not a great deal of difference between Solidarity and other trade unionists. Indeed, we found that despite the very tense relations among national union activists, on the shop-floor level representatives of Solidarity and of the OPZZ, the former communist trade union federation, get on rather well. Less than 30 percent of our respondents stated that there were many areas of conflict between the unions; well over half claimed that union relations at their particular plant were friendly.
14. Juliusz Gardawski, Robotnicy 1991 (Warsaw: Friedrich Ebert Foundation, 1992), 28. The exact wording differs slightly in each survey. In 1991, workers were asked whether they agreed that "employee participation in firm governance will definitely improve the situation of the firm." In 1983, the statement read: "The more employee participation in firm governance, the better."
15. Ibid. Again, there was some difference in the exact wording of the statements. In 1991: "Regular workers should not in general get involved in management, since that can only make the situation worse." In 1983: "Enterprise management is the business of the managers, and workers should not interfere in such matters."
16. Dariusz Chełmiński, Andrzej Czynczyk, and Henryk Sterniczuk, Pierwsze Doświadczenia Prywatyzacji: Raport z badań w sprywatyzowanych przedsiȩbiorstwach (Warsaw: Centrum Prywatyzacji, 1993).
17. A competing explanation may be that unionists' attitudes toward firm-level rights are a result of a firm's economic conditions rather than its ownership status. Although we lack precise firm-level performance data, indirect measures of performance, such as wage levels or the competitive environment of the firm, were unrelated to the responses of unionists. Since firms with the same ownership patterns had a broad variance in these indicators, it is unlikely that we would have identified the correlation between the attitudes of trade unionists and firm ownership structure if the economic condition of the firm was a key determinant of union attitudes.
18. Statements taken from interviews with Polish managers between 1992 and 1994 were carried out by Marc Weinstein and a Polish team of sociologists. Cited in Chełmiński, Czynczyk, and Sterniczuk, Pierwsze Doświadczenia Prywatyzacji; and Marc Weinstein, "The Remaking of the Polish Industrial Relations System" (Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996).
19. Statements taken from interviews with Polish managers between 1992 and 1994 were carried out by Marc Weinstein and a Polish team of sociologists. Cited in Chełmiński, Czynczyk, and Sterniczuk, Pierwsze Doświadczenia Prywatyzacji; and Marc Weinstein, "The Remaking of the Polish Industrial Relations System" (Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996).
20. On the workerist nature of Solidarity, see Roman Laba, The Roots of Solidarity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); and Lawrence Goodwyn, Breaking the Barrier: The Origins of Solidarność in Poland (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
21. On the workerist nature of Solidarity, see Roman Laba, The Roots of Solidarity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); and Lawrence Goodwyn, Breaking the Barrier: The Origins of Solidarność in Poland (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
22. Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 181-82.
23. Mark Kramer, "Polish Workers and the Post-Communist Transition," in Communist and Post-Communist Studies 28:1 (1995): 71-114.
24. See the discussion in Kathleen Thelen and Sven Steinmo, "Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics," in Steinmo, Thelen, and Frank Longstreth's Structuring Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
25. David Ost, "The Politics of Interest in Post-Communist East Europe," in Theory and Society 22 (August 1993).
26. See, for example, Przeworski, Democracy and the Market; and John Mueller, "Democracy, Capitalism, and the End of Transition," in Michael Mandelbaum, ed., Post-Communism: Four Perspectives (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996).
27. See, for example, Przeworski, Democracy and the Market; and John Mueller, "Democracy, Capitalism, and the End of Transition," in Michael Mandelbaum, ed., Post-Communism: Four Perspectives (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996).
28. For some classic statements, see Kenneth Shepsle, "Institutional Equilibrium and Equilibrium Institutions," in Herbert Weisberg, ed., Political Science: The Science of Politics (New York: Agathon Press, 1986); and Douglass C. North, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
29. For some classic statements, see Kenneth Shepsle, "Institutional Equilibrium and Equilibrium Institutions," in Herbert Weisberg, ed., Political Science: The Science of Politics (New York: Agathon Press, 1986); and Douglass C. North, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
30. See, for example, Peter Gourevitch, Politics in Hard Times: Comparative Responses to International Crises (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986); Peter Hall, "The Movement from Keynesianism to Monetarism: Institutional Analysis and British Economic Policy in the 1970s," in Steinmo, Thelen, and Longstreth, Structuring Politics; and Peter Katzenstein, Corporatism and Change; Austria, Switzerland, and the Politics of Industry (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984).
31. See, for example, Peter Gourevitch, Politics in Hard Times: Comparative Responses to International Crises (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986); Peter Hall, "The Movement from Keynesianism to Monetarism: Institutional Analysis and British Economic Policy in the 1970s," in Steinmo, Thelen, and Longstreth, Structuring Politics; and Peter Katzenstein, Corporatism and Change; Austria, Switzerland, and the Politics of Industry (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984).
32. See, for example, Peter Gourevitch, Politics in Hard Times: Comparative Responses to International Crises (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986); Peter Hall, "The Movement from Keynesianism to Monetarism: Institutional Analysis and British Economic Policy in the 1970s," in Steinmo, Thelen, and Longstreth, Structuring Politics; and Peter Katzenstein, Corporatism and Change; Austria, Switzerland, and the Politics of Industry (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984).
33. Janusz Da̧browski, Michał Federowicz, and Anthony Levitas, "Polish State Enterprises and the Property of Performance: Stabilization, Marketization, Privatization," in Politics and Society 19:4 (December 1991): 403-38.
34. Laszlo Bruszt, "Reforming Alliances: Labour, Management, and State Bureaucracy in Hungary's Economic Transition," in Acta Oeconomica 46: 3-4 (1994): 313-32. Also, interview with Hungarian industrial sociologist Laszlo Neumann, February 1995.
35. For more on this, see David Ost, "The Crisis of Liberalism in Poland," in Telos no. 89 (fall 1991); and "Labor, Class, and Democracy: Shaping Political Antagonisms in Post-Communist Society," in Beverley Crawford, ed., Markets, States, and Democracy: The Political Economy of Post-Communist Transformation (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995); Marc Weinstein, "From Co-Governance to Ungovernability: The Reconfiguration of Polish Industrial Relations," in Kirsten Wever and Lowell Turner, eds., The Comparative Political Economy of Industrial Relations (Madison: IRRA Press, 1995); and Steven Stoltenberg, "An Underground Society: The Evolution of Poland's Solidarity 1982-1989" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1995).
36. For more on this, see David Ost, "The Crisis of Liberalism in Poland," in Telos no. 89 (fall 1991); and "Labor, Class, and Democracy: Shaping Political Antagonisms in Post-Communist Society," in Beverley Crawford, ed., Markets, States, and Democracy: The Political Economy of Post-Communist Transformation (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995); Marc Weinstein, "From Co-Governance to Ungovernability: The Reconfiguration of Polish Industrial Relations," in Kirsten Wever and Lowell Turner, eds., The Comparative Political Economy of Industrial Relations (Madison: IRRA Press, 1995); and Steven Stoltenberg, "An Underground Society: The Evolution of Poland's Solidarity 1982-1989" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1995).
37. For more on this, see David Ost, "The Crisis of Liberalism in Poland," in Telos no. 89 (fall 1991); and "Labor, Class, and Democracy: Shaping Political Antagonisms in Post-Communist Society," in Beverley Crawford, ed., Markets, States, and Democracy: The Political Economy of Post-Communist Transformation (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995); Marc Weinstein, "From Co-Governance to Ungovernability: The Reconfiguration of Polish Industrial Relations," in Kirsten Wever and Lowell Turner, eds., The Comparative Political Economy of Industrial Relations (Madison: IRRA Press, 1995); and Steven Stoltenberg, "An Underground Society: The Evolution of Poland's Solidarity 1982-1989" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1995).
38. For more on this, see David Ost, "The Crisis of Liberalism in Poland," in Telos no. 89 (fall 1991); and "Labor, Class, and Democracy: Shaping Political Antagonisms in Post-Communist Society," in Beverley Crawford, ed., Markets, States, and Democracy: The Political Economy of Post-Communist Transformation (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995); Marc Weinstein, "From Co-Governance to Ungovernability: The Reconfiguration of Polish Industrial Relations," in Kirsten Wever and Lowell Turner, eds., The Comparative Political Economy of Industrial Relations (Madison: IRRA Press, 1995); and Steven Stoltenberg, "An Underground Society: The Evolution of Poland's Solidarity 1982-1989" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1995).