Introduction:
What are social partnerships? What are Social dialogues? Who are the social partners engaged in the social dialogue process? What makes them social partners/ What is the purpose of social dialogue/ And is the social dialogue process any longer fit for purpose in today’s world, and in the context of the complex crises facing the world, and confronting humanity?
I write from the perspective of one who at best has been a skeptic of the social dialogue process and narrative. At best, in its origin and through the best of times, it has been inadequate as a tool to meet the needs of workers, and resolve the challenges of the world of work in favour of the workers and the working people.
However, in the face of the complex crises of existential proportions confronting humanity, and rocking the world of work to its very foundations, it is debatable if the social dialogue process has not outlived its usefulness, even for capital, the market and capitalism, in its current form.
Setting The Context:
At the heart of the social dialogue narrative, conception and process, is the expressed desire, sometimes overt, sometimes covert, to replace, and or supplant the conception of class struggle, which is associated and equated with social strife; with the social peace, through a negotiated social pact between, the designated social partners.
This political and ideological purpose is hidden and covered through the economic language, and enabled by its framing within the context of industrial, and or labour relations. Within this framework, the purpose of social dialogue is to achieve industrial harmony, and to prevent and mitigate industrial strife.
It is not a coincidence that this notion took form, and gained in traction in the aftermath of the great depression and the two world wars of the first half of the 20th century. Governments, businesses and corporations, and trade unions began to shift towards a more structured process of dialogue between the primary actors in the world of work, but in a manner aimed at depoliticizing the world of work, taking the political out of the workplace, and the work place out of the arena of the political. This was against the series of revolutions and revolutionary outbursts engendered by the global economic crisis, and rooted in consequent industrial strife.
The interests of the economic actors had to be shown to be same, and came to be conceptualized as enabling and ensuring industrial, that is economic growth, through increasing productivity, and increasing profits, as a consequence of which, incomes can then increase and grow.
Ultimately though, the purpose is to secure the more or less active and proactive participation, and even complicity of the workers through their representative organisations, in managing the capitalist system, policing industrial relations and the market, and ensuring industrial, and more importantly, social harmony among the contending classes of capitalism.
The end result of this is the eventual substitution of the class struggle and class politics with a range of industrial relations, ranging from social cooperation, through social collaboration, and social cooptation, to social compromise.
Who Is A Social Partner And What Are Social Partnerships?
Within this depoliticized industrial relations framework, who are the social partners? And are they in reality social partners?
The first thing to note here is that in order for there to be a social partnership, there must be social partners. Who then are these social partners among which a social partnership is desirable? According to this industrial relations framework, where the desire for industrial harmony is the priority, irrespective of the relative political, economic and social powers of the partners, these partners are the employers [including in particular the businesses and corporations], the employees [that is the workers], and the state [which is assumed to be neutral, even though the state always doubles as employer, and as such ultimately the representative of every other employer]. In this equation, it is comfortably overlooked that the state, which is also an employer, is a state that has been constituted by, and in the interest of the capitalist system; it is a state that shares in the interest and desire of big business and corporations for improved and increasing productivity, and revenues and profits.
And, although employers and their organisations, along with the state and its institutions, as well as workers and their organisations are all indeed social actors and social stakeholders in the industrial context, and in the work place and the world of work, nevertheless, this fact alone does not, and should not make them social partners.
Whereas social actors and stakeholders can, and do need to have a framework for dialogue, but it should be as social actors with often mutually antagonistic interests, rather than as partners with shared interests, which are to be collectively promoted and safeguarded.
This notion of social partnership politically and structurally disarms the working class, and leads to the working class subordinating its interests to the interests of its more powerful social partners. It leads the workers away from class politics and class struggle, towards the path of dispute resolution among actors with shared interest to protect.
A true social partnership among real social partners, would be possible when and where the businesses and corporations are owned, controlled and democratically managed by workers, where the state is a democratically representative state of the working people, where workers industrial and workplace representative organisations are truly under democratic control of their members, and not under the control of more or less unaccountable entrenched leaderships of elected aristocracies and unelected bureaucracies; that is in a society and socioeconomic formation that is based on social property ownership, a socialist system.
However, this is not the only issue with the social partnership mechanism in its origin, as well as in its current iteration. The other, and equally important issue with the framework is the scope of its representativeness of all the actors in the economic process. In a world where Micro, Small, and Medium Scale Enterprises [MSMEs] constitute a significant portion of economic activity and the world of work, and where there are significant levels of informalization and casualization of work, the work place and working conditions, this tripartite arrangement at the core of the social partnership process is extremely inadequate and quite obviously unrepresentative of significant sections of the population. This is why, social dialogue is increasingly unable to stem social strife and respond to the needs and interests of wider sections of the economy beyond the boundaries of industrial relations.
Social Dialogues And Social Pacts:
Because social partners have been designated in this way, and the consequent social partnership has been construed in this manner, the social dialogue process amongst these social partners, is thus already very limited in its representativeness, and skewed against workers, because of its failure to take into account the relative character of, and balance of constitutive political and economic, even social powers among these partners, which is weighted heavily in favour of two of the partners [Employers and the State], to the detriment of the third [the workers].
The most significant and comprehensive social pacts that come out of these social dialogues are often the Tripartite Collective Bargaining Processes that lead to Tripartite Collective Bargaining Agreements [CBAs], within industry, within sectors of the economy or across the entire economy, such as in national CBAs.
Because by their very nature, these CBAs are limited to conditions at the work place, and the terms and conditions of work and the worker in the workplace, their ability to cater for the interests of workers across the economy, nationally, and even across borders, particularly across global supply chains is thus constrained and severely limited to the ultimate benefit of the big business and corporations, and the states that back them, and or benefit from them.
If this framework was already limited and limiting, how can it be adequate and impactful in the current context of complex global crises? How can this framework accommodate the interests of workers in the informal sector, workers in MSMEs, and workers who are residents of communities, neighbourhoods, impacted by the climate crisis, by environmental devastation, by corporate abuse?
For instance, continental, bilateral, multilateral, and global free trade and economic agreements are negotiated, without the place for continental, bilateral, multilateral, and global CBAs within the frameworks of these trade and economic agreements.
Towards Social Transformation?
The thrust of my argument has been that the social dialogue process, is a constraint to, rather than enabling of social transformation.
It its conception, evolution and practice, its purpose has been to render the struggle of workers politically ineffective, and to coopt this into the process of achieving social stability, at the expense of the social transformation of the conditions of the workers and of work, that is the social transformation of the workplace and the world of work.
The class struggle is not the antithesis of social dialogue; and social dialogue is not an progressive or advanced replacement or substitution for the class struggle. In fact, for the workers and the working class, class struggle and social dialogue can be, and ought to mutually reinforcing as integral parts of the same process. In this sense, class struggle is social dialogue, in the sense in which the social movements proclaimed that Resistance Is Advocacy.
First, we will have to bring politics, that is class and political contestation back into the work place, into the world of work, and into the life of workers organisations.
We then have to redefine the idea and characterization of social partners and social partnerships. We must accept the employer and the state are social actors and social stakeholders in the industrial context and economic process and space, nevertheless, they are not the social partners of the workers and the working class. It is important, ideologically, and politically to redefine social partnerships and the social partnership process. We do not need to be partners to engage in meaningful dialogue, As social actors who recognise the relative importance and significance of other social actors, we can engage in social dialogue, including our engagements being shaped by our class interests and class politics, and the deployment of elements of class struggle. This is important because the primary power of the working class and its organisations is social, in terms of our numbers, and in terms of our place in the scheme of production, given that work is at the heart of world of work, and the world of work is central to human civilisation.
Second, on the basis of the foregoing we would have to redefine the scope and representative coverage of social dialogue, in order for the process to be comprehensive, for the eventual social pact to be inclusive. This will require bringing into the fold, on the one hand, presently unrepresented segments of workers in MSMEs, in informal sector, and in casualisation; and on the other hand, community and citizens organisations, and the movements, which are simply other forms of organisation and organising and mobilising [including mobilisation] of the workers, but not on the basis of their workplace, but rather on the basis of where they are residents, and of issues which impact and affect them directly outside of the workplace, but which are essentially consequences of the processes occurring within the world of work, and the way and manner of the organisation of the world of work.
A real and effective social dialogue process will thus have to effectively include and be expressly representative of all of these social actors and social stakeholders; whether this be a dialogue across a workplace, across a corporation, across an industry, across a sector, or across entire economy; or whether it be at local, national, bilateral, multilateral, continental and global levels.
It is within this context that workers and workers organisations representing workers at the workplaces [wherever these are], the trade unions in particular, can then define the parameters for identifying Social Allies, and building sustainable Social Alliances and Strategic Partnerships with these Social Allies, to further the interests of workers and working people in general, within the context of the world of work; and to push the interests of workers and working people within the context of specific social dialogues and eventual social pacts that emerge from such social dialogues. And these social allies will have to be the community and citizens organisations, and the social movements, which are organising workers along issues beyond the actual workplace.
This is made necessary, and is precipitated on the fact that there are three primary dimensions to the existence of the worker; the worker in the workplace [that is the work space]; the worker in the home (that is in the private space); and the worker in the community, where they are resident (that is in the public space).
It is only within this context of expanded social dialogue, where the worker is in strategic alliance with other non-workplace based workers organisations, that class consciousness can develop and be enhanced, and that the class struggle can take place driven by the class politics of the worker, and in the overriding interest of the working people who constitute the overwhelming majority of society, whether they are presently in work or not, and regardless of how precarious or stable their work and work conditions are.
The present form of presentation and manifestation of the social dialogue process, lures the worker into a false sense of shared interests with the employer and capital, undermines development and nurturing of class consciousness, blunts class politics, weakens class power, and self-limits and constrains the class struggle, leading to an outcome, that prioritises industrial harmony and social peace and stability, as the catalyst for economic growth and safeguard for social development and improvements in the conditions of workers; over the actual interests and priorities of the workers, and in a manner that commits workers to make social compromises that are ultimately inimical to the interests of workers.
In this scenario, workers workplace-based organisations become coopted, and are transformed from agents of social transformation into agents who police the social peace in the interest of the society, that is in the interest of the dominant classes in society who own big business and the corporations and control the state.
Jaye Gaskia is Associated With Praxis Academy & the Campaign For Transformative Governance (CFTG) in Nigeria. www.jayegaskia.com
