title: Enterprise unionism and strategies of the autonomous Labour movement: a contemporary history of Taiwanese trade unions
Creators: name: Chiang, Kuo-Yu
Publisher: name: The University of Edinburgh
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Taiwan
subject: labour history
subject: Enterprise unionism
subject: Taiwanese democratisation
subject: Industrial relations
subject: trade unions

description: This thesis is the first historical study on the overall process of contemporary unionism in Taiwan, as opposed to a case study focusing on a specific labour organization or short period. By excavating the history of local labour movements (1977-2019), I aim to provide a new interpretation to an old question: why is Taiwanese labour weak? The thesis explores not only the circumstances that created the weakness, but also the initiatives undertaken by organized labour. Structural limitations, as well as trade unionist strategies developed in response, are foregrounded as the dynamic forces that have shaped Taiwan's labour history. With an approach of history from below, which prioritizes the perspectives, ideas, and actions of the silenced subalterns, this thesis draws upon union documentation and labour movement magazines to understand organized labour's rationale behind historical episodes. A lens of enterprise unionism is applied as Taiwanese labour's strategic development has been based upon this form of mobilisation vehicle. As to history, this thesis examines Taiwanese enterprise unionism in its performance in both industrial relations and democratic involvement. The former examination includes the process in which labour reclaimed management- or state-controlled unions at the local, regional, and national level; the mode of collective bargaining; the effectiveness of union voicing during neo-liberal restructuring; and labour's recent effort to introduce supra-enterprise unionism. Political examination includes Taiwanese unions' resistance to authoritarian rule, their failure in forming a class- based political party and strategies for policymaking inclusion during and after Taiwan's democratic transition. With union history unearthed, this thesis finds that enterprise unionism, with its resourceless and fragmented nature, produces labour's organizational dependency on employers and political dependency on parliamentary actors. While employer influence over workers' bargaining vehicles is amplified through electoral intervention and employer sponsorship of union function, trade unions become succumbing to mainstream political parties due to their incapacity for independent presence in state legislatures. Nonetheless, labour is found to have momentum reaching beyond enterprise boundaries. In conclusion, this thesis renews our understanding of enterprise unionism by generalizing mechanisms that produce and reproduce enterprise unions in Taiwan. Against previous hypotheses, this thesis demonstrates that enterprise unionism is not the embodiment of collaborative Eastern culture, nor a product of an insufficiently competitive labour market, but a socio-political construction that reduces labour costs through weakening labour's bargaining position. Instead of a system of conflict avoidance based on direct communication between employers and employees, enterprise unionism is based on alteration of union voicing and insufficient communication. Its collaborative propensity does not come from mutual understanding, but from employer influence over labour's bargaining vehicle. The greater the influence is, the less effective the communication becomes. Enterprise unionism is the reason Taiwanese labour is weak.