Institutional resources as a source of trade union power in Southern Europe

Abstract Institutional resources are one of four sources of power available to trade unions (Gumbrell –McCormick and Hyman, 2013). Literature has tended to pay more attention to associational and organizational power and to emphasize the indispensable but problematic character of institutional resources. This paper examines the role of institutional resources in three Southern European countries (Greece, Portugal and Spain) which share common characteristic including post dictatorship political settlements; recent economic crises; external intervention. Comparative analysis draws out the distinctive role and character of institutional resources in Spanish industrial relation. It shows how t…