Moldovan employment relations: path dependency?

We examine the theory that trade unions’ functions in a transitional economy are characterised by ‘path dependency’ through the lens of case studies of employment relations in enterprises operating in Moldova. An ethnographic approach is taken to analysing social relations in three locally and foreign-owned medium to large scale companies in the clothing sector. The case studies explore union responses to managerially-driven re-structuring. We find that each enterprise has forms of trade unionism with diverging identities, strategies and fundamentally different sets of relationships to workers. We characterise the different forms as: ‘traditional paternalist’, exhibiting strong continuities with the Soviet past, a ‘disconnecting welfarist’ form with union shadow-boxing/worker resistance and an ‘integrating collectivist’ form with the union attempting to integrate a representative orientation with worker resistance. We conclude that the forms of trade unionism exhibit considerable heterogeneity within an over-arching continued commitment to their welfare functions. This may indicate that the ‘integrating collectivist’ form does not presage a new ‘path’ for Moldovan trade unionism but does demonstrate the bounded diversity existing within the existing paradigm.