Competing for workers’ representation: established and grassroots unions in the Italian logistics sector

ABSTRACT Employment conditions for low-skilled workers are deteriorating across all European countries, leading to the emergence of grassroots unions alongside more established labour organisations. Despite the increasing union heterogeneity characterising corporativist Southern European countries in particular, inter-union relationships have never been emphasised in previous studies. Our article explores the evolving relational landscape of employee representation and its impact on effective advocacy for low-skilled workers. In conducting a multiple case study research design within the Italian logistics sector, we rely on the concepts of frames and power resources to understand inter-union relationships and their consequences for workers’ concerns. Our results show how grassroots unions and established unions are characterised by deep frame contestation in terms of ideational incompatibility. The studied grassroots union adopted radical frames emphasising labour–capital struggles, while established unions employed a more moderate ‘just balance’ approach, pursuing dialogue with firms. In line with this, the grassroots union made much stronger use of structural and associational power resources, while the established union used a wider variety of such resources. This dynamic fostered heightened competition and antagonism between the unions. However, our results also suggest that this antagonism inadvertently resulted in a positive division of labour that revealed a complementarity between different union framings in addressing workers’ concerns.