Making Time: Organized Labour and the Politics of Care Leave

Introduction

Promoting work-life balance has been a focus of recent directives from the European Commission and a source of policy innovation in several countries. Social policies that make time for family and self-care are important tools for building sustainable work, but countries vary considerably in the extent to which such tools are available.

Role of Trade Unions

Trade union organizations may play an important role in developing statutory care-related leave rights and protections, particularly as women still provide a bulk of family caregiving and now constitute a majority or near-majority of union members in many countries.

Project Overview

This project will use a novel mixed-method design to investigate organized labour’s relationships to national leave policies that grant time-off from work to address care needs. These needs include:

1. Leave to care for a child
2. Leave to care for an aging parent
3. Leave to care for an ill spouse
4. Addressing self-care needs through sick leave or disability benefits

Quantitative analyses will examine union-policy relationships across rich democracies starting in 1965, while qualitative analyses will focus on organized labour’s policy advocacy in Ireland, France, and the Netherlands.

Analytical Framework

Analyses of predictors will:

• Distinguish between different types of social provisions
• Consider differences in trade unions and the types of workers they represent
• Investigate the mechanisms of potential union influence over policy
• Compare union-policy relationships across different institutional contexts

Central Ambition

A central ambition is to integrate the interdisciplinary fields of comparative policy analysis and social movement research to advance comparative labour studies and develop new theories of union-policy relationships.

Data Development

The project will additionally develop data infrastructures, offering much-needed longitudinal, comparative data on different types of care leave provisions.

Conclusion

Overall, the project will assess the extent to which organized labour can be a partner for developing social policies that promote sustainable work for the future.