Usurping the Social Question

Geert Wilders, the leader of the right-wing Islamophobic Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), made two promises throughout the 2023 election: he’d be tough on immigration, and his agenda would be the most “social” of any political party in the campaign.

This is part of a larger trend in which Europe’s right-wing populist parties are campaigning on supporting strong welfare states, although in a way that is chauvinistic, nativistic, and frequently ethnonationalist.

This is a dramatic shift. In the 1980s and 1990s most right-wing populist parties across Europe were arguing for neoliberal policies to slash public budgets and displayed general hostility toward the welfare state. Now, the picture has become more muddled — at least in terms of their rhetoric on the campaign trail.

Bieling told Jacobin that in the past, “the social question wasn’t really on the agenda. It was more or less about the control of borders and fighting against the idea of a multicultural society.” But the growth in working-class support for the Right has also led to a shift in terms of the programs that these parties have put forward.

Central to this change is the idea of welfare chauvinism. Rather than attacking the welfare state, the Right now takes aim at its universal class-based solidarity. The erosion of class solidarity through welfare chauvinism presents a serious, albeit indirect, threat to the organizing strength of labor unions.

The irony is, Bieling explains, that when these parties enter into parliament they frequently vote against the interests of workers, undermine labor unions, and align themselves with existing bourgeois parties.

Dismantling the Institutional Power of Organized Labor

Europe’s right-wing populist parties are also undermining the different ways that labor unions have historically sought to build power through institutions. For example, many Nordic countries organize their unemployment support through what’s called the “Ghent” system. Under this system unions, rather than the state, administer unemployment support payments. As a result, the system significantly contributes to the high degree of union membership common to these states.

This system has come under attack by Nordic far-right populist parties over the past years. In Sweden, the right-wing Sweden Democrats have fought to replace the system with a state-organized welfare system that would diminish the role for unions. In Denmark, the nationalist Danish People’s Party worked alongside bourgeois parties to allow competing cross-industry insurance schemes.

In Austria, labor legislation has historically been negotiated with the country’s largest unions and the country’s Chambers of Labour, a legal representative of the interests of workers funded through a compulsory contribution of 0.5 percent of the wages of all workers. The right-wing Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has undermined labor unions by bypassing them when writing labor legislation and has attempted to cut the funding of the country’s Chambers of Labour — effectively weakening the voice of organized labor in the country. Undermining the institutional structures in which labor unions are embedded is a strategy aimed at eradicating the function that they play as intermediaries between workers and the state.

Eroding Finland’s Industrial Relations

One of the most comprehensive recent assaults on unions has emerged in Finland, where the right-wing Finns Party has allied with the bourgeois National Coalition Party (NCP) to implement a broad swathe of limitation on the right to strike. Last year, Finland held an election that saw the Right overtake the incumbent Social Democrat–led coalition in a campaign that focused on inflation, the war in Ukraine, and rising inequality.

The resulting government led by the NCP’s Petteri Orpo includes the pro-business and conservative NCP and the nationalist right-wing Finns Party, which has described itself as a “workers party without socialism.” Capitalizing upon an (albeit moderate) increase of public debt as a result of the pandemic and Europe’s inflation crisis, the Orpo government has introduced a swathe of anti-worker legislation.

Plans include limiting the role of union representatives in the workplace, making cuts to social security, imposing new fines on strikes that courts deem to be illegal and limiting the duration of political strikes. The legislation is a blatant attack on some of the central tenets of Finnish labor organizing that have long been the bread and butter of its strength.

Despite the largest trade union confederation of Europe organizing a campaign against the policies, the Orpo government has been able to implement several of the cuts.

Nevertheless, the labor union organizing may have proved successful, as Finland’s Left Alliance outperformed all expectations in the European parliamentary elections this June, while the Finns Party nearly failed to secure a single seat.

Fighting to Represent Europe’s Workers

An uncomfortable truth is that increasing shares of blue-collar workers in Europe are finding the vision of a chauvinistic welfare state appealing.

Around 60 percent of blue-collar workers in Austria voted for the FPÖ in 2017, and around 27 percent in Sweden for the Sweden Democrats in 2022. In Germany and France, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and Rassemblement National (RN), respectively, have had relatively stable support from the working class in recent elections. In the most recent European parliamentary elections, Germany’s working class and low-income population disproportionately voted for the far-right AfD.

For Europe’s labor unions there is a challenge in terms of how to respond to rank-and-file members aligning with right-wing populist parties. Some unions such as the Swedish Metalworkers’ Union have forbidden shop stewards or union leaders from being members of these parties; other unions have instead tolerated right-wing party memberships.

The European parliamentary elections of this June highlighted yet again that Europe’s right-wing populists are on the rise. While the role for unions in promoting a vision of class-based solidarity will no doubt remain crucial, they will ultimately be limited by the weakness of the Left within society as a whole. Thus far, the normalization of right-wing chauvinist talking points has made plausible the rise of reactionary elements within the labor movement, but this is not an irreversible shift.