Pension Policies and Trade Unions' Strategies in Italy and Spain. the Great Recession As "Critical Juncture"?

A generous pension system was a trademark of the South European model of welfare and Italy and Spain are a case in point. Also, in both countries, trade unions have traditionally represented key players in pension policymaking thus significantly contributing to the expansion of old age protection schemes. Even in the last two decades of “permanent austerity”, workers’ organizations have been repeatedly involved in pension reforms both in Italy and in Spain, which have however followed partly different pension trajectories.

While both retrenched public paygo schemes, Italy has moved towards a much more individualized system of old age protection, also embarking on a (difficult) transition to a multi-pillar architecture. By contrast, Spain has peculiarly combined cost-containment parametric reforms with some expansionary interventions for selected social groups. This at least until the Euro-crisis imposed harsh austerity measures in both countries – though with different speed in reform implementation – as well as pushed the unions at the margins of pension policymaking.

Against such backdrop, the paper systematically analyzes trade unions’ preferences and strategies in pension reform processes in Italy and Spain with two main goals. On the one hand, it aims at assessing to what extent unions’ preferences were key in shaping pension reforms in the last two decades. On the other, it asks i) whether the Euro-crisis has operated as a “critical juncture” for unions’ preferences in this field, and ii) what strategies workers’ organizations are developing to tackle the risk of irrelevance in pension policymaking after the Great Recession.