Hello and welcome to ECHY podcast, Voices on the World of Work.

I'm your host, Bianca Luna Fabrice, and in this episode we will be looking into unemployment

benefits and trade unions with Daniel Clegg and Elke Hines, both from the University of

Edinburgh.

This episode stems from an article that they have very, very recently written for our

academic journal transfer, and you can, of course, find it linked in the show notes.

I would like to actually start with a simple question.

So what role, if any, have unions played in the operation of unemployment benefit

systems? So historically they have played a huge role and indeed they were the first to come

up with any kind of insurance against unemployment. And this was because unemployed workers could

exert a downward pressure on wages.

So offering some kind of support was really important for trade unions, not just from a moral

point of view, but also really out of self-interest.

And at a time, so, you know, late 19th century, early 20th century, when classic liberalism

was really still very dominant

and viewed any type of state interference into the labor market as an absolute no-go.

Unions were actually the first ones who set up some form of mutual help for their members

in times of economic crisis. These occupational funds stood on quite

weak foundations, however, because they were organized by sector. So that means that during an economic

crisis, lots of workers in the same trade lost their jobs simultaneously and that quite easily

bankrupt the funds.

And therefore, a bit later, some local authorities stepped up and experimented with subsidizing

...