All about power after all? A multi-level analysis of employers’ organization membership in Europe

Employers’ organizations (EOs) are the voice of business interests in social partnership and socio-economic policy making. Their legitimacy depends on the willingness of employers to join them as members. We examine the role of two types of power that EOs confer onto their members as drivers of EO membership: countervailing power against labour and organizational power. By analysing large-scale micro-level data on more than 30,000 business establishments across 27 EU countries in 2013 and 2019, we find that at the micro-level, company size, workplace unionization and the presence of trade unions and works councils are positively associated with membership, as is union density at the macro-level. These findings suggest that, in contrast to contemporary arguments in the EO literature, countering the collective power of labour remains an important motivation for EO membership. The positive impact of company size also suggests that organizational power, that is the ability to influence public policies and collective agreements through EOs, dominates the services provided by EOs to their members as a selective incentive for EO membership. Further tests of this argument, however, yield inconclusive results.