Labour divisions and the emergence of dual welfare systems

Abstract

This article illustrates the possibility of consistent labour union opposition to redistributive welfare state expansion and demonstrates its importance for the postwar emergence of so-called dual welfare systems. In recent years, scholars have paid much attention to the postwar welfare trajectories of countries where social policies came to stratify rather than reduce social inequalities. Yet, they have paid little attention to the importance of organizational divisions among workers for this. Despite recent criticisms of traditional class-based views of postwar welfare state expansion, much of the welfare state literature continues to view organized labour’s involvement in this through a perspective that assumes labour unity and support for this expansion. This article illustrates why this is problematic. It does so by reexamining and highlighting organized labour’s role in the postwar emergence and persistence of the ‘social division of welfare’ in the United Kingdom.