Trade unions as steppingstones to working-class office holding – Evidence from pre-parliamentary career trajectories

Across contemporary democracies, working-class people are numerically underrepresented in parliament, a trend that has increased over the past decades. But while recent research on representational inequality shows that the social class background of legislators matters for redistributive policymaking, the causes of this growing underrepresentation are still poorly understood. Trade unions are often seen as key actors in influencing the parliamentary representation of workers, and recent empirical evidence shows that union density and working-class officeholding are positively correlated. However, the mechanisms behind these findings are not clear, particularly with regard to how unions and parties interact in the nomination process. The paper adopts a mixed methods approach to address this gap. Based on unique data on the occupational biographies of ~ 500 German federal legislators since the 1970s, the paper examines the extent and the ways in which trade unions influence working-class officeholding. Deploying sequence analysis tools, the paper analyzes how the ‘typical’ career paths to parliament differ between those with and without working-class backgrounds, showing that union-related occupations are the most common ‘politics-facilitating’ jobs for working-class MPs. In-depth interviews with ~ 30 working-class MPs further illuminate the mechanisms of union support, its change over time, and potential differences between male and female MPs.