Abstract
This issue of the Journal addresses an important range of topics. Although all engage with the increasing difficulties confronting efforts to sustain the social regulation of work and employment in hard times, some of the authors draw more optimistic conclusions than others.
The ‘turn to organizing’ by European trade unions has long been debated. Almost universally, membership decline has weakened unions, and US-inspired methods of active organizing have been increasingly embraced as a solution. The most cited instances to date have been by Western European Union (EU), but Adam Mrozowicki shows that in the last two decades the approach has also been adopted in Central and Eastern Europe. In a study which examines four countries and two contrasting sectors, he finds considerable diversity in the degree to which organizing has been embraced and the approaches adopted. Differences in institutional contexts and available resources form part of the explanation, but the strategic choices of key actors are also of key significance: a factor particularly important because in most cases the policies adopted are very decentralized.
Why should trade unions coordinate their bargaining policies cross-nationally? This is the question addressed by Susanne Pernicka and Vera Glassner. Despite limitations, there have evidently been moves towards a Europeanization of wage bargaining, although without the supportive industrial relations institutions analogous to those which facilitate coordination at national level in many countries. Rational choice theory provides no explanation; rather, it is necessary to consider more diffuse supports of a cultural character – shared understandings – which over time can themselves become institutionalized, together with the strategic initiatives of the policy-makers themselves.
Cross-national coordination of a different kind occurs in the form of International Framework Agreements (IFAs) within multinational companies. Veronika Dehnen and Ludger Pries analyse such agreements in 62 companies and examine three cases in particular depth. IFAs are sometimes dismissed as little more than window-dressing, but the authors show that they can be effective regulatory instruments. The key issue is whether they integrated within a broader web of regulation involving trade unions and European Works Councils.
Financialization has been identified as a decisive component of 21st-century global capitalism and a major driver of neoliberalism. One aspect of financialization is the role of bond markets in shaping the borrowing capacity of national governments, linked to the assessment of ‘credit-worthiness’ by private ratings agencies which apply unambiguously neoliberal criteria, governments which follow policies in line with the traditional ‘European social model’ risk being downgraded and subject to penal rates of interest. Thomas Prosser shows how this process has worked out in the ‘PIIGS’ countries, where financialization lies at the core of enforced austerity and the deconstruction of established industrial relations institutions.
Neoliberalism is also the theme of the comparative study of employment policy by Özgün Sarımehmet Duman. Her article compares experience in Greece and Turkey, in response to what she sees as the dominant neoliberal force of the EU policies. Turkey, as an accession candidate, complied systematically with the market liberalization required by the accession conditions, whereas Greece proved far more resistant. Consequently, there was little scope for further liberalization in Turkey as a result of the crisis, while in Greece the impact of the bailout conditions has proved devastating.
Finally, Sara Kahn-Nisser examines trends in labour rights in the 10 countries of Central and Eastern Europe which joined the EU in 2004 and 2007, comparing the impact of the requirements of the EU social acquis and of the monitoring by the International Labour Organization of compliance with core labour standards. She finds that, overall, rights improved or at least remained stable in the years 1998–2004. Of course, a key question is, what has happened under adverse conditions since that date?