Abstract
The process of eastern enlargement of the European Union (EU) embraced post-socialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) for the first time in 2004, followed by further eastward EU enlargements in 2007 and 2013. These enlargements brought wide-ranging expectations for the economies, societies and labour markets of the new Member States in CEE. Among other expectations, EU enlargement fuelled hopes on the side of labour for improvements in living and working standards as well as in social protection after the difficult transition years in the 1990s. EU membership was also perceived as a potential and likely source for strengthening labour’s institutional resources. This should have occurred through more support for strengthening the basic pillars of western democracies, including through strong trade unions, collective bargaining institutions, a functioning tripartism and employee voice at the workplace, also in the new Member States.
More than 10 years have passed since the first EU enlargement to the CEE region. What did these 10 years mean for labour? What have trade unions in the region done to benefit from the new opportunities and mitigate new risks brought by EU membership? Did their initial expectations at least partly materialize? To what extent did EU membership help to equip labour with additional power resources in a region with notoriously low trade union membership and hollowing of industrial democracy since the early 1990s?
It is the aim of this special issue to respond to these questions from diverse perspectives. First, the articles evaluate achievements in terms of social cohesion and institutional convergence. Secondly, several articles analyse the collective and individual strategies of workers in the new Member States in response to post-enlargement challenges. Thirdly, articles evaluate the effect of the EU on the structural and institutional resources available to trade unions in the CEE Member States, including their legal resources, organization capacities and capacity to influence policy. Finally, the articles help us to understand the lessons that can be learned for the exercise of labour’s vital functions in CEE societies, and for European workers and labour movements in general.
Labour and trade unions faced the post-enlargement challenges and opportunities in different ways, and this experience helps to draw the contours of a ‘new political economy of protest and patience’ not only for labour in Central and Eastern Europe but in Europe as a whole as well. The introductory article argues that in the present post-enlargement reality, labour has at its disposal a much broader array of deliberative voices, including institutionalized channels of influence via social dialogue, collective bargaining and impact on legislative changes. At the same time, in the face of declining membership and individual exit strategies from the labour market, e.g. through work-related migration to western Europe, the structural power of labour has been weakening despite the EU’s effort to institutionalize the principles of ‘Social Europe’ in its new Member States. The economic crisis has further complicated the impact of the EU enlargement on the forces of labour in CEE through weakening collective bargaining institutions, the growth of atypical forms of employment and public sector austerity.
From the analytical perspective of exit and voice adopted in this special issue, CEE workers did not respond to these challenges only through individualized exit strategies. Several contributions document that organized labour adjusted its strategies to address austerity, membership decline and labour market changes increasingly through protests in the public space. The bottom line of this special issue is that the strategies used by CEE forces of labour to cope with challenges after the EU enlargement are not necessarily unique to the new Member States. Instead, perspectives on CEE workers’ and trade unions’ strategies in the past decade shed light on possible future trajectories for the role of organized labour and the quality of working conditions in other parts of Europe as well.