Jane Hardy

'Thinking outside the box'? : Trade union organizing strategies and Polish migrant workers in the United Kingdom

This article focuses on the responses of British trade unions to the arrival of Polish workers since the 2004 enlargement of the European Union. It is argued that existing definitions and explanations of UK trade union engagement with migrant workers do not capture the strategies that have been used to engage with these migrant workers. We suggest that there have been two sets of responses. First, recruitment and organization activity has centred on inclusion and has been undertaken on new terrains using innovative strategies. Second, we point to the importance of new linkages locally, regionally, nationally and internationally in organizing these new labour market entrants.

Trade union responses to migrant workers from the ‘new Europe’: A three sector comparison in the UK, Norway and Germany

This article compares trade union strategies towards migrant workers from the ‘new Europe’. The analysis focuses on three sectors in the UK, Norway and Germany. We conclude that trade union responses to these migrant workers are shaped by the complex interplay of national industrial relations systems, sectoral dynamics, EU regulation and the agency of individual trade unions.

Finance, policy and industrial dynamics : The rise of co-productions in the film industry

This paper explores the growing phenomenon of international co‐productions in the film industry. We argue that the rise of co‐productions is part of a wider narrative of financial and institutional innovation shaping industrial organization in the film industry. This narrative centres on film finance as a central risk distribution mechanism, and discusses how changes in film support policy, increased tax competition, the search for finance and an abundance of inflowing capital are increasingly driving industrial dynamics in the film industry.

Bending workplace institutions in transforming economies: foreign investment in Poland

ABSTRACT This article examines the way in which foreign investment in the transforming economies of Central and Eastern Europe has been deeply concerned with shifting informal collective and individual understandings about economic behaviour in the workplace. The framework of the analysis is institutionalist, drawing on the idea that markets are socially embedded and politically instituted. Informal institutions are central to the analysis; in particular, their content, creation and recreation and contestation. Further, it is argued that enabling myths have been used to to displace the legacies associated with Communist workplaces to promulgate a set of ideas and institutions considered to be in line with competitive markets. Intense competition means that firms cannot wait for these ideas to change in an evolutionary way and therefore agents are actively engaged in transferring these myths across national boundaries through circuits of intellectual capital. The main agents for the diffusion of a new set of values associated with the market economy at the level of the workplace have been foreign investors. The entry and restructuring of two flagship investments are used to illustrate how firms have transferred corporate values across national boundaries to displace what were regarded as unsuitable mindsets associated with the previous regime.

Impacts of horizontal and vertical foreign investment in business services: the experience of Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic:

This article examines the impact of foreign direct investment in business services on the economies of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia and their place in the European division of labour. A distinction is drawn between horizontal market-seeking foreign investment in business services and efficiency-seeking vertical investments, which have increased since 2000. We posit a conceptual framework that differentiates between the static, dynamic and institutional properties of global production networks and their impacts on localities and regions. The research is based on interviews with senior managers in 25 companies in the three case-study countries, as well as inward investment agencies. We conclude that the most salient static impacts of these investments are on the labour market, where horizontal investments provide fewer, but more skilled jobs than vertical investments. Dynamic effects were contradictory in that, although learning and spillover effects were modest, vertical investments demonstrated a propensity to move up the value chain. Strategic coupling with local actors involved institution bending, enhancement or harnessing in changing the spaces of production.

In the front line: women, work and new spaces of labour politics in Poland

Pessimistic accounts of womens lives in post-communist Poland view women as powerless and passive victims of the transformation process. In contrast, this article argues that while political change and the restructuring of the economy have closed down some spaces of articulation and organisation, others have opened up. The article focuses on the way in which women in their spheres of work are shaping and actively resisting change through new organisations and individual and collective actions, which are in some ways a break with the past, but in other ways build on previous forms of activity. The work draws on qualitative research conducted over the last decade across Poland. This has coupled extensive interviews with women workers, national and regional trade union leaders, activists and feminists in a number of major Polish cities with reviews of Polish media and policy. We examine the economic and ideological context in which these new articulations are taking place, against the background of Polands post-war communism and the rise of opposition movements. We look at the neoliberal restructuring of the economy and the implications for women within the labour market and in their domestic lives. In particular, we examine initiatives from below in workplace organisation, by focusing on new unions and new actions in the public sector, and the beginnings of organisation in the new areas of the economy such as supermarkets. Finally, we look at how women are articulating their interests beyond formal workplaces. We conclude that we should be optimistic about these new spaces of activism. While some are well established, others are embryonic but provide a strong foundation on which women can increase their participation in spaces that promote their varied interests.

Negotiating ‘solidarity’ and internationalism : the response of Polish trade unions to migration

In the context of massive outward migration after Polands accession to the EU in 2004, this article explores the possibilities for cross-border collaboration by Polish trade unions. The findings are based on interviews with the two main trade union/trade union federations, Solidarity and Ogolnopolskie Porozumnie Związkow Zawodowych: All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions, at national, regional and sectoral levels. Examining the issues and challenges faced by Polish trade unions in terms of loss of membership and social capital, the article also evaluates the significance of Polands status as a country of some inward migration. It is argued that cross-border trade union collaboration has become an even more urgent project as the economic crisis intensifies competition in the labour market and increases the potential for xenophobia.

Transformation and crisis in Central and Eastern Europe: A combined and uneven development perspective

This article elaborates a theory of combined and uneven development that takes the dimensions of spatiality, labour and institutions seriously. Drawing on this conceptual framework, an account is given of the way the 2007–2008 crisis was inflected in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The integration of these countries with the global economy has taken place in different ways through trade, investment and finance. This has not only been a source of unevenness within and between them, but has also determined the form and severity with which they have experienced the crisis. The combined and uneven development perspective is therefore able to provide a rich and more dynamic account of economic development and the transmission of the crisis. Further, rather than labour being treated as one among many institutions, it is privileged in its potential role of instigating deep social change.

Upgrading Local Economies in Central and Eastern Europe? The Role of Business Service Foreign Direct Investment in the Knowledge Economy

This article introduces the main themes of the special issue on the role of business service foreign investment in Central and Eastern Europe and its propensity to upgrade regions and localities. The debate is firmly set in the context of an increasing emphasis on the knowledge economy. We point to conceptual and data problems which make it difficult to accurately gauge quantitative and qualitative trends. A connection is made between the drivers of offshoring and the potential benefits for localities. The importance of linking research findings to policy issues is underlined.

Eastern Promise? Foreign Investment in Poland

Provides a critical overview of the role of foreign direct investment in the transition to market economies in Eastern Europe, and Poland in particular. Patterns of investment are examined in the wider context of changes in the global pattern of international trade and production, taking into account the specific nature of the Polish economy in terms of industrial structure and institutions. The industrial legacy of the Communist period and the low level of savings makes foreign investment critical for updating obsolete capital and bringing Western business expertise. It is suggested that firms have been attracted by low costs, new markets and, in particular, market domination. However, political instability and embryonic market structures suggest that firms have found other means of accessing markets and only large transnational companies in a limited number of sectors have undertaken investment of any significance.