Roland Erne

Explaining Romanian labor migration: from development gaps to development trajectories

While migration scholars often neglect the national and transnational relations of production and exchange within which labor migration occurs, international political economists tend to treat labor migration as a mere side effect of transnational capitalism. By contrast, this article considers the constitutive role that post-socialist transformations and the EU integration played in shaping the various patterns of intra-European east–west labor migration since 1989. We argue that labor migration was not driven by development differentials between the west and the east as such, but rather by the particular type of development the latter adopted after the fall of communist regimes and by the way post-socialist countries were integrated in transnational circuits of production and exchange. We are sustaining our claims by a comparative assessment across time of the articulations between the different modes of production and different labor migration patterns during different stages of Romanias post-socialist transformation. This historical comparison enables us to insulate the influence of changing levels of development and modes of production on labor migration because our focus on a single country is keeping the influence of other national institutional factors constant.

Let's Accept a Smaller Slice of a Shrinking Cake. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions and Irish Public Sector Unions in Crisis

At the time of writing, Irish unions are balloting their members about a new collective bargaining agreement for the public sector (Labour Relations Commission 2013). If a majority of union members in a majority of public sector unions within the Irish Congress of Trade Union (ICTU) endorses the proposed “Croke Park 2” agreement, it will come into force on the 1st July 2013. As a result, the public sector wage bill will be cut by another 7% with union approval, although public sector workers have already suffered a reduction in their earnings to the order of 25% since 2009. This development raises two questions: First, why is there a sudden need for an additional one billion euro cut in Irish public sector pay? Second, why are the leaders of Ireland’s biggest public sector unions, i.e. SIPTU and IMPACT, campaigning for a yes vote despite the pay cuts that the proposed deal entails?

European collective action in times of crisis

This introductory article to the special issue proposes a more encompassing view of transnational collective action in Europe, which goes beyond the classical, country-by-country oriented, comparative industrial relations approach. Instead, we propose an extension of focus to capture also other actors, action repertoires, places and levels. Specifically, we introduce and integrate the contributions to this issue, by extending our analytical perspectives from traditional forms of employment to precarious and posted workers; from national and European trade union structures to informal groups of workers and social movements; from unions’ traditional strongholds in manufacturing multinationals to workers in the meat industry, health care or occupied factories; from national unions seen as coherent units to a perspective that emphasizes their internal contradictions; from the analysis of discrete actions to historically more encompassing perspectives; and from utilitarian views on collective action to a larger perspective that assesses the analysis of the importance of collective struggles for the making and unmaking of a new European working class.

European unions after the crisis

While an economy is always ‘embedded’ in society, the relationship between the two is undergoing profound changes in Europe, resulting in widespread instability which is emphasised by the current crisis. This book analyses these changes, and in particular pressures of intensifying international competition, globalization and financialization within Europe.

Mind the Gap: National and Local Partnership in the Irish Public Sector

This article uses case study data from a major Irish city council to investigate and explain public sector worker attitudes towards social partnership at local and national level. It is argued that the more sceptical attitudes to workplace partnership reflect structural differences between local and national arrangements, which have enabled public sector employers to use ‘social partnership’ as a constraint in the implementation process of a pre-determined public sector reform agenda.

Is migration from Central and Eastern Europe an opportunity for trade unions to demand higher wages? Evidence from the Romanian health sector

Industrial relations scholars have argued that east-west labour migration may benefit trade unions in Central and Eastern Europe. By focusing on the distributional aspect of wage policies adopted by two competing Romanian trade unions in the healthcare sector, this article challenges the assumption of a virtuous link between migration, labour shortages and collective wage increases. We show that migration may also displace collective and egalitarian wage policies in favour of individual and marketized ones that put workers in competition with one another. Thus, the question is not so much whether migration leads to wage increases in sending countries, but whether trade unions’ wage demands in response to outward migration consolidate collective solidarity and coordination in wage policy-making or support its individualization and commodification.

Introduction: politicizing the transnational

Labor movements have always found it difficult to reveal and transform the social relations that constitute markets. The growing transnational movements of goods, capital, and services in themselves have therefore not triggered closer trade union cooperation across borders. Transnational collective action also requires conscious choices and a mutual understanding that solidarity across borders is warranted. For this reason, this special issue of Labor History assesses the role that politicization processes play in triggering transnational union action.

Obligatorisches Referendum, Plebiszit und Volksbegehren — drei Typen direkter Demokratie im europäischen Vergleich

In Europa finden immer mehr Volksentscheide statt. Diese Entwicklung wird im ersten Kapitel dieses Beitrages dokumentiert. Anschliesend werden die europaischen Erfahrungen mit direkter Demokratie klassifiziert, verglichen und bewertet. Zum Schluss werden die Argumente diskutiert, die gemeinhin von Skeptikern und Gegnern der Starkung direktdemokratischer Burgerrechte vorgebracht werden. Dabei sollen unmittelbare und mittelbare Demokratie nicht gegeneinander ausgespielt werden (Ruther 1996). Vielmehr geht es in diesem Beitrag darum, die unterschiedlichen europaischen Erfahrungen mit Volksentscheiden fur die deutsche Debatte uber die Einfuhrung direktdemokratischer Verfahren auf Bundesebene zu erschliesen.

Labour History symposium: Roland Erne, European unions

In this erudite and cautiously optimistic book, Roland Erne, a leading authority on contemporary trade union developments in Europe, challenges the widely held view that there is no realistic prospect for overcoming the European Union’s democratic deficit. Based on a series of important case studies of corporate mergers and wage bargaining, European Unions is both highly original and compelling. Erne’s intent is to assess the conditions under which trade unions combine to adopt and implement strategies that have a democratizing effect on EU governance. A must-read for all interested in the fate of European trade unionism, European Unions is here discussed by some of the foremost scholars of that subject.

European Trade-Union Strategies: Between Technocratic Efficiency and Democratic Legitimacy

The democratic nature of the EU, or the lack of it, has never been so important (Schmitter 2000; Erne et. al. 1995). It is generally acknowledged that the existing governance structures and mechanism of the EU “are not able to provide democratic legitimation for the EU polity as a whole” (Heritier 1999: 208; European Commission 2003a: 38). Indeed, a democratic polis needs as well as constitutional bodies, a tight network of intermediate institutions and social organisations such as the unions, other civil society associations and the media (Lepsius 1993). These offer more possibilities for citizens’ participation in the political system and thus an increase in its legitimacy. Hence, the making and performance of European civil society organisations is linked to the constitution of a democratic EU polity. This chapter analyses one potential agent of Euro democratisation, namely organized labour. Although unions have often played an important role in national democratisation processes, this does not necessarily promise a similar role for them at the EU level. Authoritarian regimes typically prohibit free trade-union activity and consequently impel unions to take part in democratisation movements, but the current institutional setting of the EU provides alternative options for organized labour, namely Eurodemocratisation, Euro-technocracy and (re-) nationalisation. I will assess the tensions between these options in a comparison of the different strategies of trade unions in two transnational company merger cases.1 While the unions and European Works Councils involved seem to have adopted a Euro-democratic strategy in the ABB-Alstom merger case, they apparently pursued a Euro-technocratic strategy in the parallel Alcan-Pechiney-Algroup case. The adoption of different strategies seems surprising since it was the same European, German and French unions that played a decisive role in both cases. This indicates that unions have a range of options, something which leads one to reject any kind of determinism regarding the role of civil society organisations in the EU integration process.