Position in global value chains and wages in Central and Eastern European countries

This paper examines the relationship between the relative position of industries in Global Value Chains (GVC) and wages in 10 Central and Eastern European countries. We combine GVC measures of global import intensity of production, upstreamness and the length of the value chain with micro-data on workers. We find that the wages of Central and Eastern European countries workers are higher when their industry is at the beginning of the chain or at the end than in the middle. Secondly, wage changes depend on the interplay between upstreamness and GVC intensity. In sectors close to final demand, greater production fragmentation is associated with lower wages.

The new EU Directive on Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions in the context of new forms of employment

The article examines the reach, protective effects and limitations of the recently adopted European Union (EU) Directive on Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions. After explaining the need for a new instrument, the article analyses the Directive’s protective provisions. Cases of the European Court of Justice are presented to provide the wider context and explain how the EU social acquis impacts upon the implementation of the Directive. Finally, new developments in the EU labour and social field are discussed, making recommendations of possible avenues for providing protection to a larger category of workers.

Combatting exploitation of migrant temporary agency workers through sectoral self-regulation in the UK and the Netherlands

The recent growth of precarious work has sparked a vivid debate on whether this tendency can be reversed by the social partners through sectoral self-regulation. In this sectoral case study of the temporary work agencies sector in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, the views, approaches, power and interaction between trade unions and employers’ organizations are studied in the context of increasing labour migration in the decade following European Union enlargement. The results show that the employers’ organizations have been leading actors in self-regulation, seeking collaboration with trade unions in the Netherlands. In both countries, trade unions have taken an inclusive approach but had little power to affect the deterioration of employment conditions. It has proven difficult to the social partners to reverse the process of increasing precarious work and exploitation. Strict regulatory frameworks imposed by the government are needed to turn a vicious circle into a virtuous one.

Orchestrators of coordination: Towards a new role of the state in coordinated capitalism?

Liberalization poses significant challenges for the continued provision of collective goods within coordinated market economies (CME). Extant scholarship suggests two dominant sets of responses. Either CMEs continue to rely on employer coordination, but only for a privileged core, leading to dualization. Or, in cases where the state enjoys high capacity, the state instead compensates for liberalization but ends up crowding out employer coordination. In both cases, the result is decreasing employer coordination. We argue that in CMEs, the state may also play the role of “orchestrator” by supporting the revitalization of employer coordination. It does so through the deployment of ideational and institutional resources that mobilize employers’ associations on a voluntary basis. Applying our framework to a core area of coordinated capitalism, vocational education and training, we show that in both Germany and Switzerland, this indirect and soft form of state intervention was instrumental for turning around their crisis-stricken vocational training systems.

Rationalizing the irrational: Making sense of (in)consistency among union members and non-members

Focusing on 13 OECD countries over 25 years, we examine the factors that explain why a sizable fraction of wage-earners exhibit an inconsistency between their union membership status and their confidence in unions by being either confident non-members or non-confident members. While structural factors associated with joining constraints generate inconsistency in specific labour market categories, wage-earners who have extreme ideological orientations and are highly interested in politics are much less likely to exhibit inconsistency across time and countries. For individuals who have intermediate ideological orientations and are not very interested in politics, differences in terms of non-member and member inconsistency between countries are explainable through contextual variables such as economic conditions, the level of employment protection, and historical legacies. Implications for union membership research and union strategies are discussed.

With or without U(nions)? Understanding the diversity of gig workers’ organizing practices in Italy and the UK

Since 2016, mobilizations of gig workers across European countries have become increasingly common within location-based services, such as food delivery. Despite remarkable similarities in workers’ mobilization dynamics, their organizational forms have varied considerably, ranging from self-organization, to work councils, to unionization through rank-and-file or longstanding unions. To start making sense of this diversity in organizing practices, we compare two cases of mobilization in the food delivery sector: in Italy, where workers have initially opted for self-organization, and in the UK, where they have organized through rank-and-file unions. Drawing on interview and observational data gathered between 2016 and 2018, we find that the diversity of organizational forms across the two cases derives from the interaction between agential and contextual factors, namely: the capabilities of rank-and-file unions and the political tradition of militant organizing of the environment within which gig workers are embedded. These findings contribute to the emerging debate on labour relations in the gig economy by showing the central role that factors external to the labour process and to the institutional context play in shaping the structuring of labour antagonism in a still lowly institutionalized sector characterized by transnationally homogenous challenges.

Looking for a North Star? Ideological justifications and trade unions’ preferences for a universal basic income

Trade unions are often said to be hostile to a universal basic income (UBI). Their judgement may be affected by factors such as their work ethic, perceptions of the unemployed and preferences for labour decommodification. Yet, most studies fail to sketch out the reasons for which unions oppose or support a UBI from a normative standpoint. To understand the impact of ideology on unions’ appreciation for a UBI, I integrate results from 62 questionnaires with 27 in-depth qualitative interviews. This study illustrates that unions’ preferences for a UBI are associated with their theoretical understanding of labour, diverging substantially across welfare regimes. Whereas unions from Bismarckian and Nordic countries are generally opposed to a UBI, organizations from Liberal and Mediterranean countries tend to see UBI as a legitimate policy option. However, in some circumstances they set aside the policy for pragmatic reasons, thus disconnecting their normative orientations from perceptions of its concrete viability.

The different faces of international posting: Why do companies use posting of workers?

The importance of the posting of workers across EU borders has grown considerably in the past decade, causing concern regarding its impact on labour standards in Europe. This article asks why posting has taken such a flight. Building on quantitative analysis and in-depth interviews set against other sources, we shed light on employer motives for deploying posted workers. We develop a typology of posting which shows that while cost minimization is a crucial motive, especially in sectors where labour cost is an important competitive concern, a much wider set of motives are at play. Skill shortages across all levels of the skills spectrum play a crucial role in every sector. In addition, companies use sub-contracting for highly specialized temporary work as well as for routine tasks. Posting is also used for career development, especially of high potentials. Based on the wide array of employer motives for the use of posting, our typology distinguishes between ‘competition posting’, ‘specialisation posting’ and ‘expert posting’. The article discusses some implications for EU policy vis-a-vis posted work.

Resisting the Great Recession: Social movement unionism in Croatia and Serbia

Addressing the debate regarding the impact of the Great Recession on changing union strategies in post-socialist Europe, our analysis shows that in Croatia and Serbia the crisis, while depressing strike numbers, was nevertheless met with substantial union resistance. Developing a paired comparison and relying on protest event data for the period 2000–2017, we argue that the differences among the two countries’ respective varieties of capitalism drive divergent union strategies described as social movement unionism. In Serbia, the role of unions in protests articulating workers’ demands remained more central and unions were overall more present in the protest arena, while in Croatia, unions have exhibited stronger propensity to forge alliances and adopt innovative policy strategies. While taking on board scholarship that portrays social movement unionism as signalling union weakness, we argue that strategies which increase union mobilization capacity may also be understood as increasing union resilience in changing social circumstances.