Schmalz / Sommer Confronting Crisis and Precariousness

Organised Labour and Social Unrest in the European Union
Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-1-78661-048-5
Verlag: Rowman & Littlefield International
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 246 Seiten

Reihe: Studies in Social and Global Justice

The 2008 global financial crisis and the subsequent Eurozone crisis triggered dramatic changes in European labour relations. Unemployment and precariousness increased considerably. This was further exacerbated by austerity measures, leading to declining minimum wages and layoffs in the public sector. These structural changes varied considerably by country but collectively pose challenges to organized labour as they confront neoliberal restructuring. Concurrently, recent social struggles continue to develop with unemployed and precarious workers playing a major role as protest actors.


Focusing on the triangular relationship of precariousness, trade unions and social movements, this book draws on a range of exciting cases, both comparative and country case studies, in order to understand how the shadow of the crisis still haunts organized labour in Europe. The chapters in this collection each offer a unique perspective on how the results of the crisis, in Western, Southern and Eastern Europe, are leading to a variety of new social movements as a consequence of increased precariousness and also how trade unions are attempting to respond.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Schmalz, Stefan

Sommer, Brandon

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Confronting Crisis and Precariousness in the European Union
Stefan Schmalz, Brandon Sommer and Antonio Loffredo

2. Precariousness in the Eurozone: Causes, Effects and Developments
Klaus Dörre

3. The Competitive Architecture of European Integration: European Labour Division, Locational Competition and the Precarization of Work and Life



Stefanie Hürtgen

4. Precarious Environment: European Trade Unions in a Time of Crises
Steffen Lehndorff, Heiner Dribbusch and Thorsten Schulten

5. Holding its Own: Labour Among Social Movements in France
Karel Yon

6. Are Trade Unions Trapped? Precarious Movements and Labour Struggles at the Left Turn in Portugal
Elísio Estanque, Hermes A. Costa, Dora Fonseca, and Andreia Santos

7. Enduring Austerity: Memoranda Politics and its Impact on Labour in Greece
Maria Markantonatou and Geoff Kennedy

8. Spatialities of Precarity: Young People in the Southern Mediterranean
Jörg Gertel

9. The End of the German Model? The Transformation of German Capitalism and Fragmented Labour Relations
Stefan Schmalz and Lea Schneidemesser

10. Precarity And Counter-Movements in the European Semi-Peripheries:
Adam Mrozowicki

11. Labour Protests in Eastern Europe
Joachim Becker



12. Conclusion: Two Worlds of Precariousness, Two Worlds of Unionism
Stefan Schmalz, Brandon Sommer, Raúl Lorente, and Johanna Sittel

Über Autor(innen)

Schmalz, Stefan
Stefan Schmalz is Associate Professor (Akademischer Rat) at the Institute of Sociology at the Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena, Germany. His research interests include global political economy, trade unions and labour relations in Europe and China. He was awarded several research grants on labour and political economy.

Sommer, Brandon
Brandon Sommer is Researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. He spent the majority of his early career working as an engineer on factory floors throughout Canada, the United States, Mexico and China. He is now a Ph.D Researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies in the Hague studying industrial transformation and precarity in China.

Stefan Schmalz is Associate Professor at the Institute of Sociology at the Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena, Germany.



Brandon Sommer is Researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague.