Labour and Social Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe

Europeanization and beyond

Violaine Delteil, Vassil Nikolaev Kirov

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138927995
• eBook ISBN: 9781317402190
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Over a quarter of a century after the fall of the Berlin Wall and 10 years after their accession to the European Union (EU), Central and Eastern Europe Countries (CEECs) still show marked differences with the rest of Europe in the fields of labour, work and industrial relations. This book presents a detailed and original analysis of labour and social transformations in the CEECs.

By examining a wide range of countries in Central Europe, Labour and Social Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe offers a comprehensive and contrasting view of labour developments in Central and Eastern Europe. Chapters explore three related issues. The first deals with the understanding of the complex process of Europeanization applied in the sphere of labour, employment and industrial relations. The second issue refers to the attempt to link the Europeanization approach with an analysis mobilizing the theoretical concept of "dependent capitalism(s)". The third issue refers to the cumulative trends of labour weakening and labour awakening that has emerged, in particular in the aftermath of the crisis beginning in 2007-2008.

This book will be of interest to academics, policy makers and stakeholders at European and national level in the EU member states.

1 Introduction: revisiting the transition

Labour markets, work and industrial relations in the new Europe

Violaine Delteil and Vassil Kirov

Introduction

On 9 November 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and symbolically announced the beginning of what has often been called of post-communism; the period of political and economic transformation or “transition” in former communist states located in Central and Eastern Europe towards free market-oriented capitalist economies with some form of parliamentary democracy. For some observers this return to “normality” was expected to be a rapid process. But more than twenty five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and ten years after the Central and Eastern Europe Countries (CEECs) acceded to the European Union (EU), they have still not lost their specificities and have not resolved all of the challenges they inherited or faced later in the transition and EU integration processes. This is particularly true in the field of labour markets, work and industrial relations, in which the CEECs still show original patterns which contribute to the socio-economic heterogeneity of the enlarged European Union. While the process of economic transformation is widely considered as having been relatively successful, especially since the beginning of the 2000s, the labour market and social regimes have indeed experienced much more problematic transition since from the start of the reforms and till present (Kohl, 2015). Key difficulties concern notably: low wages, precarious work, instrumentalized social dialogue and strong and continuous labour emigration (at least for some of the countries). Those difficulties have tended to provide some new support to the hypothesis of an “Eastern laboratory” of social regulations, in which the flexible use of employment has found new modalities.

In this complex dynamics of transformation, the processes of EU economic integration and EU regulation have been an ambivalent force for changes, increasingly playing against a “high road” convergence and Europeanization process. Semi-peripheric or peripheric integration of CEECs economic sector into European and international market and global value chain have played a decisive role in a context of competition between territories and institutional frameworks, to mitigate the convergence process. EU rules aimed at harmonizing labour and social norms, have also been largely inefficient to promote a “high road” Europeanization process, before downgrading its own ambition of a “European Social Model”. Echoing the very partial ‘top-down’ Europeanization, the ‘bottom-up’ Europeanization has remained contingent of vivid domestic resistances.

Echoing these specific dynamics, the main purpose of this book is to propose a renewed analysis of labour markets and social transformations in the CEECs. The book aims to address and articulate three related issues, whose theoretical and analytical backgrounds are discussed below. The first one deals with the understanding of the complex (multi-scalar, multi-actor) process of Europeanization applied here to the sphere of labour, employment and industrial relations. On this issue, the contributions discuss the more or less effective instruments promoting Europeanization, as well as the channels and obstacles that have contributed to mitigating significantly EU convergence, and which are revealed to be largely rooted in actors’ strategies. The second issue refers to the attempt to articulate the Europeanization approach (which emerged in the 1990s) with an analysis mobilizing the theoretical concept of “dependent capitalism(s)” that gained ground in the academic agenda of the mid- and late 2000s. It aims at questioning the emergence or consolidation of external dependencies in the CEECs within the EU integration process, its various modalities and channels, as well as its consequences for actors’ games, public policies and socio-economic performance. The third point refers to the ambivalent changes that affected the labour side, in this specific context marked by the “big transformation” of the rules of the game, a growing asymmetry among actors at the expense of the labour constituencies, but also and counterbalancing weakening labour, some forms of labour awakening. The latter are often interpreted as the “end of patience” (Beissinger and Sasse, 2014), which has emerged in particular in the aftermath of the crisis.

The theoretical ambition of the book includes attempts to discuss and re-evaluate the explanatory power of the theories that have driven the analysis of the “big transformation” of post-socialist countries, since its beginning. Explicitly or more implicitly, the chapters develop analytical tools and arguments that offer contributions and criticisms to the renewal of the theoretical and analytical frameworks in two main directions.

The first theoretical direction invites complementing the macro institutionalism centred on structural features and reforms, by drawing on micro-politics and micro-sociology. The focus is on the actors’ strategies, their capacity to interpret the rules (foreign or domestic ones), to mitigate or oppose their implementation, as well as the modalities by which actors interplay and inter-relate together, form alliances and coalitions, and proceed to the cumulative definition of their roles. These appear to be very effective in analysing the dynamics of the trends. This approach also helps to reconsider, in a more micro and dynamic way, the “pathdependency theory” (Stark and Bruszt, 1998). The weight and structuring power of the past still appears as a key feature for understanding the peculiar roles endorsed by some groups and actors. These roles originated from their positions and relationships in the previous regimes, as illustrated by the trade unions for example. The latter were unable to efficiently represent and defend the interest of the employees, on many occasions while being cooperative in supporting governments in the changes.¹ Taking into account the permanent redefinition of these roles, which were rooted into the past but have been constantly reviewed according to the context and changing opportunities, helps in reconsidering the CEEC actors’ inheritance and in dealing with present issues.

The second direction refers to the “Diversity of Capitalisms” (DoC) approach (see more in Bluhm, 2010; Amable, 2003), which appeared as a challenge to the “Variety of Capitalisms” (VoC) approach (based on the work of Hall and Soskice, 2001). The Diversity of Capitalisms approach has aimed at addressing the two main analytical pitfalls of the VoC: firstly its static stance, by calling for paying more attention to the dynamics of structures, institutions and the games of actors (see below); secondly, the VoC approach looks solely at the business side of capitalism, whereas the DoC literature seeks to enlarge the scene by considering a comprehensive interplay of actors, including domestic and external ones, incorporating coalitions and alliances of actors (be they explicit or not), as well as oppositions and political conflict.

In accordance with the above-mentioned theoretical purposes, the methodology of this book proposes to link macro analysis with a series of empirical findings at the micro level. This ambition is served by a multi-disciplinary approach mobilizing and in some cases bridging different academic fields: institutional economics (mainly under the banner of the DoC approach), the sociology of work, employment and industrial relations (forms of work organisation and employee representation) and political sciences including macro and micro politics (strategies of actors vis-à-vis the rules of the games).

The various contributions of the book cover a large range of countries from the region, with the ambition of offering a more comprehensive view of Central and Eastern Europe, and remedying the gaps of many recent contributions that have mostly exclusively focused on the Central European countries (Graziano et al., 2013; Meardi 2012; Avdagic et al. 2011). This is particularly true for the discussion of the Europeanization process. Enlarging the panorama to the Balkan region in particular offers interesting insights that feed discussion and qualify “dependent capitalism” (and its regional variants).

Taken together the chapters of the book propose a wide range of illustrations of the Europeanization process and its limits, the building on and reinforcing the processes of external dependencies, as well as the reconfiguration, resistances and resilience of labour and social models in the CEECs. Among the variety of topics proposed in the book, the most original and rarely covered by the existing literature include the analysis of labour migration and migrants’ remittances in the home countries (Markova, Chapter 6) and the role of “structural funds” in influencing public policy and the Europeanization process (Bonnet, Chapter 8). Other ground-breaking analysis concerns the development of new union strategies aimed at unionizing precarious workers (Mrozowicki et al., Chapter 12), or aimed at using some external anchor like ILO intervention as a “positive” interference (or dependence) to opposing the domestic process of downgrading social and labour standards (Delteil and Kirov, Chapter 10).

1. Europeanization and beyond

We start by looking at what exactly Europeanization means in the context of the CEECs, how it plays out, how actors are impacted and what the impact Europeanization is. What are its instruments and channels? And what obstacles (internal, external) oppose the convergence of the CEECs on institutions and practices in the social and labour sphere? Finally, we ask how far the crisis has overhauled or contradicted the Europeanization project and may have implicitly laid the seeds for a “de-Europeanization” process that appears to be primarily grounded in the periphery of the EU.

The debate about the Europeanization process is not recent, but is ongoing. The general conclusion that emerges from the book echoes the view that concerning Europeanisation, “although acknowledging the EU was at times a motor of change, its power was limited to particular points in the accession process and varied significantly across policy areas” (Haughton 2007). In line with other scholars, the conclusions of the chapter converge on the claim that Europeanization has been a relative success in some spheres (e.g. the economic one) but with a mixed results and failures in the labour and social sphere.

Analytically speaking, the debate on the analysis of the Europeanization process reveals a number of distinctions. First, there are two cumulative processes, i.e. the “top-down” Europeanization monitored by the EU, and the “bottom-up” Europeanization, channelled by the strategies and practices of domestic actors, which are more or less connected to transnational networks. Second, there are various instruments and procedures supporting this process, ranging from the “hard acquis”, “soft law” through to the downgrading of the EU itself in terms of social convergence. Third, there are phases or periods in the CEECs’ institutional process of convergence, running from the preparation and rules’ adjustment leading to EU membership, through to the public policy changes triggered by the last crisis.

1.1 Europeanization: channels and obstacles

In the case of the CEECs, more obviously than for older member states, the structuring power of the “hard acquis” has been more limited and scrutinises the extent to which real standards and practices changed following EU accession, especially with respect to the myth of a socially cohesive Europe. As illustrated by Meardi (2012 and Chapter 7 in this volume), the limits to the enforcement process of social standards appear particularly relevant for the CEECs. The author shows how the transposition of the “hard acquis” remained somehow formal, and how its real impact has been often ambivalent: while the acquis has been able to uphold the reinforcement and upgrading of some labour and union rights, it has also had some reverse impacts. This conclusion echoes the analysis of Poland by Mrozowicki et al. (Chapter 12). These authors admit that on the one hand EU rules and recommendations contributed to the introduction of some worker-friendly policies, including non-discrimination principles, favourable formal regulations of temporary agency work and some new (not always effective) institutions of employment relations, such as works councils and European works councils (EWCs). However, while the EU directive has been used by some trade unions to impose the transformation of a civil contract to a labour contract, it also served the liberal forces for reforming the legislation on labour contracts and softened the conditions for using flexible, i.e. fixed-term contracts (see Mrozowicki et al., Chapter 12). As summarized by Drahokoupil and Myant (2015: 332), the implementation of EU acquis was “slow and rather patchy” and intertwined with pressures from internal actors. Finally, with the distance of time it is clear that “the review of the accession period concerning social and employment issues reveals that specific choices by policy makers and employers actively constructed the enlargement as a social deregulation process, despite initially much talk of a ‘European Social Model’. EU law has not had the proclaimed effect of preventing races-to-the-bottom” (Meardi, Chapter 7).

Less surprising, the soft acquis have played a much more limited structuring role, reflecting more obviously the weight of the dominant domestic actors, in using, interpreting and filtering EU rules and recommendations. “Top-down” Europeanization has been strongly mitigated by the strategies displayed by some groups of domestic actors, downplaying the enforcement of new institutional rules, and/or instrumentalizing EU recommendations for domestic purposes (i.e. the “use of Europe” as theorized by P. Graziano et al. 2013). This appears for instance in the Romanian context, in which the neoliberal government of Emil Boc overused the bail-out conditionalities to impose a profound overhaul of the Labour Code and the Social Dialogue Code, strongly dismantling labour and union rights (Delteil and Kirov, Chapter 10).

The influence of European Funds in the social and labour fields has been far less analysed in the recent literature, but is addressed by two contributions here stressing the structuring role of this incentive along two dimensions. The first one concerns domestic governance in the case of Poland, where it participated in the acceleration of decentralization, the partial retreat of the State in funding some social programs (that were replaced by the European Social Fund, ESF), and to the over-focusing of labour market policies towards some targets, which are not always adapted to specific local features and challenges (Bonnet, Chapter 8). The second dimension concerns the acculturation of trade unions within a cooperative partnership with employer organizations (Delteil and Kirov, Chapter 10). Yet, as cooperation among social partners is mainly directed towards employment policy (the fight against discrimination, informal labour etc.), which is generally an area of consensus and highly time-consuming, union efforts are diverted away from offensive industrial action.

Compared to “top-down” Europeanization, “bottom-up” Europeanization has revealed itself to be much more limited and random in the area of work. It is in particular conditioned to the limited advantages of business actors to harmonise (and upgrade) their labour norms, instead of playing the game of the territorial competition and taking advantage of the permissive institutional environment, counteracting or actually turning the transfer of practices of the multinationals upside down.

“Bottom-up” Europeanization has appeared however in a contrasted manner among sectors and firms, according to many factors. These relate to: commercial activities (export or domestic-led, transnational, productive activities and HR coordination), to the nationality and culture of the headquarters, to the permissiveness or resistance of the host country and affiliates (see for instance, Contrepois et al., 2010).

Drahokoupil and Myant (Chapter 3), highlight the selective transfer of rules and practices within multinational companies (MNC), inducing only a partial upgrading of labour standards. In the banking sector, the domestic-led activity has seen top management dictate relatively low requirements for harmonizing the HR st...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: revisiting the transition: labour markets, work and industrial relations in the new Europe
• Part I Dependent capitalisms and labour changes
• Part II Formal dependencies and informal resistances to the Europeanization of labour and industrial relations models
• Index