Confronting Crisis and Precariousness - Organised Labour and Social Unrest in the European Union

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.

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