A B S T R AC TContrary to predictions of continued weakness of the union movement in post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, in recent years Polish trade unions have undertaken various revitalisation attempts, including campaigns to organise unions in the private sector. Although the existing literature accounts for this internal union transformation by referring to macrosocial and institutional factors, this article suggests that the emerging potential of union renewal is linked with the new forms of union activism and worker agency. This assertion is based on an exploratory empirical study using 45 biographical narrative interviews with company-level union representatives in Poland. The analysis reveals the existence of 'transitional' and 'reinvented' patterns of union activism. The article concludes that new unionism in Poland does not resemble an economic unionism or broad social movement unionism as suggested by other authors. On the contrary, it follows a path that combines the reinvented union ethos with market-oriented strategies. K E Y WO R D SPoland / trade unions / union activism / union renewal / worker agency 221

This article reports on research conducted at General Motors UK and Poland; BMW-UK; VW-Motor Poland. The development of a range of managerial practices at the workplace, often described as lean production techniques, is discussed. The focus is on the impact of the latter on employees' quality of work-life. While advocates of lean, so-called leanistas, argue that the 'right' management cadre will allow the positive effects of lean to prevail, evidence confirming this assumption remains limited. In contrast to 'lean ideology', findings here highlight the deleterious effects of systems so defined on the quality of life at work and to workers' health beyond employment.

In this article, we examine the role of institutional context, organizational structures and trade union strategies in tempering membership decline in the number of trade unions in Poland. Empirical data include membership statistics collected for NSZZ Solidarność and 54 affiliates of two other largest trade union confederations (OPZZ and FZZ) supplemented by semi‐structured interviews with union leaders. In a decentralized collective bargaining system in Poland, a centralized trade union confederation (NSZZ Solidarność) can more easily shift resources to efficiently organize workers than decentralized confederations, OPZZ and FZZ, whose development is mostly driven by competing trade unions representing narrower occupational groups. In conclusion, this observation is put in a broader context of the debates about trade union renewal in Eastern Europe.

In the context of debates on the meanings of precarious employment, this article explores the varied ways young workers in Poland and Germany are managing precarity. Biographical narrative interviews with 123 young people revealed four different ways interviewees experienced precarity. These different approaches reflected varied ways in which interviewees were orientated to work, the meanings attributed by them to precarious employment and the material and cultural resources they possessed. It is argued that despite institutional differences, precarity in both countries is experienced similarly and represents a tendency to endure precarity and cope with it by individual means. Simultaneously, criticisms of precarity were more typical of young Poles than Germans. Cross-country variances were explained by the different mechanisms of institutional support for young workers and the greater belief in meritocracy in Germany.

This article explores the different trade union responses to the growth of precarious work in the retail sector in Estonia, Poland and Slovenia in the context of the global economic crisis. The empirical research is based on interviews with trade union leaders and case studies of large multinational hypermarket chains. The analysis of sector-level union responses suggests the crisis has not deeply changed their path-dependent character. The most effective union tactics, involving political mobilization and sector-level collective bargaining aimed at halting the growth of precarious work, were observed in Slovenia’s neocorporatist system of industrial relations. By contrast, company-level collective bargaining and mobilization were more advanced in the two neoliberal systems, Estonia and Poland. In all three countries, the most important innovations were union-led campaigns aimed at increasing public awareness about precarious work.

This article seeks to explain variations in trade union approaches to membership recruitment in Central and Eastern Europe, focusing on the automotive and retail sectors in Estonia, Poland, Romania and Slovenia. The analysis accounts for cross-country and sectoral differences in organizing approaches by reference to the role of institutional contexts, union organizational resources and trade unionists' social agency.

Focusing on the cases of Italy and Poland, this paper examines the link between union organizational democracy and the economic and political inclusion of precarious workers. It argues that union membership of vulnerable groups is not a necessary condition for the representation of their voice and economic interests by labour organizations; rather, these two forms of the inclusion are shaped primarily by institutional contexts in which unions operate as well as by their identities and structural characteristics. In both examined countries the economic inclusion of precarious workers has been more advanced, while the degree of their political inclusion lagged behind and varied across major union confederations in line with two distinct models of unionism: a solidaristic and a diversity-oriented one.

The General Motors (GM) case stands out for its transnational employee cooperation. During the crisis the 'national turn' of union politics seems to have eroded solidarity and mutual trust relations. In this article the authors suggest disentangling the behaviour of labour representatives and their attitudes, identities and feelings to develop a more sophisticated perspective on labour transnationalism. Concepts of sociological neo-institutionalism and empirical evidence from two automobile companies (GM/Opel and Volkswagen) in Germany, the UK and Poland are used to investigate the conditions under which transnational solidarity occurs and prevails. The authors conclude that solidarity in both companies has not come to an end and contributes to repertoires of contention in future labour conflicts.