Transnational politics and labor markets are undermining national industrial relations systems in Europe. This article examines the construction industry, where the internationalization of the labor market has gone especially far. To test hypotheses about differences between "national systems," the authors examine the United Kingdom, Finland, and Germany, alongside European-level policy making. Regardless of overall national institutional framework, employers seek to avoid industrial relations rules, while unions attempt to relocalize labor relations. Both use shop-floor, national, and European power resources. The authors argue that comparative industrial relations should take seriously the connection between action at the national and transnational levels. Lillie, N., & Greer, I. (2007 Suggested Citation IAN GREER Leeds UniversityTransnational politics and labor markets are undermining national industrial relations systems in Europe. This article examines the construction industry, where the internationalization of the labor market has gone especially far. To test hypotheses about differences between "national systems," the authors examine the United Kingdom, Finland, and Germany, alongside European-level policy making. Regardless of overall national institutional framework, employers seek to avoid industrial relations rules, while unions attempt to relocalize labor relations. Both use shop-floor, national, and European power resources. The authors argue that comparative industrial relations should take seriously the connection between action at the national and transnational levels. Keywords: trade unions; varieties of capitalism; migration; European Union; Construction ________The authors would like to thank the interviewees. We are grateful to Ian Fitzgerald and Jan Cremers for help with the research process. Transnational labor markets, production, and capital movement play increasingly important roles in industrial relations. In some industries, there is evidence of employment systems diverging within national contexts, while at the same time converging internationally.1 Nonetheless, many scholars continue to assign overriding influence to national institutions on shaping the interactions of unions and employers 2 and treat transnational political arenas as apolitical and exogenous to policy making, downplaying the neoliberal reorientation of elites. This article will show that while national institutions have not disappeared, industrial relations actors now operate in a trans-and supranational environment, where rules are in flux and enforcement far from self-evident. Supranational politics, transnational production, and transnational labor markets are supplanting and undermining national institutions as influences on employer and union strategy.To demonstrate the interplay between trans-and supranational politics and national industrial relations, we look at construction in three European Union (EU) member countries: Finland, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Although construction is traditiona...
This article compares forms of labour transnationalism in three industrial sectors: motor manufacturing, maritime shipping and clothing and textile manufacturing. In each case, unions engage in very different transnational activities to reassert control over labour markets and competition. As institutions of transnational cooperation deepen, unions continue to struggle with competitive tensions (worker to worker and union to union) which vary from one industry to another. The Industrial Determinants of Transnational Solidarity: Global Interunion Politics in Three Sectors Mark Anner Pennsylvania State Ian Greer Cornell University Marco Hauptmeier Cornell University Nathan Lillie University of Helsinki Nik Winchester Cardiff University ABSTRACTThis article compares forms of labour transnationalism in three industrial sectors: motor manufacturing, maritime shipping and clothing and textile manufacturing. In each case, unions engage in very different transnational activities to reassert control over labour markets and competition. As institutions of transnational cooperation deepen, unions continue to struggle with competitive tensions (worker to worker and union to union) which vary from one industry to another.
Using evidence from the shipbuilding and construction industries in Finland, this article shows how trade union responses to the introduction of migrant workers can be conditioned by product markets. Growing numbers of 'posted workers', or intra-European Union work migrants employed via transnational subcontractors, are segmenting the labour market, by competing with domestically domiciled workers whose employment is more tightly regulated. In Finland, the construction worker's union has had a far more assertive and successful approach to enforcing wage norms than the union in shipbuilding. This appears to be related to the greater exposure of shipbuilding to international product market competition.
This article argues that off‐shore is losing its exceptionality by being absorbed into a broader process of variegation and deterritorialization of sovereignty, and that capital’s search for a new “fix” is driving this process. Capital goes off‐shore by exploiting non‐territorial definitions of sovereignty, as a means of shifting the regulatory regime under which social relations take place, without moving in a geographic sense. In this way, capital shields itself from social control by defining certain spaces and contexts as off‐shore, creating spaces of production in which the sovereign regulatory capacities of the state and society are systematically constrained. This “unbundling” and deterritorialization of sovereignty is a way for capital to escape from national class compromises and undermine working‐class associational power. As tensions and contradictions created by off‐shore production unravel, conditions on‐shore and offshore converge, and off‐shore loses its distinctiveness. Ultimately, this process threatens to undermine the sovereignty norm, state autonomy, and capitalist hegemony.
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