Market Expansion and Social Dumping in Europe

Back to the future: workplace relations and labour law in the 21st century in the Asia Pacific context

“…From the moment the Treaty of Rome was signed there was an implicit threat to traditional industrial relations systems in Europe because of the free movements of goods within the European Union (EU). But this threat did not materialize for more than 30 years until the enlargement of the EU to include low wage countries in eastern Europe (Bernaciak ).…”

Stepping up to strike: a union mobilization case study of Polish migrant workers in the Netherlands

“…Firms engage in transnational hiring and, in doing so, consciously strategize across sovereign sites and arenas of regulation in order to take advantage of lower cost structures and less strict regulatory environments. These practices are part of a pervasive dynamic of labour-cost competition which is integral to the growth of capitalist markets (Bernaciak 2015). When firms transgress certain normative boundaries as a way to make themselves more competitive, they often trigger accusations of social dumping.…”

“…It is important to note that this study does not make a strict differentiation between legal and illegal, because social dumping is not just about the legality or illegality of actor behaviour, rather this chapter discusses violations of social and industrial relations norms in ways that create a certain kind of competitive dynamic (Bernaciak 2015). Interpretations of what is legal and what is illegal can vary, especially between unions and employers (see Arnholz and Eldring 2015), given that there are conflicts between legal frameworks resulting from EU regulation and overlapping national jurisdictions.…”

“…In Europe, such accusations usually refer to normative structures inherited from the post-war national industrial relations systems of western Europe, which sought to ensure income stability for workers, humane treatment and due process in the workplace, as well as rights to workplace representation and collective action, reasonable notice prior to dismissals, and similar worker protections (Bernaciak 2015 society as a whole, the challenge is to enforce normative constraints on such 'unruly' (Streeck 2009: 75) employers. Much has been written about the conditions and downward labour market pressures created by recent intra-EU labour mobility (Lillie 2012;Meardi 2012;Wagner 2014).…”

“…This exerts downward pressures on wages and employment conditions in certain occupational markets (Meardi 2012;Lillie 2012), which some refer to as a social dumping dynamic (Bernaciak 2015). How firms use cross-border recruitment practices to undermine or circumvent existing regulatory systems, is not often clearly recognized.…”