debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
Once upon a time, former PES President Poul Rasmussen called the Barroso team “Chicago boys”. Now, Green leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit talks of “neoliberal Taliban”. Understandably, the President of the European Commission is not amused. So, let’s look at the facts: According to the Commission’s reading, the deepest financial and economic crisis since the 1930s is [...]
A new instrument of international labour regulation International Framework Agreements (IFA) are important in international labour regulation. As the globalization of production and markets is increasing, an international regulation of labour is strongly needed. Existing instruments such as the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, the ILO Tripartite Declaration of Principles Concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social [...]
The unanimous political response to the crisis across Europe today is that of austerity and budgetary discipline. Cutting pay and social welfare, attacking bargaining mechanisms and making employment contracts ultra-flexible: that is the current paradigm, the Berlin/Brussels consensus, offered as the only way forward. This solution is not working and will not work. It stifles [...]
In November 2011, the military dictatorship in Fiji jailed two of the country’s most prominent trade union leaders. Following the launch of an online campaign sponsored by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and run on the LabourStart website, some 4,000 messages of protest were sent in less than 24 hours. The government relented, the [...]
When the economic crisis broke following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and the global banking system seized up, workers began to be laid off, families saw their houses repossessed and banks teetered on the brink of collapse. Financial panic knew no frontiers. It was clear that a coordinated global response by governments [...]
Something new is happening in Bulgaria: after four years break, the trade unions organized two simultaneous protests: the BDZ (Bulgarian State Railways) strike already underway (launched on 24 November 2011) and a national rally (30 November 2011). Both actions pertain to the classics of trade unionism: a strike is a tool used to obtain more [...]
Trade unions in Britain are at a watershed. This month’s public sector strike on November 30th, involves 3 million workers from 27 different unions. It follows the largest ever trade union organised demonstration held in March and the public sector strike of three quarters of a million workers in June. This wave of strikes and [...]
The supposedly universal decline in the power of trade unions is often ascribed to unavoidable or desirable trends such as technological progress or globalisation. In a short, clear and well-argued paper John Schmitt and Alexandra Mitukiewicz from the CEPR in Washington DC point out, first, that (de)unionisation trends have been very different across the OECD [...]
The debate on Europe‘s future has become lop-sided. The fascinating idea of European integration, of finding a peaceful and cooperative order on a continent torn apart by wars and conflicts has deteriorated. We are left with a narrow-minded discussion on sovereign debt and its impact on interest rates and monetary stability. Developing a stable democratic [...]
After successfully bailing out banks and adopting a first wave of economic recovery measures, the authorities of the European Union (EU) and its member states began to impose draconian, anti-social austerity plans from the beginning of spring 2010. These plans stem from an increasingly coordinated policy at the EU level, which is entering a new [...]
Although ‘flexicurity’ may sound English, at least to my Swiss ear, the term does not figure in the New Oxford Dictionary. Nevertheless, the term can make sense; namely as a concept that aims to describe the logic of the Dutch central agreement on welfare and labour market policy of 1996 that emerged in a situation [...]
The battle has resumed in Wisconsin. The state supreme court has allowed Governor Scott Walker to strip bargaining rights from state workers. Meanwhile, governors and legislators in New Hampshire and Missouri are attacking private unions, seeking to make the states so-called “open shop” where workers can get all the benefits of being union members without [...]
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