Confronting Crisis and Precariousness

Stefan Schmalz is Associate Professor at the Institute of Sociology at the Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena, Germany. Brandon Sommer is Researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague.

• 1. Confronting Crisis and Precariousness in the European UnionStefan Schmalz, Brandon Sommer and Antonio Loffredo2. Precariousness in the Eurozone: Causes, Effects and DevelopmentsKlaus Dörre3. The Competitive Architecture of European Integration: European Labour Division, Locational Competition and the Precarization of Work and LifeStefanie Hürtgen4. Precarious Environment: European Trade Unions in a Time of CrisesSteffen Lehndorff, Heiner Dribbusch and Thorsten Schulten5. Holding its Own: Labour Among Social Movements in FranceKarel Yon6. Are Trade Unions Trapped? Precarious Movements and Labour Struggles at the Left Turn in PortugalElísio Estanque, Hermes A. Costa, Dora Fonseca, and Andreia Santos7. Enduring Austerity: Memoranda Politics and its Impact on Labour in GreeceMaria Markantonatou and Geoff Kennedy8. Spatialities of Precarity: Young People in the Southern MediterraneanJörg Gertel9. The End of the German Model? The Transformation of German Capitalism and Fragmented Labour RelationsStefan Schmalz and Lea Schneidemesser10. Precarity And Counter-Movements in the European Semi-Peripheries:Adam Mrozowicki11. Labour Protests in Eastern EuropeJoachim Becker12. Conclusion: Two Worlds of Precariousness, Two Worlds of UnionismStefan Schmalz, Brandon Sommer, Raúl Lorente, and Johanna Sittel

This ambitious comparative project addresses the weakening position of labor unions in the EU since the economic crisis of 2008. Editors Schmalz (University of Jena, Germany) and Sommer (International Institute of Social Studies, the Hague) bring together various viewpoints revealing the levels of precariousness of organized labor from southern Europe to the more established northern EU member states. In the south particularly, the neoliberal economic restructuring (codified by the Single European Act in 1987) combined with economic recession 20 years later to foment union resistance to austerity policies and social unrest, yielding new social movements. Ultimately, trade unions have yet to formulate a coherent response to this new normal in Europe, and the outlook remains gloomy. Even in Germany, where the situation is less grim for unions, labor struggles have become more fragmented, leading to the emergence of nascent "social-movement-like strategies." However, in southern states mobilization-platform unionism has developed in conjunction with social protest. The diverse case studies present an antagonistic situation in the southern states that may spread to the North, as the EU has been unable to create common labor policies.Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.