Mass Strikes Against Austerity in Western Europe – A Strategic Assessment

Nowak, Jörg; Gallas, Alexander

doi:10.15173/glj.v5i3.2278

Cited by 24 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…In the five years 2010-2014, 48 general strikes were held in western Europe, with peaks of fourteen and twelve in 2010 and 2012. The vast majority of these general strikes took place in countries which combined severe economic crisis with a culture of political strikes: 23 were held in Greece, ten in Italy, six in Portugal, two in Spain, as well as five in France, and two in Belgium; by way of comparison, there had been 38 general strikes, or ten fewer, in the ten years 2000-2009, twice as long (ETUI 2016; see also Nowak and Gallas 2014). Even in Ireland, where there is little tradition of militant trade unionism and where the dominant union culture is pragmatic and accommodatory, strike volume (the number of days not worked because of industrial action) nonetheless rose to four times the EU average in 2009 (Geary 2016).…”

Section: Fiscal Austeritymentioning

confidence: 99%

Regimes of austerity

Hayes

2016

Social Movement Studies

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This article discusses the European wave of contention catalyzed by the financial market crash of 2008/9 and the subsequent imposition of austerity measures by governments across the continent. It develops two central arguments. First, it argues that we need a clearer and more sharply differentiated understanding of the operation of austerity as a social and political phenomenon than can be accounted for by reading the crisis of austerity as a solely material set of grievances. Second, it dissociates austerity into a series of interconnected regimes, which are fiscal, ideological, political, and civic. In so doing, I show how the material aspects of austerity are intimately tied to the ideational, institutional, and spatial enclosures they create, enabling us to see more clearly how the practice of austerity is intimately tied to the progressive dismantling of collective democratic space. The transformative potential of anti-austerity mobilizations accordingly lies in their capacity to develop an alternative moral economy grounded in new forms of solidarity and sociability, whether in workplaces or in the civic squares. Keywords Austerity; strikes; occupations; pro-democracy movements; enclosure Following the subprime lending crisis and subsequent financial market crash of 2008/9, governments Congress (TUC) called 'the biggest strike in a generation', in protest against public sector pension reforms; 1 in November 2012, the European Trade Union Conference staged '14N', an unprecedented 'European Action Day' of transnational, cross-sectoral, and simultaneous strikes in six countries, supported by union rallies and demonstrations in a further seventeen countries (Dufresne 2015, pp.151-3). Mass protests were not restricted to southern and western Europe. Economic crisis, structural adjustment and public sector reform generated remarkable mobilizations in the Balkans and Central-Eastern Europe: in Slovenia, a country of two million people, 150,000 workers in the public and private sectors participated in a collective walk out against wage cuts in 2008, and 100,000 public sector workers organized a general strike in February 2013 (Musić 2013); Varga (2015) reports that, variously, in the Czech Republic, 'Stop the Government!' protests that started in 2010 culminated in April 2012 with a demonstration mobilizing 120,000 people, the largest since 1989; in Poland, the largest trade union confederations (including Solidarity) organized a general strike in Silesia, with 100,000 steel, mining, energy, and transport workers taking part; and in Romania, unions mobilized 750,000 public sector workers in a general strike in October 2009, 50,000 supporters for a demonstration in the centre of Bucharest in May 2010 (here again, the largest since 1989

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Section: Fiscal Austeritymentioning

confidence: 99%

Regimes of austerity

Hayes

2016

Social Movement Studies

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“…An evergrowing literature in electoral research trying to explain apparent shifts in voting behaviour (Bartels and Bermeo, 2014;Hernández and Kriesi, 2016;Whiteley, 2016) is accompanied by an increasing number of publications on social movements, notably on the "Indignados" in Spain and the "Occupy" movement in the United States (Graeber, 2012;Della Porta and Mattoni, 2014;Ancelovici, Dufour and Nez, 2016;Romanos, 2016;Della Porta et al, 2017). Research on industrial conflict, too, has benefited from this general upswing (Gallas, Nowak and Wilde, 2012;Nowak and Gallas, 2014;Gallas and Nowak, 2016). However, the literature on Spain still reveals some weaknesses: either it is mainly descriptive (Gil and Hernández, 2014;Lacalle, 2015) or it focuses primarily on political aspects of strikes (Luque, 2012b), leaving aside economic factors that are likely to affect strike activity in times of economic crisis.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political and Economic Factors Influencing Strike Activity during the Recent Economic Crisis: A Study of the Spanish Case between 2002 and 2013

Pohl

2018

GLJ

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The Great Recession and the upsurge of widespread social movements in various crisis-ridden countries have given new impetus to the debate on the relationship between economic breakdown and the occurrence of collective action. I revisit the issue by examining strike activity in Spain between 2002 and 2013. For a better understanding of the continuities and changes, I contrast two sets of literature on industrial conflict. The first deals with economic factors influencing strikes or, in other words, with the question of whether and how fluctuations in manpower supply and demand account for continuities and changes in strike activity. The second advocates for a look beyond the economy, towards the political exchange that takes place between unions and state actors and which, depending on its positive or negative nature, leads to shifts of the distributional struggle away from the marketplace towards the public arena or vice versa. The findings reveal that, rather than exclusive, the two perspectives prove to be mutually conducive and are most significant when they are combined. The political exchange model is helpful for understanding the rather stable or even declining strike frequency prior to the economic crisis but also the three nationwide general strikes in 2010 and 2012, which represented a rupture in the social consensus. If the general strikes are left aside, the economic variables come into play: an increased strike frequency during the economic crisis is in fact accompanied by a shift towards smaller strikes related to a single workplace, and to so-called "defensive" strikes. This indicates that an actual decrease in workers' bargaining power was overcompensated by a growing number of circumstances in which the recourse to strike action became a means of last resort.

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“…Specifically, governments acting in their role as an employer introduced wage cuts for employees in public administration, education, health and social care. In reaction, public sector unions called a series of strikes and used other forms of resistance, which made them the main organisers of anti-austerity protest across the continent (Glassner, 2010;Kriesi, 2014;Nowak and Gallas, 2014;Vandaele, 2011;Vaughan-Whitehead, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trade unions and the sovereign power of the state. A comparative analysis of employer offensives in the Danish and Irish public sectors

Szabó

2018

Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research

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The changing composition of trade unions has far-reaching consequences for the relationship between unions and the polity. In particular, the concentration of trade union membership in the public sector-a process that has been taking place in most EU countries-implies a shift away from collective agreements towards legislation as the dominant way of managing employment relations. Pluralist models of collective bargaining assume a neutral, mediating role of the state, but in the public sector the state by definition acts as an employer as well. The state is equipped with the sovereign power to circumvent traditional bargaining agreements and force its will upon trade unions through legislation. The article investigates major bargaining disputes in Europe after 2008, focusing on two countries (Ireland and Denmark) that have different political environments and that, although affected differently by the financial crisis, underwent similar government interventions in labour relations. The findings suggest that a shift towards legislation is a tendency that affects all types of industrial relations systems.

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Mass Strikes Against Austerity in Western Europe – A Strategic Assessment

Cited by 24 publications

References 10 publications

Regimes of austerity

Regimes of austerity

Political and Economic Factors Influencing Strike Activity during the Recent Economic Crisis: A Study of the Spanish Case between 2002 and 2013

Trade unions and the sovereign power of the state. A comparative analysis of employer offensives in the Danish and Irish public sectors

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