IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jcmkts/v52y2014i2p403-419.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

European Integration and the Disembedding of Labour Market Regulation: Transnational Labour Relations at the European Central Bank Construction Site

Author

Listed:
  • Ines Wagner
  • Nathan Lillie

Abstract

European integration through mutual recognition has facilitated the growth of a pan‐European labour supply system in which transnational subcontractors ‘post’ workers from low‐wage areas to higher wage areas. This allows employers to create spaces of exception in which the national industrial relations system of the country where work occurs does not fully apply. Drawing on interviews with managers, workers, unionists and works councillors at the European Central Bank construction site in Frankfurt, Germany, this article shows how transnational subcontracting allows employers to access, and create competition between, sovereign regulatory regimes. It concludes that high‐cost, high‐collective good national systems such as the German one, which depend on territorial boundedness for their integrity, are likely to be destabilized by this aspect of European integration.

Suggested Citation

  • Ines Wagner & Nathan Lillie, 2014. "European Integration and the Disembedding of Labour Market Regulation: Transnational Labour Relations at the European Central Bank Construction Site," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(2), pages 403-419, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:52:y:2014:i:2:p:403-419
    DOI: 10.1111/jcms.12096
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.12096
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/jcms.12096?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Streeck, Wolfgang, 1992. "National Diversity, Regime Competition and Institutional Deadlock: Problems in Forming a European Industrial Relations System," Journal of Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(4), pages 301-330, October.
    2. Virginia Doellgast & Ian Greer, 2007. "Vertical Disintegration and the Disorganization of German Industrial Relations1," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 45(1), pages 55-76, March.
    3. Nathan Lillie & Ian Greer, 2007. "Industrial Relations, Migration, and Neoliberal Politics: The Case of the European Construction Sector," Politics & Society, , vol. 35(4), pages 551-581, December.
    4. Jonathon W. Moses, 2011. "Is Constitutional Symmetry Enough? Social Models and Market Integration in the US and Europe," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(4), pages 823-843, July.
    5. Eichhorst, Werner, 2000. "Europäische Sozialpolitik zwischen nationaler Autonomie und Marktfreiheit: Die Entsendung von Arbeitnehmern in der EU," Schriften aus dem Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung Köln, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, volume 40, number 40.
    6. Damian Grimshaw & Jill Rubery, 2005. "Inter-capital relations and the network organisation: redefining the work and employment nexus," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 29(6), pages 1027-1051, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Werner Schmidt & Andrea Müller, 2021. "Workplace universalism and the integration of migrant workers and refugees in Germany," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(2), pages 145-160, March.
    2. Virginia Doellgast & Matthew Bidwell & Alexander J. S. Colvin, 2021. "New Directions in Employment Relations Theory: Understanding Fragmentation, Identity, and Legitimacy," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 74(3), pages 555-579, May.
    3. Mussche, Ninke & Corluy, Vincent & Marx, Ive, 2016. "The Rise of the Free Movements: How Posting Shapes a Hybrid Single European Labour Market," IZA Discussion Papers 10365, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Dries Lens & Ninke Mussche & Ive Marx, 2022. "The different faces of international posting: Why do companies use posting of workers?," European Journal of Industrial Relations, , vol. 28(1), pages 27-45, March.
    5. Ines Wagner & Lisa Berntsen, 2016. "Restricted rights: obstacles in enforcing the labour rights of mobile EU workers in the German and Dutch construction sector," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 22(2), pages 193-206, May.
    6. Seeliger, Martin, 2017. "Die soziale Konstruktion organisierter Interessen: Gewerkschaftliche Positionsbildung auf europäischer Ebene," Schriften aus dem Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung Köln, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, volume 89, number 89.
    7. Ines Wagner, 2015. "EU posted work and transnational action in the German meat industry," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 21(2), pages 201-213, May.
    8. Andrea Iossa & Maria Persdotter, 2021. "Cross‐Border Social Dumping as a ‘Game of Jurisdiction’ – Towards a Legal Geography of Labour Relations in the EU Internal Market," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(5), pages 1086-1102, September.
    9. Jens Arnholtz & Chris F. Wright, 2023. "Labor Migration as a Source of Institutional Change: Danish and Australian Construction Sectors Compared," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 76(3), pages 532-555, May.
    10. Cornel Ban & Dorothee Bohle & Marek Naczyk, 2022. "A perfect storm: COVID-19 and the reorganisation of the German meat industry," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 28(1), pages 101-118, February.
    11. Ergen, Timur & Seeliger, Martin, 2018. "Unsichere Zukünfte und die Entstehung von Kooperation: Wie Erwartungen kollektives Handeln ermöglichen," MPIfG Discussion Paper 18/8, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    12. Bjarke Refslund & Annette Thörnquist, 2016. "Intra-European labour migration and low-wage competition—comparing the Danish and Swedish experiences across three sectors," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 62-78, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ines Wagner, 2015. "The Political Economy of Borders in a 'Borderless' European Labour Market," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(6), pages 1370-1385, November.
    2. Ines Wagner, 2015. "Rule Enactment in a Pan-European Labour Market: Transnational Posted Work in the German Construction Sector," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 53(4), pages 692-710, December.
    3. Markus Helfen & Jörg Sydow & Carsten Wirth, 2020. "Service Delivery Networks and Employment Relations at German Airports: Jeopardizing Industrial Peace on the Ground?," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 58(1), pages 168-198, March.
    4. Adrien Thomas, 2016. "Degrees of Inclusion: Free Movement of Labour and the Unionization of Migrant Workers in the European Union," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(2), pages 408-425, March.
    5. Virginia Doellgast, 2010. "Collective Voice under Decentralized Bargaining: A Comparative Study of Work Reorganization in US and German Call Centres," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 48(2), pages 375-399, June.
    6. María J Paz & Mario Rísquez & María E Ruiz-Gálvez, 2022. "Inter-firm power relations and working conditions under new production models," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 33(1), pages 138-157, March.
    7. Romel Ramón González-Díaz & Ángel Acevedo-Duque & Guido Salazar-Sepúlveda & Dante Castillo, 2021. "Contributions of Subjective Well-Being and Good Living to the Contemporary Development of the Notion of Sustainable Human Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-17, March.
    8. Corinne Perraudin & Héloïse Petit & Nadine Thèvenot & Bruno Tinel & Julie Valentin, 2009. "Inter-firm dependency and employment inequalities: Theoretical hypotheses and empirical tests," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 09019, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    9. Miguel Martínez Lucio & Stefania Marino & Heather Connolly, 2017. "Organising as a strategy to reach precarious and marginalised workers. A review of debates on the role of the political dimension and the dilemmas of representation and solidarity," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 23(1), pages 31-46, February.
    10. Rachel Ann Mulhall & John R. Bryson, 2013. "The Energy Hot Potato and Governance of Value Chains: Power, Risk, and Organizational Adjustment in Intermediate Manufacturing Firms," Economic Geography, Clark University, vol. 89(4), pages 395-419, October.
    11. Janet Druker & Geoffrey White, 2013. "Employment relations on major construction projects: the London 2012 Olympic construction site," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(5-6), pages 566-583, November.
    12. Helfen, Markus & Nicklich, Manuel & Sydow, Jörg, 2019. "Arbeitspolitische Verankerung des deutschen Windkraftanlagenbaus? Empirische Befunde zu ausgewählten Fallunternehmen [Embeddedness of German wind turbine manufacturers in industrial relations inst," Industrielle Beziehungen. Zeitschrift für Arbeit, Organisation und Management, Verlag Barbara Budrich, vol. 26(1), pages 35-62.
    13. John S. Heywood & Uwe Jirjahn, 2014. "Variable Pay, Industrial Relations and Foreign Ownership: Evidence from Germany," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 52(3), pages 521-552, September.
    14. Thomas J. Holmes & Julia Thornton Snider, 2009. "A Theory of Outsourcing and Wage Decline," NBER Working Papers 14856, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. John T Addison & Paulino Teixeira & André Pahnke & Lutz Bellmann, 2017. "The demise of a model? The state of collective bargaining and worker representation in Germany," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 38(2), pages 193-234, May.
    16. Dorian Aliu & Ayten Akatay & Armando Aliu & Umut Eroglu, 2017. "Public Policy Influences on Academia in the European Union," SAGE Open, , vol. 7(1), pages 21582440176, February.
    17. Höpner, Martin & Haas, Christine, 2021. "Dürfen europäische Gesetze Grundfreiheiten einschränken?," MPIfG Discussion Paper 21/2, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    18. Wood, Alex & Lehdonvirta, Vili, 2021. "Antagonism beyond employment: how the ‘subordinated agency’ of labour platforms generates conflict in the remote gig economy," SocArXiv y943w, Center for Open Science.
    19. Torben Krings, 2021. "‘Good’ Bad Jobs? The Evolution of Migrant Low-Wage Employment in Germany (1985–2015)," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 35(3), pages 527-544, June.
    20. Martine D’Amours & Leticia Pogliaghi & Guy Bellemare & Louise Briand & Frédéric Hanin, 2024. "Reconceptualising Work and Employment in Complex Productive Configurations," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 38(1), pages 63-82, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:52:y:2014:i:2:p:403-419. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0021-9886 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.