The current economic and financial crisis: Transformations in work in the Greater Region

In Luxembourg, the portion of cross-border workers amongst wage earners is very high. How are these workers involved in the governance of the labour market? Major agreements on employment are adopted by the Chamber of representatives. Then, they become applicable to all wage earners performing their occupation in Luxembourg, practically one-half of them being cross-border workers. This paper will try to answer the following questions. Can such a governance model persist if crossborder workers continue to grow? What form of governance should one assign to the Luxembourg labour market with the legal entities and institutions of the Greater Region in order to better involve the cross-border workers in such governance, knowing that they will soon make up the majority? Can the border crossers become the victims of the current crisis? Isn’t there a risk that Luxembourg would find itself in a situation where inside a sovereign state a minority would end up making decisions setting itself over a majority on the labour market? How could one then better integrate the entire workforce in a new form of transnational governance? This text was presented by Franz Clément in the framework of the XVII ISA World Congress of Sociology in Gothenburg, Sweden, in July 2010 (Research Committee on Sociology of Work RC 30)