Weak Labour, Strong Interests: Polish Trade Unions and the Integration of EU Energy and Service Markets

This paper examines the motives behind the EU-level activism of CEE trade unions, which are commonly regarded as weak actors. To this end, it studies lobbying and protest actions staged by Polish labour organizations in relation to proposals for the EU Emission Trading Scheme Directive and the EU Services Directive. The analysis confirms the salience of interest-based accounts of supranational union action, but it also shows that labour interests are context-specific, influenced by economic conditions and regulatory changes in particular market segments. In this regard, priority given by the unions to job preservation or the improvement of social standards has important implications for their positions; it also determines the selection of their allies at national and transnational levels

Crisis and change in industrial relations in Central and Eastern Europe

This article introduces the special issue on industrial relations in Central and Eastern Europe since the financial and economic crisis. Already dependent economically on funding from the west, and lacking the robust industrial relations institutions traditional in much of Western Europe, countries in the region were particularly vulnerable. However, there are important cross-national differences, and the strategies of key actors have significantly affected the outcomes

Trade unions in Europe: challenges and responses

Trade unions are collective organisations with the purpose of defending and advancing the interests of workers. However, which workers are represented, how their interests are conceived and what methods are adopted to pursue these objectives are issues that show great variation both within and between countries. These differences in turn affect how they address questions relating to labour migration. In this chapter, we explore the different models of European trade unionism and their contrasting approaches to issues of recruitment and representation

Trade union strategies in the age of austerity: the Romanian public sector in comparative perspective

This article examines the impact of the economic crisis and its aftermath on collective bargaining, by comparing reactions to austerity policies of trade unions in healthcare and education in Romania. We develop an encompassing theoretical framework that links strategies used by trade unions with power resources, costs and union democracy. In a tight labour market generated by the massive emigration of doctors, unions in healthcare have successfully deployed their resources to advance their interests and obtain significant wage increases and better working conditions. We also show that in the aftermath of the crisis, healthcare trade unions have redefined their strategies and adopted a more militant stance based on a combination of local strikes, strike threats and temporary alliances with various stakeholders. By comparison, we find that unions in the education sector have adopted less effective strategies built around negotiations with governments combined with national-level militancy

SANC integrator in the progress: QCD and EW contributions

Modules and packages for the one-loop calculations at partonic level represent the first level of SANC output computer product. The next level represents Monte Carlo integrator mcsanc, realizing fully differential hadron level calculations (convolution with PDF) for the HEP processes at LHC. In this paper we describe the implementation into the framework mcsanc first set of processes: DY NC, DY CC, ff->HW(Z) and single top production. Both EW and QCD NLO corrections are taken into account. A comparison of SANC results with those existing in the world literature is given

Rattling Europe’s ordoliberal ‘iron cage’ : the contestation of austerity in Southern Europe

This article explains the popular revolt against austerity in Southern Europe as the outcome of profound politico-economic changes that are shaped by the transformation of the European Union’s (EU’s) macro-economic governance. It comprises three parts. The first part demonstrates how ordoliberalism – the Germanic variant of (neo)liberal economic thinking – was embedded in the EU’s new macro-economic governance, in processes that constitutionalise austerity and remove democratic controls over the economy. The second part examines the impact of austerity-driven reforms on welfare and employment in the aftermath of the sovereign debt crisis. These reforms undermined the social reproduction of Southern Europe’s familistic welfare model by destabilising three key pillars of social protection: employment security for households’ primary earners; small property ownership; and pension adequacy. The third part analyses the emergence of anti-austerity social politics in Southern Europe, both parliamentary and grassroots, and assesses their effectiveness in light of the collapse of public trust in both EU and domestic political institutions. The article concludes with our reflections on the fragility of EU’s integration process under the hegemony of ordoliberalism

Baltic labour in the crucible of capitalist exploitation: reassessing 'post-communist' transformation

Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this article re-assesses ‘post-communist’ transformation in the Baltic countries from the perspective of labour. The argument is based on a historical materialist approach focusing on the social relations of production as a starting point. It is contended that the uneven and combined unfolding of ‘post-communist’ transformation has subjected Baltic labour to doubly constituted exploitation processes. First, workers in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have suffered from extreme neoliberal restructuring of economic and employment relations at home. Second, migrant workers from Central and Eastern Europe in general, trying to escape exploitation at home, have faced another set of exploitative dynamics in host countries in Western Europe such as the UK. Nevertheless, workers have continued to challenge exploitation in Central and Eastern Europe and also in Western Europe, and have been active in extending networks of transnational solidarity across the continent

Precision studies of observables in pp → W → lνl and pp → γ , Z → l+l− processes at the LHC

This report was prepared in the context of the LPCC Electroweak Precision Measurements at the LHC WG (https://lpcc.web.cern.ch/lpcc/index.php?page=electroweak_wg) and summarizes the activity of a subgroup dedicated to the systematic comparison of public Monte Carlo codes, which describe the Drell–Yan processes at hadron colliders, in particular at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This work represents an important step towards the definition of an accurate simulation framework necessary for very high-precision measurements of electroweak (EW) observables such as the W boson mass and the weak mixing angle. All the codes considered in this report share at least next-to-leading-order (NLO) accuracy in the prediction of the total cross sections in an expansion either in the strong or in the EW coupling constant. The NLO fixed-order predictions have been scrutinized at the technical level, using exactly the same inputs, setup and perturbative accuracy, in order to quantify the level of agreement of different implementations of the same calculation. A dedicated comparison, again at the technical level, of three codes that reach next-to-next-to-leading-order (NNLO) accuracy in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) for the total cross section has also been performed. These fixed-order results are a well-defined reference that allows a classification of the impact of higher-order sets of radiative corrections. Several examples of higher-order effects due to the strong or the EW interaction are discussed in this common framework. Also the combination of QCD and EW corrections is discussed, together with the ambiguities that affect the final result, due to the choice of a specific combination recipe. All the codes considered in this report have been run by the respective authors, and the results presented here constitute a benchmark that should be always checked/reproduced before any high-precision analysis is conducted based on these codes. In order to simplify these benchmarking procedures, the codes used in this report, together with the relevant input files and running instructions, can be found in a repository at https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki/bin/view/Main/DrellYanComparison

Expression of TopBP1 in hereditary breast cancer

TopBP1 protein displays structural as well as functional similarities to BRCA1 and is involved in DNA replication, DNA damage checkpoint response and transcriptional regulation. Aberrant expression of TopBP1 may lead to genomic instability and can have pathological consequences. In this study we aimed to investigate expression of TopBP1 gene at mRNA and protein level in hereditary breast cancer. Real-time quantitative PCR was performed in 127 breast cancer samples. Expression of TopBP1 mRNA in lobular carcinoma was significantly lower compared with ductal carcinoma (p < 0.05). The level of TopBP1 mRNA appeared to be lower in poorly differentiated (III grade) hereditary breast cancer in comparison with moderately (II grade) and well-differentiated cancer (I grade) (p < 0.05 and p < 0.001 respectively). We analyzed TopBP1 protein expression using immunohistochemistry and Western blot techniques. Expression of TopBP1 protein was found to be significantly increased in poorly differentiated breast cancer (III grade) (p < 0.05). The percentage of samples with cytoplasmic apart from nuclear staining increased with increasing histological grade. There was no significant association between level and intracellular localization of TopBP1 protein in hereditary breast cancer and other clinicopathological parameters such as estrogen and progesterone receptors status, appearance of metastasis in the axillary lymph nodes and type of cancer. Our data suggest that decreased level of TopBP1 mRNA and increased level of TopBP1 protein might be associated with progression of hereditary breast cancer