Overcoming Postcommunist Labour Weakness: Attritional and Enabling Effects of MNCs in Central and Eastern Europe

Based on micro-level analysis of the developments in the steel sector in Poland, Romania and Slovakia, this paper examines the effects of multinational corporations (MNCs) on labour unions in Central and Eastern Europe. It makes a three-fold argument. First, it shows that union weakness can be attributed to unions’ strategies during the restructuring and privatization processes of postcommunist transition. Consequently, tactics used for union regeneration in the West are less applicable to CEE. Rather, the overcoming of postcommunist legacy is linked to the power of transnational capital. Through attritional and enabling effects, ownership by MNCs forces the unions to focus their efforts on articulating workers’ interests. The paper examines the emerging system of industrial relations in the sector and explores the development of the capabilities needed to overcome postcommunist legacies

The Moral Boundary Drawing of Class: Social Inequality and Young Precarious Workers in Poland and Germany

This article explores the relational and moral aspects of the perception of class structure and class identifications by young people in objectively vulnerable labour market conditions in Poland and Germany. Drawing on 123 biographical interviews with young people in both countries, it demonstrates that young precarious Poles and Germans tend to identify themselves against the ‘middle class’ – understood variously in the two countries – and attribute the sources of economic wealth and social status in their societies to individual merits and entrepreneurship. Positioning oneself in the broad middle and limited identification with the precariat is explained by the youth transition phase, country-specific devaluation of class discourses and the effects of individualisation

A comparative analysis of evolution of the social consequences of lean production in the international automotive industry in Britain and Poland : 2001 – 2013

In this paper we report on initial findings of research conducted at General Motors UK and Poland; BMW-UK; VW Motor Poland. Making use of both quantitative survey data and qualitative interviews with employees and union officials, we discuss the development of a range of managerial practices at the workplace level in Poland and the UK often described as lean production techniques. We examine these with respect to their impact on employees' perceptions of the quality of work-life-home-life. While advocates of lean have argued consistently that with the right management cadre in the right place, the positive effects of lean for both employers and employees will prevail, evidence demonstrating higher levels of employee satisfaction in lean regimes is scant. This is not surprising for at least two reasons. In contrast to the ideology of lean, the impact of systems so defined is deleterious to the quality of life at work and to worker health more widely defined including life beyond employment. Furthermore, there is some evidence that the impact lean may be impacting negatively on worker decisions to take early retirement or to exit the sector. While there are variations within and between the plants in our study, nevertheless, the data highlights the growing disjuncture between claims and evidence both in the UK plants in which the lean production system was introduced in the late 1990s, and in the Polish greenfield plants build upon the assumptions of lean since their beginning

Becoming a young radical right activist: Biographical pathways of the members of radical right organisations in Poland and Germany

With the increasing popularity of the radical right, much research has tried to explain the motives of voters. Less attention has been paid to the motives of people to become radical right activists – specifically young people, a group with a high tendency to join right-wing parties. Within the context of the internationalisation of the radical right, this article draws on 28 narrative interviews conducted between 2019 and 2021 with young radical right activists in Poland and Germany, two countries with considerably different political and discursive opportunity structures. We propose to recognise a new motive for becoming involved in political activism: career-oriented individual self-realisation in Germany, as opposed to fulfilling a duty to the nation in Poland. While we identify two different types of radical activism within the different contexts – the (nationalist) anti-establishment populist career type in Germany and the (nationalist) anti-political intellectualism/elitism type in Poland – they both point to the normalisation of the radical right in the two countries

Defining personal reflexivity: a critical reading of Archer's approach

Margaret Archer plays a leading role in the sociological analysis of the relation between structure and agency, and particularly in the study of reflexivity. The main aim of this article is to discuss her approach, focusing on the main contributions and limitations of Archer’s theory of reflexivity. It is argued that even though her research is a pioneering one, proposing an operationalization of the concept of reflexivity in view of its empirical implementation, it also minimizes crucial social factors and the dimensions necessary for a more complex and multi-dimensional study of the concept, such as social origins, family socialization, processes of internalization of exteriority, the role of other structure–agency mediation mechanisms and the persistence of social reproduction.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio