Leveraging the Courts to Protect Women’s Fundamental Rights at the Intersection of Family-Wage Work Structures and Women’s Role as Wage Earner and Primary Caregiver

The causes of disaster, both immediate and underlying, that resulted in 54 fatalities in Riga in November 2013 are analyzed in this paper. The collapse of the Maxima supermarket is seen as a safety failure resulting from longer-term deregulation in Latvia encouraged by external advisors such as the World Bank and the EU, and the specific crisis-induced drive to minimize regulation by local political actors, especially in the aftermath of ongoing austerity. The paper raises the issue of what is a ‘safety crime’ in the context of post-communist Baltic states, and asks whether the notion of ‘corporate killing’ or corporate manslaughter is applicable to the circumstances of the disaster. The paper suggests the need to establish accountability for social harms caused by the unfettered pursuit of private profit over public safety

Labour Standards and Migration in the New Europe: Post-Communist Legacies and Perspectives

The post-communist New Member States of Eastern Europe have experienced significant forms of labour exploitation, with deterioration in labour standards and the working environment. This is leading to increasing labour force `exit' on a scale not hitherto anticipated. Migrant workers from the Baltic states, paid lower wages and with poorer working conditions, have been at the centre of a number of high-profile labour disputes in the EU-15. This article uses Latvia as a case study in order to discuss the implications of increasing labour migration for the New Member States and for labour standards in the wider EU

Die Gestaltung des neuen Europas nach der EU-Erweiterung

Der Beitritt der neuen Mitgliedstaaten aus Zentral- und Osteuropa zur Europäischen Union (EU) könnte durch die schwach ausgeprägten Gewerkschaftsstrukturen und den wenig entwickelten sozialen Dialog dieser Staaten die vorgeschriebenen Arbeitsstandards der Länder mit starken Gewerkschaftsbewegungen, wie Schweden, bedrohen. Dieser Artikel betrachtet die politischen, wirtschaftlichen und legalen Implikationen eines Arbeitsstreiks in der Bauindustrie, verursacht durch die Beschäftigung lettischer Arbeiter in Schweden durch die lettische Baufirma Laval un Partneri. Der Streit zeigt im Kleinen beispielhaft die wahrgenommenen Gefahren für die Arbeitsstandards, die sich durch die Osterweiterung der EU ergeben.The accession to the European Union of Central and East European new member states with weak trade union movements and poorly developed social dialogue may pose a threat to regulated labour standards in advanced social democracies with strong trade union movements such as Sweden. This article examines the political, economic and legal implications of a labour dispute in the construction industry arising from the presence of Latvian contract labour in Sweden employed by Laval un Partneri. The dispute exemplifies in microcosm the perceived challenges to labour standards posed by the recent Eastward enlargement of the EU

Labour Mobility in Construction: European Implications of the Laval un Partneri Dispute with Swedish Labour

The accession to the European Union of new member states from central and eastern Europe, with weak trade union movements, poorly developed social dialogue and inferior working conditions, has been viewed as a threat to regulated labour standards in the EU-15. This article examines a high-profile labour dispute arising from the conditions of Latvian construction contract labour in Sweden. The dispute exposes weaknesses in the protective floor of minimum standards offered by the posted workers Directive. It also goes to the core of the debate about the preservation of a ‘European social model’ and the proposed Services Directive

Working class culture: The work-in at Upper Clyde shipbuilders

The thesis investigates the formation of a unified class identity among a highly sectionalised labour force, the shipbuilding workers of Clydeside. One episode is examined in detail, the work-in at Upper Clyde Shipbuilders during 1971-72, which was a protracted campaign for the 'right to work' by a. workforce whose jobs were jeopardised by the sudden bankruptcy of the company. The successive phases of the work-in are reconstructed through documents and records of the time including transcribed tape-recordings of the workers' discussions and meetings. An attempts is made to show the detailed unfolding of the workers' strategy ?nd tactics in response to the internal and external pressures upon them to abandon or modify their objective of preserving both their own employment and the shipyards as functioning entities. It is suggested that the success of the workers in securing their objectives was contingent upon the ability of the shop stewards leading the campaign to forge and maintain a cohesive solidarity among the workforce, despite divisive sectional undercurrents, The work-in itself, although largely symbolic in nature, is shown to be the focus for national and international working-class solidarity and, in addition, to command the support of other sections of the population not normally identified with workers' struggles. It is argued furthermore, that in posing certain fundamental questions 3, bout the future direction of the Scottish economy, this campaign for the right to work provided the initial focus for a broader anti-monopoly alliance to begin to take shape as well as the context for demands for Scottish devolution. It is maintained that as a result the Conservative Government reversed their decision to reduce the scale of shipbuilding on the Upper Clyde and embarked upon a fundamental change in industrial policy which became known as the U-turn of the Heath administration. The UCS campaign is pinpointed within a period of rising working class militancy in the early 1970's and it is suggested that it itself made a significant contribution to generating organised worker resistance elsewhere s not only to redundancy threats, but to the broader social and industrial policies of the government. The wider implications of the UCS campaign are examined therefore in terms of what is identified as a watershed phase in the development of post-war British capitalism. Those and subsequent developments have raised several fundamental questions about the contribution of trade union struggles to political change and strategies for Socialism in contemporary Britain. The final part of the thesis examines these issues on the basis of the UCS study. It is argued that trade union struggle can be seen as the site of regeneration for a working class culture preserving within it historical memories of class experiences of resistance to exploitation. A Leninist redefinition of working class culture is offered which identifies its core in an ideology of democracy and socialism deriving from the application of principles of solidarity, collectivism and straggle. Working class culture while based on trade union struggles is not necessarily therefore limited to purely wage militancy. Rather, it is a collective class inheritance based on resistance to exploitation which is capable of providing an essential springboard to more revolutionary challenges. As such the thesis attempts to reinstate the central importance of the struggles of the organised working-class as the leading force in the general movement for social change

Unfitness to Plead. Volume 1: Report.

This has been produced along with Volume 2: Draft Legislation as a combined document Presented to Parliament pursuant to section 3(2) of the Law Commissions Act 1965 Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed on 12 January 201

The moral discourses of ‘post-crisis’ neoliberalism: a case study of Lithuania’s Labour Code reform

This article problematizes the neoliberal reconfiguration of labour rights in Lithuania, a newer European Union member state, in which the impacts of the global economic and financial crisis were particularly severe and where radical austerity measures were subsequently imposed. Now, after six years, in an attempt to resolve the exhaustion of previous austerity-based solutions for economic recovery, a new Labour Code is being introduced which will further weaken labour protections and labour rights. This article analyses conflicting positions in current debates over Labour Code reform. It attempts to map the mobilization of strategic discursive resources in an unfolding dialogical ‘moral’ politics of Labour Code reform in the current conjuncture of ‘post- crisis’. Theoretically, this article draws upon the seminal work of the early Soviet Marxist scholar V. N. Voloshinov in proposing a dialogical method which foregrounds the interconnections of language, class and ideology

Venue Shift Following Devolution: When Reserved Meets Devolved in Scotland

This article examines the means used to address blurred or shifting boundaries between reserved UK and devolved Scottish policy. It outlines the main issues of multi-level governance and intergovernmental relations in Scotland and the initial problems faced in identifying responsibility for policy action. While it suggests that legislative ambiguities are now mainly resolved with the use of ‘Sewel motions', it highlights cases of Scottish action in reserved areas, including the example of smoking policy in which the Scottish Executive appears to ‘commandeer' a previously reserved issue. However, most examples of new Scottish influence suggest the need for UK support or minimal UK interest