Description
Book SynopsisHow the European Union handles posted workers is a growing issue for a region with borders that really are just lines on a map. A 2008 story, dissected in Ines Wagner's Workers without Borders, about the troubling working conditions of migrant meat and construction workers, exposed a distressing dichotomy: how could a country with such strong employers' associations and trade unions allow for the establishment and maintenance of such a precarious labor market segment?
Wagner introduces an overlooked piece of the puzzle: re-regulatory politics at the workplace level. She interrogates the position of the posted worker in contemporary European labour markets and the implications of and regulations for this position in industrial relations, social policy and justice in Europe. Workers without Borders concentrates on how local actors implement European rules and opportunities to analyze the balance of power induced by the EU around policy issues.
Wagner examines
Trade Review
A good read for those who want to understand the difficulties in defining a regulatory floor for new types of work in fragmented arenas of crossborder industrial relations. Similarly, those looking for inspiration about options to engage with the obstacles in practice are well-served here. In addition, the pages are filled with many important observations regarding the more fine-grained realities that posted workers face: from their temporary status and lack of embeddedness in foreign host countries to the organizing difficulties they confront. Also, the explanations of regulatory details of posted work are informative, especially those about the political and legal rationales for defining posting within the framework of the European treaties as an economic freedom of service providers. This relevant observation points to the ideological cleavages around decent work more generally.
* ILR Review *
Ines Wagner's Workers without Borders provides a good example of the kind of scholarship which the precarization trend requires, focusing in particular on the dark underside of labor market integration among European Union economies. It is a message which policy elites and the public writ large badly need to hear.
* Social Forces *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Methods and Data Collection
2. Posted Work and Transnational Workspaces in Germany
3. Management Strategies in Transnational Workspaces
4. Posted Worker Voice and Transnational Action
5. Borders in a European Labor Market
6. Broadening the Scope
Appendix I: Article 3 of the Posting of Workers Directive
Appendix II: Overview of Interviews
Notes
References
Index
