Documents Wagner, Ines 11 results

"This article investigates how cross-border mobility in the European shipbuilding industry affected the employment security of workers on standard and non-standard contracts in sending and receiving countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. It draws on qualitative findings from Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland and Romania, where shipbuilding production is integrated into transnational networks, leading to high cross-border mobility. Despite restrictions and a reduction of shipbuilding activities, the east-west labour mobility continued during the pandemic contributing to employment security in the east and addressing labour shortages in the west. The findings show that the type of employment contract, national employment protections and workers' mobility status (e.g. posted or self-initiated) influence workers' vulnerability. Specifically, the mobile workers with the most secure employment were also better protected by government measures than those in less secure employment during the pandemic, resulting in hierarchised groups of cross-border labour. Workers engaging in circular migration across Europe were the least protected."

"In the course of European integration, national trade unions in Europe founded the umbrella organization of the European Trade Union Confederation in order to establish common political positions. Drawing on the case of supranational politics of services regulation, this study shows how cleavages within the EU's multi-level system of labor regulation make the development of such positions a difficult task. Whereas most research on cleavages at the supranational level focuses either on party groups or national origin, findings indicate a vertical line of conflict within the multi-level system of European trade unionism."

"Germany and Denmark are among the world's largest exporters of meat products. Two decades ago their labour markets were similar, but since then they have diverged significantly. The industry in Denmark has maintained high wages and good working conditions, while in Germany there has been a rapid growth in precarious employment, with widespread use of subcontracted and posted migrant workers. We argue that the key explanation for this radical difference is the power position of the trade unions, which also affects how employers position themselves. We show how trade union power embedded in the local and sectoral industrial relations systems influences the wages and working conditions in German and Danish slaughterhouses."

"There is considerable evidence that employers are violating the labour rights of mobile EU workers. However there is disagreement as to whether the lack of enforcement of these rights is caused by poor EU-level or weak national-level potential to oversee and sanction infringing companies and to enforce the rules. This poses the following three questions. Which enforcement gaps exist in relation to EU labour mobility? Which circumstances lead to these particular enforcement gaps? And what is being done to close those gaps? To answer these questions we examine the behaviour of institutions key to these processes, interviewing the respective labour enforcement agencies and trade unions in the German and Dutch construction sector as well as mobile EU workers themselves. We discuss three distinct difficulties encountered in enforcing labour standards: 1) disparities between enforcement institutions in different EU Member States; 2) enforcement challenges faced within the national context; and 3) representation gaps between host country collective representation channels and mobile EU workers. "

"Von einer Entsendung wird gesprochen, wenn ein Arbeitnehmer in einem EU-Mitgliedstaat angestellt ist, der Arbeitgeber jedoch entscheidet, ihn vorübergehend in einem anderen Mitgliedstaat arbeiten zu lassen. Die Entsenderichtlinie soll diese Art von transnationaler Arbeit regulieren. Fragen, wie sich die Lebenswelten, die Arbeitsbedingungen und die sozialen Räume von entsandten Arbeitnehmern gestalten, waren bisher ein wenig beachtetes Untersuchungsfeld. Welche Konsequenzen für Arbeits- und Beschäftigungsbedingungen und soziale Sicherung hat grenzüberschreitende Entsendung in der Entsendepraxis in dem Einsatzland Deutschland? Die in diesem Beitrag vorgestellte Studie untersucht, wie sich die transnationale Regulierung auf die Entsendepraxis auswirkt. Im Fokus der Analyse steht die Problematik, dass das Beschäftigungsverhältnis von entsandten Beschäftigten in zwei Staaten verankert ist."

"This article traces the course of a transnational action in the German meat industry involving an alliance of transnational posted workers, a local civil society organization and the trade union NGG (Gewerkschaft Nahrung-Genuss-Gaststätten). As labour's channels of influence have broken down and posting of low-wage workers has intensified, trade unionists have responded by building coalitions with societal actors. The case illustrates a complementary approach to studying how resistance unfolds in transnational workplaces under conditions in which traditional avenues for protest are blocked or marginalized."

"How 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 the particularities of posted worker dynamics at the workplace level, in German meatpacking facilities and on construction sites, to reveal the problems and promises of European Union governance as regulating social justice. Using a bottom-up approach through in-depth interviews with posted migrant workers and administrators involved in the posting process, Workers without Borders shows that strong labor-market regulation via independent collective bargaining institutions at the workplace level is crucial to effective labor rights in marginal workplaces. Wagner identifies structures of access and denial to labor rights for temporary intra-EU migrant workers and the problems contained within this system for the EU more broadly."

"Artificial intelligence (AI)-based algorithms are increasingly used to monitor employees and to automate management decisions. In this article, we ask how worker representatives adapt traditional collective voice institutions to regulate the adoption and use of these tools in the workplace. Our findings are based on a comparative study of union and works council responses to algorithmic management in contact centres from two similar telecommunications companies in Germany and Norway. In both case studies, worker representatives mobilised collective voice institutions to protect worker privacy and discretion associated with remote monitoring and workforce management technologies. However, they relied on different sources of institutional power, connected to co-determination rights, enforcement of data protection laws, and labour cooperation structures."

"The enlargements of the Single Market in 2004 and 2007, have fundamentally altered shipbuilding employers' production and staffing possibilities. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Norwegian shipbuilders began to offshore hull production and outfitting to countries in central and eastern Europe (the CEE countries) and eventually acquired several Romanian yards. From 2004, Norwegian yards also hired large amounts of CEE workers through temporary agencies and subcontractors. Transforming the mode of production and staffing in the yards, this two-way mobility has been driven by opportunities to increase production, overcome labour shortages, reduce labour and production costs, and adjust more flexibly to fluctuations in markets and production. This enabled the shipbuilding industry to handle a boom in production of offshore supply ships and the ensuing bust after the oil price dived in 2014.
The shipyard industry is part of the Norwegian core industrial relations system, with strong trade unions and employers' associations. As wages and labour costs are among the highest in Europe, the yards' competitiveness depends on high quality and productivity.
The dual mobility and outsourcing of work has led to a dualisation of the workforce, and declining employment among local blue-collar workers. Due to numerous examples of inferior wages and conditions among the subcontracted CEE-workforce, the unions in 2008 won through with demands for extension of minimum terms in the collective agreement, fueling tension and legal strife between the social partners. Eventually further re-regulation and enforcement measures were enacted, strengthening the rights and remuneration of migrant workers.
Our overall findings suggest that the two-way mobility of production factors can generate gains both for western and eastern yards and workers. However, the dual mobility has contributed to erosion of the industry's national skill base and establishment of a flexible segment of migrant workers who are not incorporated in the model of organised labour relations, lacking institutional representation and voice.
Looking ahead, the ongoing turn towards the production of more technology-intensive ‘green' vessels will require upgrading of qualifications, calling for more investment in vocational training, skill formation and long-term recruitment."