Ambivalences in the Countermovement – Does Re-Embedding Take Place As a General Move Towards More Equity?
With regards to the globalization of labor regulation (Pries/Seeliger 2013), scholars from Industrial Relations today are facing a very ambiguous and diverse landscape of initiatives and measures on different scales. Against this background, the paper attempts a conceptual contribution to our understanding of internal dynamics of this nexus from the viewpoint of Polanyian theory. Drawing on two case studies, the paper aims to show how measures that can be understood as parts of a general countermovement to neoliberal globalization can bear contradictious implications in relation to the political constellation from which they emerge.
As multinational companies have proved to be at the core of economic globalization, they have become a central locus of labor regulation via international framework agreements (Rüb, Stefan et al. 2011). Against this background, the paper introduces the transfer of co-determination measures within the Volkswagen company from Germany to its South African plant. While the German system has been built on a tradition of co-determination, which granted workers political influence on the labor process, South African trade unionists view such participation measures from a communist perspective (i.e. as a thread of real subsumption of labor under capital). Moreover, while such agreements tend to privilege workers at OEMs, economic pressure is often handed down the value chain. As international framework agreements in general (and measures of worker participation in particular) therefore do cause redistribution not only between capital and labor, but also within the working class, the instrument of international framework agreements appears as ambivalent.
As a second case, the paper inquires the field of international wage coordination in the course of European integration or, more precisely, the discussion around a European minimum wage. Over the last decade, a proposal to launch a campaign on a European bottom-limit for wages set at 50 and perspectively 60 percent of the national median wages has been debated among the national affiliates of the European Trade Union Confederation. While most representatives from the East and the South of Europe were in favor of the proposal, it has until today been effectively blocked by the Scandinavian federations. From the latters´ perspective, a minimum wage does not only weaken the social partners in the sectoral collective bargaining arenas. Moreover, by introducing it via the EU-level, national social partners might lose their autonomy to other players in the European multi-level system of labor relations.
By looking at the interview-based findings of the cases, we can attempt a number of theoretical considerations:
Firstly, we can detect a general ambivalence in the emergence of what could be termed a countermovement to neoliberal globalization. While measures of re-embedding the globalized labor market can take decommodifying effects in some places, they may not work or even become counterproductive in others. While a European minimum wage might for example strengthen trade unions representing workers in the low-wage sector, it may at the same time even weaken trade unions in highly organized sectors. We may therefore have to depart from the idea of the countermovement as a general move towards more equity.
Secondly, a more fundamental problem arises with regards to the question of how to conceptualize the concept of de-commodification from the viewpoint of political sociology: As actors are necessarily uncertain about the future (Beckert 2016), they cannot objectively know which measures to pursue in order to achieve decommodification. Instead, they are restricted to pursuing strategies on the basis of their experiences and capabilities. While the social-democratic trade unions from Germany have traditionally valued peaceful labor relations as a basis of economic prosperity across classes, the communist colleagues from South Africa have maintained their hostile relationship with the capital side since the days of Apartheid. The second consideration therefore aims at the conception of political goals in countermovements: While actors may aspire do decommodify labor (or other fictitious commodities), this does not mean that anything alike is actually going to happen, once they reach their goals.
Thirdly, evidence suggests that the dynamics of the countermovement may be ambivalent, but by no means totally contingent. Instead, both cases are showing that outcomes (i.e. the introduction of co-determination measures and the blockade of a European minimum wage-campaign) tend to follow the interests of the more powerful actors involved. While the number of two cases may not allow for an overall generalization, these insights reflect a core-periphery dynamic in political agenda-setting. Which measures can or cannot become the countermovement seems to be largely influenced (if not determined) by strong labor organizations from the core countries (Germany, Scandinavian), rather than representatives from the Periphery (Eastern Europe, South Africa).
On the basis of these three insights, the paper aspires a contribution to the conceptual understanding of what might turn out to be an emerging countermovement to neoliberal globalization.
Bibliography
Beckert, Jens (2016): Imagined Futures. Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics. Boston: Harvard University Press
Pries, Ludger and Seeliger, Martin (2013) "Work and Employment Relations in a Globalized World: The Emerging Texture of Transnational Labour Regulation," Global Labour Journal 4 (1), 26-47
Rüb, Stefan et al. (2011): Transnationale Unternehmensvereinbarungen. Zur Neuordnung der Arbeitsbeziehungen in Europa. Berlin: Sigma
Webster, Edward et al. (2008): Grounding Globalization. Labour in the Age of Insecurity. Oxford: Blackwell