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Erne, Roland
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Erne, Roland
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- Publication'Zeit für einen Themenwechsel'Die deutschen Gewerkschaften sind zu technokratisch. Um wieder kampagnenfähig zu werden, müssen sie das moralische Gerechtigkeitsempfinden der Bevölkerung ansprechen. ---German trade unions are too technocratic. In order to be able to run successful campaigns again, they need to address the popular sense of moral justice.
62 - PublicationMind the gap : national and local partnership in the Irish public sectorThis article uses case study data from a major Irish city council to investigate and explain public sector worker attitudes towards social partnership at local and national level. It is argued that the more sceptical attitudes to workplace partnership reflect structural differences between local and national arrangements, which have enabled public sector employers to use 'social partnership' as a constraint in the implementation process of a pre-determined public sector reform agenda.
440 - PublicationTowards an Integrated European Healthcare Space?While health services have long been insulated from the process of European integration, this article shows that we are witnessing their re-configuration in an emerging EU healthcare space. The article uncovers the structuring lines of this space by focussing on three interrelated processes that contribute to linking national healthcare systems into a larger EU-level one: 1) indirect vertical pressures linked to the rise of a new capitalist accumulation regime and the constraints of both the Maastricht economic convergence and the EU accession criteria; 2) horizontal market pressures linked to the free movement of health services, workers and patients within the European Single Market; 3) direct political pressures linked to new EU laws and New Economic Governance prescriptions that the EU has been issuing since the financial crisis of 2008. The article shows that these processes have helped constructing a European healthcare space that is uneven in terms of the distribution of access to services by patients and of wages and working conditions of healthcare workers, but similar in terms of economic and financial governance pressures within and across EU member states.
151 - PublicationEuropean trade-union strategies: Between technocratic efficiency and democratic legitimacyThe democratic nature of the EU, or the lack of it, has never been so important (Schmitter 2000; Erne et. al. 1995). It is generally acknowledged that the existing governance structures and mechanism of the EU “are not able to provide democratic legitimation for the EU polity as a whole” (Héritier 1999: 208; European Commission 2003a: 38). Indeed, a democratic polis needs as well as constitutional bodies, a tight network of intermediate institutions and social organisations such as the unions, other civil society associations and the media (Lepsius 1993). These offer more possibilities for citizens’ participation in the political system and thus an increase in its legitimacy. Hence, the making and performance of European civil society organisations is linked to the constitution of a democratic EU polity. This chapter analyses one potential agent of Euro-democratisation, namely organized labour. Although unions have often played an important role in national democratisation processes, this does not necessarily promise a similar role for them at the EU level. Authoritarian regimes typically prohibit free trade-union activity and consequently impel unions to take part in democratisation movements, but the current institutional setting of the EU provides alternative options for organized labour, namely Eurodemocratisation, Euro-technocracy and (re-) nationalisation. I will assess the tensions between these options in a comparison of the different strategies of trade unions in two transnational company merger cases.1 While the unions and European Works Councils involved seem to have adopted a Euro-democratic strategy in the ABB-Alstom merger case, they apparently pursued a Euro-technocratic strategy in the parallel Alcan-Pechiney-Algroup case. The adoption of different strategies seems surprising since it was the same European, German and French unions that played a decisive role in both cases. This indicates that unions have a range of options, something which leads one to reject any kind of determinism regarding the role of civil society organisations in the EU integration process.
774 - PublicationLe relazioni industriali europee dopo la crisi. Verso un interventismo regolatorio post-democratico?L'attuale programma di liberalizzazioni europee sta minando il consenso sociale che era alla base dell'integrazione europea. Le ripercussioni gravissime sui sistemi sociali e di r.i. nei paesi più in difficoltà. Il carattere a-democratico di queste politiche. La previsione, e la speranza, di un periodo di crescenti conflitti sociali contro questa politica di austerità, in grado di scardinare definitivamente il modello sociale europeo.
456 - PublicationThe European Union. A Significant Player in Labour PolicymakingGrasping the European Union’s (EU) increasingly important role in labour policymaking across member states is not an easy task. It is not enough to untangle the complex set of EU institutions, laws, and policies in the field. It is equally important to consider the impact of the European integration process on the balance of power between capital and labour interests. This chapter thus first presents the relevant actors and the way in which they intervene in EU labour policymaking. Then we outline how the EU influenced labour policymaking from the start of the European integration process. This includes an analysis of its internal market programme and monetary union, which exposed workers and businesses to increased horizontal market integration pressures. We also discuss the much more vertical country-specific policy prescriptions that the EU began issuing annually after the 2008 financial crisis. Finally, we outline the recent Covid-19 pandemic and consequent developments.
11 - PublicationIs the European Semester Really Being Socialised? Rethinking the European Union's New Economic Governance Regime and Labour Politics(2019-09-07)
; ; One of the key responses from the European Union (EU) to the global financial and sovereign debt crises has been to overhaul its economic governance regime. The former Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso, went even as far as to label the shift to the EU’s New Economic Governance (NEG) regime a ‘silent revolution’. In this paper, we propose a new approach for the analysis of NEG and examine the question whether we are really witnessing a progressive socialisation of its policy content, as an emerging literature claims. We do this through three key steps. The first step is to offer a new way of thinking about the institutional structure of the NEG regime, especially the so-called European Semester, which, thus far, has primarily reflected the EU’s own understanding of it across various academic literatures. The second step is to propose a methodological innovation in how to evaluate the policy orientations and prescriptions stemming from the NEG regime. Whereas most studies about the EU’s Country Specific Recommendations (CSRs) treat each prescription as equal, as if they exist in an institutional vacuum, we instead take into account the varying degrees of constraint that are attributable to NEG prescriptions as they relate to the broader institutional structure they are embedded within. Hence, the more precise and enforceable a NEG prescription is the more significant it becomes. Furthermore, our analysis also accounts for the location member states find themselves in across the uneven but deeply integrated European political economy, as otherwise similar NEG policy prescriptions can take on very different meanings from differentiated positions within this structured environment. This allows us, in a third step, to apply our conceptual and methodological innovations to a contextualised analysis of close to 100 NEG document issued between 2009-2018 for the Eurozone as a whole, Germany, Italy, Ireland and Romania, i.e. for different locations of the EU’s uneven but deeply integrated political economy. Focusing on policy areas affecting labour politics, including wages, labour markets and collective bargaining, our findings demonstrate that there has not been a progressive socialisation of the Semester. Instead, a pro-business policy paradigm is still dominant over any social(ising) considerations. We therefore conclude our paper with some reflections that problematise these dissonances and discuss possible future (research) orientations on the EU’s NEG regime and labour politics.259 - PublicationLe renouveau du modèle démocratique"La Citoyenneté européenne", rapport-proposition sur la citoyenneté européenne. Participation, droits sociaux et civiques émanant de l'Association Eurocités-Comité du Bien-être social (Mairie de Barcelone).
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