CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2014
| Author | Jakimovs, Sergejs |
|---|---|
| Title | Does Free Movement of Services and Labor in the EU Threaten Coordinated Market Economies? Swedish Corporatism and the LAVAL Challenge |
| Summary | The study addresses the issue of repercussions of enhanced competition from low wage highly mobile Eastern European labor forces on Swedish coordinated system of industrial relations. It discuses the fundamental differences between labor market organization in liberal (LME) and coordinated market economies (CME), addressing the puzzle of Swedish corporatism, which, unlike similar CMEs of Western Europe, stayed open and liberalism-embracing after 2004 EU enlargement. By using the LAVAL case as a symbolic precedent of industrial relation differences in EU, the analysis examines the ECJ ruling on the case and explores how Swedish actors (state, trade unions and business) adopted to the free market challenge. To do so, it uses content analysis to study scholarly debate on the issue and examines supplementary interviews conducted in the process of research The study concludes, that, while the ECJ clearly put national market values below free market principles, Swedish state and business showed substantial flexibility in adapting to post-LAVAL challenges. Trade unions, as shown in the example of Swedish-Latvian construction sector, remained critical towards any reforms, which limit their bargaining capacities and are not active in cross-border cooperation as a measure to prevent cheap labor flows to their market. |
| Supervisor | Bohle, Dorothee Christine |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2014/jakimovs_sergejs.pdf |
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