When does solidarity end? Transnational labour cooperation during and after the crisis – the GM/Opel case revisited

Susanne Pernicka, Vera Glassner, Nele Dittmar, Adam Mrozowicki and Małgorzata Maciejewska
Additional contact information
Susanne Pernicka: Johannes Kepler Universität Linz, Austria
Vera Glassner: Johannes Kepler Universität Linz, Austria
Nele Dittmar: Johannes Kepler Universität Linz, Austria
Adam Mrozowicki: Uniwersytet Wrocławski, Poland
Małgorzata Maciejewska: Uniwersytet Wrocławski, Poland

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2017, vol. 38, issue 3, 375-399

Abstract: The General Motors (GM) case stands out for its transnational employee cooperation. During the crisis the ‘national turn’ of union politics seems to have eroded solidarity and mutual trust relations. In this article the authors suggest disentangling the behaviour of labour representatives and their attitudes, identities and feelings to develop a more sophisticated perspective on labour transnationalism. Concepts of sociological neo-institutionalism and empirical evidence from two automobile companies (GM/Opel and Volkswagen) in Germany, the UK and Poland are used to investigate the conditions under which transnational solidarity occurs and prevails. The authors conclude that solidarity in both companies has not come to an end and contributes to repertoires of contention in future labour conflicts.

Keywords: Cooperation; European Works Councils; industrial democracy; industrial relations; trade unions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0143831X15577840 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:38:y:2017:i:3:p:375-399

DOI: 10.1177/0143831X15577840

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic and Industrial Democracy from Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().