The state and class discipline: European labour market policy after the financial crisis

Charles Umney, Ian Greer, Ozlem Onaran and Graham Symon

No 14120, Greenwich Papers in Political Economy from University of Greenwich, Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre

Abstract: This paper looks at two related labour market policies that have persisted and even proliferated across Europe both before and after the financial crisis: wage restraint, and punitive workfare programmes. It asks why these policies, despite their weak empirical records, have been so durable. Moving beyond comparative-institutionalist explanations which emphasise institutional stickiness, it draws on Marxist and Kaleckian ideas to argue that, under financialisation, the state has been pushed to adopt disciplinary and destabilising policies which target the working class, as a means of bolstering the ‘confidence’ of capitalists in the short term. Wage restraint and punitive active labour market policies are two examples of such measures. We argue that this process is not embedded in existing institutions, but actively disrupts or subverts them.

Keywords: wage share; wage-led growth; minimum wage; living wage; public investment; pre-distribution; redistribution; collective bargaining (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-06-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/14120/1/GPERC33_Umney_etalF.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: The state and class discipline: European labour market policy after the financial crisis (2017)
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:gpe:wpaper:14120

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Greenwich Papers in Political Economy from University of Greenwich, Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nadine Edwards ().