Projects with keyword: Decent work agenda

This project continues a key theme of Charles Woolfson:s European Commission Marie Curie Chair Excellence Award (2004-2007) in the Baltic states i.e., labour standards, decent work in the form of regularised employment relations, access to training, and the character of the working environment in terms of occupational health and safety in the post-communist states. It explores the difficulties in securing regulated labour standards, as against ongoing counter-tendencies towards the informalisation of employment relations. It also asks how these labour standards are changing in the context of European Union enlargement and what empirical evidence there is of the integrative impacts of European directives and regulations on working life and work environment in the new member states ie., convergence or divergence.

This project is part of a comparative international study commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, UK, and led by the Working Lives Research Institute of London Metropolitan University. It involves researchers in a number of European countries including UK, France, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Latvia, Poland, Spain and Sweden. The project examines in each, the forms and extent of forced labour, the legislative and policy contexts, and opportunities for those subject to forced labour to seek redress through the civil or criminal law, local authorities or government agencies, NGOs, trade unions or other civil society actors. Case studies are illustrated with examples of good or innovative practice in securing redress.

The research project addresses the EU's regional approach to support countries in the Western Balkans in their progress towards EU membership. It focuses on the social reconstruction in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia and the regional dialogue on social and employment policies within the Bucharest process. The study investigates local and national trade unions strategies to challenge downward pressure on labour rights and standards brought about by the implementation of a neoliberal model of reconstruction. It analyses the counter-influence of European social dimension as well as practices of the international organizations such as the UNDP, ILO and International Trade Unions Confederation (ITUC) and civil society organizations on the development of 'transethnic' regional solidarities. It also examines the forms of labour collaboration necessary to counterbalance hostile employers and governments. The main question concerns the efficacy of EU support for social dialogue and the implementation of the ILO 'decent work agenda' in empowering trade unions in their struggle for labour rights and standards in post-conflict former Yugoslavia. The issue is especially pertinent considering the wider study of post-conflict societies, marked by social fragmentation, ethnic divisions, political clientelism, poverty, informal economy and migration pressures.