The Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS) work-in was the largest and most successful of the 190 work-place occupations between 1971 and 1975, and took place during a key period in the politicization of industrial action in early 1970s. Even at a superficial level the UCS work-in therefore poses some interesting questions. The Conservative government was never soft on its working-class opponents. The Conservative government had taken over many elements of the Labour Party’s industrial relations strategy. The Labour-inclined Record ran its front-page story on 22 September as ‘Speak Up Brother Dan’. On the same day the Conservative Glasgow Herald’s editorial argued that ‘the full-time trade union officials have a duty to take over from the shop stewards and work with management to ensure that the maximum number of jobs is preserved’. The Heath government was trying to hold together quite opposed sections of British capital and of the Conservative Party.

Corporate Social Responsibility Failures in the Oil Industry directly challenges the oil industry's claims of corporate good citizenship, now widely advanced as part of a global public relations initiative. The volume spans the industry's reach, from the troubled waters of the UK offshore Continental Shelf, with its horrendous legacy of the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster, to the inhospitable shores of Newfoundland with its own tragic legacy of lost lives; to the new frontier of oil corporate colonialism in the former Soviet Union and the icy plains of Alaska. The central theme of violations of basic labour rights and of health and environmental protection standards will make uncomfortable reading in the boardroom. It is equally essential reading for those who seek to improve the position of workers and industries within the oil industry's global reach.

This article seeks to address the implications of Brexit and attempts to chart a way forward for the left. It tries to reposition the Brexit debate over immigration, free movement of labour and labour standards in terms of the politics of austerity and a progressive nationalism in order to detach it from current xenophobic narratives of the right. The issue of labor standards is one area that paradoxically the current Conservative administration has sought to champion. It is suggested that a progressive nationalism that rejects the European project has the potential to advance labor rights in a post-Brexit Britain in an inclusive and non-xenophobic way if linked to a wider internationalism that builds on trade union struggles for decent labour standards especially for migrant workers.

This article problematizes the neoliberal reconfiguration of labour rights in Lithuania, a newer European Union member state, in which the impacts of the global economic and financial crisis were particularly severe and where radical austerity measures were subsequently imposed. Now, after six years, in an attempt to resolve the exhaustion of previous austerity-based solutions for economic recovery, a new Labour Code is being introduced which will further weaken labour protections and labour rights. This article analyses conflicting positions in current debates over Labour Code reform. It attempts to map the mobilization of strategic discursive resources in an unfolding dialogical 'moral' politics of Labour Code reform in the current conjuncture of 'post-crisis'. Theoretically, this article draws upon the seminal work of the early Soviet Marxist scholar V. N. Voloshinov in proposing a dialogical method which foregrounds the interconnections of language, class and ideology.

The Conservative government of Theresa May asserted that labour standards would be preserved post-Brexit. The Labour Party also privileged labour standards in its anti-austerity programme. The threat remains however that Brexit will provide an incentive to erode labour standards in a global 'race to the bottom' in a 'Singapore scenario'.

20 | International Union Rights | 23/4 REPORT | BREXIT Free Movement of Labour and Brexit: Reclaiming National Sovereignty or a Victory for Xenophobia? In a timely essay in the aftermath of Brexit, the great Egyptian Marxist scholar, Samir Amin, addresses the key issue of what is meant by ‘national sovereignty’ by posing the question: National sovereignty: for what purpose?1. At first glance, ‘national sovereignty’ in an age of globalising economic forces may seem something of an anachronism. Amin however makes the important distinction between what he terms a national ‘sovereignty…in the service of… financialised monopolies’ and what by contrast, is a ‘positive nationalism’, within a ‘framework defined by the (‘nation’) State’. The nation State, is still the key arena where the ‘decisive struggles that transform the world unfold’. A ‘positive nationalism’, therefore, in contrast to insular reactionary nationalism, is both ‘popular’ and ‘democratic’. Its content is defined against, in the first instance, national ruling elites and involves ‘decisive struggles’ for democratic rights. Such struggles also have the inherent potential to interlink with other national struggles of a similar democratic and popular nature. So understood, internationalism is therefore part and parcel of asserting a different kind of ‘national sovereignty’. This narrative of ‘reclaiming’ national sovereignty as a ‘project that is popular, social and democratic’ offers a more nuanced understanding perhaps of why many in the UK voted to leave the European Union in the referendum of June 2016. The Brexit vote is emphatically characterised as a vote for closing borders against ‘foreigners’. This entails ending the European Union’s mandatory requirement for all member States to accept ‘free movement of persons’ with the right to live and work in any member State. Control over who enters, who leaves, who has the right to remain and under which conditions is, of course, the most fundamental marker of national sovereignty. Free movement of persons in this light can be seen as fundamentally undermining national sovereignty. The Brexit vote thus could be seen as an assertion of the desire to reclaim control over national borders, for mistaken reasons or otherwise. The referendum vote is an expression of opposition to the European Union perceived as a super-State which seeks to obliterate national borders. Yet to reassert the prerogatives of the nation State is not necessarily to embrace a reactionary nationalism which seeks to scapegoat foreigners, immigrants and non-nationals as the ‘Other’. A democratic national politics stand in sharp opposition to the remote and supra-national European Union, and especially to the unelected and politically unaccountable European Commission, characterised in Amin’s words, as an ‘absolute denial of democracy’ and ‘incapable’ of reform. Prevailing austerity policies at a pan-European level serving the interests of ‘financialised monopolies’ were decisively rejected by many ‘Leave’ voters in the context of the UK where national elites, in the service of the City of London, have vigorously implemented their own ‘competitive austerity’ programmes since the global crash, under both Labour and Conservative-led coalitions. In the backwash of the global financial and economic crisis, austerity at the behest of the European Commission and the European Central Bank, with the notable temporary exception of Greece, was willingly or otherwise implemented by national governments throughout the Eurozone area. Restoring the economic health of the European economy, simultaneously ruled out policies of industrial investment as well as State-led interventions that could generate jobs and growth. Thus, a rejection of the current European project is a rejection of ever-encroaching EU interventions in domestic policy decision-making and the grip of tight disciplinary fiscal powers which have eroded the economic independence of member States. The Brexit vote is therefore also about the desire to regain control over national economic direction and decision-making. In this reading, it aims at creating a more democratic form of national economic policy and more responsive democratic forums at national and regional levels (Scotland being a case in point), which ordinary people feel they have some say in, rather than being an expression of simple-minded ‘anti-immigrant’ sentiment. Yet undoubtedly, the heart of the matter in the British referendum vote – the hinge issue – was the question of the free movement of labour to the...

This article draws on the experience of the imposition of radical austerity measures in the Baltic states. It challenges the myth that austerity can be achieved in a socially and economically 'costless' manner. Baltic-style austerity has now become a template of 'successful adjustment' and a recipe for recovery of the Eurozone. The authors argue contra such 'myth-making' that austerity is compromising the longer run sustainability of societies that follow this path, while simultaneously ending prospects of the adhesion of a European 'Social Model' in the post-communist periphery. The article is a contribution to an emerging debate in academic and policy circles concerning the viability and future of Europe's 'Social Model' in an age of austerity.

The increase in labour precarity which has accompanied the global economic and financial crisis is itself part of a longer term historical trend towards the increasing vulnerability of labour. This has two elements that are relevant: 1. The impacts of crisis on regulated labour standards in general 2. The role crisis-induced migration flows in accelerating labour precarity on a European and transnational scale. Both these tendencies need to be seen against fundamental changes in the architecture of European labour rights and labour law as it seeks to accommodate the competitiveness agenda of the European Commission in promoting greater labour flexibility and adaptability within a context of free movement of labour.

The Great Economic Recession was experienced with particular severity in the peripheral newer European Union member states. Baltic governments in particular introduced programmes of harsh austerity known as ‘internal devaluation’. The paper argues that austerity measures have accelerated the fragmentation of the labour market into a differentially advantaged primary (largely public) sector, and an increasingly ‘informalized’ secondary (largely low-skill manufacturing and services) sector. It is suggested that the production of a segmented labour market has acted as a major stimulus towards creating, in both Latvia and Lithuania, among the highest levels of emigration in the European Union, especially during the years of the crisis from 2008 onwards. In the absence of effective state policy to address a gathering socio-demographic crisis in which this migration is a key component, so-called ‘free movement’ of labour raises troubling questions for wider societal sustainability in the European Union’s neoliberal semiperiphery in an era of protracted austerity.

The Great Economic Recession was experienced with particular severity in the peripheral newer European Union member states. Baltic governments in particular introduced programmes of harsh austerity known as ‘internal devaluation’. The paper argues that austerity measures have accelerated the fragmentation of the labour market into a differentially advantaged primary (largely public) sector, and an increasingly ‘informalized’ secondary (largely low-skill manufacturing and services) sector. Taking Baltic Lithuania as a case study, it is suggested that the production of a newly segmented labour market has acted as a major stimulus towards among the highest levels of emigration in the European Union. This migration raises troubling questions for wider societal sustainability in the EU’s periphery.

The so-called 'Baltic model' of austerity sometimes receives uncritical praise from advocates of tightened austerity. This model has achieved an almost uncontested vogue among international finance officials and European Union policy makers who portray it as a 'socially costless' template for other crisis economies. The article examines the impact of austerity on Baltic Lithuania, a peripheral newer EU member state, and suggests that the harsh austerity measures adopted by its government in order to restore fiscal balance have been far from socially costless. Austerity has accelerated fragmentation of the labour market into a differentially advantaged primary (largely public) sector, and an increasingly informalised secondary (low-skill manufacturing and services) sector, stimulating extraordinarily high levels of emigration as the population, especially younger persons, depart from the country. We describe this here as the formation of a new austeriat.

In the current era of austerity free movement of labour has produced an ongoing but also contingent flow of migrant labour, an austeriat, moving from poorer crisis-hit regions of Europe to those countries such as Sweden where the crisis has been less severe. This article describes the working and living experiences of Bulgarian Roma berry pickers in Sweden. It argues that, in the context of a previously well-regulated labour market, an erosion of labour standards based on the exploitation of seasonal unskilled labour migrants from Bulgaria is occurring in the Swedish berry industry, in turn posing challenges for labour market actors and regulatory authorities. The article concludes with a discussion of what might be appropriate European and national trade union responses to the issues of labour precariousness which have emerged.

The roof collapse of the Maxima supermarket in Riga, Latvia on November 21, 2013 left 54 dead. This analysis identifies the disaster as a "safety crime." Neoliberal deregulatory measures, intensified by the global economic and financial crisis and a programme of radical austerity, together with corporate and state disregard of public safety and well-being, combined to produce the disaster. The wider context and underlying causes of catastrophic safety failure exemplify the inherently contradictory character of the neoliberal "Baltic model" of austerity, recently much in vogue with international policymakers in both Europe and the United States. The authors conclude that the current renewed drive by the European Commission towards reducing regulation for business, especially in the aftermath of the crisis, further justifies longstanding anti-regulatory preferences of neoliberal domestic elites, with the result that the costs of disregard for public safety are externalized onto the general populace.

This paper addresses the historical and contemporary challenges created for occupational safety and health in the EU member state of Latvia, which joined the European Union in 2004. It examines the historical background for the determinants of workplace health and safety in Latvia as a former Soviet republic, and thereafter, following independence from the USSR in 1991, as an open-market neoliberal economy. These divergent contexts have set a problematic trajectory of reactive path dependency with respect to the regulation of occupational safety and health.With the onset of the economic and financial crisis of 2008 onwards, Latvia suffered a particularly sharp economic downturn. We suggest that previous limited advances made in the management of occupational safety and health at the workplace level since accession to the European Union may have been undermined. Ever since the crisis, business and policy actors have sought to promote rapid economic recovery as the overall priority, at the expense of protective occupational safety and health regulation. This approach was brought into sharp relief with the collapse of the Maxima supermarket roof in Riga in November 2013, resulting in 54 fatalities. The event has raised debates on the enforcement of safety regulation in the new era of neoliberal austerity to a greater level of public salience, although with, as yet, uncertain policy outcomes.

Page 9 Volume 21 Issue 1 2014 INTERNATIONAL union rights The blacklisters indicated cuts to industry support for university funding D uring the 1980s, the offshore oil industry was the experimental testing ground for Thatcher’s grand design to create a unionfree environment onshore. The stakes, not least financial, were high and the oil companies employed the devices of phoney employee-consultative committees, while ensuring that union ‘contamination’ from the better-organised contract workforce (who had experience of unionism whilst working onshore but now also worked offshore ), were dealt with in the most summary manner . Blacklisting and intimidation of identified activists who were prepared to challenge authoritarian managerial diktat on the rigs was rife. As the Piper Alpha disaster was graphically to illustrate in July 1988, and many other ‘lesser’ tragedies reconfirmed , lack of independent employee ‘voice’ - the confidence to speak up without fear of retribution - was to have lethal consequences. The role of the union in giving backing to onshore health and safety representatives was crucial but wholly absent offshore. In total over 500 men had lost their lives in safety failures in the UK offshore sector - many of which could have been avoided had management been ready to listen to the concerns of the workforce and taken advantage of their unique capacity to perform ‘safety auditing from below’. The system of blacklisting offshore employees - known as the NRB (Not Required Back) enabled the construction contracting companies offshore to maintain a zone of union exclusion that was largely effective, until the fire and explosion on Piper Alpha - the world’s worst offshore disaster claiming 167 lives - shook the industry to its foundations. What followed was an unprecedented ‘insurrection ’ led by the contractor workforce, demanding a say in safety and a union to protect them when they did speak out. In two tumultuous ‘summers of discontent’, contract workers often supported by sympathetic oil company employees, occupied the offshore rigs in one of the most dramatic episodes in the post-war history of British industrial relations. Together with two of my colleagues, John Foster and Matthias Beck, we recorded (literally ) this struggle as it unfolded day by day, detailing the strategy and tactics of the fierce (sometimes internecine) struggle for union recognition, subsequently recounted in our book Paying for the Piper. This was one of the key industrial disputes of the late 1980s and early 1990s that eventually led to the subsequent New Labour government amending Thatcher’s employment legislation to enable union recognition (both offshore and onshore) through the Employment Relations Act 1999, although as we now know, with somewhat mixed results. We also publicly challenged the industry’s official narrative of contrition in the aftermath of Piper Alpha - that the safety lessons had been learned and that the industry had transformed itself in terms of its management practices and measurable safety outcomes (See Woolfson and Beck 2005). All of this activity as industrial relations researchers was enough for the blacklisting organisation, The Consulting Association, to put myself (and probably several others whom we do not know about, including my colleagues) on its list of identified persons against whom the taking of measures were discussed, including steps whereby ‘there may be a reduction in his [my] activities’ and suggesting that “funding from oil industry to Glasgow University may be cut if aboves (sic) activities continue’. What the blacklisters had not reckoned upon was the tradition of actually supporting independent critical scholarship as the hallmark of academic freedom, something to be treasured and intrinsic to the core values of the university. Even in this age of the neoliberal academy, Glasgow University made it clear that external pressures from whatever quarter would be resisted. Perhaps another less courageous institution might not have been so principled. Cash-strapped universities both in the UK and in the US have been more than amenable to accepting major research funding from Big Oil on such highly contentious issues as energy sustainability, climate change and the impacts onshore fracking. Whether or not ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’ is an open question. Most recently, in returning to the topic of offshore safety in a study of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of...

This article analyses the 2008 economic crisis and its outcomes for the Baltic states. It then gives a genealogy of European economic policy responses to the crisis, tracing them from the emerging 'freshwater' school of economics (e. g. University of Chicago) that arose in opposition to Keynesian theory. The more immediate cause of the 2008 crisis, long in the making, was its reliance on private debt to sustain economic demand in light of profit-enhancing wage suppression. Following the 2008 financial shock, European Union policymakers crafted policy that placed the burden of adjustment on labour. A programme of austerity was chosen in much of the European Union, at odds with the post-war European 'social model'. This represented a retreat from the notion of a European project that encouraged liberalisation of economic policy but at the same time could be harmonised with a social dimension to create a distinctive 'Social Europe'. Nowhere was this austerity more vigorously applied than in the Baltic states. Its effects are examined here, along with lessons to be derived from that experience.