Workers after Workers' States

Labor and Politics in Postcommunist Eastern Europe

By: David Ost (Editor), Stephen Crowley (Editor)

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Paperback | 19 September 2001

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256 Pages

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15.2 x 22.8 x 2.4

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After decades as the official "ruling class" of ostensible "workers' states," labor in Eastern Europe has fallen dramatically. Although the painful consequences of market transformation have hit workers hardest of all, protests have been surprisingly few and ineffective. More than ten years after the start of the transition, trade unions are among the weakest institutions of postcommunist society, unable to influence policymaking or secure material rewards for workers. Why, given unprecedented political freedoms coupled with such adverse economic change, has labor been so quiescent since the fall of communism in Eastern Europe? And what are the political consequences of that weakness for societies trying to build lasting democracies?

This book, through the use of comparative case studies, explores the causes, extent, significance, and implications of this weakness. The ten cases-Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine-focus on the status of trade unions and the relationship between labor and politics in each country. Comprising a full array of postcommunist societies, these countries represent a wide variation in labor institutions, political experiences, and economic outcomes. In their introduction and conclusion the editors consider structural, sociological, and ideational explanations for labor decline in the postcommunist era and assess the impact of that weakness on the consolidation of democracy in the region.

Industry Reviews

The individual country chapters provide invaluable detail on the development and progress of trade unions in each context. The book will obviously be read by specialists in the field, should be dipped into by country specialists who perhaps know little about this aspect of transition, and could usefully be recommended to those academics and students concerned more generally with trade unions and the collective organization of labor in the twenty-first century.--Slavic Review

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